Twitter

How much IS too much?

24th January 2017 by Alan Leave a Comment

How do you know if you are over-doing it with the tweets…?

The story of Australian Jade Ruthven, and the letter she received from her ‘friends’ regarding her supposed over-posting of her tiny daughter’s progress on Facebook saw many people pose the question, can you really post too much on social media? Where is the cut-off point, if there is one? Who decides when it is too much?

The context

Jade Ruthven’s case is a personal one, as opposed to business which is what we address in this article but the letter she received, a copy of which subsequently went viral across the globe, produced a riot of opinions. Interestingly, they all seemed in favour of Ms. Ruthven but the crux of the matter was this – is it possible to post too much and give your audience too much of a good thing? Certainly friends of Ms. Ruthven seem to think so.

How much is too much, in relation to your business and sharing information, news, articles and general updates on social media?

How long is a piece of string?

There are so many questions, so many variables and factors that it can seem almost impossible to answer such a question. No doubt someone, somewhere is working on a magic equation right now but, until that magic formula drops in your inbox, we have scoured the Internet and come up with 5 indicators that you are tweeting and posting just about the right amount of times, not too much and not too little.

Indicator 1: REACTION

OK, you post a tweet, update your status and hit the send button… then you do it again… and then again but it may be that this is not actually doing your business much good.

The question you need to be asking is how is the audience reacting to your tweets etc.? Are you tweets and updates echoing, or just shouting out the once?

What you are looking for are re-tweets, shares, likes, favourites, pins and such like, all indicators that your audience is with you, reading you and understanding you?

If this isn’t happening…

… your followers are either jaded, with an over-kill of tweets and posts or, you are talking to the wrong people.

Indicator 2: the number of followers is growing steadily…

… and naturally. All too often, you will see accounts pop up that tell you for “$5 you can have 30,000 new followers within 24 hours” or other ludicrous claims. Think quality, rather than quantity.

If your content is spammy and overdone, people stop following. If you don’t tweet or update, people will stop following but, if they like what you do, they will share and re-tweet; their followers will see it and from those followers you may get a handful of people following you.

It is the way that social media works; the clue is in the name – “social”. Be social and appropriate and people will follow you. Your audience needs to grow naturally, and not be forced with sill $5 offers.

Indicator 3: the RIGHT people are responding

This is where you are effectively asking for a favour or two from the high flyers in your industry. A great example is a fledgling furniture company with a unique product – creating furniture from old wine barrels. They tweet, including the high flyers such as @Kevin_McCloud and he re-tweets etc. and the ball starts rolling.

You don’t have to look for just the famous celebrities, but well-known ‘icons’ within your line of business. Getting this type of response can create a much-needed reaction for your business.

Indicator 4: advertising vs. conversation

There is no right or wrong when it comes to how you use social media in terms of advertising and/or conversation with employees, but the response you get – and how you subsequently respond – will vary… or it should.

Some businesses do use their Twitter feed, for example, as an advertising or marketing space; in this, overdo it with hundreds of tweets a day gets a bit boring, hence people stop following.

However, if you are indulging in conversation with clients, customers and fans, then you can get away with tweeting or posting more. However, unless you have the time, energy and person to tweet and post all of the time, you could possibly never get on with anything useful, ever again.

Indicator 5: what the dashboard says

For those with a serious nature behind their social media presence, it pays to tap into the power of platforms such as Hootsuite or BufferApp. The premium or business services of these platforms allows you to connect all your social media presence together in one place.

You can post the same thing across all your platforms, or lead a campaign on just one to up the followers and shares. Likewise, you can also see from various streams how well your accounts are doing and what real results you are reaping.

In fact, you can see forming before your very eyes your magic formula as to how many tweets and posts are too much, too little or just right.

What do you think is the optimum number of tweets for a business to send in a day? What about other social media platforms?

The Marriage of Twitter and FourSquare

7th April 2015 by Alan Leave a Comment

March 2015 saw an announcement from Twitter that they will partner with Foursquare to pinpoint ‘location tagging in tweets’. But, what does this mean for you and your business… if anything at all?

