Tweeting authorities (December 19, 2010)

The Influence Metric

Some local authorities have opted to focus on Twitter rather than Facebook, others have managed to develop both. This analysis concentrates Twitter activities exclusively. I've used klout.com to produce this set of numbers. It offers another useful insight into how local authorities use social media to engage with citizens.

Read how to understand the Klout Influence Metric here: klout.com/kscore. Influence is determined by a variety of factors including retweets, @messages, follows, and lists. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.

My previous analysis can be found here:

1. How social is your Local Authority?

2. Local Authorities on Facebook

 

Observations:

Some Twitter @names are indicative of the perceived need for a Twitter channel but may become a limiting factor as the purpose of Local Authority Twitter streams becomes clearer. For example, my hometown, Southampton, has named it's stream "sccevents". It's not memorable and its scope in future will become more about citizen engagement, going beyond an events listing service.

@camdentalking <-- demonstrates the need to be an early adopter. (@camden and @camdencc already taken)

General note:

1. I'm not sure why local authorities choose not to follow-back? It's a kind of arrogance in my view. If you're worried about being overwhelmed by tweets; use lists to categorise your followed folk.
2. Use Twitter to engage, discuss, win-over. The announcements about bins, road closures etc are all good but there's so much more to be achieved. Set-up and stick to #hashtags. Exampe: #bypass, #bins, #abandonedcar, #citizenpraised.

Table key:

T = true reach: is the size of your engaged audience and is based on the followers and friends who actively listen and react to your messages.
A = amplification: is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions (retweets, @messages, likes and comments) and is on a scale of 1 to 100.
N = network: indicates how influential your engaged audience is, also on a scale of 1 to 100.
S = style: there are 16 Klout communication types, typically local authorities fall into 3 styles: Thought Leader, Specialist, Explorer. Lewisham is a notable exception, it's listed as a Feeder. For further explanations of these styles, see below the table or visit www.klout.com.

 

Local
Authority
 Twitter name

Klout
score
T
AN
S

Glasgow

 GlasgowCC 69 870 50 74 Thought Leader
Edinburgh Edinburgh_CC 68 551 50 73 Thought Leader
Brighton & Hove BrightonHoveCC 62 968 45 67 Thought Leader
East Renfrewshire* EastRenCouncil 61 170 39 66 Thought Leader
Walsall walsallcouncil 58 797 41 62 Thought Leader
Belfast belfastcc 57 698 35 64 Specialist
Sheffield SCCPressOffice 56 626 35 64 Specialist
Southampton sccevents 54 367 33 58 Specialist
Swansea SwanseaCouncil 53 986 31 58 Thought Leader
Devon DevonCC 53 927 31 59 Thought Leader
Kent kent_cc 52 1000 30 58 Specialist
Newcastle upon Tyne NewcastleCC 51 378 28 56 Specialist
Christchurch dorsetforyou 51 654 28 58 Specialist
Kirklees KirkleesCouncil 51 248 29 57 Specialist
Nottingham nottinghamnews 50 605 26 57 Specialist
Derbyshire Derbyshirecc 49 295 23 58 Specialist
Solihull SolihullCouncil 48 50 27 51 Explorer
Lewisham LewishamCouncil 46 848 21 55 Feeder
Leeds leedscc 46 742 22 55 Explorer
Salford SalfordCouncil 45 544 22 54 Explorer
Camden camdentalking 44 205 21 55 Thought Leader
Lincoln lincolncouncil 42 267 20 48 Specialist
Norfolk NorfolkCC 41 738 18 49 Specialist
Lambeth lambeth_council 37 882 16 46 Explorer
Derby DerbyCC 29 209 12 34 Specialist
St Helens sthelenscouncil 22 243 11 34 Specialist

*Apologies to East Renfrewshire for missing you off the list. If your local authority outperforms any of those listed above, please contact me.

Klout Twitter styles (from klout.com)

Thought Leader

You are a thought leader in your industry. Your followers rely on you, not only to share the relevant news, but to give your opinion on the issues. People look to you to help them understand the day's developments. You understand what's important and what your audience values.

Specialist

You may not be a celebrity, but within your area of expertise your opinion is second to none. Your content is likely focused around a specific topic or industry with a focused, highly-engaged audience.

Feeder

Your audience relies on you for a steady flow of information about your industry or topic. Your audience is hooked on your updates and secretly can't live without them.

Explorer

You actively engage in the social web, constantly trying out new ways to interact and network. You're exploring the ecosystem and making it work for you. Your level of activity and engagement shows that you "get it", we predict you'll be moving up.

iPad or Kindle? (October 2, 2010)

After my intial "iPads are a rubbish idea" reaction I have to admit I rather fancy one. I took a test drive recently, watched a bit of movie with the grand kids, reviewed some photos yadda yadda. I instantly converted from *pointless* to *want one*. But here's where things get a bit complicated. Recently I jumped ship — switching from iPhone to HTC Desire — and I have to say with no reservations it works for me! So, how about an Android powered tablet? They're out there but they're not the finished article, positively clunky in fact when compared to iPad. The same is true of the HTC by-the-way in a less critical and therefore OK kind of way. The user interface looks unsophisticated, a bit slung together, compared to iPhone. But that's OK because I'm not tied to iTunes. This is where complicated decisions get a little simpler; no iTunes means no *walled garden* of applications and that means freedom. Apple sales and major league fans will claim iTunes provides safety by preventing undesirable applications from being installed on your phone. True to some extent, but not the complete picture. Simple selection criteria will guide you to a similar outcome when choosing Android apps: avoid the frivilous, avoid all vices, stick to official apps from Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. Boring equals safe. So far then, I've swapped iPhone for Android, celebrated my departure from iTunes and promptly got Toys Fever for iPad.

The real decision

Having decided I'd rather like an iPad I then started to reason on why? What would I do with it? After all, I'd choose laptop over iPad on most occasions and on most occasions I'm not that far from the laptop. If I were out-and-about I'd be happy with the Android handset. This internal left-right-brain ping-pong went on for some time until work colleague and trusted advisor Joel Williams (@tentonipete) showed me his Kindle. Unobtrusive, easy to use, the *print* looks amazing and is therefore very easy to read. It's very cool. And here's the deal. For what I want it's perfect. I do lot's of reading for research, that's for the planning part of my job. I frequently use quotations from my favourite books in presentations. It all fits. I don't need an iPad, I need a Kindle. I can fill it with all my books, add annotations and even tweet these if I want. It does mean re-buying all my books and you should check they're available on Kindle. For example, The Cluetrain Manifesto is not — aaaaaahhh! So that means carrying 1 book and 1 kindle.

Well kept secret

Here's the extraordinary discovery. Kindle comes in 2 versions: Kindle with Wi-Fi and Kindle with Wi-Fi and 3G. Option 1 £109, option 2 £149. I chose option 2 thinking I would sort the mobile contract one day if I really needed to. NEWS FLASH: no need for contract. The Kindle came from Amazon, next day, pre-configured with my account details and 3G already enabled. The 3G is FREE, FOREVER. Books arrive in an instant — only ever from Amazon and therefore not unlike iTunes in that respect but hey, I only ever purchase new books from Amazon. I can also tweet comments to Twitter and Facebook if I opt to.

iPad or Kindle? Depends what you want I suppose, for me: Kindle.

Kindle-ts