In preparation for a presentation I am giving at Hotel Website Marketing next week I pulled together a list of Irish media on Twitter and used Klout to some insight into their rankings/influence.  The results were surprising.  The landscape is fairly scattered with individual journalist/media personalities tweeting (some under unusual twitter handles) and some publications/programmes running their own twitter streams.  I expected some of the individual journalists to score high, which they did, but what was surprising was the influence that the generic twitter profiles were getting. 

Media Twitter Chart

Initially I thought most would fall into the climber category with low influence but high following as most started using their breaking news or equivalent and did not follow many people.  However a good proportion of them scored high in the persona category showing that they are interacting more with the community and that it appears they are being actively managed.

Another interesting observation was that even as I was plotting people their scores where changing rapidly.   Marie Boran from Silicon Republic moved from the connector category to the persona category over the course of a few days.  The list is not a complete list but Rick O’Shea scored highest on the ones I had.  Klout could not find quite a few of the profiles.

Media Twitter Rankings

Newstalk Twitter Profile

Looking at the Newstalk profile alone you get a sense of how active they are.  2,156 tweets, 1,896 followers and following 564 people.  The tweets are a variety of ones from the show and some regular observation/news tweets.  They also respond to other peoples tweets and have a reasonable engagement level.

Overall this picture shows that most Irish media have moved from using Twitter as a purely broadcast tool and are engaging more than ever.  This has a lot of implications for the PR industry and is a very positive trend.  I imagine a lot of stories that end up on the clipplings floor might make their way on to the Twitter streams, something that a lot of companies could be missing out on.  The rule for engaging via Twitter are still evolving but a good starting point is to make sure you are following them.  A sudden influx of DMs and @ comments pointing to press releases would be pretty unwelcome.  I also imagine that the media publications are watching each others activity and that it could get pretty competitive.

Broadcast
 The Holiday Show: @theholidayshow

 RTE News @RTENEWS
 The Last Word: @lstwrd

 RTE Morning Ireland: @morning_ireland

 Newstalk Breakfast Show: @breakfastnt

 Phantom 105.2: @phantom1052

 Dublin’s Q102: @dublinsq102

 RTE Drivetime @drivetimerte
 RTE The Business @thebusinessrte/
 RTE Business @RTEbusiness
 RTE Updates @RTERad1Updates
 RTE Saturday View @Saturdayviewrte
 RTE Sport @rtesport
 RTE Arts @rtearts
 RTE @rte

Radio Personalities
 Ray Foley – Today FM: @rayfoleyshow

 George Hook – Newstalk: @ghook

 Sean Moncrieff – Newstalk: @SeanMoncrieff

 Rick O’Shea – 2fm: @rickoshea

 Ryan Tubridy @tubridyradio1

Publications (Print & Online):
 Analogue Magazine: @analoguemag

 Irish Times: @the_irish_times

 Irish Times Business @IrishTimesBiz

 Irish Independent @IrishIndo

 Irish Examiner @IrishExaminer

 Sunday Business Post @ sundaybusinesspost
 Sunday Independent @SundayIndo
 Sunday Tribune @sundaytribune_
 Sunday World @SundayWorld
 Irish Sentinel – Satirical site: @irishsentinel

 Day and Night Magazine (Irish Independent): @dayandnightmag

 Life and Fitness Magazine: @derryo

 Media Contact: @Mediaflash
Journalists
 Marie Boran – SiliconRepublic: @PixieVonDust

 John Collins – Irish Times: @jaycee001

 Mark Coughlan: @Mark_Coughlan

 Richard Delevan – Guardian: @rdelevan

 Kilian Doyle – Irish Times: @kilian_doyle

 Tadhg Enright – RTE: @tadhgenright

 Shane Hegarty – Irish Times: @shanehegarty

 Harry McGee – Irish Times: @harrymcgee

 Hugh Linehan – Irish Times: @hlinehan

 Mark Little – RTE: @marklittlenews

 Adam Maguire: @adammaguire

 Dick O’Brien – Sunday Business Post: @dickobrien

 Chas Taylor – Irish Times: @ChasTaylor

 Adrian Weckler – Sunday Business Post: @adrianweckler

 Joe Drumgoogle @jdrumgoole

 Ronan Price Independent @ronanprice
 Kathy Foley Sunday Times @kathyfoley

New additions

 Niall Kitson PC Live @niallkitson

 Silicon Republic @siliconrepublic

 Paul Hearns, ComputerScope @Paul_Hearns

 Karlin Lillington, Irish Times @klillington

 Conor Pope, Irish Times @conor_pope

 Ciara O’Brien, Irish Times @ciaraobrien

 John Kennedy, Silicon Republic, @MrJohnFKennedy

• Electric News
• Vincent Browne, Journalist and TV Presenter
• Business & Leadership, online business portal
• PCLive, home personal computing magazine 
• Dick O’Brien, Sunday Business Post
• Rosemary McCabe, Journalist
• Paul Cunningham, RTE
• Cian McCormack, RTE

I use Klout for this exercise but another new tool on the block is the TweetLevel from Edelman.  Some scores differ but give some useful insights.  Both are good for setting bench marks against others and provide a useful roadmap for increasing influence.

