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Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

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The Super Bowl Commands Social Media

In light of the 2012 London Olympics and the limitations placed by the game’s organizers on social media activity, the upcoming Super Bowl is showing the world how it should be done.

The Super Bowl will not only embrace social media, a “command centre” to provide an enhanced experience to fans.

The command centre will consists 16 employees and 30 volunteers who will coordinate the information from @superbowl2012, and also use Twitter as a content engine for Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and their blog.

From open parking spots to local restaurants and fun tidbits during the game, the NFL is really leveraging social media.

They’re thinking so outside of the digital box that if this doesn’t become the standard for big events, I will be disappointed.

The reason the NFL’s approach seems so ingenious is it is focused on the fans, mostly fans traveling from out of town. To care enough to deliver a wealth of information about what’s going on outside of what’s happening in the game should resonate with most fans.

At the end of the day, Eli Manning vs. Tom Brady, Victor Cruz vs. Ochocinco and other storylines will dominate. With an event that is so globally beloved, the social media activity will naturally be over the top.

It is vital the NFL upped its game digitally but the credit should still be given to the media company leading the charge, especially since the detractors and naysayers for the London Olympics have been many.

The big test will also come when The Academy Awards happens in a few weeks. What mark on social media will they leave from their global telecast?

By Mark Evans - February 3rd, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Who Knew! Inane Tweets Are Disliked

I’ve been fascinated with inane tweets. You know, people who tweet about their need for a coffee, how they’re not feeling well, the statement of mind of their cats or dogs, their affinity for pickles or the ultra-annoying “Good morning!”

They’re the kind of tweets that make me wonder: Why do people feel compel to spend the time to share these kind of tweets, which, at best, have a limited audience or have no interest to any but the author? It is because people have nothing better to do with their time? Do they really think other people are interested, or they provide a shred of value?

For anyone curious about why these tweets happen, you’ll be interested in a study called “Who Gives a Tweet: Evaluating Microblog Content Value” by researchers Paul André of Carnegie Mellon, Michael Bernstein of MIT, and Kurt Luther of Georgia Tech.

After spending a year studying 43,738 tweets, they found the three most strongly disliked categories were “presence maintenance, conversation and Me Now”.

In particular, “Me Now” tweets only had a 22% chance of being read even though there might be an expectation their followers would be interested.

“Analyzing the free text responses to understand the reasons, we found many cases in which the follower was not interested by the tweeter’s life details, e.g., “sorry, but I don’t care what people are eating”, “too much personal info”, “He moans about this ALL THE TIME. Seriously,” the study said.

Foursquare Check-Ins a “Special Hatred”

The study  said a “special hatred” was Foursquare location check-ins: “Foursquare updates don’t need to be shared on Twitter unless there’s a relevant update to be made.”

To get a better handle on the tweets that people like or dislike, the study rated tweets in worth reading (WR) and not worth reading (NotWR). In the NotWR category, the tweets were described as “arrogant, boring, depressing, mean”, while WR tweets were “funny, exciting, useful, informative”

In conclusion, the reachers suggest if people should do the following to improve the chances of their tweets being read:

- Embed more context in tweets (and be less cryptic)

- Add extra commentary, especially if retweeting a common news source

- Don’t overuse hashtags and use direct messages (DMs) rather than @mentions if more appropriate

- Happy sentiments are valued and “whining” is disliked

- Questions should use a unique hashtag so followers can keep track of the conversation.

More: Business Insider‘s Megan Garber has some thoughts on the study.

By Mark Evans - February 1st, 2012 - 1 Comment »
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Posted in Social Media

Why the Buzz about Twitter Brand Pages?

 The world is all a-Twitter about the much-speculated launch of Twitter brand pages.

According to Business Insider, these brand pages will “to build platforms on their pages that could include iFrame environments, allowing users to play games or shop on a brand’s site without actually leaving the Twitter environment.”

Okay, that, in theory, sounds interesting because Twitter.com is still doesn’t have much pizzazz for users despite efforts by Twitter to improve the usability and features.

