john blue - building an information radar with twitter

Building an Information Radar

With Twitter

1Wednesday, March 12, 14Good morning,Welcome to the webinar Building an Information Radar With Twitter

Truffle Media

Ned Arthur, Director of Sales and Content Development

John Blue, Chief of Community Creation

2Wednesday, March 12, 14Hi, My name is John Blue and I work at Truffle Media Networks, an agriculture media company focused on agriculture animal health issues.

FYI

Resource page: https://radar.hackpad.com/

This webinar is being recorded and will be published when done.

3Wednesday, March 12, 14This webinar is being recorded and will be published when done.There is a support page on Hackpad (https://radar.hackpad.com/ )

FYI

To ask a question, type in your questions on the GoToWebinar control panel and I will address them at designated question points.

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To ask a question, type in your questions on the GoToWebinar control panel and I will address them at the designated question points.

Landscape

5Wednesday, March 12, 14Media use over the last 20 years has changed. People have moved from utilizing media based on time and location to discovering and finding information in real time through multiple channels and various sources of authority. Information media has become time free, virtual, digital, and very participatory. (next)

Landscape

6Wednesday, March 12, 14Today the way people receive information is far greater than 20 years ago; And there is more noise.

Why an Information

Radar?

7Wednesday, March 12, 14Why is this important? Finding out information on a topic or person or business is needed many times throughout the day to make decisions. Having a process in place to help identify and highlight trends or events is needed to help get through the swell of data.

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There is so much information and data every minute; you have no control over the amount.What you do have control over is the way in which you handle information and data.

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Putting in place a set of tools and approaches will help.

What is an Information Radar?

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Radar review

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The idea of information radar is already in use today: weather, flight, stock, traffic. Each of these apps collect, organize, and display data to help people make decisions.

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An information radar extends the idea of the single purpose apps of weather, flight, or traffic to an approach whose goal is to questions of a specific nature. (next)

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An information radar is driven by the initial questions that are being asked.

Twitter Review

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Since this webinar that uses Twitter, I want to do a short review on Twitter.

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Twitter is very simple at the surface: people share things 140 characters at a time.

screen namename

tweet

avatar

date/timeimmediate actions

gear box of actions

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But there is more than just that 140 character post. This single tweet has more than 30 data points as a part of the 140 characters: location, time, mentions, favorites, links in the tweet are just a few.

General infoLocation

Metrics

Relatedconnections

Recommendations

Index to additional information

Trends

Tweet

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In addition to the tweet itself, there are a series of other players on Twitter, each with their own set of data (name, info, location, avatar, time zone, etc.). There is over 30 different elements for each Twitter user. (next)

General infoLocation

Metrics

Relatedconnections

Recommendations

Index to additional information

Trends

Tweet

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Additionally, there are other Twitter things: trends, recommendations, and lists that play a part in the Twitter interactions people initiate.

If you want to learn more about the data Twitter collects along the way, see the Information Radar resource page on Hackpad: Twitter Field Guide

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Any questions?

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An information radar is driven by the initial questions that are being asked.

Questions Drive Action

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Example

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This is an example I am going to use to help get started. Truffle worked with Smart Animal Training Systems over the last year to help put in place tools and approaches to understanding the lay of the land in pet training technology on the social web. (next)

Example

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Explain what Smart Animal is about

Examples

•What are some events that are happening in the pet world?

•Who are some of the leading voices in pets/pet technology?

•What are some trends that are in the same space as Smart Animal Training Systems?

•What are some of the media outlets in the pet/pet technology space?

•Are there are any webpages with additional information I should pay attention too?

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These are some questions that were being asked.

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Once the questions were created, scanning was started. This process was a bit ad hoc as we did not yet know anything.

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Knowing nothing about the pet world on social media, I used the Twitter search bar to start scanning. Terms like pet, dog, and cat were initially used.

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Quickly I was able to see a few tweets that looked promising. What is #globalpetexpo?

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The #globalpetexpo hashtag led me to a long set of tweets of a pet products event that was being held in Orlando (2013).

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Detection

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And one of those tweets had something even more interesting: #BlogPaws hashtag... What is that?

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There is a whole community! and another event; social media and pets.

Any questions?

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Ok, so now I have found some events and a bunch of tweets. What can help long term? Let’s organize some of the info.