Let’s examine the facts…

Recently, we have looked at how local business, who rely on local customers can harness the global power of social media for their business. There are times, however, when appealing to the local population is the driving force behind a business and letting people know where you are is one thing, but your customers tagging their location is another game entirely.

We have all seen the tweets, status updates and the like that advertise to the world where someone is enjoying *lunch/shopping/white water rafting/car servicing/haircut/everything (* delete as appropriate).

This newly announced partnership between Twitter and Foursquare could essentially mean that specific landmarks, businesses and other points of interest could be tagged.

Can’t we do that already?

Kind of. All it takes is a quick sign in to your Twitter, announce you are enjoying the hospitality and creative, strategic thinking @LocallyHQ and the world knows where you are… or does it?

This partnership of geotagging between these two platforms is being rolled out across the US and Canada in these next few weeks, with other ‘additional markets’, as Twitter called them, to follow.

A partnership based on common sense

It is, according to a variety of industry experts, a marriage made in heaven. Foursquare has seen to be struggling of late, with a large number of users migrating to its spin off app, called Swarm.

Twitter, on the other hand, is always looking to improve user engagement; in a conference earlier on in the year, they announced they had run a ‘test’, sending tweets to users based on where they were at the time. The hard data from this experiment was that users were more likely to open their account within 30 days than those who were not sent ‘geo-tagged’ tweets.

What or who is Foursquare?

Foursquare is a company that produces two apps to guide in you a world “full of amazing experiences”, a direct quote….

Foursquare – launched in 2009, this app is intelligent in that it realises that all out tastes are different, so why produce the same search results? Based on the places you go/have been and the reviews etc. you give them, the app suggest new places that they it thinks you will like (based on this past data).
Swarm –this is the same app essentially but in real time; it is the fastest and easiest way, or so say Foursquare, for you and your friends to ‘keep up and meet up’.

Backed by a variety of investors, some huge names and individuals they call Angel Investors, the numbers behind these apps is quite staggering;

Community – More than 55 million users worldwide with over 6 billion check-ins, millions of which are made every day; however, finding the number of UK users of either app is a tough number to find. Stabbing in the dark, some people the number could be anything up to 5 million. This partnership between Foursquare and Twitter, a social media platform with a strong UK base, they are probably hoping or betting on the fact that their UK numbers (along with the rest of the world population of users) will significantly increase.
Businesses – more than 1.9 million businesses have claimed their location on the apps. A bit like filling in those details on Yell.com, the idea is that you control your business information and input. Clearly worth a punt, if your business is essentially local and fixed.
Employees – around 170 apparently, with headquarters in New York and offices in an Francisco and London

A start-up unicorn?

Those who spend their lives immersed in the stock exchange have called Foursquare a ‘start-up unicorn’ or, it has the potential to be one.

This means that as a new business, it could have the ability to break the $1billion value bench mark in in its first few years of trading. And it seems that once again, as a business, it has multiple ways that it can do this.

Is this a partnership worth following?

It could be.

Twitter is a social media platform that is incredibly popular. Facebook has a 5 year head start over Twitter, so boast bigger numbers but, the power of Twitter’s reach is still strong. Plus, its acquisition of Cardspring in the summer of 2014 means that soon it could be accepting payments online, as well as Twitter businesses being able to offer discounts online that can also be applied in store.

And it seems that Twitter has also become the leader in terms of real time news and breaking stories, as shown by recent events over in the US. With the UK election looming large, its newsfeed was awash with comments and discussion relating to the big 7 leader debate from only last week.

It is certainly a social media platform that packs punch when it comes to authority and credibility; the fall out of Jeremy Clarkson, BBC Top Gear and the now infamous ‘fracas’ featured heavily across the platform but without drowning out other news stories. Again, as quick as tweets appeared, they would disappear down the newsfeed.

Worth keeping an eye…?

We think so yes, as for those businesses with a high street presence or location, it could be a great way to get your business out there.

BUT, it depends on how popular Foursquare continues to become in the UK. If predictions and forecasts are anything to go by, it linking with Twitter could be the upward bounce that it needs. Since it created the off-shoot Swarm, it has given off the impression of an app struggling to not only grow in the crowded app market place, but maintain its position.

