Tools for Online Engagementl

Tools for Online Engagementl

This is by no means the canonical list of available online engagement platforms and tools. There are far too many niche and up-and-coming options to list. The social media space by its’ very nature forever evolving. This document will give you a good idea of what is out there and available for you to use.

This list is not an ‘authorised’ collection of platforms allowed to be used in the APS. Each platform has inherent strengths and weakness and should be well understood before committing APS resources. If you find a tool which you think is better ‘fit-for-purpose’ you should build you business case around it.

If we’ve missed a tool that you think can add value to our Online Engagement, please let us know and we will consider it for the next version of this document.

Online Engagement Platforms

Twitter
Type / Microblogging Service
Founded / March 2006
Alexa Rank / 10
Users / 200 Million
Strengths / Easy to use
Quick setup
Large potential audience
Geared towards one-to-many conversations
Myriad of third party monitoring and management tools available
Used widely throughout the APS
Weaknesses / Large noise to information ratio,
Can be hard to build a followership
Demographics / Estimated Demographics are on Quantcast
From Wikipedia / Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and by July, the social networking site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million registered users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet." Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of apps for mobile devices.
Website /
Facebook
Type / Social Network
Founded / 2004
Alexa Rank / 2
Users / 1.11 Billion
Strengths / By far the largest social network
Used widely in APS for promoting graduate programs
Used very successfully by Queensland Police
Good sharing and broadcast tools
Weaknesses / Dependent on discovery
Platform is based on personal ‘social graph’ and connecting on a professional level can be difficult
Continuity on account can be difficult due to Page management structure
Demographics / Estimated Demographics are on Quantcast
From Wikipedia / Facebook is an online social networking service, whose name stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. It was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. Facebook now allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site.
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Reddit
Type / Discover, News Aggregator & Entertainment
Founded / June 2005
Alexa Rank / 117
Users / 43 Million
Strengths / Strong Discovery Culture
Lots of speciality and niche ‘subreddits’
Weaknesses / Anonymous nature of commentsencourages trolling
Large amounts of inappropriate content
Very difficult to reach a large audience
Demographics / Estimated Demographics on Quantcast
From Wikipedia / Reddit, is a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of either a link or a text ("self") post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down", which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page. Reddit is based in San Francisco, California.
Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. It was acquired by Condé Nast Publications in October 2006. In September 2011, Reddit was split from Condé Nast, and now operates as a subsidiary of Condé Nast's parent company, Advance Publications
Website /
Tumblr
Type / Microblogging & Sharing Service
Founded / February 2007
Alexa Rank / 32
Users / As of April 13, 2013, Tumblr has over 102 million blogs.
Strengths / Young Audience
Strong sharing culture
Weaknesses / An overabundance of inappropriate content
Limited control over content
Reaching a large audience can be challenging
Demographics / Estimated Demographics on Quantcast
From Wikipedia / Tumblr, is a microblogging platform and social networking website, owned and operated by Tumblr, Inc. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users' blogs, as well as make their blogs private. Much of the website's features are accessed from the "dashboard" interface, where the option to post content and posts of followed blogs appear.
Website /
Pinterest
Type / Scrapbooking Service
Founded / March 2010
Alexa Rank / 34
Users / [January 2012] 11.7 Million Uniques
Strengths / Strong Sharing Culture
Pinterest has a stated that they strive to keep their community positive and respectful
Higher than internet average CTR (click through rate)
Weaknesses / Limited usefulness for Online Engagment for the APS
Demographics / Demographics on Pinterest
From Wikipedia / Pinterest is a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users can browse other pinboards for images, 're-pin' images to their own pinboards, or 'like' photos. The site was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp, the site is managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and inventors
Website /
LinkedIn
Type / Professional Social Networking
Founded / 2003
Alexa Rank / 14
Users / 225 Million
Strengths / Professional and mature audience
Professional nature of network discourages ‘trolling’ behaviour
Weaknesses / Premium options are not available for free
Demographics / Estimated Demographics on Quantcast
From Wikipedia / LinkedIn is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003,it is mainly used for professional networking. As of January 2013[update], LinkedIn reports more than 200 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories.
The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, and Malay.Quantcast reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally.In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace.LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD".
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Google+
Type / Social Network / Social Layer
Founded / 2011
Alexa Rank / N/a
Users / 500 Million (235Mn Active)
Strengths / Using circles it’s possible to compartmentalise personal & professional under one account
Google+ is fully integrated into the full Google experience
Google ‘Hangout’ video conferencing
Data Liberation; Google give you the ability to save data
Weaknesses / Google+ users only spend a minimum amount of times looking at Google+ Pages / Profiles (3.5 minutes monthly vs 7.5 hours on Facebook).
Demographics / An infographic is available here
From Wikipedia / Google+ is a multilingual social networking and identity service owned and operated by Google Inc. It is the second largest social networking site in the world, having surpassed Twitter in January 2013.As of December 2012, it has a total of 500 million registered users, of whom 235 million are active in a given month.Google has described Google+ as a "social layer" that enhances many of its online properties, unlike conventional social networks generally accessed through a single website.
Website / plus.google.com

