This Week in Social Analytics #50
It’s Friday, so that means it’s time for This Week in Social Analytics and our favorite posts of the past week in the world of measurement, analytics, and social media. See a great piece we missed? Link to it in the comments!
Using Facebook and Tumblr to Engage Students [written by & from ProfHacker]
“And though digital tools have become an integral part of our efforts to engage students, we’re continually surprised by unexpected successes or failures.
We found ourselves talking about just that topic toward the end of the fall semester as we realized that we had created similar social media projects for our students, one with Facebook and one with Tumblr. In itself, that isn’t so unusual, but the results of those projects – one successful, one not – pushed us to dig deeper for answers about what worked, and why.”
Researching in Public on Tumblr [from ProfHacker; written by Anastasia Salter]
“Writing a Tumblr post feels like less of a commitment than blogging: because the form is based on very viral, often short, content, it feels more like a living notebook where pages can be easily reblogged and annotated from others’ notes. The tags make it relatively easy to move through the entire network of content to find new conversations…Because of this fluidity and flexibility, I find Tumblr makes a fascinating start as an accessible research journal.”
Emphasis added.
Why It’s a Mistake For Brands to Ignore Tumblr [from Social Media Today; written by Jon Thomas]
“Tumblr has carved a niche in the crowded world of social media; it is just taking brands a long time to notice. But that may play in your brand’s favor. A few brands have firmly planted their feet in Tumblr, particularly now that it has a growing ad platform, but it’s still a place where your brand can establish a presence before its competitors do.”
Twitter Vines Get Shared 4x More Than Online Video [from AdWeek; written by Christopher Heine]
“Unruly Media’s research reveals that branded Vines (see Doritos example below) are shared four times as often as branded Internet videos. What’s more, Unruly found that five Vines are shared every second on Twitter—so the non-advertising world apparently digs the six-second videos, too.”
Full study here.
Twitter’s 1% Generates 20% of Tweets [from Marketing Charts]
“Among the highlights of the study was the revelation that the top 1% of Twitter users accounted for 20% of all tweets. Expanding that out a little, the top 5% accounted for 48% of all tweets and the top 15% accounted for 85%.”
With Lucky Sort creators on board, Twitter is officially a data company [from GigaOM; written by Derrick Harris]
“At Twitter, though, data is a slightly different beast than at other web companies. Twitter’s value lies largely in real-time data — topics can be peak, crest and all but vanish within a 48-hour window. This situation has hampered some of Twitter’s efforts to surface optimal search results, and it has spurred the decision to buy companies such as Backtype (for its streaming-processing Storm technology) and parallel-processing startup Ubalo.”
Which Social Networks are Growing Fastest Worldwide? [from eMarketer]
“Twitter came in fourth worldwide at 22% of internet users, but GlobalWebIndex also found that the microblogging service claims the title of fastest-growing social network. Between Q2 2012 and Q1 2013, active users of Twitter rose 42% globally, according to the study.”
New TweetReach Tracker 2.0 version rolls out tomorrow!
Tomorrow, Tuesday May 14th, all Trackers will roll over to the new 2.0 version. Don’t worry – all the same full-fidelity, real-time tracking is there as before – but we’ve totally rethought and redesigned the Tracker look and feel. It’s cleaner and simpler than the old version, and gives you all the information you need at a glance. A few more metrics have been added to your Tracker’s summary page, too!
Current TweetReach Pro subscribers have probably already noticed our new look already, which has been in beta for two months. Starting tomorrow it will be the default for all newly created and existing Trackers. Prefer the old look? You’ll still be able to access it for a few more weeks; use the “View old version” link in the top right corner of your logged-in screen until June 10th.
Got questions? Check out our helpdesk for more on the new Tracker, or let us know in the comments or via email.
And check out the new look by logging into your account, or looking at the screenshots below:
This Week in Social Analytics #49
It’s Friday, so that means it’s time for This Week in Social Analytics and our favorite posts of the past week in the world of measurement, analytics, and social media. See a great piece we missed? Link to it in the comments!