There again, is your local, online business ready to take on this new challenge?

Social media, statistics and decisions – Part 2

13th February 2015 by Alan Leave a Comment

In part 1 of what statistics about social media usage can mean to us, as a business, we focused mainly on data and figures that related to Twitter. Knowing the group you and your followers could fall in, as well as when the best times to tweet are, can make your presence on this real time platform work a little harder for you.

In part 2, we carry on looking at social media platforms, identifying statistics for Facebook and a little nod to Pinterest.

And so, what do statistics on Facebook usage teach us?

The favourite, most crowded day of the week when it comes to posts is…. (drum roll please!)

FRIDAY!

Don’t we all love Friday?! The day where we can look back at the week, revel in our accomplishments and maybe plan the weekend… and this more relaxed approach on a Friday may actually mean that we feel more compelled to post a variety of statuses.

With over 225 billion posts analysed as part of this piece of research, we were quite impressed initially but then we looked at the statistics again and came to the same conclusion, but with an additional observation.

The research we came across was presented in a lovely bar graph and Friday was the busiest day for statuses, posts and the like BUT, but a gnat’s whisker. What we learnt from this research was that every day on Facebook was, to be honest, fairly crowded and so dropping a status onto the platform every now and then was probably going to be lost without a trace.

Our take on this statistic?

We always knew Facebook was busy, with statuses and posts having a seconds of air time before it is swamped by something else. Every day is busy and so if Facebook is one of your preferred social media then you need to be constant and consistent with your use of it. Friday, however, seemed the day where shares and likes peaked; some social media experts suggest keeping your better stuff until the end of the week. We think a little frivolity on a Friday never hurt anyone…

Photos work every time on Facebook…

…or so the statistics say. We already know that sharing appropriate visual content, linked with your brand or business is a great way of snagging some much needed eye ball time however, what did take us by surprise was the magnitude of photo-led content.

If you really truly want your posts and statuses shared and liked on this social media platform, then you need to include a photo… take a look at the stats:

In 2014, the most shared posts on Facebook across the globe looked like this…

87% shared had a photo attached to it
4% had a link
4% had an album
3% a video
2% was the just the status itself

Our take on this statistic?

We always knew that photos and graphics were powerful but were not aware of how powerful until we saw this chunk of data. What it doesn’t tell us, however, is how many of these shares are from personal or company accounts, and this may differ.

However, the fact that photos work cannot be avoided but always exercise caution, making sure the photo or image you are using is not only connected or related to your brand, but also appropriate for wider sharing. Coveting favour through controversy is probably best left to those with celebrity status and a team of lawyers on hand.

The social media platforms that drive the most ‘traffic’

We have all been coached over the years to think of social media sites as means of engaging customers and fans, thereby increasing the possibility of these people accessing and using a website.

With so many social media platforms out there, coupled with our desire to be the best, popular and successful, we can sometimes spread our brand a little too thin across everything, everywhere. However, from a bunch of statistics released by Shareaholic, it seems that social media driven traffic splits in to two categories: quantity and quality.

If quantity is what you are after, you need to get your brand on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. Simple.

If however, you want a decent conversation or are looking to seriously engage new buyers or customers, then look at the lower performing sites. In terms of time on a website, pages per visit examined by a customer and bounce rate, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn won hands down every time.

Our take on this statistic?

Just like we have hinted at before, you need to be involved in the ‘right’ social media for you and your brand. Facebook and Twitter are the big hitters in terms of numbers, and think about joining Pinterest too. If, however, you are interested in more ‘quality’ targeted traffic then the other social media sites may suit you better.

Overall, a broad social media strategy is required… IF you have the time and means to pull it off (and there is lies the problem for so many small, online and local businesses).

Figure out what is good engagement

Time for some real number crunching!

Social media of all kind is about engagement; it is about people feeding back to you, you feeding back to them, having a conversation, posting reviews… you get the idea.

