Blog
Changes to our twitter account
July 11th, 2011
We’ve been tweeting the top, most active KTN’s news stories (and the second most active KTN’s for that matter) for sometime now. The system was scheduled to tweet news stories at specific times of the day, only if they hadn’t been tweeted before.
This worked well to a point, but on occasion duplicate tweets were sent out due to some poor coding, and the way the system was designed meant that the account could have long gaps of not tweeting anything.
Today, that’s all changed. We’ve been improving the code, and from now our account will tweet slightly differently.
- Firstly, the frequency of tweets have been increased – however they’re still spaced evenly throughout the day so you get the best, latest news as soon as possible.
- Every news story which is tweeted is now logged on our own systems, which is checked before we send a tweet – preventing any more duplicate tweets from being sent out.
- If the most active KTN, or second most active KTN, haven’t posted a new news story by the time we’re ready to tweet again – rather than not tweet at all, we’ll now tweet the latest news story on the site at the time (again, only if it hasn’t been posted before), by whichever KTN has posted it. Hopefully, this will also increase the amount that smaller KTNs get their news stories tweeted by our service.
Posted in Development, Twitter | No Comments »
Reduced News Output
June 6th, 2011
Due to an ongoing issue with the web platform our KTN content providers use, we have been informed by the organisation which runs the service, the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), that our access to their news feeds has been suspended until further notice.
Until we can work on a solution, or until the TSB have fully investigated the issues they are having on their end, we will have a reduced service on our news output.
This means, our main news feed on our homepage, as well as on each KTN page will no longer be receiving updates. Tweets from KTN accounts, as well as media from Flickr and Vimeo will remain unaffected during this time.
We’ll update this post as and when we have more information.
Update: 7th June
We’ve responded to the TSB, acknowledging their decision and affirming our belief that this site isn’t responsible for their current issues. We have also stated that if they lift the block, we will reduce the amount of hits our site has on their site to alleviate any issues and as a gesture of good will.
In the mean time, we have altered our homepage to show the latest news from the KTN’s from their Twitter accounts, so you still get to see the latest news from the KTNs.
Update: 14th June
After just under a week of issues, we’re happy to announce the site is back up and running with a full news service as before. For a while updates may appear slightly more slowly, however we’ll continue to monitor the situation and always try to ensure you have the latest news available when visiting the site. Thanks for your patience, and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Posted in Services | No Comments »
Changes to how we collect stats
March 30th, 2011
After implementing our stats package the other month, we quickly became aware of a potential issue which could cause individual KTN’s to gain an unfair advantage over a short period of time, and then become ‘Top KTN’ for the rest of the week.
To help give other KTN’s a better advantage and to make the system more equal, we have implemented a change which will come into affect immediately. From today, the KTN’s which are tweeted from our account, and the Top KTN which is featured on our homepage, will be calculated on a rolling daily basis as opposed to weekly.
This should help improve the content on the site, allowing us to retweet a much better range of KTNs, and making our homepage more fresh, by featuring a greater amount of different KTNs.
We’ll monitor how these changes work over the next few weeks, if you have any suggestions or comments, do leave them below.
Posted in Development, Services, Twitter | No Comments »
KTN Social Media Awards 2011
February 28th, 2011
It’s awards season. You name it, there’s probably been an award ceremony for it over the past month or so, and, not wanting to feel left out, we thought we’d launch our first ever annual KTN Social Media Awards.
We’ve been shifting through the numbers for all the activities we’ve been monitoring over the past year and below we list who came out trumps in each of our categories.
Top KTN
Awarded to the KTN who’s performance and delivery over all the social media platforms we monitor has outshone the others and who are the most active engaging KTN to their members and the public.
Winner: Materials
Coming out as the second most active tweeting KTN, and one of the top blogging KTNs, Materials have shown they are no stranger to social media to inform and engage their members. As a result of their efforts they have stacked up the most points by using social media more than any other KTN.
Top Group
Awarded to the most overall active Official Group of a KTN who use and embrace social media as a whole.
Winner: Position, Navigation & Timing
Rivalling some of the main KTN’s with their social media activities, Position Navigation & Timing have shown an outstanding effort in their social media activites, demonstrating that they are not shy of a tweet or two!
Top Tweeter
This award goes to the KTN who has embraced and used Twitter the most compared to all other KTNs.
Winner: Creative Industries
Congratulations to the Creative Industries KTN for being the most active user of Twitter compared to all of the other KTN’s, sharing more tweets than any other KTN to their ever growing list of 980 followers.
Top Blogger
Awarded to the KTN who have blogged the most news articles on their website.
Winner: Environmental Sustainability
Way ahead of any other KTN; the Environmental Sustainability KTN have blown away the competition and have published the most blog posts on their Connect blog – with more than 100 posts more than the next closest KTN.
Top Photographer
Awarded to the KTN who has made the most out of Flickr, and have uploaded the most albums to the online photo sharing website. This award does not take into consideration photos uploaded via other mediums, such as Twitter.
