New Pew report on social media use

PIP_Twitter_Fall_2009 –

Research Study: @sockington is more influential than @chrisbrogan

This Webecology research report has been making the rounds on Twitter. I haven’t had time to read it until now, here are my reading notes:

The Webecology team uses large scale data mining to identify patterns indicative of online culture and community. Wish I’d do this, too – and will, as soon as I find a research partner to help with the data mining part.

For this project, the authors set out to create a more accurate measure of influence on Twitter that goes beyond either:

1. number of followers; or
2. followers/friends ratio

The authors defined influence on Twitter as:

influence on Twitter = the potential of an action of a user to initiate a further action by another user

Specifically, influence means the potential of a tweet to generate replies, mentions (conversational behaviors), RTs, and attributions (content-pushing behaviors).

This is an atheoretical, operational definition of influence (the study’s Achille’s heel).

As far as I understand, all 4 actions were weighed equally. So, a RT factors the same as an @reply in determining influence.

They selected 12 Twitter accounts to study. The selection was based on this criterion: the 12 accounts were  ”widely perceived to be among the more influential users on Twitter.” It is not clear who did the perceiving, and what definition or measure of influence they used in the process of perception. IMO, the arbitrary selection of the sample is another major weakness – but in this case, I can live with it, because the purpose is not to derive conclusions about Twitter culture as much as it is to demonstrate how the methodology can be used.

Then, the 12 users were grouped into 3 categories. Here is a table with the accounts they analyzed, and their number of tweets over 10 days, as well as the number of followers and friends at the end of the 10 days:

—

Celebrities	Username	Tweets	Followers	Followees
Ashton Kutcher	aplusk	3,205	3,407,385	209
Shaquille O’Neil	THE_REAL_SHAQ	2,072	2,092,541	562
Stanley Kirk Burrell	MCHammer	6,016	1,331,797	31,202
Sockington	sockington	5,711	1,089,984	380
Justine Ezarik	ijustine	7,718	605,441	3,039
News Outlets	Username	Tweets	Followers	Followees
CNN Breaking News	cnnbrk	1,096	2,712,530	18
BarackObama.com	BarackObama	330	2,018,016	761,851
Mashable.com	mashable	17,914	1,363,510	1,925
CNN	cnn	11,607	193,625	50
Social Media Analysts	Username	Tweets	Followers	Followees
Gary Vaynerchuk	garyvee	7,532	862,790	9,683
Chris Brogan	chrisbrogan	48,341	94,715	88,431
Robert Scoble	Scobleizer	23,112	94,295	2,423

The data that they mined was as collected over 10 days, in August 2009. The data included:

• The 2143 tweets generated by the 12 users
• The 90,130 actions (responses, RTs) triggered by the original 2143 tweets
• All the tweets generated in connection with the 12 users (by their followers and friends;a total of 134, 654 tweets, 15,866,629 followers, and 899,773 friends/followees)

The authors produced 2 types of influence reports, based on the type of action that was triggered:

1. conversational action (people replied, or mentioned the user – e.g. “meeting @stockington for catnip”)
2. content-pushing action (people retweeted, or gave attribution – e.g. “via@username”)

Please note that a mention may or may not be a response to a tweet. If they were not responses to a tweet, they fall outside the authors’ definition of Twitter influence, and they should have been excluded from the analysis.

Here we go, on to the findings:

Conversational action

This graph shows you the amount of conversational activity (@replies and mentions) each user got in response to one (average) tweet.

Content action

This graph shows you how much content action (retweets and attributions) each user got for each (average) tweet:

So here we see that, per tweet, @sockington did get more retweets than @chrisbrogan.

The authors claim that these graphs of influence/tweet are the most accurate measure of Twitter influence so far. Therefore:

@sockington IS more influential on Twitter than @chrisbrogan,

because the fake cat gets more retweets. (sorry, @sockington, I do love you!!!)

I know exactly what you’re thinking, it starts with B and ends with T.

That’s because here we have a problem of construct validity. The measures do not actually measure influence. I wish the authors had read some research in communication & persuasion about the concept of influence, then worked their way from a conceptual to an operational definition.

Obviously, @sockington gets more retweets because he’s cuter & funnier than @chrisbrogan (sorry, Chris!). We don’t know why people reply or retweet. This study ignores a very important aspect of human relations: meaning. There is meaning in tweets, and meaning in why people retweet. But that is not captured in this study.

That being said, the report shows what can be done with data mining – it’s awesome! With a bit of help from people who know how to study meaning (hint, hint!), this type of research will be extremely valuable.

If anything, let this be an argument for computers & communication people working together, across disciplines.

In a future post, I will review conceptual and operational definitions of influence.

Quantum Physics

Someday, I will understand quantum physics. But since in the past few weeks I’ve been unpacking, unpacking, unpacking, unpacking, unpacking… (you get it)… OK, never mind. Here’s a video about quantum physics. It should be the beginning of any research methods class.

