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Weekly Media and Comms Round-Up – 16 Sept 2011

Sam C — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:00:22 +0000

Twitter was in the news again this week, as they announced the launch of a new analytics platform, providing insights into how many links and Tweets are shared across the platform. Techcrunch TV covered the event as it happened here. The presentation also highlighted that Twitter had passed 100 million users for the first time, and around 5 billion Tweets are sent every month. We also learnt this week that Twitter sentiment is being used by a hedge fund to predict short term stock market price changes (with up to 87% accuracy…).

A fascinating study by Market Sentinel on fan engagement on Facebook showed that despite huge numbers of fans liking pages, only around 0.002% actually engage with the page more than once. Given the way Facebook’s edgerank calculations work (determining what appears in feeds), if people do not engage with a fan page or piece of content, that ‘like’ will disappear from users’ feeds.

Fast Company explained IBM’s latest thinking in transforming companies into social businesses, including insights being derived from the way people interact digitally to improve various functions in the business. The BBC’s Deputy Head of the Newsroom also wrote about how social media is changing the way the BBC operates, and the shifts in the way people consume news.

Finally, the next instalment in the guide to social media newsrooms is here, where Alistair discusses comments and engagement on corporate blogs.

Part two: who won the undecided voters after the first live TV debate?

Glide Technologies — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:25:50 +0000

So, after our first round of research showed that there was quite some work for the various parties and their leaders to do to win over the undecided voting public, we decided to ask who came out on top after the first UK televised election debate.

As the post debate polls suggested, it seems that Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg had the most success in swaying the undecided. Unsurprising I thought as he seemingly did everything out of the guide to public speaking – looking directly down the camera, remembering the names of those who asked a question and by separating himself from the other main parties, he gave the public a reason to remember him by.

Back to the results. Looking at the research we ran on the 13^th of April, the Liberal Democrats have increased their popularity among potential voters by 10.2%. On the other hand, Labour’s popularity has decreased 3.35% (I thought that it would have been much higher) with the popularity of the Conservatives decreasing by 4.83%.

However, it would seem that neither leader did quite enough to sway the majority of the voters as the undecided only dropped by a measly 1.8%.

So, there’s still work to be done as the next round of televised debating approaches. Stay tuned to find out who will win the battle of ‘the undecided’.

Alex

Part One: who will win the undecided voters?

Glide Technologies — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:57:56 +0000

Every time we pick up a paper from now until the 6th May we’ll be bombarded by images of politicians /smiling/holding babies/waving enthusiastically and generally doing everything in their power to persuade us that they are the right person for the job.

As the use of the internet and social media in particular is providing the parties with new ways to reach the voting public (think Barack Obama’s all conquering campaign team – is he the first social media president?), it’s hard to believe that everyone is talking about a possible hung parliament for the 1st time since 1974.

Maybe that’s because some people in the UK are still getting this hideously wrong. Either that or someone forgot to send the ‘How To’ memo to Stuart MacLennan.

This interesting little tool was passed round the office last week . A great attempt by a not for profit organisation aimed at helping you cut through the spin and get straight to the policies.

However, it would seem that the first round of campaigning has done little to sway the mood of the voting public as the results from our own research showed.

We asked 1,000 people who they were going to vote for in the coming election. A massive 27.16% of people were still undecided, with 32.77% of that percentage being females compared to only 19.02% of males. There are also considerably more undecided’s in the 16-54 age bracket compared with those in the 55+ age bracket.

As the first unveiling of party manifestos gets underway and the PR and marketing strategies of the parties go in to over drive, it’ll be interesting to see who is the most successful in swaying ‘the undecided’.

We’ll run this poll again after the historical election TV debate to see who, if any, has managed to win over the undecided majority.

Alex

kraft’s takeover of cadbury – what the public think

Glide Technologies — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:54:48 +0000

As a chocolate lover, I was more than concerned about the recent take over of Cadbury by American giant Kraft… many thoughts went through my head but biggest concern (due to my love of chocolate) is ‘will the chocolate go all Americany?’. Sabrina, who sits next to me and is from Texas will disagree on this point, but American chocolate just doesn’t taste the same (and no Sabrina, it doesn’t taste better)!!!!

Now I know that I should be worried about the bigger picture: how this affects share prices? are jobs going to be lost in the UK as a result? etc etc…. but the media are covering that angle so I feel that I don’t have to!!!

So – I used GlideInsight, our online panel research tool to see what everyone out there thought about the takeover and quite rightly, over 45% of you are very upset that the take over has happened.

Whilst 27.72% (29.87% of women) worry about the chocolate not tasting the same (see it really does matter!).

For a serious angle I did also put a question into GlideInsight about whether people thought there were going to be job losses and a massive 59.21% (65.53% from the region of Midlands and Wales) of people agreed that it was inevitable as “it always happens in these circumstances”. Only 7.23% of people thought that there wouldnt’ be job cuts in the UK (Kraft aren’t going to be too popular when the take over begins!).

So, I guess that Cadbury chocolate from Britain may never be the same (sniff, sniff) I guess I ‘ll just have to wait and see…. or maybe I’ll have to pledge allegiance to Nestle instead.