Idle No More at Six Months includes a breakdown of online participation and sentiment in three categories:

• Low engagement – 1-15 tweets per participant, generally considered to be members of the public with limited interest in the movement;
• Medium engagement – 16-500 tweets per participant, includes those more actively interested in the movement including supporters, critics, media, labour groups and researchers/analysts; and,
• High engagement – 501 or more tweets per participant, some of the most passionate supporters of the movement, some media and the ‘robots’.

Using Marketwired/Sysomos Heartbeat and Full Duplex Compass to analyze 1.3 million pieces of content with a particular focus on the 1.2 million tweets and Idle No More website, the report offers insight into the cycle of public opinion, the evolution of discussed themes. It also notes what the movement did well and where it may have missed opportunities to re-energize online activity.

The purpose of the report is more than just to comment on the movement. It’s a look at what civil action movements and governments need to know based on available data. And still, the report only scratches the surface.

The report is available through FullDuplex.ca.

Featured photo: Elizabeth May.

New report looks at Idle No More’s first six months is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

There’s a parallel online. Facebook. Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ are great neighbourhoods to have a property in these days. Second Life and MySpace? Not so much.

CBC’s Evan Solomon explained to the audience at the CPRS 2013 National Convention that digital real estate is losing its value. Communicators looking to improve their investment portfolio should consider relationships a “buy.”

Yup. Relationship, relationship, relationship. As Evan said, “If you’re not deepening the relationship everyday, you’re losing the relationship.”

I agree with Evan. In fact, that’s what made him a great opening act. At least, that’s the way I joked about it. His talk was a perfect setup to one I delivered this morning. I called mine “Ghost in the Machine” — a play on the fourth album by my favourite band (The Police) and the Arthur Koestler essay the album’s named after.

Ghost in the Machine is another way of explaining my thoughts around digital eye contact (digital iContact for you more geeky folk).

The principle is this: if there’s no soul in your communication, there’s no reason for your audience to buy your message. I walked my audience through a number of examples of how putting the ghost into the machine made campaigns and crisis communication efforts more effective.

I made the case for applying your innate skills at engaging with people both in “real-life” situations and digital interaction. Let’s call the latter “mediated experiences.” Basically, use your social intelligence in all aspects of your communication efforts. Understand your environment, the conditions and the participants, then be fearlessly sincere.

If you’ve been working within a machine culture for a while, this emergence of your ghost will take time. It also isn’t complicated. I explained it this way…

Honesty and sincerity take courage because they’re not generally accepted in corporate communication. Actually, they should be natural. Moreover, case after case show they generally yield better results; if not in the short-term, definitely in the long.

Message control takes energy. It’s like swimming upstream. It’s become the preferred method because its less polarizing — in theory. This approach yields santized and frequently meaningless results, with generally non-committal commitments to values and outcomes. It also means we don’t have to be human and appear vulnerably happy or vulnerably sad. This can be exhausting trying to keep our ghost out of our communications.

Based on tweets, the one point that resonated the most with my audience tied to corporate communication… “Ghosts apologize; machines say sorry.” Or, perhaps it was the only thing I said which was concise enough to make it to a tweet.

Putting the ghost in the machine is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

For many years he’s been sharing his SWARM methodology which can be applied in a variety of reputation, issues and crisis management scenarios. It may seem like common sense to those who are committed to digital culture, yet it’s incredibly hard for many organizations, companies and institutions to embrace. It requires ambandoning conventional thought. It’s a methodology I borrow from quite a bit in my own client counsel.

Tod just released a new and concise way of presenting SWARM.

The SWARM Methodology by @TodMaffin is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

The survey, which takes between 12 and 15 minutes to complete, walks respondents through a variety of categories to learn about Canadian online habits such as following current events, researching issues, navigating partisan discussions and participating in all forms of online campaigns (information, political, advocacy and activist).

The survey is open for responses through June, analysis will take place in July and we’ll write the report in August. We plan to release the survey results in September.

We would appreciate your participation and help in raising awareness of the survey so we can attract as many responses as possible.

Click here to be taken to the survey.

Thank you in advance for your time, insight and support in helping to promote survey participation.

How are Canadian opinions shaped online is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

I’ve written a number of times about the ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) nature of the social web. The premise of my theory is that discussion on the web doesn’t evolve as much as is hastily moves from one pile-on to the next driven by… oh, look… shiny object!

Exactly.

I call this the This Too Shall Pass effect. It’s the not-entirely-jokingly concept of coming clean, surviving three or four cycles of Tylenol, then carrying on with life. The shiny object could be anything including the latest celebrity arrest, a natural disaster, a new incident on a hot-button issue such as bullying, a inspirational campaign such as KONY2012 or a picture or video of a cute pet. They all have their moment in the public conscious before the next shiny object comes along.

Satisfy the public interest and it will move along

Crisis communications 101 has long come with the guidance “mess up, fess up.” That’s good advice. The premise is you reveal everything that happened and all information you have on the issue, you own the problem, you suggest steps to make it right, you answer as many questions as is practical and you follow-up periodically to whoever has maintained an interest in the matter. Being the firehose operator can help you drown out the issue by satiating everyone’s appetite for information. They’ll be satisfied or bored of the issue and carry on.

Examples

There are many examples of This Too Shall Pass in action. I’ve highlighted a few on my blog. The Auditor General’s draft report on G8 Summit spending. TellVicEverything. The Amanda House YoPro criticisms of Loblaws. The list grows everyday.