The Real-Time Marketing Drumbeat Gets Louder, as Agencies, Brands Sign On [from eMarketer]
“In a February 2012 survey by GolinHarris, consumers expressed more positive feelings about brands after they were exposed to real-time marketing than before the exposure. Nearly half said they would feel more positive, while 46% would be more interested in the brand. Likelihood to recommend, to consider making a purchase, and to try or buy all were also significantly higher after exposure to real-time marketing.”
7 Things Marketers Should Know About Tumblr [from Inc; written by Jeff Haden]
“Tumblr isn’t a blog platform like WordPress; it’s a social network that has a blogging platform.” says Neil Patel, co-founder of the Web analytics firm KISSmetrics. “The beautiful thing about Tumblr is that it makes it really easy to share your content with millions of Tumblr users… so you can get a big audience without spending a ton of money on marketing.”
Brands Are Giving Precious Ad Real Estate to Tumblr Like Facebook a few years ago [from AdWeek; written by Christopher Heine]
”Of course, there’s data behind these directions. Y Combinator partner Garry Tan made waves last winter when he released a study finding that among 13-to-25-year-olds, 59 percent regularly use Tumblr versus 54 percent regularly using Facebook.
According to comScore, Tumblr drew 37 million unique desktop and mobile visitors in March, up roughly 30 percent over the year-ago period. Tumblr users post memes, GIFs, videos and other content that they discover online or fashion themselves.
Last week, Tumblr announced a mobile ads product. . .’If [young people] are not using a smartphone, they are using an iPad,” Dooley said. And brands are tumbling toward them.’”
Top VC: Tumblr’s CEO Is Worth $200 Million Because He Ignored My Advice [from San Francisco Gate; written by Megan Rose Dickey]
“Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson says he used to bug Karp about adding a comments feature to Tumblr. Wilson wanted readers to be able to comment on Tumblr blogs, but Karp wouldn’t budge.”
Twitter Helps Us Stay In Touch (Especially When We’re Miles Apart), Says Study [from AllTwitter; written by Shea Bennett]
Perhaps not surprising, but there were some other interesting takeaways from the study, such as:
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The Indonesian capital Jakarta was the city where most tweets originated, accounting for 3 percent of all geotagged tweets
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New York and Sao Paulo tied for second place
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While people who are further apart tended to tweet each other on a more frequent basis, people who live closer together were more likely to be infrequent communicators on Twitter
Find the full study here.
Social Media Is the Best Way to Market an App, Study Finds [from Social Times; written by Devon Glenn]
“In AppsFlyer’s Mobile Advertising Measurement Q1-2013 report, analysts observed that using these social channels improved three important metrics for app marketing campaigns: user quality, conversion rates, and volume. App marketers in the study promoted their apps on social media through user invites and social app discovery platforms.”
26 Social Media Marketing Tips from the Pros [from Social Media Examiner; written by Debbie Hemley]
Broken down by Calls to Action, Content Strategy, and Email and Social Integration. Insights from Social Media Marketing World Conference.
And this week in Twitter oddities novelties:
Huggies TweetPee Device Tweets Parents When Their Baby Has Peed Their Diaper [from Laughing Squid; written by Rusty Blazenhoff]
Available in Brazil.
Tracking Instagram, Vine and more with TweetReach
TweetReach Quick Tip: Did you know you can track anything on Twitter? Even though Instagram has revoked its display cards (effectively removing in-Twitter viewing only), the hashtags and other keywords still show up, so you can effectively track an Instagram campaign that’s cross-posted to Twitter. Same goes for Vine posts, and anything else. You just need a hashtag, URL or keyword to find those posts on Twitter. Simply enter the hashtag or keyword into our search box, and you can find any tweets that include it, even if they originated on Instagram or Vine– or anywhere else.
Want more on using hashtags? Twitter has a best practices post on their Development Blog.
A SXSW 2013 shot from our Union Metrics Instagram account
Twitter’s first comedy festival: by the numbers
Twitter and comedy are no strangers, but last week saw something unprecedented in 140 characters or less: a comedy festival held entirely on Twitter. Comedy Central’s #ComedyFest pulled in some of the biggest names that already joke on Twitter daily, in addition to those established comedians completely new to the platform, such as Mel Brooks.