Newspaper readership and the ability to translate younger readers into future buyers is a real tricky one for Irish media.  The online habits of younger readers are well documented and last weeks announcement that the online had overtaken TV and other media forms as the most prevalent advertising medium in UK brought sharper attention to the topic. 

Add on to this the heavy investment into the printing presses which compounds the problem for media owners.  The Irish Times spent approx 50 million euro on its printing press while the impressive Independent plant was possibly similar.

Most articles on this topic focus on ploughing investment into the online product.  Most media owners are doing this to some degree but not everyone is online and the investments in the printed press needs to be realised.  Print is not dead and the popularity of freesheet and glossy magazines show they still have a good following even among the more digital native.  The tactile physical and instantly portable nature of print means its still has great following and plenty to offer if it embraces real innovation.

Last weekend I was part of a panel at a creativity conference called ‘Creativity Rising’ in Fitzpatrick Hotel organised by MultiTalent.  The 20 participants came from Spain, Austria and Ireland.  Over the weekend people presented a ‘Work in Progress’ of some initiative they were undertaking in the realm of creativity.  The group then peer reviewed each one and delivered feedback and suggestions.

During one of the breakout session I had a good chat with Humberto Matas from DNX in Madrid.  We spoke abouts some of the challenges facing the print media industry in Spain and Ireland.

Two interesting things emerged from the conversation on how the print industry can translate younger readers into older buyers and not canibalise the entire print industry.  The two areas were

1. Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is a hot topic at the moment with interesting experiments in Amsterdam with mobile technology.  Check here for an earlier piece I did on AR.  In simple terms augmented reality pulls together multiple layers of data to help present different version of the real world and allow new ways of interacting with it.  One possible use for the print industry is that along side an article there is a symbol/bar code that could be scanned by mobile phone, web camera or event an interactive kiosk.  Once scanned this would pull up a 3D interactive version of the story that younger viewers could manipulate or use to find more information or buy services.  Rather than having all of this originate from online and stay online,  this type iniative would anchor it to the physical newspaper with multiple modes for online interaction. 

2. Embedded Video Screens

 Very similar to the moving photos in Harry Potters Daily Prophet US publishers are experimenting with inserting tiny video screen in to magazines and newspapers.  Entertainment Weekly will be distributing 2.7mm thick video screens that are integrated into the magazine.  These rechargable screens can play up to 40 minutes of video.  As video is the choice of younger demographics it has a good chance of attracting younger readers but also offers advertisers much more choice in advertising.  Hopefully it does not become advertising platform alone but rather another editorial outlet.  As the technology evolves and gets thinner it could in theory replace all the colour photos.  Hopefully the recycling industry would catch up so it was unlikely to produce  a waste nightmare but I imagine that short life easily recycled screens and batteries would emerge.

This shows the how the entire media industry is converging.  Print publications becoming web portals becoming social media outlets becoming twitter channels becoming virtual radio and tv stations (with podcasting and YouTube).  In theory the Irish Times would compete with RTE and YouTube only stations.

The next few years will see alot of media changes and its obvious that online will be the key driver.  However there is still life in the print edition but only innovation will save the day.

– new post scripted information –

Just noticed this great video from TED India.  Lots of interesting stuff but fast forward to 8 minutes to see how Six Sence technology can interact with newspapers.

The Examiner ran a piece on RTEs plan to run Aisling’s Diary, a three minute “Snack TV” soap aimed at teenagers.  Its almost a Bebo in reverse.  Bebo started Sophies Diary online and are now looking to the major tv stations to broadcast.  It will be interesting to see how interactive it is and how embedded the Bebo profile section will be.  The RTE website does not have the number of teenagers crawling through it that Bebo does.  Major rewrites of scripts on a daily basis place new demands on production teams that previously had time to absorb market research before changing direction.  Now viewers can impact the shape of future programmes and lobby for their own outcomes.  Sophies Diary is well on the road for subtle product placement with brands like Sure blended in the storyline.  Rather than an obvious Truman Show holding the product up to the hidden cameras the story line was worked around tricky situations that would require good deordorant.  Sure has a sting at the beginning and end.  Fees of 200K sterling have been mentioned for this type exposure so it will be interesting to see what route RTE takes.  Its great to see some Irish content finally popping up and proof that the social networks are here to stay and offer some good communications opportunities.  At three minutes pop it show how short the captive attention span is.

Following the training of Irish Times staff a few weeks ago the fruits of their hard labour can now be seen online.

Now Irish Times journalists go out with trusted pen, paper and digital recorder. Journalists recording interviews is nothing new but them editing and uploading the content is a fairly big progression.

Interesting implications from a PR perspective. It introduces an element of colour to press conferences that may not always be desired and further erodes the fallacy of control but it also opens up opportunities. If they are using audio content then why not high quality audio interviews that are supplied by a PR company especially if the reporter cannot attend.

This is a trend that is only likely to increase in complexity with rumours that Silicon Republic will be introducing video content or at least recording some events they cover. Undoubtably this will be a sellable item for them but again once the PR industry invests in the software and hardware its another area of potential growth for the PR industry.

Lets hope the NUJ sort out their differences on content generated for the paper versus the web.