From Finance’s Online Services Branch

govdex
Type / Controlled collaboration platform
Cost / Free [at May, 2013]
Platforms / Online [based on Confluence]
Description / The govdex service provides an online communications platform that supports an access controlled collaboration environment for government agencies and their stakeholders. It is managed by the Department of Finance and Deregulation (Finance).
Features / Secure: govdex is accredited to hold documents up to (and including) the security classification level of UNCLASSIFIED with a Dissemination Limiting Marker (DLM) of For-Official-Use-Only (FOUO) or SENSITIVE.
Document and information sharing: documents and/or information can be uploaded and shared in their original formats within the community.
Collaborative authoring: community members can add, edit and remove text within a document or provide feedback in a forum.
Project, task and issues tracker: keeps track of projects, tasks, and issues.
Event planning: the calendar function enables key dates to be listed with details of requirements, locations and contacts.
Update alerts: community members can opt to receive daily emails providing summaries of any updates made to the community
Benefits / Quick: a govdex community can be provisioned for an agency within 5 working days of the receipt of a completed application.
Simple: templates and guides are available to help agencies customise and utilise their communities.
Cost effective: communities are provided at no cost to the agency
Website /
govspace
Type / Blogging Platform
Cost / From $4,500 Per Annum [at May. 2013]
Platforms / Online [based on WordPress]
Description / The govspace online communications platform hosts public blogs and websites on behalf of Australian Government agencies. The service is managed by the Department of Finance and Deregulation (Finance).
The service was introduced in April 2010, and by March 2013, 38 agencies have taken advantage of the service publishing a total of 56 live blogs and websites on a wide range of issues from policy to community engagement.
Examples of the use of govspace are available at govspace.gov.au/directory.
Features / The govspace platform makes it easier for Australian Government agencies to create blogs and websites, to enhance the ability for individuals to contribute to government discussions and forums.
Govspace uses WordPress software and is housed on fast, reliable and secure infrastructure.
By using govspace agencies are able to concentrate on content and online engagement rather than infrastructure-related issues.
Agencies can use govspace to establish their own ‘space’ to host a blog, website or combine the features of both, for example a website with commenting functionality.
Benefits / Quick: a streamlined engagement process means a govspace site can be provisioned for an agency within five days of the receipt of a completed MOU.
Simple: themes, templates and guides are available to help agencies customise and utilise their space.
Cost effective: Engagement capability using a .govspace.gov.au domain is provided from $4,500 per annum.
Website /

Social Media Management Tools

Tweetdeck
Type / Twitter Management Dashboard
Cost / Free
Platforms / Online & Desktop Versions
Description / For twitter power users, allowing you to more effectively monitor and interact with twitter.
Using a column layout to relay tweets in real-time. Based on different parameters including keywords, hashtags or lists a user can effectively monitor multiple information streams concurrently.
Features / Ability to schedule tweets
View and control multiple accounts
Monitor multiple keywords and lists in real time
Unified login across multiple platforms
Benefits / The cross platform nature of the platform makes it very handy for use ‘on-the-go’ and the unified login allows you to have your setup accessible from any computer or most internet enabled devices.
Ability to track keywords or set up lists allows you to easily monitor everything from specific keywords (or hashtags) to the people in your organisation.
Scheduling tweets gives you the ability to better co-ordinate the release of information across multiple sources.
Free of charge it’s one of the most powerful apps available in this category.
Website /
Hootsuite
Type / Social Media Dashboard
Cost / Free [Basic Service], Pro [~12$ a Month], Enterprise [Costs vary]
Platforms / Online / Mobile Platforms [iPhone, Android & iPad]
Description [From Wikipedia] / HootSuite is a social media management system for brand management created by Ryan Holmes in 2008. The system’s user interface takes the form of a dashboard, and supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress and Mixi.
Additional integrations are available via HootSuite’s App Directory, including Instagram, MailChimp, Reddit, Storify, Tumblr, Vimeo and YouTube.
Features / Control Multiple Social Networks
Ability to create custom reports and analytics
Ability to create teams to manage your online presence
HootSuite has a lot of features to recommend it which are based described on their website [hootsuite.com/features] and for Enterprise [enterprise.hootsuite.com/features].
Benefits / Hootsuite is a very comprehensive dashboard for Social Media engagement. At an enterprise level the tool it can be to manage conversation across multiple platforms, team members and locations.
You can find a list of HootSuite case studies on their website at blog.hootsuite.com/category/resources/case-study-resources/
Website / | enterprise.hootsuite.com