Many moons ago, when Facebook was at its highest peak, the standard for social engagement statistics (and what constituted success), was marked; but, as other social media sites have come along and our tastes have changed, experts on social media marketing and reach have spent some time scratching their heads, pondering what makes for successful engagement NOW.

If you chase statistics as part of your social media engagement and you really need to know the answer, then it depends on how many fans you have. Looking at Facebook, as an example…

If you have between 1 and 9,999 fans on Facebook, each post should have 28 interactions
10,000 to 99,999 fans, you should expect 118 interactions per post
And, with over 100,000 to half a million fans, there should be a minimum of 385 interactions per post

In other words, the bigger you are on social media and the more you grow, the busier your accounts should be.

Our take on this statistic?

Pretty useless really, but those who are very serious about the whole social media thing, growing their reach and engagement statistics etc., these statistics could be a useful bench mark. We suggest that engaging your buyers in meaningful, helpful and informative posts is more important reaching benchmarks that do very little…

Get pinning!

If you enjoy the visual aspect of engagement, then Pinterest is one social media platform that is becoming increasingly popular; if you haven’t used it or come across it yet, take a look at how to use it and what it could offer your business.

Like other platforms, there are certain days that seem to hold the key when it comes to ‘categories of engagement’; on Monday, Fitness seems to be popular (after the sludge of the weekend…?). Tuesday represents the day technology pins are popular, Wednesday pins are attached to inspirational quotes, Thursday is fashion day and Friday is humorous stuff (there’s what weekend link again!). The weekend pins are travel and food and crafts, all hobby and social based.

Our take on this statistic… and all the others?

This proves what we have been thinking for some time and that is that social media is a beast worth taming, but in a way that works for you and your business, and not because you think you should be on that platform. The ‘everyone else is doing it’ seems to no longer work.

Our take would be this;

Take a look at some of these statistics and discard what you think is irrelevant or not appropriate for your business. If you are heading for cult status, then get posting with images on Facebook and Twitter but, if you are growing your engagement, preparing for a marathon rather than a spring, then take a look at the less ‘mass media’ approach.

But, in all cases, you need to be confident in your use of the platform so our ‘advice’ is simple – start small, with one or two social media platforms at most, become an expert on these and stick to them, if they work…

Social media, statistics and decisions – Part 1

11th February 2015 by Alan Leave a Comment

Understanding all three components is somewhat essential we feel but unless you have a finely tuned analytical mind, it can be difficult to decipher the good, the bad and the ugly. As the 19^th Century British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli said,

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”

And so when we came across a shovel load of research, data and statistics about social media, we set our minds to decoding it all, so that you, our prized blog readers could delight and revel in knowing you are doing something right, an important wheel in the social media revolution and tweak those areas that may need some additional work.

We have come across 10 pieces of what we think are fascinating facts, data and statistics about how we and our customers use social media platforms; some are surprising and some results predictable and yet, we stick to what we think are tried, tested and successful methods.

In part 1, we look at 5 statistics and data from surveys, and in part 2 to be published soon, we take a look at another 5. If you use Twitter for your business, you really do need to read on!

What did we learn…?

Who favourites, mentions and re-Tweets your Tweets are NOT who you think

Twitter is all about gaining followers; with a sprinkling of re-Tweets and a few ‘favourites’, your Tweets could be seen by more eyeballs across the globe than in a high street optician’s chain. Cock-a-hoop when we get these weekly stats from statistic and data crunching apps like SumAll, we pay no more attention than this…

… but something more formidable lurks within these re-tweets. Many of us, in the same way that brand snobbery exists when we go shopping for new trainers, will hanker after the re-tweet or the ‘favourite’ from a ‘power user’; in other words, some Tweeters may hanker after the BIG names out there but recent stats show that 91% of mentions come from people with less followers.

Crestfallen, we limp away from Twitter, deflated and defeated… and yet, if you have 3 mentions from people with 500 followers each, that’s another 1,500 pairs of eyeballs… and if they re-tweet it, then are thousands of more eyeballs…

Our take on this statistic?

Cherish every re-Tweet and make sure you enjoy the company of the little guy on twitter for they are just as powerful and valuable as the big boys.