The critical conclusion

Tearing the band aid off slowly means trickling new scandalous details everyday. You’re offering yourself up as your own shiny object. You’re feeding the worst possible parts of the ADD nature of the social web as it applies to you, rather than playing up its benefits. This approach assures you will be the story each day, every day, for a long time.

If that’s you’re preferred approach, you’ll need more Tylenol.

Crisis commununications 101: Tear off the band aid is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

For the last six months I’ve been following online chatter related to — and pinned to — the movement. I’ve published regular analysis which considers trends in activity, issues discussed, gender skews and popular tweets. My weekly updates have been diligently followed by people interested in the movement; those who support it and those who are affected by its actions. My analysis has been both praised and criticized.

The movement is a first in many ways for Canada, the world and most certainly for First Nations peoples. Among other things, it gave a voice to people who largely didn’t have a voice. And, it allowed their voices to be amplified through democratized media and subsequently raised their profile through traditional media.

There is a wealth of information to be considered by campaign and movement organizers, and those who are the target of criticism. Full Duplex has been analyzing online activity and we are in the midst of pulling together a report we plan to publish in early June. One of our many findings is that as the movement itself seemed to lose its online energy, an increasing number of people began opportunistically using the popular hashtag as a catch-all for all forms of anti-government and anti-corporate sentiment. There was also a noticeable amount of completely unrelated content tagged with #IdleNoMore. In some ways this evolution of the hashtag marginalized the voices of those who created it.

What follows is the analysis of Idle No More online activity for May 19 through 25, inclusive. Analysis was performed using Marketwired/Sysomos Heartbeat.

Bolstered by the Senate scandal and Prime Minister Harper’s (mis)handling of it, the following posted a rise in activity:

• News mentions down 62% (from 60 to 97)
• Twitter mentions up 18% (from 7,214 to 8,503)
• YouTube mentions up 13% (from 22 to 25)
• Forum mentions, including Reddit, up 8% (from 55 to 51)
• Blog mentions up 1% (from 94 to 95)
• Facebook mentions up marginally (from 226 to 227)

Posing a fall in activity:

• n/a

The 8,503 tweets issued this past week came from 2,868 unique Twitter accounts; an average of 2.9 tweets per account. The number of participants increased 13% from last week’s analysis.

In all, online mentions were up 10% from the previous week.

The three Twitter accounts which issued the most tweets tagged #IdleNoMore, #NativeWinter or including the text “Idle No More” were @teamrevoltnow (1,167, up from 1,086 last week), @idlenomoreyeg (182, up from 174) and @joanie399 (170, up from 157). They combine for 1,519 tweets or 18% of relevant tweets for the week (down 2% over the previous week). To contextualize their contributions, @teamrevoltnow issued the equivalent of 167 tweets on average for each day last week, @idlenomoreyeg 26 and @joanie399 24.

Among the more common themes this past week include oil and gas (keystone), indigenous rights (racism), days of action in Vancouver and Edmonton (YEG) and Bill C-45 which served as the tipping point for the creation of the Idle No More movement. Mentions also included the campaign to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

The following buzzgraph illustrates the connection between key terms in the most active conversations. The stronger the connection between the words, the thicker and bolder the connection line. There are three levels of connection illustrated by a thick solid line (strong), a thin solid line (medium) and a thin broken line (light). The Buzzgraph that follows shows only two degrees of connection during the election campaign — strong and light.

The top tweet for this report was issued by @canadianglen. His May 20 tweet which links to the Sisters in Spirit page of Voices-Voix.ca has been retweeted 66 times and 11 people indicated it as a favourite.

Summary of IdleNoMore traffic for May 19 – 25 is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

I wrote Nigel Wright’s resignation and PMHarperMustResign ignite CDNpoli on Monday. Among the main points I tried to get across is that the growing senate scandal motivated a significant increase in #cdnpoli chatter — on a long weekend to boot — and that, while the number of tweets calling for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to resign was substantial, the number of people issuing those tweets was relatively low.

My ongoing analysis of online chatter about Canadian politics typically relies on the #cdnpoli hashtag since it’s much easier to identify relevant conversations even if the resulting analysis amounts to a look at a self-selected focus group of people interested in (or committed to) political or hyper-partisan chatter. This helps identify issues of importance since these discussions, like the reports issued by Hill journalists, emanate outwards as though travelling through a web of connected networks. We have the ability to measure that spread.

The one limitation of this approach is it fails to consider the larger reach of significant issues — the senate scandal, for example. Many Canadians are tweeting about the issue and expressing their frustration and anger with the key players (Mike Duffy, Nigel Wright, Pamela Wallin), Senate, Conservative Party, Prime Minister’s office and the Prime Minister himself without using or knowing of the #cdnpoli hashtag. Analyzing the broader conversation demands patience and an iterative process to ensure the identification of relevant chatter is as accurate as possible. This means developing a complex boolean search which captures as much signal as possible while eliminating as much noise as possible.

I’ll spare you the details. Instead, let me offer you a quick summary of my findings.

Within #cdnpoli (that self-selected, real time focus group), I identified that 12,288 people have issued tweets about the cascading senate scandal, expressing near-unanimous anger with the Government & PM from May 15 through May 21 inclusive.

When I expanded the search to include tweets not tagged with #cdnpoli,  I discovered 43,585 tweeters have joined the online chatter about the cascading senate scandal, expressing near-unanimous anger with the Government & PM from May 15 through May 21 inclusive.

