Here’s a comparison of Swedish university twitter accounts using Klout (I’ve done something similar before). I’m interested in how much klout tells you – does it reflect the nature of the twitter account. Does it tell us whether the twitter account is being used to engage, or simply broadcast? And before you get all sniffy, engagement is a fancy word for talking.
Swedish university twitter accounts ranked by Klout score.
Does Engagement Have An Impact On Your Klout Score?
Klout only seems to tell you so much. It’s definitely telling you whether you left the starting blocks or not, but after that – well – it seems to get pretty blunt rather quickly. Here’s the amount of tweets, RTs, and @ replies from the top 6 Swedish universities, as ranked by their Klout scores, from January 2011. #RT is the number of times they retweeted something, #@ is the number of times they replied or mentioned another user (but not in a RT). Lists is the number of times they are listed.
The number of @s and RTs gives an idea of how much the account is talking. It would seem that Klout is not so sensitive to engagement. For example, @karolinskainst and @lundsuni have barely acknowledged that they have followers, through their lack of RT’s and @s, but still they have a reasonably high klout score. Both @malmouniversity and @liuuniversitet are engaging with their followers, but it does not look like it particularly impacts their klout score.
Klout’s important for a gross comparison – but it looks like it’s less sharp for getting a handle on engagement. Or? Shoot me down in flames – I’ve love to have a single number which quantifies engagement!
Some observations on best practice.
I looked at a bunch of twitter accounts for this article, here’s some observations:
You so need a bio, and if you’re not using all the characters you’re missing out on opportunities to be found. It’s the only place on your twitter page (other than the tweets themselves) that you can put a clickable link in. Without a good bio it’s hard to decide whether you’re worth following or not – this goes for your personal account as well.
How often do you tweet? Particularly if it’s an English language account, there’s whole bunch of people who never see your tweets because they’re on the dark side when you’re tweeting. If it’s important information, consider sending it out several times to maximise your changes of being read– don’t be shy.
Are you sending traffic to your other online assets? Your Facebook page would probably appreciate a shout-out once in a while, and if you’ve just updated your admissions guide on your website why not tweet about it?
Do people care enough about you to put you on a list? Getting included on someone’s list means you’re in the VIP lounge for their attention. Make your own list of all the tweeting staff, students and offices from your university – that way you’ve got a handy source for RTs and an overview of your tribe’s activity.
A final word, if you’ve created an account but are rarely using it then you still need to pay attention to any questions or comments you get. Otherwise you could be quietly bleeding out good will, without ever realizing it.
Nikon’s Less Than Cunning Facebook Comment Provokes Friend Wrath
September 30, 2011Nikon’s Facebook administrator, or one of them, had a bad day yesterday. They post this:
Which resulted in comments like this:
And more of this…
Ouch. That’s gotta sting – definitely not thinking of their target group there. Not only did this post catch fire, but it also made its way quickly around the web. Not a great PR day.
A little while later they post an apology:
Which resulted in a whole bunch of new posts; some like this:
Poor choice of words? Over reaction?
Yes, both. They are talking to a community of artists – this comment was going to inflame them, and rightly so – technology is the tool. We get that Nikon sell equipment – ramming that message down our throat was clumsy. Equally, the comment got liked by a whole bunch of people (though that does not necessarily mean they agree with the sentiment). Further, it’s not uncommon to see a controversial post explode into a feeding frenzy like sharks in a swimming pool – the smallest sniff of blood can attract a lot of hate. It probably reinforced a negative view of the brand which some people already held, their marketing team are probably looking with their interest at their unlike metric (though that won’t tell the whole story, by any stretch).
Not answering comments
There was a bit of a miss that, as far as I can see, there was no answer from Nikon to any of the comments which appeared on the original post. Yes – it would have taken a ton of work but if they’d got active on the resulting comments, explaining that it was a mistake on the thread itself it probably would have demonstrated sorrow far better than their apology some 12 hours later. Here’s an example of the kind of micro-moderation this requires – this is the band Morbid Angel dealing with their fan’s ire.
Fire the administrator?
A few posts suggest firing the administrator. Like this:
Really? I’ve got no idea how Nikon functions with hiring and firing, but I think that firing the administrator would be a bad idea. Social media’s joy and power is the immediacy of response – which allows us to both inspire people, but also piss them off, very quickly. This post was not their finest hour, but firing the admin would be an over-reaction. Nikon – learn from what happened here and figure out if there was a better way to apologize. Incidentally, ‘apologize’ is corporate speak – you should be ‘sorry’.
What do you think – could they have managed this in a better way?
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