In December we asked on twitter ‘what words come to mind when thinking about 2010′ (we took out a few inappropriate ones).

We don’t know how representative it is. Actually we can assume it isn’t representative – we think it was a small-ish sample of people we knew on Twitter participating, but could have been anyone who got the link to the survey.

One could say that the general consensus about 2010  from this group was:

- long hard crap year with awful wikileaks but a growth in connections; or

- wikileaks caused chaotic and crazy reflection of connections, depressing long hard  GFC recovery growth.

At Tribe Research, 2010 saw a lot of change and some putting of wheels-in-motion for 2011. In the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out a key aspect of our activity in 2010 - improvements to the CloudMaker and ActionMap components of  Tribal Tool-Kit.

And here is what you thought about 2011…

We hope at the end of 2011 you’re not thinking – long hard crap as your top 3 descriptive words, but we do hope growth and connections are! We also hope that floods and disaster don’t remain as the key words for 2011 but hope, new and love do.

International sporting events such as the Commonwealth Games and the Olympic Games are often used by host countries to highlight their positive attributes, which in turn are meant to increase trade and tourism. To do this they often wow us with opening ceremonies, amaze us with carefully crafted cultural stories, and persuade us with the experiences of the thousands of people who attend the events.

Unfortunately, with the high demands of modern media networks, minor errors start to appear as major ones, and major errors appear as a total debacles. Thus trying to win over an audience in this environment is extremely difficult.

Interested in how well the organisers had done so far in promoting India, we asked Twitter and Facebook their reaction to the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth games via one simple question…

“When you think about the Delhi2010 Games, what is the first word that comes to mind?”

And this was the result….

While the result offer interesting insights into the minds of the people who have completed the survey, it is important to highlight a few characteristics of this survey that have impacted the result and possibly impact the way it should be perceived.

1. Number of survey participants

Having done a brief search (finding channel 10 data on Australian TV Watching Community- Throng site) on viewer-ship  of the Commonwealth games “Day 1″, I discovered that between 670,000 and 1.3 million people had seen various events through out the day. This suggests that the 66 people who took part in the survey may not provide the best overall representative reaction to the games. This result  is however still representative of the group of people who took part and representative of part of our tribe.

2. Frequency of words

Asking survey respondents to only give one word means the chance of getting a wide range of frequencies is much less than it would be if we asked for three words from each respondent. Tribal Tool-Kit mini survey allows you to choose one, two or three words to enter. This time we chose only one word to force people to put more thought into their response, honing it into something more valuable. Tribal Tool-Kit also allows cleaning of results to avoid typos, and completely meaningless responses, though we did not use the feature this time.

So what is the overall result?

While this survey is just a bit of fun, it does suggest to me that while Australian’s think the games are a “boring” “shambles” verging on “chaos”, we still enjoy winning “gold”.

Want to try you hand at setting up your own survey. Why not sign-up and give it a go…

What can you do with ActionMaps?

A few weeks ago we asked on a range of social media, about the importance and satisfaction of these over the last financial year:

1. Engaging your customers
2. Maximising your investment in marketing
3. Profitability
4. Staff retention
5. Development of new business
6. Providing feedback to your tribe
7. Reducing your overheads
8. Enjoying your time at work

While many of these issues could have similar importance to you when putting together the list, ActionMaps allow you to look deeper into the data by understanding not only what is important to your tribe (in this case, those that took part in the survey), but also put in order what you need to focus on first by understanding their satisfaction.

So what was your feedback?

And what does that tell us?

According to the data, while they set out in July 2009 thinking that enjoying time at work  is important (8), participants were only moderately satisfied with this in 2009-2010, and as such should focus on improving this to turn it into something that can be promoted as a key aspect or unique selling point.

The “send to marketing” area shows aspects that are ready to be promoted as they are both high in importance and high in satisfaction. According to the survey these include, engaging your customers (1), profitability (3), and best of all, development of new business (5).

Also important is understanding what aspects do not need focus as they are aspects that participants do not consider important. In this instance reducing your overheads (7) was of lowest importance and satisfaction. It is great that this isn’t seen as a focus anymore. Also of low importance were maximising your investment in marketing (2) and  providing feedback to your tribe (6), although they had higher satisfaction than reducing your overheads. It is considered that the distributors of the survey, should have lower importance.