Twitter and communication networks

This is slightly more technical and psychological in application but, once you have the idea, it could be valuable information to have.

Twitter is about conversations and there is some rather interesting research from the Pew Research Centre and the Social Media Research Foundation (we didn’t know they existed either!) that suggests within these conversations there are ‘6 distinct communication networks’…

Divided – much like life, we disagree and in most cases, we rarely seek out the company of people who do not agree with us. This research suggests that Twitter is no different and that there are two, polarised groups on Twitter with different or opposing groups, and never the twain shall meet. Politics is listed as one of the most divisive topics of conversation…
Unified – the research suggests there are up to 6 large groups of people who with a topic as the means of unifying them. These tight crowds of people can be professionals, hobby groups etc.
Fragmented – these clusters tend to be formed around celebrities and brands, with discussions being polarised, a mass amount of information and opinions are generated and shared, but with groups rarely agreeing. Think of this as many small groups across Twitter discussing the latest popular subject or topics…
Clustered – these groups tend to cluster in small the medium sized groups, with the research finding that the majority of conversations being around the latest news stories. Hence global news events can generate content and discussion
In-hub and spoke – think of this as one person standing in the middle of a large group; this person speaks, the surrounding group, hanging on each and every word, then go on to re-tweet every bit of detail. In many cases, the members of this outward ‘spokes’ tend to converse and share with each other too. The fans of the brand look IN on the brand…
Out-hub and spoke – this is where the above groups is reversed, with the brand or business responding to the comments and questions of their customers on Twitter. This creates outward ‘spokes’, unlike number five which is where the information is fed inward. in other words, one brand has many spokes reaching OUT to consumers.

Our take on this statistic…?

Knowing where your brand fits in with these groups can help to understand why you sometimes have a huge amount of engagement with customers but, then it falls away. We find that many of our clients use Twitter as a way of offering customer support but, their customer support strategy makes no mention of this…

Written word verses Visuals

Every year, the Social Media Examiner conducts a survey of over 3,000 marketers and their most recent survey produced rather interesting result…

Although there has been a lot of talk about visuals – graphics, vines, video etc. – it sees that 58% of these 3,000+ marketers are saying that the written word trumps the visual aspect each and every time. Coming in second – way behind on 19% – are graphics such as infographics, followed by videos. Sharing other people’s content also figured in the survey with audio content being in last place.

Our take on this statistic…?

We have said many, many times before that original written content that oozes quality, authority, brand awareness and leadership on a range issues places you far more firmly at the centre of things on social media. Keep in mind the power of storytelling too…

Twitter and response times

Twitter is a great social media for many different kinds of businesses and brands BUT, there is something that you should be acutely aware of…

Twitter is essentially seen by consumers are a real-time platform; in other words, they comment and you respond… but not at your leisure. It turns out from a survey carried by a technology firm that customers have firm opinions about the time a company takes in responding to them.

But, if you think that responding in an hour is a close-shave for your business, you need to know that customers who contact you via Twitter with a complaints actually expect an almost instant response.

Our take on this statistic…

You MUST take your responsibility on social media seriously; if not, you could do more damage than good. If you are using Twitter as part of your customer service strategy, then you need to be hot-to-trot when it comes to responding.

However, if you are a small, micro or start up business, manning the barricades can 24 hours a day can turn into a monster task. It can be managed however, but always be conscious and aware that your customers have high expectations and your response needs to fit within this high standard.

Twitter and night owls

And finally, in this first part of social media, statistics and decisions, we look at data that suggests the best of time of posting and re-tweeting. If you have the time and inclination (as well as the right software!), you too can monitor a bunch of tweets – about 1.7 million, like TrackMavern did to create a wonderful looking bar graph that tells us one thing… the best times to re-tweet is between 9pm and midnight.

Do you know what Late-Night Infomercial Effect is? This is sharing content at a time when the share volume is lower, so your content stands out more. In terms of the best day, the same bit of number-crunching found that Sunday was also the best to tweet.