Index to additional information

Twitter Lists

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Twitter lists are one way to organize people on Twitter and see what just those people are talking about. Utilizing the initial search of #globalpetexpo I went through about 1,000 tweets and added people that looked interesting.

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To get started, a set of bucket names were created to organize pet people on twitter: media, product, training, health, organization, community, etc. Then the #globalpetexpo search was used as a starting point (demo)

Demo list additions

http://www.trufflemedia.com/twitter/globalpetexpo2013-02-26.html

https://twitter.com/TruffleMedia/lists/radar-example

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Show globalpetexpoAdd a person to demo radar list

Why a List?

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With a list I can now go to the list and see what is happening in that general collection of people.

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Example.

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Now that we have some organization, we need to see if some of our questions are getting answered.

Examples

•What are some events that are happening in the pet world?

•Who are some of the leading voices in pets/pet technology?

•What are some trends that are in the same space as Smart Animal Training Systems?

•What are some of the media outlets in the pet/pet technology space?

•Are there are any webpages with additional information I should pay attention too?

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These are some questions that were being asked. Several of these have been answered, some have partial info (webpages for example). Trends question has not yet been answered specifically but there are lists of Twitter people to follow that might offer info. (next)

Any questions?

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Review

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Review: Questions must lead the process. Scan the web (Twitter in this case). Detect interesting things. Summarize for sanity. Analyze where possible. Aim to answer questions. This is a process, not the end. The questions will change as business needs change.

Some tools to help

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The above steps relied on just using Twitter’s standard interface. That can get a bit cumbersome. The following are some tools that can be used to help refine.

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Scanning tools.

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Additional scanning tools, for real time review: TweetDeck

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Additional scanning tools, for real time review: HootSuite

Why TweetDeck or HootSuite?

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Multiple columns can be setup to scan real time when needed. Tweets can be scheduled. Multiple accounts can be managed.

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These are services that allow you to set up to collect social data over time and get back a file for analysis. Why important? Example: collecting Tweets from an event. Example: #SXSW is coming up shortly.

50Wednesday, March 12, 14DataSift & GNIP offer acces to the full Twitter data firehose (average 6,000 tweets/second)DataSift offers low cost ($, $20 for 70,000 tweets range) entry up to large dollar ($$$$) datastreams for big ideas/projects.GNIP offers large dollar ($$$$) datastreams for big ideas/projects.ScraperWiki offers low cost ($) entry point to a small set of Twitter data (not the fire hose)

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Summarize tools

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These tools can help summarize data from Twitter in to usable chunks and/or help organize some of the data items for better use.

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SocialBro allows you to clean up your Twitter lists; people stop using Twitter, their focus can change, or they just are not helping answer questions. Example: Filter list to drop out anyone who has not tweeted in more than 6 months. Or show me “experts” defined as those people tweeting 4 or more times a day.

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Summarize tools

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TweetReach offers a fee service to spot report on event info ($20). It is am inexpensive service to help gage engagement, see who top contributors are, and to see impression reach.

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These tools offer a variety of ways to organize larger amounts of data into usable information chunks. They have various functionality and associated costs.Google Fusion tables offers ability to extract information from data inexpensively (free) and maintain the data privately. Tableau Public and Many Eyes offer great tools, but the caveat is that data uploaded to their services will be made public.

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analyze and summarize

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Example: Scanned for #SxSw using DataSift for a ~20 hour period. 70,000 tweets later, where are these tweets occurring? Cleaning up the table (pull out tweets that have geo location info, ~10,000) and use Google Fusion Tables provides a view on where.

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Of course Austin, TX has the bulk of the tweets. Google Fusion Tables allows for zooming in; it’s Google maps overlaid with your data.

Observations

• Twitter offers data that can be used for discovery.

• Spend time refining your questions.

• Find the tools that can help save you time.

• This is a process and it will need adjusting over time.

• Many of the techniques can be applied to other social channels or digital sites.

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Questions?

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FYI

Resource page: https://radar.hackpad.com/

This webinar is being recorded and will be published when done.

65Wednesday, March 12, 14This webinar is being recorded and will be published when done.There is a support page on Hackpad (https://radar.hackpad.com/ )

FYIThere is a webinar feedback survey with two questions that will be emailed to you after the webinar closes.

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Contact Information

info@TruffleMedia.com@TruffleMediaTruffleMedia.com/Facebook

(877) 558-7833TruffleMedia.com

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