Turning News Into Knowledge

In a rapidly-evolving world packed with self-proclaimed social media gurus, ninjas, rock stars, titans, evangelists, experts, consultants and online marketing whizzes, you might be excused if you thought the traditional media had lost its influence.

After all, many will confidently tell you just that – that mainstream media is dead or dying, having been mortally wounded by legions of citizen journalists not beholden to the pressures of advertisers or friends in high places.

They may even claim that prominent social media users have replaced media professionals as the new agenda-setters. And in some cases, especially among some trending topics, that could even be true.

But here’s the thing: In topics where actual news is involved, it’s not true at all.

Instead of killing traditional media, as this TechCrunch post (about Osama Bin Laden) along with a series of MediaMiser reports have shown, social media has rather become an amplifier of traditional media and its journalists (while at the same time allowing everyone else a chance to voice their opinions too).

The reasons for this are simple, in my view: the traditional media – at least most of it – is still viewed as a trusted source and one that’s relatively objective. Bloggers and Twitter users with hundreds of thousands of followers, while wildly popular, just don’t have that same level of trust with the public (some do, but it’s a small minority).

Just take a look at the influence ratings derived from some of our recent reports such as Keystone XL: A social media and online news analysis (January 2012), our infographic on January’s Liberal Convention, or our December 2011 report on the Beyond the Border initiative, in which seven out of the top ten and four of the top five influencers were either media outlets or journalists.

These journalists and outlets might not even have as many followers as others, but that doesn’t seem to matter – their message still gets disseminated farther than anything Lady Gaga has to say. This is similar to what a New York Times writer found when he did a similar analysis.

All this should be taken in context, of course; while driving web traffic and interest certainly helps build and maintain credibility, it doesn’t necessarily pay the bills. Online advertising is still in many ways in its infancy, while readerships and viewerships in many cases still seem to be dropping. while print media, especially, has considerable challenges ahead. It likely will never be as profitable as it was during its heyday.

But it should cheer media outlets and journalists somewhat to know that, rather than being replaced by social media, they’re in fact dominating it. And for good reason.

This just in, fans of the NHL: the ladies dig Joffrey Lupul.

That’s at least what we’ve discovered after analyzing tweets mentioning the Toronto Maple Leafs sniper during our analysis of the All-Star Weekend in Ottawa.

The Toronto Maple Leafs' Joffrey Lupul. (photo by Getty Images)

Twitter sentiment around Lupul ran extremely high over the weekend: according to our analysis, the 29-year-old forward garnered a brand rating of 41.3. That’s certainly not as high as Carey Price of the Montreal Canadiens, Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks or the Senators’ Daniel Alfredsson, but higher than other stars such as Zdeno Chara of the Bruins or Capitals superstar Alex Ovechkin (see our player brand report, minus Lupul’s results, here).

The good vibes toward Lupul were flowing for a variety of reasons, from his remarkable comeback story after a long layoff following back surgery to his good-natured response during the All-Star Draft after being lustily booed by the Ottawa faithful. Even his “jersey tug” move at the beginning of the All Star Game itself provoked positive feedback.

But one of the most common comments we discovered, when drilling down into tweets about Lupul, was a little more base in nature.

Essentially, the girls think he’s really hot.

Here are just a few examples of the, shall we say, more congenial tweets surrounding the Leafs’ rejuvenated winger during the All-Star Weekend and beyond:

Published: 2012-01-28 23:37:03 User: rebeccaelliott9Tone: Positive

@MapleLeafs: Here is Joffrey Lupul speaking after the skills competition #NHLAllStar#Leafs http://t.co/MDcvK4cg? he’s soo damn sexy!

Published: 2012-01-29 20:21:43 User: KTBarnes3

Tone:  Positive @shahirj yeah #teamchara!!! Lupul is a babe!

Published: 2012-01-28 21:56:20 User: Krys04Tone:  Positive

Yep def HOT!!! RT @MapleLeafs: Here is Joffrey Lupul speaking after the skills competition #NHLAllStar #Leafs http://t.co/wlrAGfio

Published: 2012-01-29 18:50:37 User: marina_lekocajTone: Positive

saw this one comming #TeamChara lupul you babee <3

Published: 2012-02-07 19:34:40 User: wilmalex4Tone: Positive

#10sexiestmales Carey Price, Karlsson, Jamie McGinn, L. Couture, Adam Gregory, Iginla, Patty Caine, Lupul, Toews, Brian Elliot! hot!

