Below is the second in our series of reports ranking the online share of voice for the cities participating in the Google fiber initiative.
This report updates our initial metrics based on the insights we’ve collected from our research, which includes all of the direction submitted through blog comments on our first report and emails we’ve received directly. And on that note, thank you to everyone who took the time to contribute to this research on behalf of your city. As we hope we’ve shown in these reports, active participation is essential to any good online efforts, and yours is much appreciated.
Please note that if your city did NOT make the top 10 in our report, it is no indication that you are in any way not competitively positioned in the initiative. Again, Google has multiple factors in their decision making process, including how interested a community is in working with Google, community support, local activities, needs and resources, approved construction methods, local regulatory issues and area broadband speeds. And though most participating cities assert that online interaction in their campaigns will increase the chances of favorability in their selection, ultimately Google will decide which factors are most relevant.
The second report is available for download here. Just click on the image below.
And please reach out to us through the comments below or by email to david.greiner@sgandco.com if you have any questions or comments on the information and insights we’re presenting.
Cool reports guys! How do you generate the info for these? We added nearly 500 images to our website but they don’t appear in your ranking – but then again I am color blind and mildly stupid.
David –
Thanks for updating your report – I’ve been waiting for this all week!
I’m curious how Radian6 is pulling it’s image data. Jared’s right, the Topeka effort has lots of photos posted on our FB Group as well as our website, particularly in the last five days. Would photos posted on those channels not be found for some reason?
Also, I was curious, does the Duluth population include Superior as well? I believe their push is for the Twin Ports, but I’m not familiar with that area so I wasn’t sure whether Superior was a separate town or possibly a suburb of Duluth.
Again, thanks for posting!
@AlissaSheley
Great report! From What I see Topeka is basically on the top 3. I cannot wait till I see the final report. Thanks to all those TBT volunteers who have been working hard in putting Topeka first.
Consti Garay
Good work Grand Rapids on the Google Fiber project, keep it pushing!
Thanks for the initial comments, everyone. If you don’t mind, I’m going to address a couple of the questions above, as well as some of the questions coming in through our social media channels (we’ll also reach out there with answers as well) here.
First off, yes, our office is located in Grand Rapids, and that has nothing to do with its placement in the top ten. We’re just presenting the data as it appears. Grand Rapids is executing its plan on its own…
Next, regarding posting images and getting credit for them, make sure you have them tagged properly. Searches aren’t done by the content within the image, but rather by what content is attached to them. Also, make sure people are sharing information. Encourage all of your friends and followers to talk up your town through all of their digital channels, but make sure they’re referencing you using the search terms you’ve attached to your campaign.
Finally, if Duluth and Superior are working together, they may be doing so under the Duluth name, because Superior hasn’t appeared on our radar. If they’re out there on their own, let us know, and we’ll look into their efforts.
Thanks again, and keep the questions coming if you have them!
David
[...] Google Fiber Initiative Report – Round Two. [...]
Hello David,
Thank you for your reply, I do have a follow up question about the photo tagging.
How would you suggest Topeka “tag” their photo’s?
As mentioned, we’ve added 500 images this last week on facebook and on our blog.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=photos&gid=300943806610
http://thinkbigtopeka.com/galleries/
I’m not really sure how we can make their presence more obvious to your study.
Thanks for your time
-Brandon
Brandon, I suggest tagging your assets with any terms that might be searched to gather data for the initiative. “Think Big Topeka” and “Google Fiber Topeka” are a good start…
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks,
David
Hi Alissa – one thing to note in addition to what David said: because Duluth just tracked in the data, we only used their data from the US Census.
Hope that helps.
Go Fresno!
Hi David, I just wanted to let you know I reposted this on my blog and linked back to you. http://www.moxydesign.com/blog/
Nicole
Thanks, Nicole!
David & Andrew -
Thanks for the answers and clarification. I appreciate it – keep up the good work!
@AlissaSheley
[...] the golden ticket? Digital communications and measurement firm Steketee Greiner and Co. has been analyzing over 90 cities across the US, measuring activity around online conversation, digital syndication, [...]
[...] the golden ticket? Digital communications and measurement firm Steketee Greiner and Co. has been analyzing over 90 cities across the US, measuring activity around online conversation, digital syndication, [...]
