In preparation for a presentation I am giving at Hotel Website Marketing next week I pulled together a list of Irish media on Twitter and used Klout to some insight into their rankings/influence.  The results were surprising.  The landscape is fairly scattered with individual journalist/media personalities tweeting (some under unusual twitter handles) and some publications/programmes running their own twitter streams.  I expected some of the individual journalists to score high, which they did, but what was surprising was the influence that the generic twitter profiles were getting. 

Media Twitter Chart

Initially I thought most would fall into the climber category with low influence but high following as most started using their breaking news or equivalent and did not follow many people.  However a good proportion of them scored high in the persona category showing that they are interacting more with the community and that it appears they are being actively managed.

Another interesting observation was that even as I was plotting people their scores where changing rapidly.   Marie Boran from Silicon Republic moved from the connector category to the persona category over the course of a few days.  The list is not a complete list but Rick O’Shea scored highest on the ones I had.  Klout could not find quite a few of the profiles.

Media Twitter Rankings

Newstalk Twitter Profile

Looking at the Newstalk profile alone you get a sense of how active they are.  2,156 tweets, 1,896 followers and following 564 people.  The tweets are a variety of ones from the show and some regular observation/news tweets.  They also respond to other peoples tweets and have a reasonable engagement level.

Overall this picture shows that most Irish media have moved from using Twitter as a purely broadcast tool and are engaging more than ever.  This has a lot of implications for the PR industry and is a very positive trend.  I imagine a lot of stories that end up on the clipplings floor might make their way on to the Twitter streams, something that a lot of companies could be missing out on.  The rule for engaging via Twitter are still evolving but a good starting point is to make sure you are following them.  A sudden influx of DMs and @ comments pointing to press releases would be pretty unwelcome.  I also imagine that the media publications are watching each others activity and that it could get pretty competitive.

Broadcast
 The Holiday Show: @theholidayshow

 RTE News @RTENEWS
 The Last Word: @lstwrd

 RTE Morning Ireland: @morning_ireland

 Newstalk Breakfast Show: @breakfastnt

 Phantom 105.2: @phantom1052

 Dublin’s Q102: @dublinsq102

 RTE Drivetime @drivetimerte
 RTE The Business @thebusinessrte/
 RTE Business @RTEbusiness
 RTE Updates @RTERad1Updates
 RTE Saturday View @Saturdayviewrte
 RTE Sport @rtesport
 RTE Arts @rtearts
 RTE @rte

Radio Personalities
 Ray Foley – Today FM: @rayfoleyshow

 George Hook – Newstalk: @ghook

 Sean Moncrieff – Newstalk: @SeanMoncrieff

 Rick O’Shea – 2fm: @rickoshea

 Ryan Tubridy @tubridyradio1

Publications (Print & Online):
 Analogue Magazine: @analoguemag

 Irish Times: @the_irish_times

 Irish Times Business @IrishTimesBiz

 Irish Independent @IrishIndo

 Irish Examiner @IrishExaminer

 Sunday Business Post @ sundaybusinesspost
 Sunday Independent @SundayIndo
 Sunday Tribune @sundaytribune_
 Sunday World @SundayWorld
 Irish Sentinel – Satirical site: @irishsentinel

 Day and Night Magazine (Irish Independent): @dayandnightmag

 Life and Fitness Magazine: @derryo

 Media Contact: @Mediaflash
Journalists
 Marie Boran – SiliconRepublic: @PixieVonDust

 John Collins – Irish Times: @jaycee001

 Mark Coughlan: @Mark_Coughlan

 Richard Delevan – Guardian: @rdelevan

 Kilian Doyle – Irish Times: @kilian_doyle

 Tadhg Enright – RTE: @tadhgenright

 Shane Hegarty – Irish Times: @shanehegarty

 Harry McGee – Irish Times: @harrymcgee

 Hugh Linehan – Irish Times: @hlinehan

 Mark Little – RTE: @marklittlenews

 Adam Maguire: @adammaguire

 Dick O’Brien – Sunday Business Post: @dickobrien

 Chas Taylor – Irish Times: @ChasTaylor

 Adrian Weckler – Sunday Business Post: @adrianweckler

 Joe Drumgoogle @jdrumgoole

 Ronan Price Independent @ronanprice
 Kathy Foley Sunday Times @kathyfoley

New additions

 Niall Kitson PC Live @niallkitson

 Silicon Republic @siliconrepublic

 Paul Hearns, ComputerScope @Paul_Hearns

 Karlin Lillington, Irish Times @klillington

 Conor Pope, Irish Times @conor_pope

 Ciara O’Brien, Irish Times @ciaraobrien

 John Kennedy, Silicon Republic, @MrJohnFKennedy

• Electric News
• Vincent Browne, Journalist and TV Presenter
• Business & Leadership, online business portal
• PCLive, home personal computing magazine 
• Dick O’Brien, Sunday Business Post
• Rosemary McCabe, Journalist
• Paul Cunningham, RTE
• Cian McCormack, RTE

I use Klout for this exercise but another new tool on the block is the TweetLevel from Edelman.  Some scores differ but give some useful insights.  Both are good for setting bench marks against others and provide a useful roadmap for increasing influence.