Finally, staff retention (4) just falls into the “improve and educate” section. This means that this is currently both of moderate importance and moderate satisfaction to participants.

The most interesting aspect to these ActionMap results is that while promoting a survey on social media is easy, the results need to be interpreted through understanding participants a little bit. This is why it is really interesting to send a survey to a select group of your tribe, so you know some key aspects about them.

When we were discussing ‘staff retention’ and the meaning of the ratings amongst our team we saw that the perception could be very different depending on whether you’re an employee or a business owner completing the survey.

ActionMaps and You…

So while this survey was pretty general, it does highlight the power of knowing which aspects require attention, which require education, and which require less focus. Wouldn’t your business perform better if you could discover this from your tribe?

If you would like to know more about how the ActionMap or any other part of Tribal Tool-Kit can help you and/or your business, contact Tribe Research.

A CloudMaker mini survey example

We were curious about the words people on social media use when they think about the skills needed in business. So, we developed a CloudMaker mini survey.

When you think of the skills needed in business, what first 3 words come to mind?

Here are the results, while we don’t know the sample, it is still an interesting set of words to think about.

What are the first 3 words that come to your mind?

A CloudMaker mini survey example

If your tribe is using different words to those you use, then there is a disconnect in the message people are receiving about your organisation.

When you think of us, what are the first 3 words that come to mind?

Tribe Research did this and developed our cloud.

This simple activity that takes almost no time, allows you to find out the language they use when they talk about your organisation. If your marketing uses different words to what you are using, there is a disconnect and people are getting mixed messages.

Does your tribe use the same words as you?

Having fun with ActionMaps

Towards the end of last year, via our ActionMap tool, we asked ‘how was your weekend?’ and then posted the results. We wondered last time around what the ActionMap would look like in six months. So we asked again, at the beginning of last week, to see if things had changed.

We asked “How was the weekend?”

1. On Friday, we look towards the next two days with certain expectations. How important were these aspects for you on Friday?
2. Now the weekend is over, how satisfied are you with the level of achievement with these aspects?

Below are the aspects and the numbers for the ActionMap key:

1. Socialising
2. Exercise
3. Catch up on home to-do list
4. EOFY (End of Financial Year) preparation (Dec 2009 – Christmas preparations)
5. Catch up on work to-do list
6. Relaxing

Here is what our ActionMap was able to deduce:

This shows us that both ‘socialising’ and ‘relaxing’ were pretty important for most people and that most people were pretty satisfied with each of them by the end of the weekend.

It also shows us that anything to do with work and the end of the financial year weren’t really given too much importance for the weekend and delivered very little satisfaction.

When it comes to ‘exercise’, it seems that this was of moderate importance yet delivered low on satisfaction. Given that it was perceived as being important though, it could do with some attention (for those who participated in the survey at least). Catching up on work at home was also considered of moderate to high importance but also delivered little in terms of satisfaction. Again, it seems that those who completed the survey might want to give a little more focus to this aspect of their weekend.

So how does this compare to our December ActionMap?

What we did in December was almost identical except, where we asked this year about the End of Financial Year preparations, we asked about Christmas preparations. Below are the results from December 2010:

The first thing of note is that the ‘spectrum’ of importance this time around is greater than last time. In summer, it seemed that everything had a reasonable to high level of importance (ranging from a mean score of 3.3 to 5). This time around importance scores range from 1.6 through to 6.0. Satisfaction scores are almost identical to December 2009, ranging from both 3.4 and 3.5 to 5.6.

It seems that ‘work’ and ‘obligatory’ activities (such as preparing for the end of financial year or Christmas) continue to be low priorities. This time around, exercise has become more important but maintains a similar level of satisfaction. This may suggest that most (if not all respondents) came from somewhere in wintery Australia and are less active as a result of the weather – but wish they weren’t.

Work around the house is slightly less important but still derives the same amount of satisfaction as December 2009.