#ComedyFest gave us his first- and only- tweet.
The festival officially ran April 29-May 3, and featured a variety of events, ranging from moderated discussions on comedy, to individual comedians live-tweeting Ambien trips and television shows, and even included Twitter roasts. Reach for the week peaked on the first day, April 29:
4.7k tweets from 3.3k contributors reached 28.7 million unique Twitter accounts on that day, a nice chunk of the overall 17.6k tweets from 10.3k contributors over the entire week (a little under ¼ of total tweets and ⅓ of the total contributor amounts, respectively).
Mel Brooks’s first and only tweet was the second-most retweeted on April 29, second only to one from Workaholics actor Adam DeVine.
But one of the more interesting- and certainly the newest- uses of the platform during the festival was found at the bottom of the retweet list:
Cartoonist and writer Marlo Meekins used the new six-second video app Vine to create some intriguing and funny video segments during #ComedyFest, including this one of a cartoon cat running rampant across her legs and another of her throwing away the loading icon from the video. Clever and the result of careful work (one mishap while recording a Vine and you have to start over from the beginning) these show a fantastic potential future for comedic media.
While perhaps not an earth-shattering success, Twitter’s first comedy festival did see solid participation and was fantastic exposure for some up-and-coming comedians to be billed alongside the more established. While famous names might attract more followers, a space like Twitter evens the playing field when it comes to activities like live-tweeting a show via hashtag; every joke made with the hashtag ends up in the same place for interested people to scroll through, giving newbies a chance to get noticed and followed by fans and other comedians alike.
Overall, with the rise of multitasking on a second screen while watching TV in America, it makes sense to take entertainment where the people are already talking about it.
Join us for a Tumblr engagement webinar
Please join us this week for a webinar focused on learning more about Tumblr engagement. Kenyatta Cheese, Co-Founder of Everybody at Once, and Jenn Deering Davis, Co-Founder of Union Metrics, will sit down to talk about Tumblr, brands and how (and why) to foster engagement on the platform.
The webinar will be on Thursday, May 9th at 2:00 p.m. EDT.
Sign up here.
[Source: Tumblr staff blog]
Kenyatta is part of Everybody at Once, a company working on audience development and social strategy for media, entertainment, and sports. You may have seen his work on the very popular Doctor Who Tumblr for BBC America.
Jenn is co-founder and Chief Customer Officer of Union Metrics, the company that makes Tumblr’s preferred analytics application. Jenn holds a PhD in Organizational Communication & Technology from UT Austin.
During the webinar, Kenyatta and Jenn will talk about what goes into a successful Tumblr campaign, how to measure engagement, improve your content, and more. And we’ll share a coupon code for a month-long free trial of Union Metrics for Tumblr analytics at the end.
See you next week!
This Week in Social Analytics #48
It’s Friday, so that means it’s time for This Week in Social Analytics and our favorite posts of the past week in the world of measurement, analytics, and social media. See a great piece we missed? Link to it in the comments!
Positive Brand Tweets are Four Times More Effective Than Non-Tweet Ads [from Fast Company; written by Kit Eaton]
“For example, research by Deloitte suggests that a positive-message tweet can be four times more effective at getting a consumer to engage with a brand (hence, driving sales) than a non-Twitter advertisement.”
More details in this video.
Social media attracts/drives purchases for moms [from Marketing Charts]
“Mothers who are very active on social networks (defined as the top 20% of social networking mothers aged 18-49) are indeed active online purchasers. Compared to the general online adult population, they’re 96% more likely to have made an online food and beverage purchase, 73% more likely to have spent on movies and videos, 61% more likely to have bought apparel, and 82% more likely to have made an online purchase in the toys and games category.”
