Cool stuff I was readingJanuary 9th toJanuary 12th:
Logic+Emotion: Please Help Us Help Daniela’s Family -
ivan krsti� · code culture » How Porsche hacked the financial system and made a killing - How Porsche hacked the financial system and made a killing
Despite being as good as dyslexic when it comes to numbers; monitoring, metrics and analytics are massively interesting topics to me, especially when talking to so many clients who express an interest in social media and want to know one thing:
What is the ROI?
This is at best a challenging question. At worst, it can make us look foolish, as if Social Media is a passing fad with little concrete foundations or measurements.
Now, as I have written before, bringing the success of social media activity down to one metric is [feel free to insert an appropriate personal analogy for measuring the immeasurable here], so the more metrics we DO have at our disposal to understand the conversations taking place, the better.
With Twitter attracting almost 3 million users who (and according to Benedikt, post an average of 10 posts per day) there is an enormous amount of conversations taking place. So how do you get any measure of what you are doing and who you are and aren’t talking to - enter Jason’s fantastic video of Benedikt’s Twitter Friends - a tool that allows you to see essentially, who you interact with most, and what habits you use on Twitter.
The Power is in The Networks
As per the video, it’s pretty much widely accepted that Twitter consists of 3 main types of networks (some people say 4)
Your network - the network of people you follow and who follow you
Your network’s network - those people is following your followers
The @ crowd - the people you reply to most (who may not in fact be following you, but with whom you converse the most)
So what if we could dig deeper into these networks to find something of value? If we could see into our networks, would we behave differently, use different language, would we share more, link less, re-tweet less (which wouldn’t be such a bad thing for some people)?
Take a look at the list below and see what Twitter Friend measures:
Size of relevant net (outgoing) : Number of Twitter users, the submitted Twitter user replied to more than once the last 30 days
Size of relevant net (incoming) : Number of Twitter users that replied to the submitted Twitter user more than once within the last 30 days
Fans : Number of Twitter users that replied to a user within the last 30 days
Stickiness : Number of people who replied at least twice / total number of replying users
Twitter Rank : This is the position of the submitted Twitter user in the ranking of Twitterers receiving the most replies
Ratio of outgoing to incoming contacts
Overlap of outgoing and incoming net
Tweets sent / day 50 Average
Follow cost in milliscobles
Replies sent / day
Conversation Quotient (CQ) : Share of Tweets by the submitted Twitter user that were replies
Conversational Rank
Replies received / day
Links posted by the submitted Twitter / day
Link Quotient (LQ) : Share of Tweets by the submitted Twitter that included links
Replies with Links by the submitted Twitter user’s friends / day
Link per friend
Woah!
Here’s my analysis: who I most talk to.
The split of my activity:
And finally, my stats:
Overwhelming some might say, but this provides a REAL boon for brands operating on Twitter (and leads to my point at the top about finding metrics which can help determine an ROI or at the very least provide sound metrics on which to monitor branded Twitter activity).
So what if you were a brand on Twitter. How could you use this kind of tool to understand your behaviour in the market?
Would understanding that you spend 60% of yor time talking to only 10 influencers change your habits if you are a global brand? What would happen if you noticed that you never re-tweeted people who were talking most favourably about you? Would you talk to them more, re-tweet them more?
Let’s take a look at 2 big brands to see what their behaviour looks like to see where their opportunities lay:
In Starbuck’s case, the most glaring problem is the lack of @replies. It is worrying that a brand which craves our feedback through mystarbucksidea, has so few outbound comments to punters on Twitter - especially when you see how high its Twitter Rank and conversation quotient is.
Looking at Dell Outlet, there is no surprises that their link quotient is high, their @replies is low, their re-tweet quotient is low. They are a vehicle for dumping links of special offers onto Twitter with as little fuss or involvement as possible - who’s to say it is right or wrong, but $1m+ dollars can’t be wrong.
Benedikt, you’ve done the world of measurement a great service here, Jason, thanks for the video!
It’s interesting to see how times change. One of Stephen’s most popular posts of last year was about how the media and pr industries are yet to be convinced by the social media release, then along comes this fantastic video from webitpt, now Realwire (one of the earlier developers in the uk of a social media release tool worth talking about).
The video below is not only clear and looks great, but is one of the clearest explanations of the benefits of the social media release tool. Enjoy and be educated!
The IAB Social Media Handbook - Below is an introductory ebook about Social Media…what it is, how you can get started. They’ve made a fairly good stab at covering all the important areas and pointers about what to look out for. I’d love to be involved in the next version, I like to think there’s a fair bit I could add to what is already there, so Amy…do get in touch!
Some Twitter Social Network Analysis | Mediaczar - Bit late to this one. Very interesting though, especially as we see more and more pressure mounting (rightly so) from clients looking for ROI or better justification of social media efforts!
CrapHammer: Wayne knows what many Word of Mouth experts don’t - Word of Mouth isn’t about clever technology, it’s about using your brain, not tools to talk to people
Cool stuff I was readingAugust 26th toAugust 28th:
Pikchur / share pictures with your friends on Pownce,Twitter,Facebook, Jaiku, and more! - A way to easily share pictures to multiple social networks in one go.
Buy it later - Cool notification tool for twitter users which notifies you of back-in-stock items.
Only Dead Fish: Twitter User Numbers - Insight from hitwise into the number of users on Twitter
Andy Sernovitz’s Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That!: Give people something to talk about - A great case for word of mouth marketing, just like Innocent Drinks.
Why the Social Media World NEEDS to Understand SEO - Search Engine Guide Blog - Why the Social Media World NEEDS to Understand SEO - from Mack.
Pr 2.0 Technology Blogging 2 - My presentation about blogging from the KMP Marketing and PR 2.0 seminars currently enjoying a spot of time on the slideshare home page!
Despite Plurk enjoying more of my attention recently, after a fair bit of conference Twittering at the great Fuel-Conference (organised by Carsonified - much more to come shortly!) I thought I’d get a better idea of how and when my Twittering has taken place.
This follows my recent Twitter content overview from TweetCloud - and has given me a really useful view on how important Twitter is to me - and as such, why, despite all the downtime Twitter remains so crucial a communication tool for us all. TweetStats shows me this.
Looks Like Wednesdays are my busy days! Midweek boredom? Chances are something is kicking off or hitting the mainstream after a Monday launch/release.
I am pretty consistently active throughout the day (damn Twitter makes to so easy!) but this is essential to engage with the ongoing conversations. Is it me, or is this sounding increasingly defensive ? The evening peak will no doubt be when my West Coast friends are onboard and active too!
I much prefer using the web interface to Twhirl, but am growing increasingly fond of Twhirl - especially when it becomes Seesmic-compatible. I also use mobile a lot, but I am guessing this may come under the web interface as Opera Mini allows me to view in standard version.
Which kind of contradicts what Rescuetime suggests I spend my time on, a pretty similar split between Twitter.com and Twhirl (3% for Twitter.co vs 2% for Twhirl):
Another point of note is just how much content gets fed in through Twitterfeed. Twitter is an important source of my blog traffic, showing just how important it is to get my content into Twitter.
There’s a few other useful stats (such as most frequent replies and another version of the aggregated hourly feed, but I won’t overkill the stats!)
All in all, it is a pretty useful range of stats to understand the way I engage with Twitter.
From a marketers point if view, these stats taken from an influencer’s twitter ID would give me almost email-marketing style optimum opening times and day informations, for product/news launches which, coinciding with summize, would give me some interesting feedback into my product/service launch.
More later on Summize - especially its recent Sentiment measurement tool.
? The evening peak will no doubt be when my West Coast friends are onboard and active too!