Our take on this statistic…

Why not try out this after-hours theory on Twitter by setting your tweet schedule for between 9pm and midnight? The same survey also suggested that more re-tweets came from Tweets that has exclamation marks and capital letters in them…

COME BACK AND READ PART 2 SOON! #makingtherigthsocialmediadecisions

Twitter, CardSpring, your local business and the future of e-commerce

22nd August 2014 by Alan Leave a Comment

July 2014 was the month that it was announced that Twitter had acquired CardSpring (https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/17/twitter-cardspring/) a platform that could eventually be incredibly useful for those using Twitter as a means of pulling in new customers, and coveting repeat custom too.

Never heard of CardSpring?

That’s OK as it has not reached the UK yet, and may not for some time but the fact that Twitter has acquired it, along with an insight of how it could be used, is always worth keeping an eye on.

After all, more and more online, local companies are finding that they need to compete wider for new custom and repeat custom. Online and offline marketing strategies should be address the how and when you target potential customers, as well as practical activities and tools with stuff like reductions/sales, money off offers, coupons and gift vouchers or cards.

What is CardSpring?

In its current format it is a program that connects your social media promotions with card-linked promotions.

Card-linked promotions are… promotions from a local business that customer can connect or link to with their debit or credit card. They find these through online ads and when they buy from your store (either online or in-shop), they will automatically get this discount or promotion as the program recognises their card details.

Could it work for your local business…? Yes, as it creates online promotions that can be used in-store, but can also track these card-linked purchases, so you can see what is and what is not working, as well as how many repeat visits people make. And, you would have complete control over where and who will advertise your card-linked promotions.

The program has been used in America to great success, with local businesses not needing to train their staff on a new payment system or change their point-of-sale card merchant etc.; in fact, it is a completely seamless program.

Which means…?

OK, let’s say you decided via Twitter, for example, to offer 10% to all your followers when ordering a bunch of flowers online from your website. You may give them a code to input at the trolley cart bit that knocks off this 10%.

You may offer the same discount to people who use Facebook and the other social media sites you use. At the same time, you run a loyalty card scheme for your online shoppers too…

And it call starts to get a bit confusing so when you sit and look at your sales figures, wanting to know who accessed which offer from which online platform, it is information that is almost nonsensical.

(Why do you need to know that information anyway? Because it gives you an idea of what if working where, as well as where you are pulling in customers from. If you are getting zilch customers from Facebook, should you be adding something else? Or maybe the time has come to look at other apps and social media… remember one of the golden rules of your marketing strategy: review what IS and what IS NOT working!)

Back to CardSpring – this clever piece of kit allows you to set up digital coupons, rewards, loyalty programmes via various social media sites that can be card-linked; when people buy, and you get the information that you need: where they found you and what offer they have taken advantage of.

Better still, it is real time so when the consumer buys a product (in other words, they swipe their card to make a purchase), you get told and you can instantly interact with that customer! And we all know, that customers love a conversation with the people they buy from, even online.

Twitter has bought it and they are going to use it… but it might not be here for a while but when it does hit UK shores, you can be some of the first businesses to try it out!

Storing information

Increasingly, people are able to securely store information such as credit or debit card details online and possibly, one advance now that Twitter has acquired CardSpring is that customers could file their details with Twitter, and on linking their card to certain merchants and local businesses, they will automatically receive the discount or promotion on offer.

Twitter and CardSpring: the future for online commerce?

Possibly, as Twitter has one major advantage over all other social media platforms and that is the re-tweet. Whilst others shy away from curating or repeating information, Twitter’s very existence relies on circulating information, adding new in to the mix too. The re-tweet pushes out the message to a whole new audience and, if more than one person, does it the reach of the tweet can be astronomical.

So your consumers could be offered a discount in a tweet from you; they register their card details and when they buy – and this is the clever and useful bit for local business – either online or offline (in your shop, for example!), this discount is still applied!

You get an analytics report and you now have another string to your selling bow.

Backed by big investors, it is no surprise that CardSpring has developed the way it has, and courted the popularity it has and was only a matter of time before some snapped it up. Twitter could be playing a blinder here, especially as it connects the online and offline commerce experience and marketing tactics.

And in this competitive global market even local companies operate in, a professional quality program such as this, could be the thing we have been looking for…