Is online privacy over? Findings from the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future show Millennials embrace a new online reality [from USC Annenberg News]
“The survey, conducted by the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future and Bovitz Inc., reveals a “Millennial Rift” — distinct differences in online behavior and core values among Millennials (ages 18-34) compared to other users, many of whom are only a few years older. Millennials, the survey found, report more willingness to allow access to their personal data or web behavior and a greater interest in cooperating with Internet businesses — as long as they receive tangible benefits in return (view infographic breakdown).”
Twitter Speaks, Markets Listen, and Fears Rise [from The New York Times; written by Amy Chozick and Nicole Perlroth]
“Could the global economy hinge on 140 characters?”
Twitter Strikes Major Advertising Deal For Social TV [from Viral Blog; written by Igor Beuker]
“In the Financial Times president of global revenue Adam Bain stated: “’We think that the industry had been focused in the wrong area, which was making a decision between Twitter and TV. That’s not what we believe. Twitter is a bridge.’”
Social TV: Facebook Vs. Twitter Vs. Tumblr [from AllFacebook; written by Will M]
“Most speakers agreed that Facebook’s social TV data is richer than what can be found on Twitter. Tumblr Entertainment Evangelist David Hayes explained social platforms for TV this way.
- Twitter is where people say they are watching a show.
- Facebook is where people say why they are watching a show.
- Tumblr is where people express themselves by creating great content about a show.”
6 Tips to Start Creating Content on Tumblr [from Business2Community; written by Adrienne Erin]
“Once you adapt to this new format, Tumblr can be a powerful content creation (and content curation) tool that increases engagement, website traffic, and inbound leads. Here are six tips that will help you get started with content marketing on Tumblr.”
Tumblr CEO says average cost of ad campaign tops six figures [from CNET; written by Shara Tibken]
“‘What we’re doing is giving advertisers space on a canvas to make the kinds of ads that win awards,’ Karp said. ‘That kind of advertising doesn’t have a place on the Web today…You can’t make an ad that anybody even remembers on Twitter or Facebook today.’”
How to measure a Twitter campaign with TweetReach
You’ve planned out your Twitter campaign; you’ve strategized and you’re ready to launch. Now, how to measure the impact of those tweet? (You want solid numbers that reflect all of your hard work, after all.) You have several options with TweetReach, depending on your budget and time.
Twitter measurement doesn’t have to be a bear. [Image courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Gallery]
Use our free snapshot reports as soon as you launch your campaign, and capture information at the end of every day. Do it ASAP to get the best info – tweets are only available for a few days. No account is required, but you can create one to save your reports- extra backups never hurt! Are you getting more participation than anticipated? Purchase a full report and capture up to 1500 tweets about your campaign. Just 20 bucks.
I want to set up everything once, not have to worry about capturing data every day.
Set up an ongoing, real-time TweetReach Pro Tracker and it will capture all your results from the beginning of your campaign to the end. And no 1500-tweet limit, so it’s great for larger conversations. Each Tracker monitors up to fifteen search queries, so you can track all iterations of your campaign hashtags (hey, people make spelling mistakes!) and keywords. You can later edit your Trackers once they’ve started, if you see participants start using their own hashtags or other keywords you also want to track.
What if I want to go back at the end and capture data for something I missed initially?
Say you notice halfway through your campaign that participants have created their own extra hashtag or started using keywords you didn’t anticipate, and you want to capture that data. Or maybe you didn’t remember to set up tracking in advance, or you just got an analytics budget. We can access any older tweets with our premium historical analytics. No matter how far back or how many tweets, we can get to anything from Twitter’s full archive, all the way back to March 2006.
Have you used TweetReach to track a campaign? How’d it go? Tell us about it in the comments!
This Week in Social Analytics #47
It’s Friday, so that means it’s time for This Week in Social Analytics and our favorite posts of the past week in the world of measurement, analytics, and social media. See a great piece we missed? Link to it in the comments!
Twitter does drive sales says Deloitte study [from MediaWeek; written by Gordon MacMillan]
“Overall, the study found that a 30% increase in positive tweets is four times more effective in driving sales than a 30% increase in traditional above-the-line advertising, and the effect is most pronounced when it comes to sports games.”