 Published: 2012-02-07 16:09:28 User: chantelvalliereTone  Multiple

#10sexiestmales sidney crosby, kris letang, joffery lupul & all hockey players <3

But it’s not just about the tweets mentioned above – far from it. The study of Joffrey Lupul’s brand during All-Star Weekend is, rather, a great example of how anyone can rejuvenate themselves in the public eye if they do and say the right things.

Check out this tweet from @DaNucklhead, a self-proclaimed “die-hard Canucks fan”:

Published: 2012-02-06 20:37:27 User: DaNucklheadTone:  Positive 

All star draft & weekend made me a fan of Lupul. He relished playing the villian for the Ottawa crowd. Loved it #confessions

This tweet is even more remarkable considering the extent to which many Canucks fans dislike the Leafs.

But to think that just last year, Lupul was considered by some to be a “throw in” in the trade with Anaheim that brought him to Toronto – essentially, a guy perhaps even on his way out of the league thanks to some bad luck and medical complications.  Now, however, he’s a superstar (and rightfully so).

Compare that with the seemingly downward spiral of Alexander Ovechkin, one of the NHL’s money superstars for the past several years, and it becomes apparent just how fragile – but, at the same time, repairable – player brands in professional sports really are.

And of course, having the ladies on your side always helps.

MediaMiser, a leading media monitoring and analysis technology company, has acquired Gatineau-based social media and online reputation monitoring firm InfoGlutton Solutions.

The acquisition will provide MediaMiser with its own built-in, automated toning engine able to gauge the sentiment of news stories, tweets, blog posts and other content in multiple languages.

Previously, InfoGlutton’s technology had conducted online reputation management and social media listening specifically for the restaurant and hospitality industry. It was founded in 2009 and incubated via the Talent First Network’s Lead To Win program.

“This is our first acquisition and an extremely important one,” said MediaMiser CEO Brett Serjeantson. “Integrating InfoGlutton’s market-tested sentiment technology with MediaMiser’s own social media monitoring and analysis tools will help the company provide real-time, as-it-happens feedback to both large enterprises and SMEs.”

Mr. Serjeantson added the acquisition will allow MediaMiser to roll out a standalone social media product separate from its flagship software, MediaMiser Enterprise.

InfoGlutton co-founder and CEO David Nadeau, a PhD in computer sciences from the University of Ottawa, joins MediaMiser as Chief Technology Officer.

“We see this opportunity as a chance to grow from a relatively small firm into a large company almost overnight,” said Mr. Nadeau. “Working within MediaMiser gives us the means to achieve our ambitions.”

With less than a week before the holidays officially begin, the Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure video game has claimed top spot on MediaMiser’s hot toys on Twitter list for 2011!

Since November, we’ve been tracking the popularity of items of the ToysRUs Fab 15 holiday gift guide. The list includes items like the Leapfrog LeapPad Explorer learning tablet, Let’s Rock Elmo, Air Swimmers and other popular items.

And while the LeapPad Explorer jumped out to an early lead back in November, it has since sunk to second place as buzz surrounding the Skylanders game works itself into a fever pitch.

It’s a trend that made the Ottawa Citizen‘s Vito Pilieci take notice – see his article on the ongoing study here.

There are still a few days before the holidays begin, however, and it’s anyone’s guess which product could eventually come out on  top.

Here’s a breakdown on the popularity of the top eight items on ToysRUs’s Fab 15 on Twitter, as of Dec. 19:

Total tweets (from Dec. 1-19 overall)

Tweets over time (overall)

We’ve also taken the opportunity to track items Future Shop’s Must-Haves gift guide on Twitter, but in this case we’ve looked at tweets only sent from Canadian IP addresses.

As the chart below shows, entertainment and video game-related products, led by the PlayStation 3 but followed up by the Nintendo 3DS and Apple TV, have thus far been the most popular products (with the PS3 out to a very healthy lead indeed – however as the chart shows, its traction has been slipping recently).