If there was more to do on Twitter.com, it might encourage people to spend more time there rather than switching to services such as HootSuite and TweetDeck once they get the hang of using Twitter.

The question is whether Twitter brand pages have the potential to incorporate enough interesting features to become destinations that would compete against Web sites, Facebook Pages and, in time, Google+ pages.

In other words, can Twitter build a platform that brands can leverage to create a compelling experience that generates more engagement, relationship building and maybe revenue?

With Twitter brand pages in their nascent stages (only a brands such as Coca-Cola below have launched them), it’s too early tell if they’ll be successful but there is no doubt every brand will embrace them.

My biggest concern is that brand pages won’t have much of an impact unless Twitter provides brands with enough flexibility to make them interesting or useful. At the same time, Twitter needs to push ahead with making Twitter.com more compelling overall.

More: Simply Zesty said Twitter has been working on brand pages for awhile so it expects new features to be rolled out fairly soon.

By Mark Evans - January 30th, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Is Customer Service Better in Social Media?

Is it just me or are brands more pro-active doing customer service in social media than they do in their actual brick and mortar stores or through their websites?

Dell (@DellCares) and Rogers (@RogersHelps) are great examples of a social media trailblazer and a late comer getting it right. Their social media teams are really showing other customer service reps how it is done.

Recently, some Twitter users were experiencing poor customer service at a bank. Soon after, tweets about the experience were posted, and very quickly calls from branch managers (who was notified by the social media team) were made. Social media works.

Social media lends itself to better customer service than your average website: I don’t see how filling out a “Contact Us” form can ever beat the one-to-one connection on Facebook or Twitter.

Why do brands listen on social media listening while many in-store representatives are tuning customers out? This is not an indictment of employees; it is a tough job dealing with people who sometimes don’t want to compromise.

If we can learn anything from social media, it is that listening really pays off. The other lesson is people will publish their bad experiences for their social networks to see, but not always publish the good moments.

What are some of the great customer service experiences you have had on social media? Has it outweighed your experience in store or on parent websites?

More: Check out this Mashable post looking at nine ways that top brands are customer service for better customer service. Dave Fleet has a good post on eight ways that brands can scale their social support efforts.

By Mark Evans - January 20th, 2012 - 3 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

How Should Twitter Improve?

The whole world is a Twitter! Whether you get it or not, Twitter is gaining more users and credibility each passing day. This being said, we’ve all had some issues with Twitter so now it is time to brainstorm some solutions.

Here are some ideas I have, and it is on you to agree, disagree, demand change or accept things the way they are:

Update the Newsfeed:

Twitter needs to take a page from Facebook, which wrote the book on fickle design and the need to constantly reinventing the wheel. Twitter’s interface is old, it is not intuitive and even though there is a nice simplicity to it, it fails to wow.

Twitter needs to go back to the drawing board and create a sleeker design that also includes more features and quicker access to some of its key features. As well, the direct messaging process needs to be re-thought and enhanced.

Twitter gave us something revolutionary concepts when it opened its doors; now it is time to give us a design that will make us connect on a whole new level.

Become a Home for Interactive Content:

This is my wild idea but consider this: at its very core Twitter is a content aggregator yet it doesn’t really lend itself to anything dynamic. It lends itself to micro-blogging via text. Twitter has to land upon a compelling and useful way to allow interactive content to appear on the website.

Maybe the answer is to embed content or maybe it borrows from Facebook in how it enables the viewing of content. Either way, Twitter needs to become a home for dynamic content rather than just a gateway.

Twitter has come a long way in terms of marketing and  monetization, which has let it become one of the leading social media services. At the same time, there is always room for improvement.

What are some of your suggestions for Twitter improvements? Or are you happy with the way it is now?

