No Dancing Flashmob
March 25, 2011 at 7:26 am
Great idea this one…thanks to @darraghdoyle for bringing it to my screen!
Flashmob Friday – Sydney
March 18, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Hurray it’s the return of Flashmob Friday and a topical one too. Check out the Flashmob from Grand Central Station in Sydney yesterday. (You might want to skip to 2mins as it’s a bit slow moving at first 
)
Tags: flashmob friday
Great Pickup
March 17, 2011 at 5:16 pm
When you read stuff like this after a long hard week that isn’t over yet, it makes it all worthwhile..
Tags: Ireland Town
In Tests, 8 out of 10 cats…
March 16, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Have their emails set to display the most recent ones up top.
I recently posed this question on Twitter to confirm that the set up we had for the inbox on Ireland Town Social Game was right.
Imagine my surprise when 12 people on Twitter replied that they put the newest messages on top?
I put mine down the bottom and only 1 other person does the same!
That’s 7.6% on bottom, all the rest on top.
Human beings are amazing… the only one above who does what I do is a gorilla!!
Ireland Town Social Game
March 15, 2011 at 9:14 pm
If you’re looking for something fun, interesting, and challenging to get you in the mood for Paddy’s Day, then you might want to check out Ireland Town! It’s a social game on Facebook that I’ve been working on over the past 6 weeks in my role as Social Media Project Manager for Tourism Ireland.
Like all good things, it began on the back of a napkin in Bewleys when Brian conveyed to me his vision for a social game involving key destinations in Ireland. I took that napkin home, wrote it up into the shortest brief ever known to mankind, and shipped it out to a couple of trusty developers. Internally wincing at the turnaround time I was asking for proposals back, and the number of words in the brief, things happened, ideas got created and work began on Ireland Town in early February.
Betapond, who I’ve worked with on a couple of projects before, were the winning development team and they have pulled an amazing rabbit with fluffyness, brains and that can speak 5 languages – out of their hats! 
Now we’re at the end of an exciting 6 weeks. You will be able to play Ireland Town yourself from Thursday (St Patricks Day) – but if you’re a fan of one of Tourism Ireland’s Facebook Pages, you will get an early start today.
My Role (as Social Media Project Manager on behalf of the client)
- During the specification process, working on behalf of the client to ensure their best interests are being specc’ed out in the documentation and formal agreements for the project
- Communicating timelines to all parties involved in the project internally
- Sourcing content… while designers design, developers code, and the money people negotiate, someone has to come up with content ideas, and run around sourcing, signing off, and delivering. For this project we have 31 destinations with 9 tasks at each one = a lot of content to come up with. Luckily we also have our copywriters on hand to jazz up the language.
- Wearing my design hat, feeding back client’s views to the developers.
- While development takes place, I turn my attention to preparing all the ancillary content such as creating the Facebook presence, with custom designed tabs, a schedule of content for the first 6 weeks, Twitter skins, etc. Working with our trusty video editor on promo videos for Youtube.
- Communicating progress throughout to the stakeholders within the organisation. Ensuring their questions are answered, ideas are fed through into the development process, and requirements from them are clear.
- Did I mention there are 5 non-English languages?
I Love My Job.
I love the start of projects where it’s all about ideas and ‘What Can Be’. I love the middle of projects where everyone’s working together towards the same thing. I even love the crazy end of projects where days are long, and work is a heady balance of calls to mobiles and landlines, 3, 5, and often 7 way skype chats, emails flying, last minute things being dropped in…
Thank You’s
- To the makers of Basecamp, Dropbox, Skype, and Conceptshare – you are my saviours… Where would we be without you?
- To Aileen, David, & Lisa – thanks for poring over the spreadsheets and injecting fun into them! If you’re going to the Blog Awards this weekend, give them a big cheer – they’re shortlisted for the Best Sports & Recreation Blog.
- And of course, last but definitely not least, to Heidi who always ‘gets it’ and manages to do cutesy but cool at the same time – A Massive Thank You Indeed. If you want beautiful design from someone who knows what you want more than you do – talk to CookieWeb.
Go on – play Ireland Town the newest social game on Facebook. Enjoy. And happy St Patrick’s Day!
Tags: facebook.com/irelandtown, Ireland Town social game, St Patricks Day, St Patricks Day 2011
International Women’s Day is for life… not just today
March 8, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Happy international women’s day to one and all. I’m delighted to be a part of “100 Voices in Business” put together by @KrishnaDe. She asked put the word out there through her AMAZING online network to ask women in business what tip they’d give in 140 characters or less. There are some great ones in here – take the time to read every one.
Or if you could just skip to tip 94 where my one is!
Understanding Edgerank
March 1, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Now don’t come over all cold sweats please, this is a non-mathematician’s take on Edgerank!!
You may have heard of Google Page Rank which is a number Google gives to a web page based on its algorithim – the higher the number the better, and the further up the search engine results page your site will be displayed. Google Page Rank is all about relevant content. Similarly Facebook has an algorithim that it uses to display what goes in your Top News feed. It’s called Edgerank and you need to understand it if your message is going to be found by 95% of your fans.
Fact:
- The Top News feed is the default feed that everyone sees, and 95% of users don’t bother changing this setting – so it’s extremely important that you get your message into the Top News feed.
- Only 35% of commercial news gets into the Top News feed (according to this post).
Too many brands only focus on the numbers when it comes to Facebook metrics. Edgerank is is a nice qualitative metric that you can use – and it denotes a more accurate picture of success. What’s the point of having thousands of fans if your wall posts aren’t getting into the Top News streams? It’s like sending emails that are going straight to the spam folder. If you’ve thrown a whole lot of money at building fans through advertising, ensuring you engage with them through their Top News Feeds is the follow through.
Understanding Edgerank
Techcrunch has written the clearest explanation yet. Go read the Techcrunch Edgerank post for the detail.
Lifted directly from Techcrunch, Jason Kincaid succinctly explains the following (I wonder if he’s any relation to Flesch-Kincaid of the readability index fame?)
In its simplest sense, every item that appears in your news feed is an Object.
Whenever another user interacts with that object, it’s called an Edge.
Each Edge has three components important to Facebook’s algorithm:
- First, there’s an affinity score between the viewing user and the item’s creator — if you send your friend a lot of Facebook messages and check their profile often, then you’ll have a higher affinity score for that user than you would, say, an old acquaintance you haven’t spoken to in years.
- Second, there’s a weight given to each type of Edge. A comment probably has more importance than a Like, for example.
- And finally there’s the most obvious factor — time. The older an Edge is, the less important it becomes.
Multiply these factors for each Edge then add the Edge scores up and you have an Object’s EdgeRank. And the higher that is, the more likely your Object is to appear in the user’s feed. It’s worth pointing out that the act of creating an Object is also considered an Edge, which is what allows Objects to show up in your friends’ feeds before anyone has interacted with them.
My take on this – Facebook values engagement more than anything else.
To optimise Edgerank, you need to create content that people engage with – and do that frequently. But don’t worry – it’s a lot easier than optimizing Page Rank!! Here’s a handy tool you can use to calculate your Edgerank.
Start by checking your Edgerank now as a baseline, then work hard to ensure you’re engaging. Make every wall post work for you. Invite answers through questions. Be a good Facebooker and give lots of engaging content. Then go back and see if your Edgerank has increased. If it has, use your Insights to see the kind of content that delights your fans. Then give them more of it.
