We’re doing some social media monitoring for a client who had never done anything in the space before so they had no benchmarks to work from. We didn’t know what a ‘normal’ level of buzz would be and because Twitter data doesn’t go back more than a couple of weeks there was no reliable way to backtrack. I figured the best thing to do was figure out how many active Twitter users there are in Australia and then look at how many of those would be likely to tweet about our client on any given day.

Here’s my working out (bit like a high school maths test really, I sucked at those though). The results are quite important I think, and could be applied to any business:

• There are about 17,000,000 Internet users in Australia (source: Internet World Stats)
• Of those, 13% actively updated their Twitter account (ie. ‘Tweeted’) in 2009 (source: Nielsen 2010 Social Media Report)
• Which is 2.2 million twitter users in Australia (not visitors, USERS, the distinction is very important as not every visitor to Twitter has an account)
• But of all Twitter users, about 50% don’t really update their account very often (source: HubSpot)
• So that’s about 1.1 million Australians actively using Twitter
• There is a widely accepted rule that 1% of any online community will actively contribute to it with gusto and another 9% are likely to contribute from time to time. (source: Jakob Nielsen - he is one of the world’s most respected web usability consultants).
• As Jakob Nielsen writes: “1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.”
• Based on that estimate, there are about 11,000 Australian Twitter users who would be highly likely to update their status to mention any given brand if they had an experience worth mentioning. They’re the same sort of people who would, by nature, actively contribute to other forums as well. As a proportion of the Australian population, that’s  0.04%
• It’s also likely that there are 99,000 Australian Twitter users who would be somewhat likely to update their status to mention any given brand if they had an experience worth mentioning. As a proportion of the Australian population, that’s  0.43%.

So how can you use those figures to benchmark your business? Easy - work out how many products you sell (or services you deliver) over any given time period and you could expect that 0.04% of that figure will mention you and 0.43% of that figure might mention you in Twitter, or on their favourite social network of choice.

Try it, see if it works, I’d be keen to know!

The thing with Brisbane is, the weather is just so unpredictable.

Saturday      Chance of late thunderstorm.           Min 19    Max 30
Sunday        Chance of late thunderstorm            Min 20    Max 31
Monday        Possible afternoon thunderstorm        Min 21    Max 32

I wonder whose job it is to write the updates on the official Bureau of Meteorology website. I wonder if they get any copy writing training. I wonder if there’s a style guide for what they do.

Regardless, I hope the chance of late thunderstorm doesn’t impede Breaka Poolies. With 3000 kids, some famous rock and roll bands, a theme park and a hell of a lot of flavoured milk, it’s the biggest social media marketing project we’ve worked on so far and I dearly hope it comes off without a hitch. Expect some pretty decent case studies out of it shortly.

I’m watching the Yaris social media campaigns with interest.

a) Because I run a social media agency

b) Because none of the ideas coming out seem very original or groundbreaking so far. In fact, they’re straight out of AWARD school. Literally. Here’s an idea my girlfriend (who now works at Sapient Nitro) put in her book a few months ago. I’m not accusing One Green Bean of stealing the idea, because they clearly (surely) didn’t, it is uncanny though. I was hoping for better from the pitching agencies. At least One Green Bean are putting people in the car - surely any campaign that doesn’t do that gets an instant fail. Saatchi and Saatchi’s idea of a film contest bores the fuck out of me to be honest.

According to a client’s legal team, it is.

We’re handling the social media marketing for a fairly large event for 14-17 year olds. We’d planned on using our monitoring tools to find people who mentioned the client’s brand and the bands playing at the event and then adding them as friends on MySpace and Facebook and following them on Twitter. It’s what lots of people do, it’s what brands have done to me. But, according to the legal team, that counted as spam.

In fact, the exact words from the client were:

“The lawyer and I were of the opinion that all these suggestions are in contravention of the Spam and Privacy Acts, but she (the lawyer) checked with a contact who is a specialist in the Spam Act to see if there are any loop holes.  There aren’t.”

Have you ever been be-friended by a company that was reasonably relevant to you? How did you feel about it? Has anyone checked their inbox lately and seen that a large corporation has added them? I’m keen to know so I can build a case study for my client. I’m of the opinion that if you’re adding people who have mentioned your brand, or are clearly talking about directly related topics than it’s fine - they can always just say no. What do you think?

1. Because it’s like peeking into someone’s soul. Not in an Aphex Twin / David Lynch way, but in a ‘here’s the stuff that makes me, Me, and you’re invited to see‘ way.
2. Because there’s no pressure to perform, or post, or even make sense. In fact, the less sense you make, the better.
3. No one is tumbling to get a job.
4. There are no statistics, friend counts or lists of top Tumblrs.
5. People who Tumbl are artists, whether they know it or not.
6. People who aren’t artists don’t Tumbl because they don’t get it.
7. You can be completely anonymous and it doesn’t even matter.
8. You’re not limited to 140 characters
9. You can’t hide it under the bed or rip a page out.
10. My mum doesn’t know it exists yet, so I can swear.

Social media people in Sydney and Melbourne stick together and seem to be getting something done so it’s about time Brisbane stopped dropping the ball and got a coffee morning happening. I hate networking events, because they’re usually full of middle-aged small business owners who want to swap small rectangular pieces of cardboard with their names on them and dedicate council parks to people, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It should be possible to have good coffee, some interesting chit-chat and get to know the industry people in the same city as you who like the same memes without the usual Rotary B.S.. If you feel the same way, join me (@mattgranfield), @anotheradwanker, @nathbush, @anna_goddard and whoever else turns up at Campos every Friday morning from around 7ish (no need to be there at 7 sharp, it’s very informal, 8 or 9 is fine too) to around 10ish. It would be most excellent to see you there. I’ll start a Twitter thing/site/wiki shortly.

