I don’t know how I missed this.

This morning I was searching through the comments and backlinks on our company sites when I noticed some backlinks from something called Topsy. I copied the address into my browser and low-and-behold I discovered one of the most exciting sites to hit the web in, well….a while.

Topsy is a search engine for tweets. It recognises what savvy social networkers have known for a while now – that ReTweets are the new currency of the web.

Type a term into Topsy’s simple interface and you’ll see the most popular tweets on that subject. Here’s how Michael Arrington of Techcrunch described Topsy back in late May:

The 30 million or so Twitter users are an army of little content-finding machines. Topsy says those users are sending tens of thousands of unique links per day to interesting things around the Internet.

Some of those users have more influence than others. And some links are sent by lots of Twitter users, others just sent once. Those links, combined with the information in the Twitter message itself, is what Topsy uses as the basis of its search engine.

And the results are…amazing.

I agree.

Topsy is all about context. You can find what is hot online in seconds. The fact that Topsy also rates users by Influence helps verify results. Its a very impressive approach.

Topsy can be very handy for marketers and businesses trying to get their information into the social mediasphere. It allows you to see who has been ReTweeting you, who is talking about you and the amount of influence they have. It can help for both promotion and reputation management.

As someone who spends a LOT of time on Twitter, I suggest that Topsy is a breakthrough site.

Newcastle Ratings, week ending August 22

Note: These ratings results are compiled using the combined resources of SC TEN, NBN & Prime’s weekly AGB Nielsen Media Research reports.

Overall audience figures were down a bit last week with the lack of any big season finales or breakaway hit shows. SC TEN has drifted back to the pack since the end of Masterchef, but Prime has failed to capitalise on this, finishing behind SC TEN again.

Whilst Seven has already wrapped up ratings victory for 2009, Prime is locked in a ding-dong battle with SC TEN for second place in Newcastle. NBN is unassailable in overall ratings already.

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National Ratings, week ending August 22
Source: David Dale, Sun Herald Blogs

Channel Seven’s victory for the week was diminished by the poor performance of the Bledisloe Cup on Saturday. Australia is often described as “sports mad”, but rugby union seems to be an exception. At week’s end, the prime time audience shares stood at: Seven 28.3 per cent, Nine 26.6, Ten 20.8, ABC 16.5, SBS 7.8.

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Whenever you meet social media sceptics you can use some of these stats and the following video to help explain whats going on here:

Facebook currently has over 250 million users. 120 million users log onto Facebook at least once each day. 30 million users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices. In fact, people that use Facebook via their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on the social network than non-mobile users.

Social Networks are for Kids?

45 – 54 year olds are the top demographic on Twitter (according to the April 2009 comScore). 25 – 34 year olds follow closely behind at second.

There are over 200,000,000 blogs. 54% of bloggers post new content or tweet daily.

Newcastle Ratings, week ending August 15

SC TEN has improved by 2.1% in its ratings for 09 compared to last year, but this still was not enough to even come close to 3rd place on the ratings figures this week. Only averaging 17.9%, where as 3rd place receiver ABC is cruising along on 20.3%. Prime, however, was winning last year with a high of 37.4%. This percentage being even higher than current 1st place station NBN for this years figures, with a 31.3% average.

Is it the programs being aired? Glad you asked, as even though SC TEN barely scored in the ratings, 2 of their programs featured in the Top Ten Most Watched Programs.

Confusing? Take a look for yourself…

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National Ratings, week ending August 15
Source: David Dale, Sun Herald Blogs

Channel Ten managed only 14.6 per cent of the prime time audience on Friday night, easily beaten by the ABC on 20.4 per cent, thanks to George Gently, its new detective series. No wonder the shares for the week (and probably for the rest of the year) ended up thus: Seven 28.0 per cent, Nine 26.3, Ten 21.6, ABC 17.5 and SBS 6.6. We can expect Celebrity MasterChef to be rushed to air within weeks.

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(file under shameless self-promotion)

NLYZR: How effective is your website?

The whole team here at Sticky are very excited to announce the launch of NLYZR.com, a breakthrough website for businesses looking for an affordable way to improve their website search engine optimisation.

The Internet is now the most consumed media in Australia according to the 2009 Nielsen Annual Internet and Technology Report.

Furthermore, consumers between 15 years and 54 years account for the vast bulk of online sales, and a large proportion of those aged 18-54 spend five days a week in front of a computer.

Therefore it’s crucial that organisations have an effective web presence. NLYZR asks the question: How effective is your website?

NLYZR combines industry leading SEO software with the Inbound Marketing expertise and strategic insight of Sticky Digital.

The NLYZR website combines a mix of free and paid reports and detailed recommendations. Any business that follows the process and recommendations is assured of success.

Our Free Web NLYZR report is positioned to become the standard measure of website effectiveness in Australia. Already we have used it to assess over 600 Australian websites.

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The 4th annual Australasian Media and Broadcasting Congress will be held in Sydney from 31 August to 3 September 2009 and I am honoured to have been invited to present on two panels at this years event in what promises to be some vigorous and topical discussions.

Looking at the program I realised that I am the only marketing blogger to be presenting at the event, so I’d like to think I can be a strong representative of the Australian marketing blogger community.

Therefore, I’d like your input. What would you like to see addressed or mentioned in the panels I am involved with? What issues do you feel need covering? What questions would you like to see asked?

Please leave your thoughts & suggestions in the comments section of this post.

Here are the two panels I will be involved in…

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The Newcastle Ratings, weekend ending August 08

This weeks ratings tell an interesting tale. Lesson one: How to climb the ratings ladder without doing anything obvious. ABC has done something very interesting lately. While our focus has been on the constant battle between NBN, Prime and SC Ten, there has been a quiet achiever called ABC. Rather than spending a fortune on top ratings shows, or going on an up and down roller coaster ride like the commercial players, the ABC has been constant. Is the lesson consistency rather than highs and lows?

ABC seems to have no real extreme stand outs when it comes to programs, apart from perennial favourite ‘Spicks & Specks’, that each week of late continuously make the top watched programs. They have been consistent with the shows they choose to keep on air and seem to have a solid viewer base. Do we take a lesson from the old children’s story ‘The Hare and the Tortoise?”… Like most channels, all their time, money and effort is spent on promoting up coming shows and if they are a hit, that faith is entirely kept on this program. Do we instead spread the love around….So to speak??

Check out the ratings for this week!
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Did you realise that the Internet is now the most consumed media in Australia?

According to the 2009 Nielsen Annual Internet and Technology Report the average Australian spends 16.1 hours per week online. This is compared to TV at 12.0 hours per week, Radio at 8.8 hours, Video at 5.4 hours, Online radio at 4.6 hours, PC video at 4.6 hours, mobile at 3.7 hours, newspaper at 2.8 hours and magazines at 2 hours.

Hold on….Australians spend more time online than consuming TV & Newspaper combined? More time online than Radio, Newspaper and Magazines combined?

So the big question for business is: are your marketing resources being allocated to the right media?

Why does the average business automatically resort to TV / Radio/ Press when devising a marketing campaign?

Of course there are issues of target markets, cost-effectiveness and clutter with all media decisions, but I am alarmed by the number of businesses still marketing like it was 1999.

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