So how should we ‘tag’ the images on our website and facebook page? (Seriously, just update the alt tag to Think Big Topeka?) Also – how do we tag our 30 minute commercial-free primetime CBS special, NAHL-Record-Breaking-Attendance Google Roadrunners Hockey Game, and international media attention?
Jared, tagging your assets with the campaign name and any other relevant search terms like “Google fiber” and “Google fiber Topeka” will go a long way for you. Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions!
Thanks,
David
[...] the golden ticket? Digital communications and measurement firm Steketee Greiner and Co. has been analyzing over 90 cities across the US, measuring activity around online conversation, digital syndication, [...]
[...] the golden ticket? Digital communications and measurement firm Steketee Greiner and Co. has been analyzing over 90 cities across the US, measuring activity around online conversation, digital syndication, [...]
[...] the video heading results in some pretty cool stuff and creative efforts. So what has Fresno done? Reports say enough to climb up the rankings some 174% with its #fiberfresno effort currently at #4 [...]
Congrats David on a great report. We here in Gainesville, FL have been tracking various city news via The Google Fiber News Tracker at http://ThinkBigwithaGig.com/ If you aren’t already, I’d recommend tracking “Gig4GNV” references with your tools/report — we’ve executed a pretty tightly focused brand/campaign without the stunts. I know there are many factors, but just on Facebook Fans we’re in the middle of your top 10 — particular when you look at % of population.
I’d be interested in getting your list of 90 cities, including the key tag/brand used for their efforts (like “Gig4GNV”) — u can email gig4gnv (at) gmail (dot) com
[...] the golden ticket? Digital communications and measurement firm Steketee Greiner and Co. has been analyzing over 90 cities across the US, measuring activity around online conversation, digital syndication, [...]
Asheville is gaining big time. I do not see this much talent (already in progress) in the other top contenders. check out these videos on Asheville!
http://www.youtube.com/user/AshevilleOVision
[...] the golden ticket? Digital communications and measurement firm Steketee Greiner and Co. has been analyzing over 90 cities across the US, measuring activity around online conversation, digital syndication, [...]
I would second what Dan Rua posted regarding Gainesville, Florida and the Gig4GNV effort.
There have been great strides made by many volunteers using the official website – http://www.gig4gnv.com – and official Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/gig4gnv. We haven’t renamed cities or jumped in lakes but we have worked hard on both the community effort as well as the RFI.
Greenville SC – http://www.WeAreFeelingLucky.com #GoogleOnMain / #LuckyGVL thanks you for your work..
John M. Hoyt – http://www.HomelandSecureIT.com
You need to do some searches on other tags – would be interesting to see results with #luckyGVL and #GoogleOnMain included…or other relevant searches related to individual campaigns – Greenville should be higher on radar… not always going to capture everything with just “Google fiber”. There’s too many variables…
Google is WAY to sharp to miss out on Greenville, SC #googleonmain #luckygvl Google us!
On March 19th, I left a comment under your post in which you announced your first “report.” It brought to your attention that you were misidentifying the number of Facebook fans in Greensboro, NC’s group — and I left you a link to the facebook page so you could see for yoursefl your 4,400 error.
Your second report again missreports the number of Facebook fans for Greensboro. You report 2,908 when it is, in fact, 5,735.
Why do you persist in getting this wrong repetedly?
Hi Roch 101 –
We’re certainly happy to see cities increasing their fan base on Facebook; for consistency with our measurements the fans were totaled at one point in time, and left unchanged. Fan totals were captured on 3/17 on 3/24 for the first and second report respectively; this assured that each city was represented by a fair ’snapshot’ for each report.
It would be entirely plausible for any city to see a sudden swell in membership after our data was captured. In fact, this was often the case.
To quote the second report: “[...]Greensboro’s significant growth in fan base from 901 to 2,908.”
Congrats on the rapid growth!
You actually stand at 5,742 as of when I post this comment. Best wishes to you and all other cities that were involved with this effort.
EDIT: There’s some confusion on the sincerity of this post – it was indeed sincere.
Further replies on Greensboro will come soon.
I am shocked that Greenville SC did not make the top 10. We have tagged photos and tweets with #Googleonmain and #LuckyGvL. Our community came together and showed enourmous support. I would hope that you will Google #GoogleonMain and you will see the support that we have shown. I know that Google would not overlook such a great city as Greenville SC.