Senate scandal Twitter activity, May 15 through May 21 inclusive. The “bump” on May 20 reflects an online campaign held that day, identified by #PMHarperMustResign.

And that’s just Twitter. There is a growing number of news reports, blog posts and forum mentions which I’m reluctant to share at this time since I haven’t yet had the opportunity to ensure the number of identified mentions is accurate.

With activity growing everyday as new pieces of information trickle out, as the Prime Minister drags out his media availability to discuss the issue, as questionable decisions are made with respect to investigating the matter, I don’t anticipate this issue going away anytime soon. The question is, will the online chatter sustain its momentum?

This buzzgraph illustrates the connection between key terms in the most active Twitter chatter. The stronger the connection between the words, the thicker and bolder the connection line: thick solid line (strong), thin solid line (medium) and a thin broken line (light).

This word clouds illustrate the relationship of the most commonly used words in identified tweets. The larger and stronger the word, the more often it appears in tweets.

Analysis performed using Sysomos Heartbeat and Sysomos MAP.

Nearly 44,000 tweeters comment on the Senate scandal and its players is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

With the intensification of the Senate expense scandal, particularly as it relates to Senator Mike Duffy and now-former PMO Chief of Staff Nigel Wright’s generous $90,000 to the Senator, yesterday’s #cdnpoli reached a fever pitch. In all, 17,129 tweets were issued; 9,408 were immediately identifiable as relevant to the aforementioned scandal. An average weekday in #cdnpoli chatter of late has been around 9,000 tweets from 5,000 to 6,000 sources; weekends often see less than half the weekday activity from 3,000 to 3,500 sources.

Also noteworthy is yesterday’s contributions skewed 61% male, 39% female — a slightly more balanced contribution rate than the 70/30 split typical of ongoing #cdnpoli chatter.

CDNpoli overall Twitter activity, May 19

CDNpoli daily activity April 20 through May 19 inclusive

Let’s contextualize that level of activity. There were 4,897 unique contributors to the complete chatter (an average of 3.5 tweets per person). Of those, 3,365 contributed to the chatter about the scandal (average 2.8/person). The top three contributors combined for 408 of the tweets about the scandal (4% of the traffic) – a committed bunch to be sure.

The chatter continues today. As of 12pmET, 4,565 tweets have been issued by 1,261 contributors on the scandal including an online effort generally with #PMHarperMustResign (some as #HarperMustResign). To contextualize that effort, 773 people have issue 3,447 tweets identifying issues with Prime Minister Harper, his caucus and their collective political missteps and calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister — that’s roughly 4.4 tweets per person.

UPDATE: As of 4:30pmET, there has been 12,476 #cdnpoli tweets today (3,267 sources); 7,407 (1,431 sources) of which are part of the campaign to get Stephen Harper to resign as Prime Minister.

UPDATE: Final tallies for May 20... 20,371 #CDNpoli tweets from 4,991 sources (~4/source), 10,715 of which were also tagged #PMHarperMustResign from 2,144 sources (~5/source); 4,475 #CDNpoli tweets from 2,148 sources were about the Senate/Duffy/Wright issue (~2.1/source).

CDNpoli overall Twitter activity, May 20

CDNpoli daily activity April 21 through May 20 inclusive

An online campaign that ran last July 1, Canada Day, called #DenounceHarper was a coordinated attempt to discredit the PM. The campaign attracted media attention for the volume of tweets issued that day causing the effort to become a Canadian “trend” on Twitter. The number of tweets, nearly 22,000, was impressive enough to attract the media attention. However, the number of issuers,  just over 5,000 Twitter, suggests a vocal and committed bunch rather than one which inspired widespread participation.

The problem, if only one need be identified, is timing. True the issue is hot right now and the desire to strike is ripe. However, Canada Day and Victoria Day are hardly attractive days for people to put down their beer to tweet something political. Most Canadians engaging on social media today are focused on the day off from work, being with family and friends, and yes — even cracking open a cold beer and grilling something on the BBQ.

I’ll continue to monitor and provide periodic updates. Weekday CDNpoli analysis can be found at FullDuplex.ca. The weekly top-six issues list is included in my newsletter.

Analysis performed using Sysomos Heartbeat and Sysomos MAP.

Nigel Wright’s resignation and PMHarperMustResign ignite CDNpoli is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

As public interest has waned and momentum within the movemement appears to have slowed down, I’ve been looking with even greater interest for the next catalyst for the movement to recapture some of the energy and public interest it had in January. Some recent events looked poised to be catalysts. I thought the Journey of Nishiyuu walkers was in the best position to reignite the Idle No More movement. The rally on Parliament Hill celebrating the arrival of the youth walkers combined with Stephen Harper’s absence to be in Toronto for the arrival of the panda bears from China was an event rather than a turning point.

There were two potential turning points this week. I watched very closely when news broke about a report by former military official Douglas Bland for the Macdonald Laurier Institute report. The report identifies First Nations living conditions as being comparable to those experienced by indiviudals living in “third world” countries. Mr. Bland suggests those factors and high levels of unemployment among First Nations make conditions are ripe for an insurgency. That report drew only 107 tweets among captured Idle No More online chatter.