Thanks to Twitter user @c4chaos for pointing to a link that lead me to this video.

Two types of visibility

I just finished a webinar for PRWeb and talked about the research we did with SNCR about online news releases (pdf). I love Jiyan Wei (PRWeb product manager, he moderated the session) because he asks really good questions. One question he asked us today was to define visibility:

Everybody wants to gain visibility with news releases, but what is visibility?

I was lucky that Richard, my co-presented, was put on the spot first and I had a few seconds to think about this question

Here’s what I came up with, let me know if it makes sense to you:

I think about visibility as being of two types: push and pull, for lack of better terms.

Push visibility is the visibility you have when you “cut through the clutter” and your name (brand, product, etc.) makes headlines. People see it whether they want to or not. This is the type of visibility public relations and advertising have traditionally tried to achieve.

Pull visibility means being visibile and available when people need you and search for you. You might not be making headlines, but you are using the right keywords and showing up in relevant online searches. To use Richard’s company as an example, when people are looking for a Web development company in NY, Pillar should show up in the search results.

Traditionally, PR people have struggled to achieve push visibility, but given the changing landscape of media, of information availability, and information searching behaviors, for most of us, it is pull visibility that will make or break the bank.

In our survey results, people complained about not being able to cut through the clutter – not making headlines (i.e. not achieving push visibility). That’s OK. Not everybody can be in the headlines. As long as you are there for your audience when they need you, you’re OK.

What do you think? Does thinking about visibility in these terms help you?

The most important lesson

Back when I was a communication graduate student at Purdue, a friend asked me at a party:

So, what is the most important thing you know about communication?

I thought for a second (or two!) then I answered:

Know your audience.

Many years later, I still believe this is the most important lesson you can learn (and practice!) in communication – and of course, the related profession of public relations.

That’s why I’m happy to see posts such as this one by Todd Defren about Shift’s PR process, which starts with a lot of listening.

Carrie Woodward from Brains on Fire visited our class yesterday to talk about the Fiskateers community. It became apparent how much time and effort they put into getting to know their audience, and how they couldn’t have succeeded without extensive research and listening.

Yet, I see so many PR/marketing efforts that seem to be shots in the dark. Let’s just do this. Why? How? Oh, the details don’t matter. Let’s be on Facebook. Let’s be on Twitter.

I was trying to get the point across to my students, that you need to understand your audience, where they are, what they care about, what they talk about, and how… and I used this example:

Imagine you’re all sitting here in this classroom, waiting for PR class to start, but I walk in a random hall down the hallway and start lecturing there.

They laughed at the absurdity of the idea, yet how many companies do exactly that?

I hope my students will remember this lesson, and I hope they’ll be able to get it across to their bosses.

So there, that’s my most important lesson. What’s the most important thing you know about communication and PR?

Dr. V breaks out of the ivory tower

It strikes me that I can write conference papers and journal articles – but they have no impact, because no one reads them. Even if people want to read them, they don’t have access, because most academic journals are protected behind walls, and the password costs hundreds, if not thousands, of $$$ a year.

But I wrote one white paper (the first one, because I’ve been trained not to believe in self-publishing: “If it’s not double-blind reviewed, it doesn’t matter!”) and I’m amazed to see that all of a sudden I get media attention – and most surprisingly, that PR and marketing practitioners out there are actually interested in theory and research!!! (what rock have I been hiding under?!).

Here are a couple of media pieces based on interviews I’ve given:

• an article in BtoB about online news releases
• a podcast interview about social media and some of my recent research (importance of blogs in PR, social media & culture, online news releases)

The ROI of online news releases study got more media coverage, you can find a list on Jiyan Wei’s blog, but I’m not sure if he updates it…

Oh, and while I’m at it, I wrote a book, too, I guess that should count here, though the price and academic writing style might keep it in the ivory tower…

I’m thrilled to at least open a window of the ivory tower, which I find so suffocating!

Blogs matter

Thanks to all of you who participated in my survey about the importance of blogs in public relations!

Here is my presentation of the results (runs about 19 minutes).

If you quote this presentation, you can use the following citation:

Vorvoreanu, M. (2008). Blogs matter. Panel presentation at the National Communication Association Annual Convention, Public Relations Division, San Diego, CA.