Again ‘relaxing’ and ‘socialising’ derive the most satisfaction for our participants. However, it seems that our current respondents were somehow privy to the December results. Improvements have been made to the level of satisfaction gained from ‘relaxation’ and the benefits of ‘socialising’ appear to have been imparted – bravo new participants!

Though this ActionMap is just a bit of fun, it does demonstrate how a short, simple survey administered amongst your tribe can help you get some answers about your brand’s successes. A short, smart survey can also give you some indications as to where you should focus your attention to help bring your brand into line with where you would like it to be. If you would like to know more about how the ActionMap or any other part of Tribal Tool-Kit can help you and/or your business, contact Tribe Research.

…And with a new week freshly upon us and another weekend fast approaching, perhaps insights we have gained here will help to guide you towards a weekend where you get as much satisfaction as you can from doing all the important stuff (ie: socialising and relaxing!).

What are your priorities for the weekend ahead?

One of the things I like about priority lists – they fit wonderfully into an ActionMap survey.

A few weeks ago a list of 10 things the next Federal Election should be about and will be about was posted by Glebe2037. We’re not saying we agree or disagree with his list, but thought that a selection of the points would be interesting in an ActionMap.

An ActionMap survey asks participants to rate a list of items, on a scale of 1 (low) to 7 (high) in terms of importance and satisfaction. It then maps the actions when the survey is closed.

Importance question: Glebe2037 posted a list of things the next Australian Federal Election should be about & what it will be about. I thought it would be interesting to see how important you feel these things are:

Satisfaction question: How satisfied are you with the performance of the Australian Government in their current term? After you finish the survey you will be redirected to Glebe2037′s post. We’ll blog the results soon.

The aspects

1. Environment & Sustainable Development
2. Paid Parental Leave
3. Cost of Living & Interest Rates
4. Taxation & Budget Deficits/Surpluses
5. Mental Illness & Homelessness
6. Agricultural Practices & Land Management
7. Protecting Our Borders
8. Change at a pace that will not scare people
9. Public Funding of Medical & Scientific Research

The ActionMap: Use the list above for the description of the numbers in the ActionMap below.

There were 41 people who completed the survey. It was completely anonymous and promoted through social media and forums interested in the topic. So, we’re not saying that it’s a representative sample.

According to the participants, the Federal Government needs to improve: Environment & Sustainable Development, Mental Illness & Homelessness, and Agricultural Practices & Land Management.

Taxation & Budget Deficits/Surpluses is an area they’re performing best and it’s of high importance, which is why it’s on the edge of ‘Send to Marketing’. Similarly Cost of Living & Interest Rates is also on the edge of ‘Send to Marketing’ as it had higher importance than Taxation & Budget Deficits/Surpluses but they weren’t as satisfied.

The other consideration in interpreting an ActionMap is the scale. These are the numbers in the corners of the ActionMap. While the importance stretches almost all the scale, the satisfaction ratings were all below the mid-point of a 1-7 scale, 4.

The ActionMap is one of the tools in Tribal Tool-Kit.

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Have you recently checked your website has the message you want?

It can be the first place prospects see you, so you want make sure it’s sending the right message.

This quick check will make sure they get the right message

Just reading your website is a good way to start. Check consistency of phrasing between the website and what you say when you talk about your business, as it might’ve changed since you wrote the website copy.

Most people scan a website, jumping across words, so a great way to check the message of your website is to have a list of the words, ordered by frequency. Are the most common words the ones you want people to remember? Are there any typos in the list?

Here is a simple way to check the words on a website page using CloudMaker in Tribal Tool-Kit:

1. Login to Tribal Tool-Kit. You can easily create an account if you don’t have one. You get 3 credits for CloudMaker and this only uses 1, so the check is free.
2. Click on in the red banner along the top.
3. Click on in the gray menu on the left.
4. Fill in the form with:
   • The name of your business
   • Your website address
   • Change the 4 next to “Minimum word length” to 1 (then all words are loaded into Tribal Tool-Kit and you can see if you have too many small joining words making your website difficult to read).
   • Click “Get Page Words”
5. You are told whether the page loaded successfully or not. The first line will tell you how many words have been retrieved from your website. Click “Accept Dataset”.
6. You will see a table with the words and their frequency. The most frequent at the top.

