Some interesting data on Twitter CTR from @danzarella
The more interesting points here include the location of links (first half of tweets), using more verbs, and tweeting between 2-3 p.m.
The part about paper.li is useless though. People click on the "dailies" because they are mentioned in them, but it goes to a Paper.li site and you're buried there. Given how arbitrary Paper.li generates its "dailies", I'm not sure how this is useful data.
Facebook engagement comes from storytelling and stories are visual
I suppose this data shouldn't come as a surprise, as most of my personal Facebook posts with photos get the most likes and comments. This has been my experience helping clients manage Facebook pages as well.
When Facebook announced Timeline in September, I blogged my expectations for what the strategy behind it and other changes will mean for company pages. Companies should expect that Timeline features will be applied to pages as well and they should change their mindset from posting "updates" to telling stories.
The best stories are visual. Perhaps the most striking thing about the Facebook changes are the way photos are displayed. Gone are the thumbnail images. Don't let the photo and video album app be underutilized. Gather as much in the way of photos and videos from employees, create more albums and tell stories through the captions.
If Timeline comes to business pages, those assets will fill it up nicely and spark more interaction with followers, just like those personal photos do among your friends.
Then it will be interesting to see what this data looks like in the future.
When Clear and Simple Messaging Works (#kindlefire)
Dear Customer,
There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp.
Drawn to Amazon's home page as a result of the coverage and buzz from today's Kindle Fire announcement, I was struck by the customer letter that appeared front and center.
Kudos to Amazon for developing the simplest and clearest message I've seen in a long time. It works so well because it positions them and their products very clearly without naming competitors and appeals to the cost-consciousness that is so acute among consumers today. The "work hard to charge customers less" bit is incredibly powerful.
Will it make me buy one of their products? No, because I'm in the competitor's target market and value the elegant experience. But, it's compelling and will make Amazon successful.
Social network user growth records like comparing home run records
I chuckled when the first wave of comparisons came about when Google announced the Google+ 10 million and 25 million user milestones. Now that Google+ is open to anyone, perhaps it was inevitable that the next milestone of 50 million would bring about more comparisons like the image above that have been all over the streams today.
My feeling is the same as it was then. Comparing social network growth records is like comparing home run records. With home runs, it's hard because records are set in different eras, may be affected by live balls, different size pitchers mounds and the presence of performance enhancers.
Although we're talking about a much shorter span of time with social networks, we're definitely in a different "era" than when MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn launched. Social networks are so much a bigger part of mainstream culture now that a new one from a company like Google will get adopted much more rapidly.
LinkedIn top social media site for journalists, but what are they using it for?
I picked up the linked article above from Ragan's PR Daily from my colleague Bill McLaughlin's Twitter feed. It reported on a survey published by Arketi Group, a B2B marketing and PR agency in Atlanta, on how B2B journalists use the web in general.
Certainly, the headline grabbed my attention, but the main takeaway as reported by PR Daily doesn't tell the whole story. After reading the post, I had one major question: what are journalists using LinkedIn and other social networking sites for?
From reviewing the report (available behind a conversion form), the more pertinent data is the fact that 39% of journalists use social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook as their primary source of news and story ideas. As compared to data from Arketi's last survey in 2009, which showed that 10% used social networking sites as their primary source, this is a big jump.
The survey distinguishes Twitter as another source and shows that 44% use it as a primary source, as compared to 8% in 2009.
While there is near-universal adoption of LinkedIn by journalists, it's likely entirely probable that much of their use is for personal networking, as most LinkedIn users do. But the data points above do support the takeaway that company spokespeople and thought-leaders should be connected to journalists on LinkedIn, Twitter and other networks.
I won't share too much more, but there are a couple of other data points that I found interesting from the survey:
- 51% of journalists surveyed find company webinars interesting, but for industry trends and original research
- The top sources for news still are PR contacts (80%) and e-mail pitches (71%)
Overall, the survey is worth downloading.
One Way PR People Should Use Google+
If you are following any journalists, industry analysts or bloggers on Twitter, search for them and follow them on Google+. Chances are most of them are there and are much more active than on Twitter.
Google+ is commanding the lion share of attention of the early adopters now, and this includes most tech journalists and bloggers that I know. They also are much more engaged on Google+, as I learned this afternoon when I shared a post by Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read/Write Web that he wrote on his personal blog on how he sources news. I shared it on both Twitter and Google+, tagging him in both cases. He replied with a comment on Google+ and not on Twitter, which I appreciated, but it gave me a signal for how journalists like Marshall are using and treating each service right now.
Overview of Google+ Third Party Ecosystem
Much has been discussed about how much of a threat Google+ poses to Facebook and Twitter. One important element to the competitive dynamic is how rapidly an ecosystem of third-party developers and apps form around Google+.
The blog Google Plus Life wrote about this right after the launch, but I've really started to see some interesting sites and apps emerge over the last week. I've compiled links and summaries to those that I have seen below. This only covers external sites and services and not the numerous Chrome extensions for Google+ already available.
I expect that oneforty is hard at work on an ecosystem directory, but until then, if anyone knows of any others, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. I will continue to add to this list.
Directories
Find People on Plus: http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/
A site that has indexed (as of this writing) 947,996 Google+ users and categorized them by relationship, occupation, gender, following, followers, and location, among others. It also has an interesting statistics page.
PlusOnes: http://plusones.in/
Allows you to submit yourself into a manually curated database that is organizing G+ users around such dimensions as topics and companies (e.g. IBMers on Google+).
Google Plus Counter: http://www.googlepluscounter.com/
A site created by Ralf Rottman, a writer for The Next Web and founder of GrandCentrix, through which he is gathering Google+ ID's in order to "evaluate the idea of programmatically analysing Google+ streams in order to identify trends and more."
Statistics/Measurement
SocialStatistics: http://socialstatistics.com
This is a site created by one of the co-founders of TwitterCounter that provides statistics on individual users that are similar in nature to what you get on TwitterCounter. It will be interesting to see if they offer similar premium services for Google+ as well.
Clients
GClient: http://www.abelssoft.net/gclient.php
I'm fairly surprised that social media clients/dashboards like Seesmic, Hootsuite and RockMelt haven't yet provided the ability to pull in Google+ steams alongside Twitter and Facebook streams. This would be immensely valuable. I imagine it's only a matter of time. In the meantime, fast-movers like Abelsoft are offering thin clients for Google+, like this app for Windows that sits in the system tray and provides a UI similar to the mobile versions of the Google+ site seen on iOS devices.
Other Utilities
Gplus.to: http://gplus.to/
Many of the sites above require you to submit yourself using the 21-digit Google+ ID. This is a link shortener specifically for the long G+ URLs that you can tailor. Mine is http://gplus.to/TedWeismann. This got me wondering if Google is going to offer vanity URL's, similar to what Facebook did. Until they do, this is a good hack.
This is a tool for creating a profile picture for Google+. I haven't used it yet, so have trouble understanding the usefulness of this one.
Tweetmyplus: http://www.tweetmyplus.com/
This is a service for connecting Google+ to Twitter in a way that automatically tweets anything you post to Google+. This is interesting, but it somewhat defeats the purpose and value of segmenting what you share on Google+ to various Circles. I have found myself sharing some updates on both streams, so this could have utility for that, but only if you could self select what you want sent via Twitter.