Second up this past week was the death of Aboriginal Cree Canadian politician and band chief Elijah Harper. Best known for orchestrating the collapse of the Meech Lake accord because it overlooked indigenous rights, some tweeters noted Mr. Harper epitomized Idle No More long before the movement came into being. Surprisingly, Mr. Harper inspired only 310 tweets within the Idle No More online chatter on May 17, and an additional 107 on May 18. I was surprised by the low level of activity

From a statistical point of view, it could be fair to suggest the bump in traffic on Friday and the residual gentle bump on Saturday could be removed as anomalies from the actual ongoing Idle No More activity. If we take that to be true, we can remove 417 tweets from last week which brings the total to 6,797 meaning there was only a 2% increase in activity over the previous week. The resulting graph is more consistent. I have not done that here. Today’s analysis is based on actual captured information.

What follows is the analysis of Idle No More online activity for May 12 through 18, inclusive. Analysis was performed using Marketwired/Sysomos Heartbeat.

Posting a rise in activity:

• Forum mentions, including Reddit, up 139% (from 23 to 55)
• Facebook mentions up 34% (from 168 to 226)
• Blog mentions up 32% (from 71 to 94)
• Twitter mentions up 9% (from 6,628 to 7,214)

Posing a fall in activity:

• YouTube mentions down 33% (from 33 to 22)
• News mentions down 23% (from 74 to 60)

The 7,214 tweets issued this past week came from 2,524 unique Twitter accounts; an average of 2.9 tweets per account. The number of participants increased 18% from last week’s analysis.

In all, online mentions were up 10% from the previous week.

The three Twitter accounts which issued the most tweets tagged #IdleNoMore, #NativeWinter or including the text “Idle No More” were @teamrevoltnow (1,086, down from 1,173 last week), @idlenomoreyeg (174, up from 170) and @joanie399 (157, up from 136). They combine for 1,417 tweets or 20% of relevant tweets for the week (up 2% over the previous week). To contextualize their contributions, @teamrevoltnow issued the equivalent of 135 tweets on average for each day last week, @idlenomoreyeg 25 and @joanie399 22.

For the second week in a row, Canada gave up 2% share in the chatter, dropping back to 58%, the United States held on to 31% (same as last week) and the UK contributed a bit more, edging up to 3%.

Gender participation came more into balance this pas week, with women contributing 3% more of the #IdleNoMore Twitter activity.

Among the more common themes this past week include oil and gas (pipeline, keystone, transcanada, barackobama), indigenous rights (sovereignty, apartheid), treaties, the campaign to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier and the death of Aboriginal Cree Canadian politician and band chief Elijah Harper.

The following buzzgraph illustrates the connection between key terms in the most active conversations. The stronger the connection between the words, the thicker and bolder the connection line. There are three levels of connection illustrated by a thick solid line (strong), a thin solid line (medium) and a thin broken line (light). The Buzzgraph that follows shows only two degrees of connection during the election campaign — strong and light.

The top tweet for this report was issued by Janice Makokis who goes by the Twitter handle @bearclannation. Her May 15 tweet which links to the Guardian article US should return stolen land to Indian tribes, says United Nations has been 51 times and 8 people indicated it as a favourite.

Featured image: Youth for Lakes Walkers. Parliament Hill. 13/05/13 by Peter Stockdale.

Summary of IdleNoMore traffic for May 12 – 18 is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

At the end of the evening I was exhausted, inspired and barely hanging on to my voice. The ideas for my talk had evolved and the germ of the idea had expanded through the phrase “there’s something more.” Despite the demands of the evening, I still managed to answer a few questions for the camera.

I hope to see you in June.

There’s something more is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

Here are the details as published on the Social Capital Conference website.

SESSION DESCRIPTION

Never underestimate the power of audio to tell a story, spread a message and engage an audience. Better quality audio production technology is now available at cheaper prices. All-in-one podcast production apps are available for your mobile device as well. There’s almost no reason you shouldn’t be publishing audio for the web, or podcasts for RSS distribution.

Mark Blevis will take you from zero-to-podcasting in next-to-no-time. So, bring your ideas, laptop and/or smartphone and/or tablet, and your caffeinated mind for a fun afternoon. The rest is up to you.

Note, Mark only works with Apple tools so he won’t be able to answer PC or Android specific questions. The principles apply for almost all tools, though.

BIO

Mark Blevis was among Canada’s earliest podcasters when he launched Electric Sky in March of 2005. Shortly after, he helped bring Canadian podcasters together through a community-based podcast and conference. At one point, he produced five different podcasts. Just One More Book, a children’s book and literacy podcast he co-produced with his wife, became an important part of the children’s book industry marketing mix serving 3,000 downloads each day. He and his wife also produced a podcast covering the process of Andrea’s breast cancer treatment and the decisions their family faced.

Mark continues to produce podcasts for his work in digital public affairs. His interviews with politicians, campaign organizers and communication professionals can be found on his blog, MarkBlevis.com.

Zero to Podcasting workshop at the Social Capital Conference is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

The aforementioned tools, and others like Facebook, allow us to build and support communities. And yet, most politicians have not yet harnessed the opportunities presented by their digital ecosystems to achieve the next level — becoming the agent of engagement and activation in communities of interest.

Today’s digital makeover showcases an MP who is well positioned to get to the next level. A few steps are still necessary.

The subject of this week’s makeover is MP Olivia Chow.

Digital Ecosystem

Olivia Chow is among a small group of MPs who manage a reasonably large ecosystem which features a steady stream of content in each outpost. With the exception of her Google+ page (which, as I noted with other MPs, she may not realize she is the deed holder to), Ms. Chow is doing a commendable job keeping her website, Flickr photo stream, Facebook Fan Page, YouTube channel and Twitter stream current.