By Mark Evans - January 17th, 2012 - 4 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Tebow Takes on Twitter

Tim Tebow may be the most popular man in sports right now. He was a first round draft pick the NFL’s 2010 draft. He became the Denver Broncos’ starting quarterback part way through the 2011 season and has lead them on a wild charge ever since. His celebration ritual has spawned an internet and photo meme known as “taking a Tebow.” And as of Sunday, he can say that he is also a Twitter record holder.

This past Sunday during a Broncos’ game against the Steelers, Tim Tebow threw an 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime to win the game for Denver. The crowd in Denver went wild, but even more so, Twitter exploded with tweets about Tebow. Right after the touchdown pass Twitter recorded 9,420 tweets per second, making it the second most tweets per second for a single event. It was however the record for a sporting event.

I took to MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics software, to look a little bit deeper into the event. I found that it wasn’t just Twitter that was talking about Tebow. On Sunday, January 8th, I found Tebow mentioned in 2,549 blog posts, 1,495 online news articles, 22,950 forum posts and 484,946 tweets.

While 484,946 tweets doesn’t sound like a giant amount, it’s much larger when most of the tweets happen at almost the same time. Also, I pulled up a popularity chart of mentions of Tebow on Twitter over the past six months and found that this one day was almost the amount of tweets on his last most popular day.

I also found something interesting when I looked at where all the tweets were coming from. Surprisingly, Colorado didn’t even come close to being the state that produced the most tweets about Tebow. Neither did Pennsylvania. The top three states that were talking about Tebow were California, New York and Florida. Colorado actually tied for the state with 9th most Tebow tweets with Virginia and New Jersey.

Lastly, I took a look at the talk surrounding Tebow in a buzzgraph. Not surprisingly the Broncos are right in the center of the conversation. We can also see strong ties to the Steelers and the score of the game, 29-23. We can also see that Tebow’s winning touchdown pass was also a main part of the conversation as we can see from strong connection to the term “80-yard.”

With every NFL fan now with their eyes on Tebow, I wonder if he could set another record next week? Or maybe at the Superbowl?

By Sheldon Levine - January 12th, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Events, Samples, Social Media

Social Media in 2011

2011 has been a pretty big year in terms of social media.

We’ve seen new social networks appear and flourish like Quora, Google+ and Pinterest. We’ve seen big changes in some of the major social networks like Facebook’s Timeline, a running history of your online life, and Twitter taking a more strategic role as to how people are using the network and how they can start to generate revenue from it.

As well, we’ve seen a large uptake in the use of social media, both from the general public and from businesses with some pretty cool results. With all that said, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at how people talked about “social media” in 2011 using MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics software.

Going back to January 1st of this year and searching for the terms “social media,” “socialmedia” and “#sm” I pulled up some general stats around all the social media chatter this year. For 2011 I found social media mentioned in 2.2 million blog posts, 1.4 online news articles, 295,354 forum posts and 12.1 million tweets.

Trended out over time, talk of social media for the year looks like the chart below. Twitter of course dominates because of it’s quick and easy to use nature. It’s interesting to note that blogs and online news about social media seem to follow in a very similar pattern. I also did a little extra digging into the largest spike on the chart around, June 30th. It turns out that June 30th was Mashable’s Social Media Day, so there was even more chatter that day using the words “social media.”

Next I took a look at where all the talk was coming from. The following chart represents all social media talk across all the channels we cover combine. We can see that the USA controlled a large portion of the conversation at 56.8%. The UK was the second largest producer of social media talk about social media with 16.3% and Canada came in third 5.7%.

I then dug a little deeper into two main social media channels to look a little closer at the demographics. When I looked at just blogs, I found the USA still lead in conversation about social media, but this time they only accounted for 47%. Here again we also see the UK with the second most conversation (11.4%) and Canada rounding up third (6.0%). We can also see that the “other” category accounts for a lot more in blogs by making up 21.5%, which means that blogs everywhere seemed to be talking a lot about social media this year.

So, just who was doing all this blogging about social media? I first looked into the gender breakdown. It turns out males account for 60% and females for 40%. While not even, I think that those numbers are fairly close considering the amount of blogs about social media we saw this year.