Overall, we’ve found that a relatively large amount of overall tweets have come from what appear to be consumers, while a healthy chunk has also come from retailers pushing their products. However, where Canadian tweets are concerned, a far higher proportion seem to have come from consumers.

Stay tuned for the full report, coming out after the holidays!

Tech tweets over time (Canada only)

As November comes and goes, so too do thoughts of Christmas lists, holiday shopping and the much-anticipated Black Friday – an annual event that regularly spawns footage of eager shoppers being trampled underfoot.

With that in mind, we at MediaMiser have undertaken that most pressing of holiday tasks: a list of the most popular toys this year in online news and on Twitter!

After a month of analysis, we’ve found that tablet computers that emphasize learning such as the LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer have dominated this year’s online conversation thus far.

But not only have kids caught tablet fever – perhaps not a surprise, considering the popularity of gadgets with most parents – but they’re also personalizing their tablets, the report shows. The words “pink”, “green”, and “case” are three of the top-mentioned words associated with the LeapPad on  Twitter.

The Leapfrog LeapPad Explorer.

And though all toys in MediaMiser’s top five have some kind of technology component, the report also shows kids will always be kids and that parents can’t go wrong with purely fun toys such as interactive robots and radio-controlled fish.

MediaMiser’s 2011 Hot Toys in Media report – based on the Toys”R”Us® Fabulous 15, billed as “the 15 best toys of the season” – has used MediaMiser patented software to monitor mentions of the retailer’s list of must-have playthings since late October, along with overall mentions of the “#toys” hashtag. The report has monitored both online news sites and Twitter.

We’ll release bi-weekly updates of activity on Twitter and in online news regarding the Fabulous 15, with a full report due just before Christmas.

The most popular Fabulous 15 toys on Twitter, as of 10 p.m. on Nov. 21, were:

1)       LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer Learning Tablet: Tablet computer for kids ($99.99) (4276 mentions)

2)       Air Swimmers: radio-controlled toy fish ($19.99 – $39.99) (1749 mentions)

3)       Fijit Friends: Interactive, robotic toys ($7.99-$47.99) (1369 mentions)

4)       My Keepon: Interactive dancing robot ($34.99) (1026 mentions)

5)       Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure Start Pack for Wii ($49.99) (984 mentions)

The five most Tweeted-about toys of the Toys"R"Us Fabulous 15, including the LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer.

Total Twitter mentions of any of the Fabulous 15 or #toys hashtag.

Online news coverage trends of the top five since late October.

As you may know by now, this year’s MediaMiser Turning News Into Knowledge Award required Algonquin College PR students to promote the hashtag #workinPR on Twitter. And though Chels Murray brought home the hardware this year after taking some great initiative, a number of students showed impressive skills on the platform during the campaign.

Being a traditional and social media analysis company, we thought we’d share some of the activity #workinPR generated – and is still generating – since its inception in early October.

Here’s some brief stats and graphs on #workinPR from Oct. 12 until this week. Enjoy!

Overall Twitter activity for #workinPR

* The two activity spikes on Oct. 27 and Nov. 3 were spurred by student-organized #workinPR tweet chats.

Top mentioned web links

MediaMiser blog: Keep an eye on #workinPR from Algonquin College PR students!  - 13 links

5 things all PR students should know about their choice of career – 8 links

Personality types geared for a career in public relations - 7 links

The PR Closet blog – 7 links

PR vs. advertising: What’s the difference? – 5 links

PR internships: 3 tips for finding the right fit – 5 links

Top handles by influence (retweet ratio)

Top handles by followers

Top handles by number of postings

It’s not often OC Transpo makes the national media. But when it does, you can count on it being in very much a spectacular fashion.

That was certainly the case this week, when - as during 2009′s seven-week bus strike in Ottawa - the city’s transportation service made Canada-wide headlines once again. The culprit this time wasn’t picket lines, but rather a now-infamous and seriously ticked-off bus operator.

The incident, posted to YouTube Nov. 3, surfaced in public chatter over the weekend. It quickly went viral (of course), garnering more than 116,000 hits by this morning.