WIth the exception of her Google+ account, each outpost has a photo and description to help people identify the site as belonging to Ms. Chow. I found the two-step process of getting to substance in the Meet Olivia section of her website unnecessarily long. Once there, it was a two-step process to go back out and then down the chain to get to Team Chow.

Despite the apparent barrage of information on the main page, the different sections of the website are actually well delineated. Your eyes can scan and find what you’re looking for reasonably easily, and the search function is prominent and consistently placed. So are the links to her ecosystem. The only isolated site is Google+ which is only interconnected to her YouTube channel. Otherwise, her ecosystem is well connected in a hub-and-spoke model.

Still on her website, I thought the Parliament 101 section to be an asset. I was surprised by the language on her Events page. With no coming events in the list, the site returned “Not found. Sorry but you are looking for something that isn’t here.” I would have expected something like “Nothing planned. Please check back for updates to Olivia’s calendar of events.”

Three opportunities for improvement:

• Think about user experience. Apparent error messages suggest something is broken on your site.
• Too much information and visual stimulation can be overwhelming to some and can make a site look like a discount e-Commerce site. Less is more. Give visitors room to breathe.
• You’re doing a good job with four social media outposts. Unless you have the resources to make something of it, I recommend shutting down your Google+ account (or at least updating the information and encouraging visitors to visit your website).

GRADE: B+

Content

I noted in my February 2011 edition of Peace, Order and Googleable Government that Facebook user “Cash Tastic” had left a comment on Olivia Chow’s very active Facebook Fan Page saying “Could you please make more Facebook posts that aren’t tweets? Tweets make for pretty garbled reading, and if I wanted them, I’d be on twitter.” Ms. Chow has since decoupled the two accounts and is doing a commendable job creating channel-specific content. And keeping each property up to date.

In fact, Ms. Chow’s Facebook Fan Page boasts some solid content. She often shares tidbits of information which appear to be new for her community. This is a great reason for her community to stay on top of her updates. With very few exceptions, all of her posts have photos. Her events page hasn’t been updated since March.

I have three major complaints about her content.

First, too much can be just as much a problem as too little. Ms. Chow’s Flickr account provides many examples of this. Some events feature an entire collection of “spray and pray” photos. For example, there were 73 photos (many collections of nearly identical shots) of a press conference showcasing sideguard rails on a truck. The entire event could have been more effectively communicated in five or 10. The same goes for the Remembering Jack event (I understand why, but several photos of the same thing at the same angle is redundant), Google Workshop for Seniors and to a lesser extent the arrival of Journey of the Nishiyuu walkers and the Budget Press Conference, to name a few.

Second, and still on Flickr, content should be properly titled. Every photo I saw spanning 68 pages was titled with the filename of the photo (e.g. IMG_1234). It wasn’t until page 69 when we see photos of Ms. Chow’s August 2012 Mountain River trip that we know what we’re looking at by the title of the image.

Third, I’m militantly against autoplay videos. Her YouTube channel is set to autoplay anything visitors call up. Ugh!

Three opportunities for improvement:

• Be selective with what you post. Don’t make your audience filter your content. If they get annoyed by essentially repeat content, they’ll tune it all out. Choose the best shots to represent an event — be brief, be brilliant, be gone.
• Turn off autoplay.
• Title, label, describe and tag all of your content. Put names of people in the photos if you can.

GRADE: B-

Participation & Community

Ms. Chow has a very active online community, mostly centred around her Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account.

In the last 47 days, Ms. Chow’s 125 Facebook wall posts have attracted 8975 likes and 926 comments. That’s an average of 71.8 likes and 7.4 comments per wall post. That’s fairly significant. However, Ms. Chow is not active participant in the comment threads on her Facebook wall. In a cursory review, I saw only a handful of responses on her part.

During the last six months, Ms. Chow has issued 414 tweets which break out into 61% status updates/commentary, 21% are retweets and 18% are replies. The replies number is a bit low compared to some of the MPs I’ve analysed, though not terrible. Her areas of focus include infrastructure, public transit and traffic issues. She was mentioned in 10,757 tweets issued by 5,861 Twitter users (of those, 4,918 were retweets of Ms. Chow’s own updates). Among the most common themes are infrastructure, transit and speculation Ms. Chow might have given up federal politics to run in the Toronto mayoral race which never happened. There was also discussion about Ms. Chow’s diagnosis with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome.

Commenting is enabled on Ms. Chow’s YouTube channel. Most of the comments appear on older videos which means either interest has waned or, if commenting is moderated, the comment queue is backed up. Of course, it’s possible commenting has migrated to the comment thread in Facebook and responses over Twitter. Her most popular video remains the November 2006  Olivia Chow’s Green House Tour which has been viewed 56,832 times. Take note politicians; it’s not always about the work you do.

Three opportunities for improvement:

• Become a more active participant in comment threads on your Facebook Fan Page. If that means giving up a status update or two during the week, so be it.
• Most of your retweets and replies over Twitter seem to be with high profile folk. Mingle with the masses a bit more.
• I’d be interested in seeing what kind of participation you would get in a poll on your Facebook page.

GRADE: B-

Interruption (the bonus category)

I like the non-QP, non-official videos you’ve published. Her Mountain River Expedition video shows there’s more to our elected officials and they learn from outside experiences. Unfortunately, we don’t see much of this in political coverage. In fact, I’d argue mainstream media does a better job of showing this (in video) than our MPs do.

GRADE: B

OVERALL GRADE: B

Links to MP social media properties and digital makeovers completed to-date can be found on The Digital House.