Here are some highlights from the results, based on a convenience/viral (non-probability*) sample of 203 respondents:

Blogs matter in hiring decisions

• Among respondents with 5+ years of experience in PR, if they had a choice between equally qualified job candidates, but one candidate had a blog and the other one did not,
  • 74% would hire the one with the blog
  • 19% would hire the one without the blog

• Both people who blog and do not blog are more likely to hire the candidate who has a well-written, good professional blog. Among the respondents who do not write a blog themselves:
  • 57% would hire the candidate with a blog
  • 33% would hire the candidate without a blog

• Respondents who write a blog:
  • 86% would hire the candidate with a blog
  • 8% would hire the candidate without a blog

Blogs matter for individuals

I asked PR bloggers what benefits they have derived from blogging. These were the most frequently mentioned benefits:

1. Contacts, networking, engaging with PR community (26; 34%)
2. Business benefits: jobs, clients, income, internships, speaking opportunities (21; 27%)
2. Learning, keeping current (21; 27%)
2. Gaining recognition, credibility; thought leadership; personal branding (21; 27%)
Other: Sharing knowledge (10; 13%), SEO (6; 8%)
None: 3; 3.9%

Blogs matter for the PR profession

I asked both bloggers and non bloggers how they thought PR practitioners’ blogs impact the PR field.

• 91% of respondents said PR practitioner blogs have a positive impact
• 6% said PR practitioner blogs have no or very little impact
• 2% said PR practitioner blogs negative impact

PR practitioner blogs increase practitioner knowledge and move PR towards higher standards of professionalism

• Knowledge benefits (75%):
  • Educate each other (23%)
  • Create & share knowledge & best practices (32%)
  • Dialogue & discussion (17%)
  • Unify PR field (10%)
  • Keep current (6%)
• Professionalism benefits (18%)
  • Increase transparency; flack (9%)
  • Higher professional standards (6%)
  • Prove the value of PR (3%)

I encourage you to view the presentation so you can get more details and put these findings in context.

*Please remember that this sample is not representative of PR practitioners in the U.S. – or we don’t know if it is – so we can’t assume that these results apply to other people who did not participate in this survey.

Thanks again to all who participated and let me know if you have any questions!

Do blogs matter in PR? I need your help with new research project…

I’ve started a new research project about the importance of blogs for PR people & the industry as a whole.

I’ve got a favor to ask you: Would you give me 7-8 minutes to take this online survey?

If you’re a PR pro, student, educator, whether you blog or not, I need your thoughts.

I’ll share the results in academic papers and presentations, my PR Connections blog, and here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Value of Online News Releases

If you missed the Vocus webinar about online news releases, here is the recording of the session. You can also download the slides (pdf), and the executive summary of the ROI of Online Press Releases SNCR study.

The webinar includes:

• a couple of case studies (Jiyan Wei, Vocus)
• presentation of survey methodology and results (Jen McClure, SNCR & yours truly)
• interpretation of results: dual role, multiple purpose of online news releases (yours truly)
• recommendations for best practices (Shel Holtz, Holtz Communication + Technology)
• Q & A

“Utter bullocks”

I’m amused by this expression used in a comment on a RWW post titled: Study: 93% of Americans Want Companies to Have Presence on Social Media Sites.

I also believe it’s the perfect response to the report of this study, as presented in the RWW post. I don’t know, the study might be brilliant. But that’s the problem, they don’t provide enough information so I can decide if it’s brilliant or not.

Two issues here:

1) understand the data before you make decisions based on it

2) even if the data is good & valid, don’t jump in and make decisions based only on statistics & demographics

1) understand the data before you make decisions based on it

Some questions to ask about these particular results:

• who are the 93% of Americans? There aren’t that many Americans online in the first place!!! (P.S.: cultural sensitivity issue: “America” includes Canda, and South American countries. Do you mean U.S. residents?)
• they probably mean 93% of survey respondents, I guess (guessing = bad sign in research)
• who are the survey respondents? Provide information about the sample:
  • How many people took the survey?
  • Who were these people? – provide demographics of the sample
  • How were these people recruited? (random sampling, stratified random sampling, convenience sampling, self-selection?)
  • Is the sample representative of the U.S. (or the Americas?)

These are just a few things I’d like to know before I’d spend a dime on a “social media presence”. And, as RWW writer Frederic L. points out, which social media sites? Twitter and Facebook are so different they might as well be two foreign countries!

2) even if the data is good & valid, don’t jump in and make decisions based only on statistics & demographics

My social media mantra is: It’s not about technology, it’s about culture.

Culture (social norms, etiquette, communication practices) emerges quickly around a social medium, and is specific not only to that medium, but also to sub-groups of users. So you can assume there are hundreds if not thousands sub-cultures on Facebook alone (about 100 million users worldwide).

An example: Befriending someone you haven’t met before is perfectly acceptable on Twitter, but creepy on Facebook.

So think about social media as a continent with many different countries and cultures. If you were to go to Romania (my native country), would you start doing PR & marketing armed with just some demographics produced by a poorly designed research study? I certainly hope not! I hope you’d take some time (a couple of years, say) to begin to get a grasp of Romanian culture before you dive in.

Same goes with social media. Start with your surveys, and make sure you understand what a good survey is. But do some ethnographic research, too (focus groups will do) before you spend that dime on your “social media presence.”

P.S.

Since I’m ranting, let me point out that the phrase “social media presence” is also … (see post’s title). It’s not about presence, it’s about engagement & conversation.

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