Readers of your site will leave remembering prominent words. Make sure they are the ones you want them to have.

Having fun with ActionMaps

We wanted to give you a fun example of our ActionMap. It is the silly season after all.

Engagement can be simple and fun. Sometimes we make it too complicated.

This Tribal Tool-Kit ActionMap survey “How was the weekend?” asked:

1. On Friday, we look towards the next two days with certain expectations. How important were these aspects for you on Friday?
2. Now the weekend is over, how satisfied are you with the level of achievement with these aspects?

Below are the aspects and the numbers form the ActionMap key:

1. Socialising
2. Exercise
3. Catch up on home to-do list
4. Christmas preparation
5. Catch up on work to-do list
6. Relaxing

How was your weekend ActionMap

Interpreting the ActionMap

Who would have guessed that relaxing (6) would be the most important with the second highest level of satisfaction! It was just out-done by socialising (1), which wasn’t as important. Not a hugely healthy bunch of participants with exercising (2) having both low importance and satisfaction. While both Christmas preparation (4) and Catch up on work to-do list (5) were not very important, participants were reasonably satisfied with their progress. There needs to be some improvement on catching up on the home to-do list (3)!

I wonder how it will look in six months time?

The ActionMap shows relative rating of importance and satisfaction. To translate this, the scale is stretched so that the minimum and maximum averages (+/-0.02) are the end points of the scale, not 1 and 7.

Now for the important information

The survey was open for less than 24 hours and had 36 participants who were invited through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The participants rated the statements on a 7 point scale (see below). No other information was collected. We don’t know who completed the survey and hadn’t invited only a targeted audience. Therefore, the survey results could be greatly biased, but we don’t know in which way (except we know they use online networking / social media as that was the only form of invitation).

For a business it would be better to invite people to participate through email so you know who the potential participants are, but can still guarantee their anonymity as the ActionMap survey doesn’t collect personal or provide you with raw data.

How the survey appears

You can do your own ActionMap, just head over to Tribal Tool-Kit.

CloudMaker feature explained

How to create a hyperlinked word cloud to place on a webpage, so that when the words are clicked they take you to a specific website page. An explanation of word clouds is on the CloudMaker webpage.

Case study on North Side Coffee Mornings

Tony Cosentino started a guest book of people attending North Side Coffee Mornings (NSCM or #NCSM) that he has been posting to the North Side Coffee Mornings Posterous site. He wanted to create a word cloud of the people who have come along so the more often they have been to NSCM the larger their name is.

Before he got started we had a bit of a chat, the napkin shows our discussion about it.

Firstly, he set up a spreadsheet with the following format:

• A : Twitter name (eg: @katetribe).
• B : Formula of the sum of columns D, E, F, G etc.
• C : Website address for the twitter name (eg: http://www.twitter.com/katetribe).
• D : Date 1, then column E is date 2, etc. If a person attended an NSCM then they had a 1 put in cell for the dates they attended.

Secondly, the formula column B needs to be copied then paste special with only the values pasted (remember to not save the spreadsheet file as you will then loose the formulas). Then delete the date columns.

Thirdly, save the file with the 3 columns and no column headings as a csv.

Then it is time to play with CloudMaker in Tribal Tool-Kit.

• Click on Upload to CloudMaker.
• The title in this example is: NSCM Guestbook the last 6 weeks…
• The description in this example is: All guestbook data between 29 October 2009 and 3 December 2009.
• Select the file and then click upload.
• As the spreadsheet in this case is already edited there is no need to use the CloudMaker editing features.
• Click on Create word cloud from dataset.
• In the display options section change, Show HTML source to ‘yes’.
• Click ‘re-draw word cloud’ at the bottom of the screen.

Finally, copy the HTML code and paste it into the webpage you would like it to appear.

The outcome: The CloudMaker word cloud below is also on the Posterous site. They look slightly different due to website styling on each site.

Easy isn’t it! Now other coffee mornings (as well as other events) can start a guest book from the start so that they can progressively create their own word clouds.