Sketch by Andrea Ross. Analysis performed using Marketwired/Sysomos Heartbeat and MAP.

Digital Makeover: Olivia Chow is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

The truth is, until this post, I’ve never written about Ezra Levant let alone Ezra Levant alongside Jack Layton. This means the link returns nothing.

The absence of a valid page for the link has led a few people to ask what I’m hiding that I’ve deleted a post that never existed. That’s what @CanadianCynic wants you to believe. So, I decided to post this so people clicking the link will actually get a search result.

This highlights an important challenge with the web.

People can post anything: information, misinformation and/or disinformation. That’s why it’s important to monitor what people say about you, how those statements are taking hold and what people are doing/looking for on your website.

Ezra’s not here is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

Posting a rise in activity:

• Facebook mentions back on the chart (from 0 to 168)

Posing a fall in activity:

• Forum mentions, including Reddit, down 60% (from 58 to 23)
• Blog mentions down 41% (from 121 to 71)
• News mentions down 24% (from 98 to 74)
• YouTube mentions down 23% (from 43 to 33)
• Twitter mentions down 14% (from 7,683 to 6,628)

The 6,997 tweets issued this past week came from 2,124 unique Twitter accounts; an average of 3.3 tweets per account. The number of participants dropped 19% from last week’s analysis.

In all, online mentions were down 12% from the previous week.

The three Twitter accounts which issued the most tweets tagged #IdleNoMore, #NativeWinter or including the text “Idle No More” were @teamrevoltnow (1,173 up slightly from 1,106 tweets last week), @idlenomoreyeg (170, up from 142) and @joanie399 (136). They combine for 1,381 tweets or 18% of relevant tweets for the week (down 1% over the previous week). To contextualize their contributions, @teamrevoltnow issued the equivalent of 167 tweets on average for each day last week, @idlenomoreyeg 24 and @joanie399 19.

Canada accounted for 60% of all relevant traffic (down 2% from week), the United States accounts for 31% of all traffic (up 2% from last week) and the UK continued to contribute 2%.

Men edged up their contribution for the second week in a row. They increased their #IdleNoMore Twitter activity by 2% to tip the skew 56% male, 44% female.

The nature of the Idle No More online chatter changed a bit this past week. Themes including oil and natural gas (pipeline, keystone, Enbridge, frack) remain present. Bill C-45 makes a return to the graph, as does the campaign to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier. We also see a return of chatter mentioning a variety of First Nations bodies including the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), and a number of relevant news reports by the Aboriginal Public Television Network (APTN). The chatter regarding genetically modified organisms (GMO) by Monsanto also charted. Chatter about the Sacred Journey walkers has apparently trailed off by comparison.

The following buzzgraph illustrates the connection between key terms in the most active conversations. The stronger the connection between the words, the thicker and bolder the connection line. There are three levels of connection illustrated by a thick solid line (strong), a thin solid line (medium) and a thin broken line (light). The Buzzgraph that follows shows only two degrees of connection during the election campaign — strong and light.

Anonymous issued the most popular #IdleNoMore tweet of the week for the second week in a row. Their May 7 tweet which links to a copy of John Ivison’s Grim report warns Canada vulnerable to an aboriginal insurrection has been retweeted 51 times and 18 people indicated it as a favourite.

Summary of IdleNoMore traffic for May 5 – 11 is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

Most of the online mentions of Senator Finley were respectful. At least 41% were positive towards the Senator and his family. Political players of all stripes (including Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau) expressed their condolensces, reflected on their experiences and friendships with him, and some even suggested people will partake of a “wee dram of Famous Grouse” in his honour.

Unfortunately, the social web is not entirely versed in social graces. As of 8:30pmET 49 people took the opportunity to take inappropriate partisan shots at the Senator in 79 tweets which crossed a line. Some of those tweets even drew criticism from journalists.

I conducted sentiment analysis based on specific terms and feel the following report is fairly accurate.

Analysis performed using Marketwired/Sysomos Heartbeat and MAP.

Senator Finley’s death and unsocial media is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

In case you haven’t heard, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair used a quintessential Arrested Development reference in Question Period today when he asked Prime Minister Harper if missing money was “in the banana stand.”

But it’s all in the delivery. And true Arrested Development fans know Mulcair made a huge mistake. In what was clearly a scripted reference which reminded me of the Bob Newhart Lincoln sketch (“just do the piece the way Charlie wrote it”), Mulcair raced over the reference with arms flapping as though had no clue why he was being forced to do this thing. He apparently didn’t realize it would get him so much attention.

Besides the pacing, Mr. Mulcair, his coach, or both, missed a golden opportunity by leaving out the all important sideways delivery and “click, click.”

See for yourself. First Mr. Mulcair…

…and now our beloved Bluth…

No touching is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

The subject of today’s digital makeover is not particularly active in social media. And yet, his Klout score may benefit from a recent surge in mentions as the public took to mentioning his Twitter account in an online bid to raise awareness of Bill C-60 and save the CBC from potentially debilitating cuts.

The subject of this week’s (two-day late) makeover is MP James Rajotte.

Digital Ecosystem

There certainly is a lot of text on the main page of MP James Rajotte’s website. That was my first thought. It’s definitely good to offer valuable information. However, I believe the web has made us a lot more finicky when it comes to the volume of information we face and the way it’s presented. Remember, what you think is important for people to know isn’t always what people want to know. The size of the the text on his site only serves to overwhelm unsuspecting visitors.