If you looked at 90 communities, where are the ones with less than 80,000 population? Duluth has the smallest number of residents in your report; where are the others?
With over 1,100 communities responding to Google’s RFI, I suggest your report is heavily skewed around 1) population, and 2) social conversations because of population.
[...] is now passed. On the official blog post, Google states that 1100 cities made application. While an internet report done out of Michigan fails to rank Greenville, SC’s efforts in the top ten, Google [...]
What about Greenville, SC?? We had over 2,000 citizens some together with LED glow sticks to spell out Google in the heart of our great city. Google Fiber is all anyone in Greenville is talking about. Even Time Magazine is doing a story. You need to rethink the methods you’re using to gather your data because we should not only be in the top ten, but the top three at least. Go on Twitter and search the tags #LuckyGVL and #GoogleOnMain also go to WeAreFeelingLucky.com and you’ll be enlightened ! GO GREENVILLE!!!
Hello, Greenville, SC and thanks for all the feedback. Our list of our original 90 came from http://www.zettaphile.com/2010/03/02/list-of-cities-vying-for-googles-gigabit-project/, and we’ve conducted our research based on the city names in the context of Google fiber. Unfortunately, our numbers on Greenville haven’t taken into account any of the content not tagged with the city name included. We’ll certainly take into consideration your comments (again, thanks for the clarification), but I strongly recommend including “Greenville” in your tagging strategy moving forward. It will certainly make your content easier for us to find. Also, we will be reviewing any new lists of participating cities before we move forward with our next report.
Thanks again, David
10pts to David for doing the report
10pts for the beautiful format
10pts for caring
10pts for responding to comments on blog
10pts for listening
10pts for being humble
10pts for charm
10pts for helpful feedback
That’s a lot of points.
Question: David, are y’all tracking tweets and hashtags? Seems like many cities are using hashtags in some capacity to organize threads.
Trey, that IS a lot of points, and I welcome them all. I’m hoping they can be converted into brownie points with my wife, though I’m sure the exchange rate is horrible…
Regarding your question, yes, we are tracking tweets and hashtags. On page three of our latest report it’s included as “micromedia.”
Again, and I can’t stress this enough, we’re tracking by city names unless alerted otherwise, so please make sure you’ve got your city included in your hashtags too!
And since you started handing out points, I’d like to award 10 points to Greenville, SC. I love the passion! Keep it going! We’ll be doing our best to make sure we have accurate numbers for you and everyone else…
David,
Thanks for listening and having an open mind.
>please make sure you’ve got your city included in your hashtags too!
The problem with the hashtag #Greenville is that there are 25 states in the US with a city named Greenville, but only one #GoogleOnMain!
Yeah, that is a bit of a challenge. I can certainly see the logic behind your choices, and unless you’re looking for attention outside of your own circle of measurement (like in this case), it normally wouldn’t be an issue. Now that we know, it’ll make things easier for us, but moving forward, if you’re looking to attract outside measurement attention, you may even consider something like #GreenvilleSouthCarolina or #GreenvilleSC just in case your campaign vernacular isn’t public knowledge on a broad scale.
Thanks, Mike.
How did Pittsburgh do in your matrix? Google’s application map seemed to indicate that a very large number of Pittsburghers had individual responses. Should that be a category included in your analysis?
Steve, Pittsburgh didn’t make the top 10 using the criteria we’ve been using (that is doing our key word searches around official online city channels), but that isn’t to say that there aren’t other metrics to consider out there. Our intention has been to encourage cities to consider strategies that would create consistencies that make their efforts more easily measurable, so that we can offer an apples to apples comparison for everyone involved.
The goal for share of voice is to create a unified voice that can be heard, so individual responses that don’t echo the tagging strategies created at the campaign level run the risk of being missed, unless we know what to look for. The other challenge with individual responses is that it becomes very cost prohibitive to look in too many directions for data. Again, the more concise you can keep things, the easier and more accurately your efforts can be tracked.
Hope that answers your question. If you have a follow up, let me know.
David
Andrew,
Thank you for the reply. Really? That’s what you think happened? That there was a “surge” in the number of Facebook members for Greensboro after you collected your data? I think you were sloppy in your data collection and are too incurious to examine that possibility or too unprofessional to acknowledge and correct your errors.