By Monday, both traditional media and Twitter commentators were heaping large slices of scorn onto to the organization. And by scorn, we mean it: after toning a random sampling of #OCTranspo tweets from the past few days, 54 per cent were negative and 38 per cent were neutral. Only eight per cent of tweets were positive or supportive of OC Transpo.

Worse, reports on Tuesday indicated a second OC Transpo video was making the rounds, this time showing a driver on a cell phone.

Here’s who led the conversation so far both in the traditional media and on Twitter (all data is as of 11 a.m. eastern time on Tuesday, Nov. 8), gleaned via MediaMiser’s software solution:

 Media trends

After the initial posting of the YouTube video on Nov. 3, #OCTranspo Twitter activity didn’t begin its acceleration until late on Nov. 5 and into Sunday.

The traditional media, while it did cover the story on Sunday, didn’t devote significant space to it until Monday the 7th.

Please note coverage and tweet levels shown in this chart until are only until 11 a.m. on Nov. 8.

Twitter

The top influencers by retweet ratio (the number of retweets each user garners, compared to number of original tweets) were:

1) @StefankeyesCTV (retweet ratio of 14)

2) @Ottguy (retweet ratio of 7.5)

3) @stuntmanstu (retweet ratio of 6.33)

4) @crimegarden (retweet ratio of 5)

5) @Ottawasuncom (retweet ratio of 4.83)

Four of the top five most retweeted users were either journalists, media outlets or former journalists, and six of the top seven (including @CTVNews and @globeandmail, which finished sixth and seventh, respectively).

The top tweeters by number of followers and volume were as follows:

Traditional media (print, online, television, radio)

Danielle Bell of Sun Media had at least 36 stories published on the incident in publications such as the Ottawa Sun, Sudbury Star, Owen Sound Sun Times, Niagara Falls Review and Sarnia Observer.

Ms. Bell and her colleagues at Sun Media dominated print and online coverage, with five of the top six authors from the outlet (Scott Taylor, Jon Willing, Kelly Roche and Errol McGihon).

Mr. McGihon is a photographer with Sun Media and has been attributed a byline for this study, thanks to his standalone photo that ran in a series of Sun-owned papers.

CTV and Sun Media (especially the Ottawa Sun) picked up on the story in a big way over the past couple of days, with Ottawa’s CTV Two (formerly A Channel) and CTV Ottawa leading the broadcast pack.

CBC also ran with the story, with three of the top ten publications including CBC News Network and CBC Ottawa.

Postmedia publications didn’t seem to cover the story with the intensity of other major outlets, although the Ottawa Citizen did crack the top ten.

Talk radio station CFRA finished in 11th, just out of the top ten publications.

Coverage between outlet types was mixed, with news websites and daily newspapers each picking up at least 30 per cent of coverage each.

Television held its own at just under 30 per cent, while radio garnered just a shade under nine per cent of all coverage.

When on Aug. 15, 2011 Althia Raj broke the story of the re-branding of Canada’s navy and air force to include the ‘Royal’ moniker, she most likely knew it would stir a hornets’ nest of debate.

But it would have been difficult for even the Huffington Post Canada’s Ottawa bureau chief to realize just how passionate the arguments would fly from either side. Some – notably, many with past or current links to Canada’s military – embraced it as a return to tradition.

Private Chris Cole, Task Force Libeccio Aviation Technician taxis a CP-140 Aurora aircraft after landing from a functioning flight in Sigonella, Italy on 29 September 2011.

Others, such as preeminent Canadian historian Jack Granatstein, soundly rejected it as “abject colonialism.”

Whatever your opinions on what’s now the Royal Canadian Air Force and Royal Canadian Navy, you’ll no doubt be intrigued by some of our findings in MediaMiser’s latest report: “A royal debate: The rebranding of Canada’s military.”

For instance, how well did the rebranding go over with print and online media?

Pretty darn well, all told – out of the hundreds of media stories evaluated in the report, 91.7 per cent were either positive or neutral towards the rebranding (just 8.1 per cent of stories were negative). The media outlets that seemed to run the most favourable coverage of the rebranding were the Ottawa Citizen, Kingston Whig-Standard and Victoria Times Colonist.