Otherwise, Mr. Rajotte’s website is generally clean and easy to look at. Important identifying information is front and centre including contact information.

The site has a decent if selective photo gallery, and includes embedded YouTube videos and some audio recordings of a radio show Mr. Rajotte apparently hosted. The audio conversations are interesting and energetic even if they predate the last election.

Links to his digital outposts — social media sites such as his Facebook Fan Page and Twitter stream – are essentially buried. They can be found contributing to the visual clutter in the lower half of the main page of his site. His YouTube channel isn’t as easy to find. You can wind your way there by clicking on the YouTube link on one of his videos while it’s playing. That’s fair treatment since his YouTube channel doesn’t link back to (or even mention) his main website. You won’t find links to his outposts anywhere else on his site; certainly not in a consistent manner.

Mr. Rajotte’s Fan Page and Twitter profile are well constructed. They each have a good profile photo, bio and both link back to his website. YouTube has a photo and bio though no link back to his site as already noted. Instead, it links to his Google+ page (he may not realize he has this) which has a profile photo and boasts two videos. There is no bio.

His old “buddlem” YouTube Channel with 17 videos dating spanning March 2010 through March 2011 is still online.

Three opportunities for improvement:

• Restructure the main page of your website using the principle of “less is more.”
• Feature your social media properties more prominently on your website. Place linked icons in a consistent spot throughout your site.
• Link your YouTube channel to your website and dump Google+ (I don’t think you’ll be using that effectively at this time).

GRADE: C+

Content

Mr. Rajotte produces a respectable amount of content for his various sites. His YouTube channel is among the more frequently updated I’ve seen among MPs (20 videos spanning December 2011 to April 2013) and he updates Facebook and Twitter often enough that I consider them both to be current/active properties.

His tone is generally pretty good and he has a well-curated body of photos on his Facebook Fan Page. Unfortunately, those photos are not accessible to those who aren’t on Facebook. He has shared a few photos and videos on Twitter, though those have a very short shelf life.

Back to YouTube, Mr. Rajotte’s videos are largely a mix of QP and televisions appearances, and official statements. Among the latter, his Passover video stands out for overreaching — where most of his holiday wish videos simply and directly spread good cheer, this one comes across as trying too hard to showcase scripted knowledge of the religious elements of Passover to the point that I gave up waiting for a positive message and stopped watching the video.

Three opportunities for improvement:

• For your recorded statement videos… be brief, be brilliant, be gone. It’s kind of like the “less is more” suggestion above. And because we’re talking about social media, be relatable, too.
• Look for ways to post photos in a more public space, like your website.
• Write less formally on Twitter and especially Facebook (e.g. “I’m” instead of “I am”).

GRADE: B-

Participation & Community

This is unknown territory for Mr. Rajotte — both as a host and potential participant. That is, despite having respectable followings on Twitter and Facebook, his updates are largely met with crickets. He’s also one of the least active responders on Twitter. In the last six months he’s issued only 11 reply tweets, a paltry 6% of the 179 he’s put out. And because the public isn’t responding to his Facebook updates, there’s nothing for Mr. Rajotte to pipe in on. Don’t believe people who say “if you built it, they will come.” It’s up to you to determine the fate of your community.

That’s not to say people aren’t trying to engage with him. Mr. Rajotte was the subject of 1,410 tweets issued by 1,368 tweeters over the last few days as concerned members of the public appealed to him and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to save the CBC. Mr. Rajotte did not respond over Twitter, something I’m certain people were generally disappointed by. On the other hand, responding might have further inflamed the movement. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t. Given his general absence from the chatter and under the circumstances, staying dark was probably the best move. I might suggest otherwise if he had more online credibility.

Word cloud of “save the CBC” tweets and a trend graph of tweets mentioning @JamesRajotte

Otherwise, 337 people issued 660 tweets mentioning Mr. Rajotte over the last six months. Those tweets highlight a mix of themes including Edmonton and the riding of Leduc, and appearances by Mr. Rajotte on CTV’s Power Play which include discussions about Employment Insurance cuts, decorum in the House of Commons and the Parliamentary Budget Office.

Three opportunities for improvement:

• Give people a reason to engage with you productively if not positively. Pose questions. Conduct polls. Solicit input. Don’t let your network stagnate or they’ll forget you. Especially with the way Facebook newsfeeds work now.
• Build social media credibility by slowly becoming more active in the ongoing dialog. Start where it’s safe.
• Feature people from your constituency in a way that kicks off a conversation. Social media is about people, people, people.

GRADE: D-

Interruption (the bonus category)

This may sound like I’m reaching for something nice to say… Mr. Rajotte’s search setup is great. He’s not the only MP to have search integrated into his site. However, not all MPs make search easy to find (to be funny — they make you search for the search box). More to the point, the volume of text on Mr. Rajotte’s site necessitates a good search function in an obvious place. He got both right.

GRADE: B

OVERALL GRADE: C-

Links to MP social media properties and digital makeovers completed to-date can be found on The Digital House.

Sketch by Andrea Ross. Analysis performed using Marketwired/Sysomos Heartbeat and MAP.

Digital Makeover: James Rajotte is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

The Ontario Liberal Government presented its 2013 budget on May 2. While looking at the different budget-related issues being discussed online, we found there was a certain amount of overlap across the different issues. Using Sysomos Heartbeat, we identified some of the most mentioned issues. The following is a breakdown of ten of those issues and what is being said about each.