Other Social Media Management Tools

• Crowd Booster

Analytics Tools

Google Analytics
Cost / Free [Basic Service]
Platforms / Online
Description [From Wikipedia] / Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website's traffic and traffic sources and measures conversions and sales. The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service.
The basic service is free of charge and a premium version is available for a fee.
GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines and social networks, direct visits and referring sites. It also displays advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.
Website /

Analysis Tools

ESA
Type / For early detection and monitoring of emergency situations discussed on Twitter
Cost / Membership of the CSIRO Adopters group is $40,000 for 12 months For details speak with Ronald Jones,02 6216 7089,
Platforms / Web based
Description / Our Emergency Situation Awareness (ESA) software detects unusual behaviour in the Twitter stream and quickly alerts the user when an event is being mentioned on Twitter. ESA also stores tweets and allows post-event analyses.
The potential applications of social media information for disaster managers include providing:

• evidence of pre-incident activity
• near real-time notice of an incident occurring
• first-hand reports of incident impacts
• gauging community response to an emergency warning

Features /

• detect unexpected or unusual incidents, possibly ahead of other communications
• condense and summarise messages about an incident maintaining awareness of aggregated content without having to read individual messages
• classify and review high-value messages during an incident (e.g. messages describing infrastructure damage or cries for help); understand the impact of an incident on people and infrastructure
• identify, track, and manage issues within an incident as they arise, develop, and conclude; pro-actively identify and manage issues that may last for hours, days or weeks
• perform analysis of incidents by exploring social media content from before, during, and after an incident.

Benefits / Timely situation awareness for disaster managers and emergency response agencies
Information is location specific and unusual activity above background levels is detected
Customer support through adopters group
Website /
Vizie
Type / For customer engagement and monitoring of discussions relating to key words of your choice
Cost / Membership of the CSIRO Adopters group is $40,000 for 12 months details speak with Ronald Jones, 02 6216 7089,
Platforms / Web based
Description / The software, based on CSIRO research in natural language processing analyses content from online platforms grouping the content in issues or discussion topics.
Vizie sorts the social media posts, which helps identify 'hot topics' which are being discussed more often at a particular time.
Features / Visual interface:A river graph represents the retrieved posts in a simple overview so that staff can instantly see the 'hot topics' and how they are changing over time.
Tracking back to original posts: It also allows them to isolate the original post in order to discover its context.
Reporting: Vizie allows staff to prioritise posts, identifying which posts most need follow up comments to prevent the spread of misinformation.
Benefits / High level, structured overview of online discussions, supporting teams to monitor social media for an organisation. Move quickly between overview to individual messages to engage effectively.
Website /

Other Analysis Tools

• Palantir [
• Social Flow [
• Leximancer [

Miscellaneous Tools

Old Reader
Type / RSS Reader [What is RSS?]
Cost / Free
Platforms / Online
Description / The Old Reader is an online RSS aggregator which allows you to read collected ‘feeds’ from several website (or any RSS sources such as comments) in one location. It utilises much of the functionality and feel of the original Google Reader.
The strength of collecting RSS feeds in one location is the ability to essentially create a stream of news specifically of interest to you by selectively aggregating sources.
Website /
Survey Monkey
Type / Survey Manager
Cost / Free, Select [$228 per annum], Gold [$300 per annum], Platinum [$780 per annum] as at 14 May 2013
Platforms / Online
Description / On online survey tool which allows you to quickly create and publish surveys.
Website /
MailChimp
Type / Newsletter List Manager
Cost / mailchimp.com/pricing
Platforms / Online
Description / Mailchimp is a mailing list manager, providing a platform to help create, manage and send your email campaigns. It also allows you to track your email rates and provides reports on how well the campaign did.
Website /