Opinions of the name change were favourable on Twitter, as well, with just a bit more than 91 per cent of tweets either positive or neutral (eight per cent of tweets were negative).

Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) was the most positive Twitter user in the debate, with 76.9 per cent of his 13 related tweets  appearing to favour the name change. He also had one of the highest volumes of related tweets, as well as one of the highest retweet ratios of any user.

But the most popular tweet of the entire study? Look no further than that of the Queen of England’s spoof Twitter account, @Queen_UK, whose tweet “Have had “Royal” put back into the name of the Canadian Air Force and Navy, mainly to annoy the French” was retweeted 845 times in a day and a half.

Click here for the report.

So, can elephants really tweet?

If this morning’s presentation by IBM Social Business Strategist Delaney Turner means anything, they certainly can – as well as inspiring others to do the same.

Mr. Turner dropped by this morning’s Social Media Breakfast – the 25th event of the series! – at the GCTC‘s Irving Greenberg Memorial Theatre to explain Big Blue’s approach to social media (although this probably isn’t news to you at this point, considering the Twitter explosion that went off at around the same time. But still).

According to organizers, around 110 people also showed up to hear Mr. Delaney speak. His preso was all about IBM’s approach to spreading the good word via social media, which most of the attendees promptly did by tweeting and retweeting tidbits of  IBM-inspired information far and wide. Not a bad strategy, eh?

Here’s a peek at what people were saying about this morning’s presentation:

@GCTCLive (Great Cdn Theatre Co.)

Gotta love it when the #SMBOttawa people join us. You’ll never see more tweets per second in the building.

@Jason_Faber (Jason Faber)

About 110 people at #SMBottawa this morning. I have no idea how Simon and Rob get us here so early. Must be the coffee and bacon muffins.

@meghanmurray (Meg Murray)

#smbottawa no campaign or event goes out the door that don’t have a huge social media component. #IBM

@LeighMorris (Leigh Morris)

#SMBOttawa this is an interesting presentation, but could be much more effective with cleaner, less distracting slides.

@VProcunier (Victoria Procunier)

Make sure your Google+ profile is up to date as Google searches it’s own content first. #smbottawa

@TechAlly (Alexandra Reid)

Rather than restrict access to social media, treat people like adults and trust they’re going to use it right for business @DTurnerBlogs

@spydergrrl (Tanya Snook)

IBM expert profiles raise visibility of their experts like a #socialmediaequivalent of a speaker’s bureau #smbottawa

@amyleehusser (Amy Husser)

Revamping IBM’s website for SEO took them from search ranking of 19 to 2, says @DTurnerBlogs #SMBOttawa

@VProcunier (Victoria Procunier)

IBM on negative feedback. Select what they respond to. They continuously monitor what is being said #smbottawa

@krusk (Kelly Rusk)

“A social business embraces networks of people to create business value” @DTurnerBlogs #smbottawa

And there you have it! These were just some of the great Tweets we rounded up via the MediaMiser system this morning.

To follow or join the rest of the discussion, check out hashtag #SMBOttawa on Twitter and have your say.

Ever wonder just how much a front page story actually does for your bottom line?

Most likely a great deal, according to a recent MediaMiser report that studies potential correlations between media coverage and sales outcomes.

According to the report – featuring an analysis of Toyota Motor Corp.’s U.S. media coverage from January to May of 2011 – the overall number of Toyota-related articles and media mentions showed a direct correlation with that company’s sales figures.

As media mentions of Toyota climbed, sales figures did the same. And as media mentions dropped – well, you get the idea.

It’s a conclusion MediaMiser president Chris Morrison says many firms would be wise to heed.

“This study clearly shows a connection between media coverage and a company’s sales figures,” says Mr. Morrison. “It’s also an excellent indicator of why all organizations need a coherent media engagement strategy, one that includes measurement and assessments of media coverage at regular intervals.”

The report also explores how media coverage on different topics related to Toyota – topics such as recalls and production capacity – changed over time, as well as the relationship between the tone of media coverage and sales figures.

MediaMiser, a leading traditional and social media monitoring and analysis firm, is based in Ottawa and was founded in 2003.