Education/Students/Youths

Discussions concerning youth, students and education focus on the budget’s Youth Job Strategy, tuition breaks for postsecondary students and the roll-out of full-day kindergarden across the province. Though there are mentions of all these topics, the main focus is on the new Youth Job Strategy which is said to have the potential to create 30,000 new jobs for youths and students. Skew: positive.

Tax

People participating in discussions on taxes have focused primarily on cuts and how they have affected Ontario’s revenue. There is also discussion on elimintating tax loopholes, and on the two cent gas tax for municipal transit. Skew: neutral.

Economy/Debt/Deficit

Many participants are concerned Ontario’s debt is now larger than all the other provinces combined. Some had positive reactions to proposed measures to eliminate the deficit by 2017-2018 while still protecting the public service. Skew: neutral.

Employment/Jobs

The focus is very much on the Youth Job Strategy to help with youth employment. Some chatter deals with employment standards and the removal of barriers to employment for people who receive social assistance, both of which are seen positively. Skew: positive.

Austerity/Austerity Measures

The public considers this to be an austere budget. Which should be a concern for the government since many suggestOntarians can no longer afford the costs associated with austerity and that instead of making cuts, the government should be focused on stimulating growth. These conversations frame the budget in a much more negative light. Skew: negative.

Election

Conversations on Andrea Horwath and the NDP’s decision regarding the budget have led to concerns about a possible provincial election. Within these mentions, debates have emerged regarding the need for an election so soon after the last one. Skew: neutral.

Spending

Tweets focus on the 1% cap on public sector spending and the fact that 5% of Ontario’s population accounts for two-thirds of the $48 billion health care spending. Most of the sentiment surrounding spending was negative with many Tweeters lamenting how the Ontario Liberal Government is continuing to increase spending with no real improvements. Skew: negative.

Business

Concerns hinge on delaying corporate tax breaks the impact of the budget on small business. There appears to be confusion on the interpretation of the budget’s actions in regard to small businesses. While the media coverage concerning the Ontario Government’s measures toward small business was mostly positive (citing the expansion of the health care tax credit to companies with up to $450,000 in payroll) some individuals believe the Government is not doing enough to help small business owners. Skew: positive.

Poverty

Most participants feel the Budget takes active steps to reduce poverty, particularly the social assistance reform which includes a $200/month earnings exemption to help welfare recipients keep more of their income and help them get back into the full-time workforce. However, there are also a number of people who retweeted the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty’s article Wynne’s First Budget – More Austerity and Deeper Poverty. Skew: positive.

Health Care

Tweets about health care are mostly positive, discussing how the Budget focuses on investing more money in community-based programs and services, helping to ensure more people have access to health services. Skew: positive.

Ontario budget chatter online is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

Posting a rise in activity:

• YouTube mentions up 26% (from 34 to 43)
• Blog mentions up 15% (from 105 to 121)
• Forum mentions, including Reddit, up 11% (from 52 to 58)

Posing a fall in activity:

• Facebook mentions down 100% (from 7 to 0)
• News mentions down 15% (from 116 to 98)
• Twitter mentions down 5% (from 8,085 to 7,683)

It’s worth noting Facebook changed its search functions recently which may be contributing to apparent declining activity on that service.

The 7,683 tweets issued this past week came from 2,624 unique Twitter accounts; an average of 2.9 tweets per account. The number of participants dropped 1% from last week’s analysis.

In all, online mentions were down 5% from the previous week.

The three Twitter accounts which issued the most tweets tagged #IdleNoMore, #NativeWinter or including the text “Idle No More” were @teamrevoltnow (1,106, down slightly from 1,186 tweets last week), @idlenomoreyeg (142, down from 148) and @joanie399 (133). They combine for 1,381 tweets or 18% of relevant tweets for the week (down 1% over the previous week). To contextualize their contributions, @teamrevoltnow issued the equivalent of 158 tweets on average for each day last week, @idlenomoreyeg 21 and @joanie399 19.

Canada accounted for 62% of all relevant traffic (same as last week), the United States accounts for 29% of all traffic (down 1% from last week) and the UK contributed 2%.

Men contributed slightly more than women this past week which tipped the scales 4% to the male side of the gender split.

The nature of the Idle No More online chatter remained generally consistent this past week. Themes including oil (pipeline, keystone) are represented, as are recurring terms such as protest, decolonizing and solidatirty. Other active discussions included suicide and racial profiling, and IdleNoMore spokewoman Pam Palmater became more present raising the profile of the Auditor General’s report (cpc, harper, billion) and for calling out the National Post’s John Ivison.

The following buzzgraph illustrates the connection between key terms in the most active conversations. The stronger the connection between the words, the thicker and bolder the connection line. There are three levels of connection illustrated by a thick solid line (strong), a thin solid line (medium) and a thin broken line (light). The Buzzgraph that follows shows only two degrees of connection during the election campaign — strong and light.

Last week’s top tweet was issued by Anonymous, raising awareness of #IdleNoMore relevant activities in Ecuador. It has been retweeted 126 time and 36 people indicated it as a favourite.

Summary of IdleNoMore traffic for Apr 28 – May 4 is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.

I met with Mr. Manning in a noisy lounge during the Manning Centre‘s MNC2013 event in Ottawa.

Other podcast episodes you might be interested in listening to:

• Conversation with MP Marc Garneau
• Have a clear message and deliver it (MNC2013) - a podcast with Bill Whittle
• Round table on Twitter and Canadian politics

Conversation with Preston Manning (podcast) is a post from Mark Blevis. Sign up for my free digital public affairs newsletter.