Doing Words

Top 100 most influential Australian political voices on Twitter

// October 19th, 2010 // 0 Comments // As featured in..., Communication, Me, Social Media

Yesterday, Australian blogging consultant Alister Cameron published a list of the “Top 100 Most Influential Australians Talking Politics On Twitter“. Actually, it was two lists: one of people who’d been calculated to be influential during the recent Australian Federal elections (using the Twitter hashtag #ausvotes at the end of their tweets) and another of the most influential people taking part in the weekly Twitter audience for the ABC TV show, QandA (using the hashtag #qanda).

I'm 29th! Yay! I'm waiting by the letterbox for my certificate

The best part of this news is not that I was ranked 29th most influential person on the Federal election (that is as ephemeral a position — and comes with all the prestige and cachet — of being in the third car at the traffic lights).

The best news is that Alister didn’t do the number-crunching himself, he used Pulse of the Tweeters, a service built by a couple of US academics, which you and I and anyone else can use to determine the people on Twitter with the most influence on any topic which Twitter determines is ‘trending’ — being used by enough people to be considered an issue of the day.

More on the people who built Pulse of the Tweeters here but sadly not very much specific detail about how influence is determined, just some general outline about what’s important when determining influence on social networks.

Most services designed to measure influence on social networks generally have a small amount of information available for free about individual users, but rarely publish a list of users in a ranked table, preferring to save that for paying customers.

For instance, Klout shows an almost unintelligible dashboard of my influence score in detail (ooh, look, I’m a “Thought Leader”) but if I want to measure myself against other people, or find a list of the most influential people on a particular topic, I’ve got to pay and/or start finding a developer to connect to their API.

Never mind the data, look at the pretty colours

Unless you’re a Nestlé or Nike there’s little value in tracking your Twitter influence. That’s not to say is some value in being an influential Twitter user — in the past twelve months I’ve gained some valuable business leads, met fascinating new friends and been sent some wine, beer and books to review. Some of my friends have even received swish new HTC smartphones.

But for most of us, Twitter is not (and should not) be business. Our Twitter stream is some new mix of personal and professional, something we’d generate anyway in other media if Twitter didn’t exist. As I say on my own Twitter profile page, we should all try to tweet like nobody’s following. The real you is the best brand you have.

In that case, the best way to turn up on a Top 100 Influential Twitter Users list is accidentally, as a byproduct of your true passions. And the best way to leave it again is to continue expressing those true passions.

Interviewed on E-Marketing Insights podcast

// August 2nd, 2010 // 0 Comments // As featured in..., Content, Industry, My work, platform, Social Media

This week I was interviewed by Owen of the E-Marketing Insights Podcast. Listen in for a little background history of Doing Words, as well as my perspective on what happened in the early days internet content publishing, how the Web 1.0 bubble grew and burst, why social media has changed the content publishing industry irrevocably, the continuing democratisation of content, and which brands I believe are best-equipped to succeed in future content markets.

Surgeon-General’s Warning: I hadn’t taken my brevity medication before the interview so you may find I rattle on for quite some time.

You know what’s great about this podcast episode? It’s only episode four of a brand-new podcast. It was recorded on a portable digital recorder, in my car, and the total post-production probably took Owen only an hour, from importing, editing and through to hosting on Soundcloud.

Despite the market-dominating power of iTunes and News Corporation and Facebook, more unique new content is being published every year by the people who would have been considered “the audience” twenty years ago.

Check out Owen’s E-Marketing Insights podcast, it’s early days yet but shows great promise, and that’s the best kind of content there is.

I can’t talk about that, I’m not an expert!

// August 24th, 2009 // 0 Comments // As featured in..., Communication, Me, My work, Presentation

Good mate Miles Campbell of TTA and I got up and presented last week on a topic neither of us has formal qualifications or professional experience in: placebos. It’s a topic of interest for both of us and it’s something we’ve done a lot of reading and talking about.

Sometimes my clients are uncomfortable with speaking or writing about topics in which they have no formal qualifications. It comes up when I’m trying to encourage them to blog or to present an opinion at an industry event. “But I’m not an expert,” they’ll cry, “I’m a businessperson, not a journalist!” That’s not a valid reason. Journalists aren’t experts — they are bound by their editorial standards to quote expert sources rather than write their own opinions precisely because they aren’t experts — but then they write editorials which are 100% opinion and these days, increasingly blend their own opinion with their news stories. Researchers and academics are in the business of having an opinion based on research but where the data is unclear, they are supposed to remain quiet… few do. Politicians, salesmen, bureaucrats and your mates down the pub are fine with giving their opinion and yet nobody requires them to be experts. I trust your opinion far more than any politician or bureaucrat, so let’s hear it!

In this talk, Miles and I have a straightforward case to make: placebos are as effective as most other medicines and you should be able to be prescribed a placebo if it is as (or more) likely to make you better. Many in the medical profession have an ethical problem with that idea, so we propose a draft ‘placebo consent form’ that you can sign and leave with your medical practitioner.

The event, Interesting South, limits speakers to eight minutes or less, and we had a lot of ground to cover in that time, so the resulting presentation is, well, perky!

Big thanks to Ian Lyons for taping our talk.  After you’ve watched the video, consider the following points for presenters:
(more…)

It’s not about page views or visitors, it’s about converting them to customers

// August 6th, 2009 // 0 Comments // As featured in...

…In fact, getting customers to the site is only half the job. “It’s easy to get excited when you see early evidence that your online marketing is working says Jones. “But ultimately it’s not about page views or visitor rates, it’s about converting visitors to customers.”

…as quoted in “Turn on, tune in, and drop off” (Kate Hennessy, Nett Magazine, July ’09)

Nett Magazine workshop article on site usability for small/medium businesses.

How the iPhone changed my life

// July 1st, 2009 // 0 Comments // As featured in..., Me, Other news

As I said in the presentation, when I say “changed my life” I’m not talking about any single seismic change, but a significant change in my life brought about by dozens of small, incremental, important improvements in my day.

Here’s a few examples of what I mean: