Making a Social Media impression… or 7.4 million of them

 

 

Deloitte South Africa recently delivered two large client events that had a strong social media integrated strategy. Not only were the events successful, but analysis of the metrics demonstrate the importance of Social Media in the marketing plan. With 7.4 million impressions, and 204 815 unique users reached for two events, the proof lies in the numbers.

Social media is quickly becoming a standard channel in any communication or marketing plan. However, there is still a large degree of confusion around the application, measurables and actual success of these platforms at the centre of the debate on the relevance of social media in the B2B environment.

Deloitte South Africa recently ran two large campaigns, namely the CIO Forum that ran over two days in four hour sessions and focused on Tech Trends 2011, and the annual Deloitte Best Company to Work For Survey awards banquet, which lasted two hours. Both campaigns had a strong social media strategy and presence, although most focus was placed on Twitter.

With only an estimated 1 million Twitter users in South Africa, the Markets team in Deloitte South Africa recognised that a successful campaign needed a solid foundation, and focused on the three fundamentals:

1. Influencers and Relationship Networks: The team ensured they had high influencers at both events. Bringing them into the strategy and the event allowed for a strong “signal” when tweeting as opposed to noise, and allowed them to communicate with their respective networks, thereby giving the Deloitte brand greater integration with new markets.
2. Internal and External Influencers: This point concentrated on ensuring that the Deloitte message not only reached external markets, but the internal audience too. The South African team believes that the personal eminence of Deloitte staff is not only beneficial to them, but allows for greater penetration into the Twitter-sphere and assists in creating eminence for Deloitte.
3. Content: No campaign can be successful without having interesting and great content. The team focused on creating “stamps” for both events – these are pieces of content that are prepared beforehand and are easy Retweets. They are short statements, sum up a point of view and give a definitive opinion. These are scheduled into the Twitter handle, and some are then circulated to internal thought leaders to be posted.

The metrics of success

Using an array of reporting and analytical tools, the South Africa team was able to accurately gauge their success and view the impact of their three fundamental points of departure. The following shows the results of the campaigns:

 

The above reports were then imported in a Visual Data Analyser, which showcases influencers in real-time, and highlights the conversation participants and place within the topic. The visual data gives even greater insights, for example, the higher the bubble, the bigger the “signaller” or thought leader within the Twitter topic. It also shows influence; the bigger the bubble, the bigger the influence within the conversation, and it shows the connections and centrality between participants.

 

If you have any questions or would like additional information on the campaigns or the Visual Data Analytics, please contact Greg Comline on gcomline@deloitte.co.za or Mithun Kalan on mkalan@deloitte.co.za

Filed under: Executive Leadership, Technology, Media & Telecoms (TMT), BCTWF, CIO Forum, Data Analytics, Impressions, social media, Stats, Visual Data

Finding influencers in real-time

Twitter is increasingly being used as a source of breaking news. This is a good source of content but the level of context does not paint the full picture. For example, a person can say something that is positive or damaging to your brand, however, viewing this on a twitter feed of a hashtag could result in the trend setter being lost as the conversing community grows. More importantly, it is not always obvious how influential participants are coming into the conversation (within their specific social networks), nor how influential they are during a specific conversation.

Deloitte South Africa is able to overcome both of these problems with a visualisation of a twitter feed. The person that started a conversation will appear in the center of a map of the conversation. As the conversation grows, the people that contribute the most to the discussion (hash tag) will move to the centre of the map. In addition, you are able to quickly identify who the most influential participants are (represented by the size of the node) as they join a conversation. Finally, one is able to map multiple conversations at the same time using multiple hashtags (represented by point of entry and node colour).

To illustrate this, Deloitte created a visualisation of the twitter conversation during the South Africa – Fiji rugby match on Saturday 8am (GMT+2). The hashtags used for the search were #RWC2011 and #BOKKE. The video below shows a small clip of how the twitter conversation started. Visuals are richer than plain text, so we will explain what the video represents. Each node that appears is a unique user on twitter. The purple nodes are the users that used the #BOKKE tag and will enter the screen from the left. The light green nodes are users that tweeted with the #RWC2011 tag and will enter the screen from the right. A line between the nodes represents a tweet from one person to the other. This is so that we can visualise a tweet where one person mentions multiple people with multiple lines. The size of the node is the Klout score. Klout is an online tool to estimate numerically the level of influence a person has. During the video I will be able to rotate the map along the z-axis and you will be able to see a difference in the height of the nodes. The difference in the height is due to the number of mentions that particular user has. The greater the number of mentions, the higher the level of the node.

Watch the Youtube video

An important analysis of the map is that the people in the center of the map are visually and literally the center of the conversation. This is intuitive as the nodes in the center are usually bigger, implying a high Klout score.

The graph below shows the number of tweets that arrived during the match. The green line is the #RWC2011 tag and the blue line is the #BOKKE tag. We noticed that twitter becomes more frenzied as a point is scored. People also make more comments after a match.

The application for this technology is that you can map a conversation to understand the creators of the content, their relative level of influence, and the context in which a conversation is flowing. This enhances traditional Online Reputation Management. Businesses are now able to understand both historical and real time influence within conversations and manage the viral spread of a breaking topic with far greater precision using these solutions.

To find out more information about how this technology can give you an advantage please contact Andre Hugo @maxrsa or Mithun Kalan @mithunkalan on twitter.

Filed under: Executive Leadership, Technology, Media & Telecoms (TMT), #RWC2011, Bokke, Conversations, Data Analytics, ORM, Twitter, Visualisation Graphs

Deloitte report – Ten emerging issues in the power and utilities sector

This report was published by the Deloitte Global Energy and Resources. Should you require any additional information, you may contact Shamal Sivasanker who heads up Power and Utilities in South Africa. Shamal’s email address is ssivasanker@deloitte.co.za. Learn more about  Deloitte Power Solutions.

Empowering Ideas 2011 – A look at ten of the emerging issues in the power and utilities sector

“The end of the global economic crisis has forced electric utilities companies to confront new challenges. While the demand for energy continues to increase as a result of the growing global population, security of supply represents a major challenge. The reputation of nuclear energy was hard hit by the recent Japanese earthquake and resulting tsunami. While renewable energy continues to enter mainstream utilisation, unconventional gas has become more economically attractive based on improving drilling technology. LNG and coal are abundant sources and remain important parts of many nations’ fuel mix but coal could be helped by clean coal technologies and coal-to-liquids processes.

Investments in renewable energy, in the form of solar, wind and geothermal resources, continue to increase at the expense of new build nuclear energy which, in many countries, continues to be a subject of debate. In heavily regulated markets, mergers and acquisitions may be one option for utilities to grow as organic growth prospects may be limited. Energy efficiency aand demand side management programs offer a ‘win-win-win’ for governments, utilities and consumers. A clear trend is the growing importance of data analytics applied by power companies. Advanced IT techniques are helping power companies to analyse enormous data sets to create scenarios and make informed decisions”.

Download the full report . . . . Deloitte report – Ten emerging issues in power and utilities

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Filed under: Mining, Energy & Resources, advanced IT techniques, coal, coal-to-liquids, Data Analytics, Deloitte, demand for energy, emerging issues, energy efficiency, gas, LNG, nuclear energy, power, power companies, renewable energy, utilities

Advanced Data Analytics-find the blind spots to keep your customers loyal for longer.

There are few organisations that are able to source, optimise and structure data so as to let the data ‘speak for itself’. Traditionally, a firm with a deductive approach will begin with a hypothesis and look for data or evidence to support that hypothesis. A common term is for this approach is known as ‘asking the right question’. This approach also leads to attention being diverted from understanding difficult areas of business to further cementing knowledge of known areas. The result is a blind spot in which information seems to be hidden from plain sight. A better approach to fully understand customers is to combine all data in its raw form from all sources of data assets with external market data. Customer data will then need to be arranged in such a way that all aspects, no matter how trivial, are visible to the business management. The visual that accompanies this arrangement must also be intuitive in the way customers are grouped. 

Graphic: Deloitte Advanced Analytics Customer Map

 

Deloitte has an advanced modelling solution that lets the data ‘speak for itself’, eliminating assumptions or the need to ask ‘the right question’ before gaining insight from data. The approach works well with large data sets so there is no longer any need for sampling. This technique has the advantage of being able to facilitate interpretation with clients through a visual interface. A picture tells a thousand words. What we are doing, is working with data in its raw form, enhanced by external data, to create analytical data sets more capable of providing new insight for a business’ customers.

To find out how Deloitte can identify your blind spots, contact Derek Schraader dschraader@deloitte.co.za

Filed under: Information Technology, Advanced Data Analytics, Customer Loyalty Retention, Data Analytics, Mapping, Profitability, Visual Data