Four Studies on the Adoption of Social Media by Financial Advisors and Investors [from Social Media Today; written by Augie Ray]
“The time has come to look at the data and discard groundless and dangerous beliefs about social media. Here are four recent studies that demonstrate social media has a key place in FinServ strategies”
A Comedy Show That Comes via a Hashtag [from The New York Times; written by Amy Chozick]
“The festival will take place almost entirely on Twitter, with comedians posting video snippets of routines and round tables and posting jokes using the hashtag #ComedyFest.”
Twitter Partnership With Fuse Flips Social TV Scenario, Placing Twitter In The Driver’s Seat [from All Twitter; written by Mary C. Long]
“Citing Twitter’s amazing connection with millennials and its standing of the place ‘where there world unfolds,’ Twitter plans to ‘reinvent television’ by partnering with #Trending10, the first tv program sourced from real-time Twitter conversations.”
How Your Branded Content Can Thrive on Tumblr [from Business2Community; written by Stephen Jeske]
“Comscore confirms that Tumblr is the No. 2 social platform — right behind Facebook — in terms of visitor engagement. Moreover, Tumblr is highly popular among internet users and is ranked by Quantcast as one of the top 15 sites in the United States, making it an excellent platform for branded content efforts.”
How Tumblr Forces Advertisers to Get Creative [from MIT Technology; written by David Zax]
“Editorial has won in a sense: the idea that advertising, like editorial content, must be interesting, has won. You can’t just advertise next to someone else’s Tumblr. You’ve got to create a Tumblr of your own.”
Civic Engagement and Social Networks [from Pew Research]
“Our latest Internet report finds that the well-educated and the well-off are more likely than others to participate in civic life online – just as they have always been more likely to be active in politics and community affairs offline.”
You can also find Political Engagement on Social Networking Sites in the same report:
And one more from Pew:
TV Was the Top Source of Information on Boston Attacks
“Television was far-and-away the most widely-used source of information about the bombing and its aftermath; 80% of Americans followed the story on TV. About half (49%) say they kept up with news and information online or on a mobile device, and 38% followed the story on the radio. Only 29% say they kept up with the story in newspapers, about the same number (26%) tracked the story on social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter.”
Old and new “print” media were followed at about the same rate.
How to vet information on Twitter
Image courtesy State Library of Queensland, Australia
When news breaks, it now often breaks on Twitter. In the throes of a national or international emergency or other breaking news, a lot of information comes pouring in quickly. Unfortunately, there is always bad information mixed in with the good. Here are some tips for making sure information is solid before you act on it, or choose to share it with others:
- First: check the source. Is it a reputable news publication (The New York Times), or is it a publication known for publishing joke content (The Onion), or pushing out anything they think will get the most views (The National Enquirer)? If you don’t know, don’t act on it or retweet it.
- Take everything with a grain of salt. Even the biggest publications feel pressure to keep everyone updated, especially via social media, so they may share information that isn’t confirmed with authorities yet, or has been misinterpreted.
- On that note, look for retractions or updates on claims, and remember that “allegedly”, “reportedly” or “hearing reports” doesn’t mean something has been confirmed. “Sources say” isn’t solid if you don’t know who the sources are.
- Search hashtags to find repeated links and information; this can often show you the origination of a claim so you can see if it’s reliable. When breaking news is happening, hashtags will likely flood your feed and start trending. If they don’t, see which hashtags trusted publications are using, then search those.
- News outlets will likely tell you which reporters they have in the area, or will confirm information from people who are tweeting on the ground.
- Check Snopes. They quickly list and categorize anything that might be an unfounded conspiracy theory, or that needs confirmation. Sometimes old fake photographs resurface too, as these did during Hurricane Sandy in the fall of 2012.
- Finally, be cautious of scams. While the best parts of humanity will reach out to help during a natural disaster or other tragedy, others will try to profit by creating false charities or funds. Verify before you donate with sources like Charity Navigator.
If you do share something that turns out to be false or unverified, say so and commit to sharing only the best information moving forward. Consider just listening until the situation becomes clearer, then use Twitter and other social media to see how you can help, no matter where you are.