Ages ago I wrote about how social media won Obama the US election. It was a lesson in engagement and propaganda (but mostly engagement). I wondered if, and how, Obama was going to keep it up when he won the Presidency and almost a year later I think the peeps in control of communications (is that an oxymoron these days?) are doing a splendid job of using social media to give the public an insight into Obama’s White House. Take a look at some of these photos from The Official White House Flickr Photostream and you’ll see what I mean. They’re candid, and brilliant. I particularly like how they released a series of photos of Obama and Teddy Kennedy when the late senator died. It was timely and touching.

President Barack Obama and Sen. Ted Kennedy walk down the South Lawn sidewalk at the White House April 21, 2009.

Local fishing guide Dan Vermillion reacts as President Barack Obama almost hooks a trout on the East Gallatin River near Belgrade, Mont., on Aug. 14, 2009.

President Barack Obama hugs Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient actor Sidney Poitier during the award ceremony

President Barack Obama’s daughter Sasha hides behind the sofa as she sneaks up on him at the end of the day in the Oval Office

President Barack Obama presents cupcakes with a candle to Hearst White House columnist Helen Thomas in honor of her birthday in the James Brady Briefing Room, on Aug. 4, 2009. Thomas, who turned 89, shares the same birthday as the President, who turned 48.

The Obama family dog, Bo

President Barack Obama meets with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in the Oval Office of the White House

Cassie from account service: Hey Matt, whatever you’re doing on the  (insert client name) account STOP, like now. They’ve just looked at their budget and they don’t think they can afford any digital any more. They’ll front the concept fee as agreed, but they don’t want to do any social media stuff because they don’t even know how they’re going to afford the TVCs.

Me: I see…

Cassie from account service: Yeah, sorry

Me: F@#$ that. We’re presenting anyway. I’m going to convince them they need a social media campaign.

Cassie from account service: Oh… Umm.. OK

The problem is, we’ve got a cracking idea which is going to work so well for this particular client (a major charity who has an event and wants to top Movember in terms of brand recognition and participation) that I’m not going to let it go.

@davidgillespie sent me this link the other day. It’s a fan-bloody-tastic presentation on the business justification for social media and I’m making everyone watch it. I will report back.

The internet is a bit like a class photo. You get everyone’s picture of course, but there’s obviously more to being cool than how you look. In high school it’s where you hang out after school that counts. Who you date, how many people came to your birthday party, what sport you play and whether you’re captain of the football team, or captain of the chess club. Funnily enough, that’s exactly the sort of information people store in their online profiles. They may be out of high school, but the information they display next to their avatar can tell you enough about a person to know how likely they are to spread positive word of mouth about your brand.

Most companies tend to focus on calculating people’s social reach (ie. how many friends they have, where they’re ranked in Google, that sort of thing). I believe it’s the reason people like Julian Cole enjoy publishing (handy but self-serving) lists of ‘top’ bloggers. I also believe this approach is flawed (although Jules’s latest ranking of the top 35 bloggers who may, or may not be under 27 years old does at least include only reaction-based metrics).

I’ve just written an article for Marketing Mag on how we find a brand’s key online influencers which is available here. For the benefit of those who *heart* this blog instead, a distillation of the process is as follows.

I believe the fifth step; figuring out how much influence the people actually wield; is the one that gets results and leads to increased positive word of mouth for your brand. Influence is more than reactions or votes for a blog post, it’s about getting people to take action. This could be as simple as inviting people to a party and having most of the people you invite turn up, or as complicated as being at the start of a long chain of events that change the world. These steps are only a guide of course, but you’ll get the idea. This post is only a summary so refer to the original article if you want more info.

Step one: Find the people already talking about your brand

Step two: Find the people talking about your competitors

Step three: Find the people talking about your industry

Step four: Figure out their social reach

Step five: Find out who is actually listening to them

Ashton Kutcher has over a million Twitter followers but most of them are probably voyeurs. Just because he says jump doesn’t mean anyone asks ‘how high’? The best way to determine someone’s true influence over their peers depends on the social networks they are active in, how old they are and what you want to get out of them, but here’s a few tips:

• Use a tool like RetweetRank to figure out how often what they say is quoted by other people
• If you can see their Facebook profile, look at events they’ve created and see what percentage of their friends accepted invitations
• Check out their MySpace wall and see how often friends get in touch with them
• See how many recommendations they have on LinkedIn
• See how many posts they’ve made in forums, and
• See how many comments they get on their blog and how sources like Technorati and Google Reader’s voting system rank them

A few good social media monitoring tools can do this for you, but they’ll set you back around $1,500 a month. If that’s out of your price range, get in there and start copying and pasting yourself.

Step six: Analyse the numbers and crunch the data

So I’ve been in Sydney. It was a business trip and a personal trip. I like taking photos, I like writing, I like tid-bits of information. I’ve got a pile of stuff to share from the last week but it’s going to take me days as I file everything in the appropriate channel. My business friends don’t want to see photos of my Grandma, I don’t want my Grandma to see pics of me at Splendour in the Grass on the weekend but I don’t want to bore my friends with business stuff. I have more Facebook friends than people I’ve actually met, I can’t be arsed emailing people pics of scenic drives because they’re not that interesting but I want to store them somewhere publicly because I know there are others that will want to see them, but I’m not prolific enough to have a Flickr channel. 140 characters isn’t always enough and I like to keep this blog reasonably formal and focussed on the social media side of marketing. Tumblr is looking like a contender, but then I’ve got to start another new channel and I’m starting to spread myself thin and I dont want to focus my energy on something that no-one pays any real attention to.

Perhaps I’m not GenY enough to be this social. Perhaps I should get into scrap-booking.

Zac Martin, what would you do?