I spell it out here.
Roch101, thanks for the feedback, but let’s try to keep things professional, please. I understand that you’re upset with the response you received, but there was a misunderstanding with Andrew, and I’d like to clear it up for you.
I did some looking into how we did our data collection, and our mistake came when we used the information from Greensboro’s fan page, rather than the Greensboro group page. We discovered the fan page through googlegreensboro.com, which gave us the perception that it was the official city page. It was a mistake on our part that created some concern, and it’s one I’ve personally corrected for any future reports.
Again, I apologize for the misunderstanding. We’re simply trying to get the best perspective to represent the data as accurately as possible without having access to each city’s tagging strategies, so your feedback is very helpful. Please do let me know if you see anything else that isn’t accurately representing Greensboro in any future reports, and we’ll make sure we’re considering it. We’ll be using the numbers from the Greensboro group page going forward.
Thanks,
David
David, great report!
To make Google’s decision easier, we launched a city-selection tool that lets you rank your top 5 choices for Google Fiber. Click here to vote for your favorite city: http://zoomprospector.com/googlefiber.
Note: while this quiz is for fun and selects communities that have performed some of the funniest promotions, the data is all real. Enjoy!
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me
Arti Kuthiala
GIS Planning Inc.
akuthiala@gisplanning.com
Thanks, Arti…
David
David,
Thank you for the reply. I appreciate you taking a look and trying to accommodate the facts. I have some new information that actually mitigates your error and accounts for some of the confusion.
Although I think some, if not much, of this could have been avoided had you followed my link to Greensboro’s Facebook page from the comment I left on March, 19th and, while I still think you should not leave your reports uncorrected when you know them to contain errors, here is what I have learned about Greensboro’s Facebook pages from their administrator.
The original Facebook page went over 4,000 members on March 11. By March 19th, it had over 5,300 and soon reached 5,800. At that point, because of messaging limitations, a new fan page was created. That is the one you saw with a couple thousand or so. I have not been able to ascertain exactly when that was created.
To add to the confusion, “some” of the first Facebook members were ported as fans to the new page. The administrator says he does not know how many.
So, in my opinion, the overlap of an unknown number of members and fans between the old and new Facebook groups make them unreliable indicators of the number of Greensboro for Google fans going forward. We know there were just over 5,800 when the new page was created sometime shortly after March 19th, but I would consider that the last reliable snapshot — for what it’s worth.
I hope that helps and, seriously, good luck to Grand Rapids.
Roch, I’m glad we’re getting this sorted out, and thanks for the kind reply. That is a bit of a mess you’re dealing with, but we’ll do our best to capture the number accurately going forward in April. It’s much easier to do this when we’re working with clients and have a chance to be a part of the strategic team at the outset, but you (and several others from other cities) have taken the time to reach out on behalf of your city, so I owe it to you to get it right. Though we had the wrong source on the last reports, I’ll be making sure we’re pulling from the right sources going forward, and hopefully, that will result in a change in position for Greensboro. No matter what happens, the city should give you a nod for going to bat for your people.
Also, and I’m sure this can go without saying, but why not; I know I can count on you to let me know if we haven’t captured what you’re intending us to see (and yes, that’s said with a smile)…
Good luck right back to you. It’s going to be a fun year.
David
[...] was the most successful at getting grassroots support and national attention based on this share of voice report. This is a series of posts on how we did [...]
[...] than we had. This post isn’t about why we eventually rose to the top online based on this Share of Voice Report, or landing on Page 1 of the New York Times. I’ve already covered those two topics. What I [...]
[...] the golden ticket? Digital communications and measurement firm Steketee Greiner and Co. has been analyzing over 90 cities across the US, measuring activity around online conversation, digital syndication, [...]
[...] the golden ticket? Digital communications and measurement firm Steketee Greiner and Co. has been analyzing over 90 cities across the US, measuring activity around online conversation, digital syndication, [...]
The best website……
I saw this really great post the other day…….
would want to appreciate the attempts you get in writing this posting. I’m hoping the same best work of your stuff in the future also. Actually your creative writing skills has inspired me to start out my own personal blog site now.
I enjoy what you guys tend to be up too. Such clever work and reporting! Keep up the superb works guys I’ve incorporated you guys to my blogroll. Kaffeevollautomaten