Winner: Creative Industries
This award goes to the Creative KTN for being the most active photographers amongst the KTN community and having uploaded the most photo albums to their Flickr account than anyone else. Happy snapping!
Most Diverse
Awarded to the KTN who have tried to embrace social media as a whole, and who show that they have a broad scope in terms of their social media output.
Winner: Creative Industries
The most diverse KTN this year goes to the Creative Industries KTN, who have shown they are not afraid of any social network and have truely embraced the most wide range of services than any other KTN – and, on top of that actually use and make a valued contribution to the networks they are members of.
Most Ambitious
This award goes to the smaller KTNs, who may not nessacarilly have the largest follower count on Twitter; but still strive to be an engaging KTN with social media.
Winner: Financial Services
Financial Services showed continuing effort with their social media activities, even with a smaller membership base than the larger KTN’s they still found time to tweet and engage their followers while posting numerous blog posts.
The one to look out for
Electronics, Sensors & Photonics
They may not have come out on top on any of our awards for the past year; but the ESP KTN have been causing a storm as of late and are constantly thrashing the weekly Top KTN boards. Definitely the ones to look out for in the upcoming year.
Congratulations again to all of our award winners, and good luck to everyone for the next year. We’ve introduced quite a few new KTNs to the site over the past couple of months so there’s everything to play for.
Remember, you can keep track on how the KTNs are doing on a weekly basis on our Stats page, or follow our twitter account for the latest information.
Disclaimer
Data collated for these awards has been gathered from the publicly available information we have monitored over the past year. Each KTN’s data only began to be collated when they were added to our system (for the most part, roughly at the same time they joined Twitter) and so, some KTN’s may not have a full year’s worth of data to be analysed.
While we try our best to ensure the data we have is as accurate as possible, we cannot guarantee that the information is 100% correct. Server downtime both on our site and on other sites such as Twitter may cause some data to not be transferred, and thus not calculated.
Stats have been calculated from between 1st February 2010 to 31st January 2011 inclusive.
Posted in Awards, Stat Roundups | 5 Comments »
We’ve had a facelift!
February 13th, 2011
We’re nearly one year old, and what better way to celebrate than to have a facelift!
So, if you’ve been living under a rock – what changes have happened? Well the biggest is the homepage. Gone is the one single list of updates, and in it’s place, three columns on the latest news and activities! On the left, is the latest blog posts from the KTN’s. The central column is the place for the Featured blog post (more on that later!), and off course, the latest KTN tweets underneath.
The right hand column see’s the latest multimedia items, such as content from Flickr and -from today- Vimeo!
So, what was that about a featured blog post I hear you ask. Well, for the past year we’ve been monitoring social media usage from all of the KTN’s and compiling ‘Top KTN lists’ each week. But, not much else. So, from now on, the Top KTN of the past week (that’s the last full seven days), the most active KTN during that time with have their current, newest blog post featured on the homepage.
We’ve been busy adding support for more features too. Vimeo accounts are now supported on the site – as well as links to each KTN’s Facebook pages.
To round this quick update off, we’ve also been busy adding more and more KTN’s. Over the past few weeks we’ve added; Biosciences, Chemistry Innovation, HealthTech and Medicine, and Modern Built Environment
We hope you like the improvements. If you have any comments, please leave them below.
Posted in Development | No Comments »
June Roundup
July 5th, 2010
Summer has finally arrived and KTN social media activity is still as lively as ever, with some interesting results!
The top three KTNs for June 2010 are;
Joint 1st: Creative Industries and Electronics
3rd: Materials
For the first time, we have joint winners this month, with the Creative Industries KTN and Electronics KTN sharing the top spot of first place – both with a 22.9% share of all social media activity. Materials have dropped a place, and are now third after being in second place since April, who had 17.3% of activity.
The top five places this month were actually all pretty close, which goes to show that more KTN’s are actively using social media, which is shown with these higher results. This is especially impressive seeing as though these results are from the start of the summer season, which had been expected to be lower than previous months.
The most popular social media platforms this month stay in the same order as always;
1st: Twitter
2nd: Blogs
3rd: Flickr
Tweets made up less of the overall percentage this month than in May with 71.9% of all social media activity recorded being via Twitter. This is in part to an increased use of Flickr as well as more blog posts being posted.
Posted in Stat Roundups | No Comments »
May Roundup
June 4th, 2010
Summer is right around the corner, and activity amongst the KTN’s is hotting up as ever, with the most social media activity recorded in any one single month yet!
But, let’s get down to business. The top three KTNs for May 2010 are;
1st: Electronics
2nd: Materials
3rd: Creative Industries
Again, for a second month running, Electronics remain in the top spot with a total of 35.4% of all social media activity. Materials also keep hold of their spot from April and remain in second place with 18.9% of all activity, with the Creative Industries KTN knocking Postion, Location and Timing off of the leader board and join in in third place.
