Social media mining presentation by Tom Masterman of the Institute on the Environment, given at the University of Minnesota's Communicators Forum Conference, 05.13.10.

1. Dialogue Earth
Mining Social Media
Tom Masterman
Institute on the Environment
2010 Communicators Forum Conference
University of Minnesota
05.13.10

2. Agenda
• My background
• Importance of social media data
• Types of social media mining
• Dialogue Earth’s work
• What you can do today
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3. My Background
• Strategy, content creation & analytics
• 10+ years in media
• Writer/producer at Boston TV station
• Ran analytics at Internet Broadcasting
• Associate Director, Dialogue Earth at IonE
• Communication degree, M.B.A.
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4. Importance of Social Media Data

5. Importance of Social Media Data
• My broad definition of “social media”: Anywhere on
the Internet where users participate in content
creation and sharing, including...
• Blogs
• Microblogs (Twitter)
• Social networks (Facebook)
• Forums
• Video sharing (YouTube)
• Image sharing (Flickr)
• Social bookmarking (Digg)
• Mainstream media (comments on NYTimes)
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6. Importance of Social Media Data
• Most important application: Data helps you determine
if social media is important to your business, relative to
other...
• Marketing channels
• PR efforts
• Revenue streams
• Expenses
• Ways your employees spend time
• Direct competitors
• Indirect competitors
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7. Dramatic Social Media Growth Montage
Mashable.com, 02.04.10
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http://greatlaker.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/surprised_baby_2.jpg

8. Insecure Social Media ROI Montage
Econsultancy.com, 02.23.10
Mashable.com, 10.13.09
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http://sabrechaser.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/nervous-woman.jpg

9. Importance of Social Media Data
• Things I’m confident about:
• Social media is likely to grow in importance
• Meaningful applications of social media data:
• Identifying opinion leaders
• Insights into what your customers know and feel
• Awareness of potential PR problems
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10. Types of Social Media Mining

11. Types of Social Media Mining
• Quantitative. Engagement, actions, CONVERSION.
• Qualitative. Attitudes, intentions, SENTIMENT.
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12. Quantitative Social Media Mining
• Traffic. Visitors, visits, views, time spent, visits/visitor,
page views/visit...
• Participation. Followers, fans, friends, posts, comments,
likes, shares, sign-ups...
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13. Quantitative Social Media Mining
• Free traffic tools: Google Analytics,Yahoo! Analytics
• Paid traffic tools: WebTrends, Omniture
• Social media participation reporting: ow.ly / bit.ly,
Facebook Insights,YouTube
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14. Quantitative Social Media Mining
Google Analytics
• Traffic Sources report to
see which social media
sites are driving visits
• Top Content report to
see which specific
elements are converting
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15. Quantitative Social Media Mining
ow.ly, bit.ly reporting
• Clicks on your posted
(url-shortened) links
• Location of the
conversion
• Content clicked on
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16. Quantitative Social Media Mining
Facebook Insights
• Interactions
• Comments
• Wall posts
• Likes
• Demographics
• Geographical
http://www.insidefacebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/newinsights1.png
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17. Quantitative Social Media Mining
YouTube Reporting
• Views, comments,
favorites, ratings
• Event timeline
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18. Qualitative Social Media Mining
• Site identification. Where are people talking about your
brand?
• Author influence. Who is talking about you and what is
their social clout?
• Text analysis. What is being said and is it positive or
negative?
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19. Qualitative Social Media Mining
• Focused on sites: uberVU, Backtype
• Focused on influence: Klout, Twitter Grader, Technorati
• Focused on sentiment: Tweetfeel, Twitter Sentiment
• A little bit of everything: Social Mention
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20. Qualitative Social Media Mining
uberVU
• Learn top sites where topic &
brand keywords are mentioned
• Browse individual conversations
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21. Qualitative Social Media Mining
Backtype
• Similar to uberVU, browse
individual conversations (in
news sites, blogs, Twitter)
where your topic and brand
keywords appear
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22. Qualitative Social Media Mining
Klout
• Based on a keyword
search, learn the most
influential Twitter
users
• Detailed stats about
the content they
produce and who they
influence
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23. Qualitative Social Media Mining
Twitter Grader
• Search Twitter users
to determine the most
influential people
• Timeline of their
followers and
following counts
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24. Qualitative Social Media Mining
Technorati
• Based on a keyword
search, learn who the
blogging “authorities”
are on a given topic or
brand
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25. Qualitative Social Media Mining
Tweetfeel
• Get the sentiment
(positive or negative)
of tweets containing
keywords
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26. Qualitative Social Media Mining
Twitter Sentiment
• Similar to Tweetfeel, get
the sentiment (positive
or negative) of tweets
containing keywords
• Look at trends over
time
• Reclassify tweets
• Save queries to track
trends
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27. Qualitative Social Media Mining
Social Mention
• Learn top sites where topic
& brand keywords are
mentioned
• Browse individual
conversations
• Learn the top users talking
about various keywords
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28. Dialogue Earth’s Work

29. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• What is Dialogue Earth?
• Program at the U of M’s Institute on the Environment
• Started in October 2009
• Team includes experts in science, Web technology and
social media, and U of M research assistants
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30. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Background: Polarized debate over environmental
topics, such as the existence, and importance of global
warming
Telegraph.co.uk, 11.20.09
Gore Beck
Time.com, 12.17.09
Time.com, 02.10.10
30 Gore image: http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/03/20/enviro%20gore.jpg
Beck image: http://radicalrecruit.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/glenn_beck.jpg

31. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Mission: Increase shared understanding on topics
related to the environment
• Process:
• Analyze social media dialogue current focus
• Create relevant, trustworthy content
• Establish a meaningful Web presence
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32. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Analyzing social media dialogue
• Mine sites for topics related to the environment
• Model the drivers of dialogue
• Develop an accurate sentiment analysis engine
• Produce summaries and visualizations
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33. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Mining sites for environmental topics
• Extracting data via free APIs
• Focused on Twitter Search API
• Previous work done with NYTimes API
• Investigating APIs for competing analytics tools
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34. Dialogue Earth’s Work
Twitter Search API
• Filtered on “global
warming” and “climate
change”
• User data includes:
• Followers, following
• Geo-location
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35. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Mining sites for environmental topics
• Using Yahoo! Pipes and Google News to create a custom
news aggregator
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36. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Modeling the drivers of dialogue
News Media Coverage Social Media Activity Personal Experiences
Social media image: http://www.webtricksbox.com/wp-content/uploads/socialmedia03.jpg
36 Blizzard image: http://media.mlive.com/grpress/news_impact/photo/blizzard-holland1jpg-5d978a3343bd6797_large.jpg
Gas pump image: http://www.musclecarclub.com/petrol/free_gasoline_prices.jpg

37. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Modeling the drivers of dialogue
• Analysis: How correlated are global warming tweet
volume and severe weather?
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38. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Developing an accurate sentiment analysis engine
• Sentiment: attitude, opinion, emotion
• Text analysis and social media mining disciplines are
merging
• Pricey and customizable: Radian 6, Clarabridge
• Free, but limited: Social Mention, uberVU
• Free and Twitter-focused: Twitter Sentiment, Tweetfeel
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39. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Developing an accurate sentiment analysis engine
• There is tremendous potential for new, powerful
marketing intelligence
• Plus, it’s really cool data!
Facebook
Gross
National
Happiness
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40. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Developing an accurate sentiment analysis engine
• Focusing on Twitter sentiment, there are two main issues
we are addressing:
• Accuracy of polarity (+/-) coding
• Moving beyond +/- to answer specific questions
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41. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Some issues coding +/- for a tweet
• Sarcasm:
• News headlines:
• Irrelevance:
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42. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Our approach to improving +/- sentiment
• Combine a best-of-breed computer algorithm with a
dedicated social media research team
• Partnered with Twitter Sentiment creators
• Dialogue Earth research team will:
• Provide nuanced data for comparison
• Highlight promising, new directions for the algorithm
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43. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Moving beyond +/-, to answer questions
• Business leaders, marketers and researchers want to
answer specific questions:
• Do consumers like my new product features?
• What do potential voters think of my candidate?
• Will moviegoers recommend my movie to friends?
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44. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Moving beyond +/-, to answer questions
Harris Interactive
• Conducted traditional
online survey of 2,500
adults
• PLUS, teamed up with
Clarabridge to analyze
240,000 blog and Twitter
text items
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45. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Moving beyond +/-, to answer questions
• Current work: Analyzing tweets to infer answers to
questions about environmental topics
• Focusing on levers contributing to public concern about
issues like global warming:
• Does global warming exist?
• Will it have negative impacts?
• Are we accountable?
• Are there effective solutions?
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46. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Early results
• Eight rounds of coding
• First iteration of a codebook
• Increased intercoder reliability
scores
• Summary analysis on thousands of
tweets
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47. Dialogue Earth’s Work
• Producing summaries and visualizations
• Future Work: Create white papers, data tables, graphs
and multimedia to produce a “Pulse of the Planet”
Drought Severity Twitter Maps
NOAA / Weather Channel Bing Maps
Time Lapsed Tweet Animation
47 blprnt.com

48. What You Can Do Today

49. What You Can Do Today
1. Install Google Analytics
2. Search the buzz for your industry at Social Mention
3. Determine your influencers at Klout
4. Search the sentiment of your brand at Twitter
Sentiment
5. Set benchmarks based on your competition and your
specific ROI needs
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50. Questions?
Tom Masterman
Institute on the Environment
E-mail: maste078@umn.edu
Twitter: @tommasterman
2010 Communicators Forum Conference
University of Minnesota
05.13.10