The most popular social media platforms this month stay in the same order;
1st: Twitter
2nd: Blogs
3rd: Flickr
Tweets made up a whopping 77.2% of all social media activity recorded.
Posted in Stat Roundups | No Comments »
KTN Marketing: Twitter
May 12th, 2010
There’s no doubt that Twitter has proved itself as a very good communication method and marketing tool. But are KTN’s using it right? Granted not everyone is a Twitter and Social Media expert, but there are some basic and clear no no’s that the Twitter audience just don’t like or appreciate – and what you certainly don’t want is to start pushing away the very audience you’re trying to engage.
So, below are 5 do’s and don’ts for KTNs using Twitter
1. Automated Updates
Yes, automated updates from other services maybe very useful and time saving for you, but they become just plain annoying to your followers – especially if they contain repeated or similar information over and over again. Even if a follower doesn’t unfollow you for it, chances are they’ll start to ignore your endless automated tweets with links, making them ineffective. When you actually do post a relevant or important tweet, it too may become ignored because they’re in the habit and just assume its another automated boring link.
Now, this isn’t to say automated tweets don’t have their place – when used properly and effectively they can be very useful, such as with services you infrequently use – for example; automatically informing a follower of a new YouTube video you have posted for the first time in a month. You have to ask yourself; do all your followers really need – or want – all this information!?
2. One Sided Conversations
Hello? Can you hear me? Are you there? – Twitter is all about making a conversation and a one-sided conversation isn’t very useful or helpful to anyone. If you’re using Twitter, you must take the time to look out for other users tweeting and interacting with you – and respond back. You wouldn’t have a phone in your office that you never answer even though people were leaving voice mail messages would you?
3. Watch the tone!
Many KTNs have grown up to be very formal affairs. This is great for the boardroom – but who wants to engage in conversation with a twitter account if all it’s going to do is spout out management or marketing speak?
Twitter provides you with a face for your KTN – so rather having followers talking to a formal brand which isn’t very helpful or interesting, and dare I say dull – make your tweets personal and more informal – just like a normal conversation. Offer insightful information and ‘behind the scenes’ details to your followers and have an approachable, honest tone – not a nonsensical marketing one. People in turn will feel more connected and will associate themselves with you better – and that’s what we’re all after right!?
4. Don’t over promote
What’s that you say? You have an event? An Event? An EVENT?
OK ok… I heard you the first time – repeating yourself over and over isn’t going to get me any more interested than I was before – if anything it’ll put me off attending as it will just start to seem desperate – not to mention annoying your followers by clogging up their twitter stream.
Say it once and move on – if you must, you can tweet one a few weeks before the event and again on the couple days leading up to it – but if someone wants to attend they will, badgering them into coming isn’t going to help you fill those seats.
5. Long URLs
www.thisisaverylongurlwhichisntverynicetolookat.com – why put your followers through that? And – why put yourself through that? After all, you only have 160 characters – so every letter counts! The answer? Use a URL shortening service like bit.ly – not only will it make your link super short, but also make people more likely to click it – and – give you more room to explain what the link is about in the remaining characters of your tweet!
Hopefully you found some of these useful and helpful for your marketing campaigns.
Views, comments, more suggestions? Just leave them below!
Posted in Hints & Tips | No Comments »
April Roundup
May 3rd, 2010
Another month has passed and it’s that time again to get a full low down of the social media activity which was conducted during March. So without further ado;
The top three KTN’s this month were;
1st: Electronics
2nd: Materials
3rd: Position, Navigation & Timing (part of Digital Systems)
Out of all social media items over the past month, 43.4% of them were posted by the Electronics KTN racking up a total of 75 posted items; all of which were via Twitter which puts them in first place knocking the Materials KTN down to second place ending their 8 week reign at the top.
Position, Navigation & Timing – who came in third place overall – managed to post the most amount of items over the widest array of different platforms.
The most popular platforms this month were;
1st: Twitter
2nd: Blogs
3rd: Flickr
Twitter was the most popular again with 72.5% of all social media activity recorded occurring on the platform. We are aware of KTN’s making use of Facebook which we are currently not monitoring – however this is currently in development and hopefully will be live soon and will be included in future stat roundups – for more information on this just ask.
Posted in Stat Roundups | 1 Comment »
New Feature: Item Pages
April 26th, 2010
A new feature of the site which was quietly introduced the other week and after a successful trial run has now been launched officially. What is this new feature I hear you ask? Well, it’s single pages for items.
From today, by clicking on the avatar (logo) of each item, you will be sent to a permanent individual page just for that tweet, blog post etc (so it will still be available once the item has become too old to show in the stream!). The benefit of this is that you can now direct people directly to the item in question, and for people who like sharing stuff via social media – we’ve included quick and easy share buttons for Facebook and Twitter!
What’s more it will enable us to develop another new feature which is RSS feeds – which are currently in development and which we hope to launch soon!
Let us know what you think!
Posted in Development | No Comments »