Something I found interesting was when I looked into the age of the bloggers. While most people think that social media is for the younger generation, I found that the age group that blogged most about social media was those aged 36-50 years old with 37.5%. Bloggers aged 21-35 came in second with 33.3%. Those aged 51 and over made up 25%, while the youngest set, 20 and under only accounted for 4.1%.

Next I look at the industries that were blogging about social media throughout 2011. A little surprising, but education blogs actually held the greatest amount of conversation with 17.3%. The second most amount of social media conversation came from blogs in the communications and public relations field at 15.2%. The thrid place spot was tied between marketing blogs and those focused on the internet with 8.6% each.

I then headed over to Twitter. Here I found the same pattern in terms of who was talking about social media by geographical location. The US made up 49.7% of the conversation, while the UK followed8.3% and Canada coming in third with 5.5%.

The gender of Twitter users talking abut social media seemed to be a bit more split however. On Twitter males accounted for 64% of people talking about social media while the females made up the other 36%.

Lastly, I headed back to take a big picture look at what people were actually talking about when they were talking about social media. Pulling up a word cloud that spans all social channels it seems that business seemed to dominate the conversation about social media for 2011. We can see that words like “business” and “marketing” seem to be some of the largest words in the cloud meaning they came up the most. We can also see that “Facebook” and “Twitter” seemed to be the the two social networks that were talked about the most (which isn’t very surprising as they’re the two most adopted networks).

So how was your 2011 in terms of social media? What were your highlights? Let downs? Lessons learned? Let us know in the comments.

By Sheldon Levine - December 29th, 2011 - No Comments »
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Posted in Samples, Social Media

Two Big Social Media Lessons from 2011

Social media enjoyed another banner year in 2011. New services such as Google+, Path and Pinterest appeared on the scene, popular services endured dramatic changes, and more people became fans, users and enthusiasts.

With such an interesting and fast-moving year, we would be remiss not have learned a new lesson or two; some of which will carry their importance well into next year. Here are two of the biggest lessons this year:

1. There is room in the  digital sandbox

Google+ burst onto the digital scene and made the “+1” graphic something we now expect to see everywhere on the Web. Google+ offered variations of and, in some peoples’ opinions, an evolution on Facebook and YouTtube. The content being shared by users now reaches into the billions, although it is left to be seen whether Google+ can continue to enjoy strong user growth.

Unthink (discussed in this post) was another example of a new and different social media forum that elbowed its way into the social market. Even though it has yet to fully take off, Unthink has attracted serious media interest, and the number of usersy could grow in the near future.

In 2012, there will be another wave of forums and experiences and it would be very surprising if a small handful of them didn’t find an audience.

2. Users will embrace change

Social media users are often seen as incredibly rigid but also very loyal. When a service changes, the cycle usually starts with resistance, then mild acceptance, and then full-out embracing the change that they originally vehemently opposed.

Facebook recently unveiled its Timeline. By reading the comments and posts in the months before it launched publicly, you would never have thought the reception would have been so warm. Lo and behold, many people have downloaded the Timeline app, and are they’re not unsure how they ever lived without it.

There are dozens of more lessons we should take from the past year, and the astute user and observer already has embraced them. As we head into 2012, it will be hard not to believe there will be more new services, changes, stories, personalities and don’t forget…cautionary tales and important lessons.

By Mark Evans - December 27th, 2011 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Social Media is Not Like Taking Vitamins

To be engaged on social media, do you have to be active all the time?

For brands and individuals looking to establish a strong social foothold, there seems to be a belief you need to a constant and consistent presence. This means many brands and people never take a break from using social media. It’s a 7/24 kind of thing.

This ideology struck me last weekend when I saw a tweet from a well-known digital executive: ”Please don’t mistaken my lack of activity on Twitter for a lack of activity.”

To me, it came across as an apology or a mea culpa for taking a break from Twitter. It’s not only absurd but sad that someone has to explain or justify why the tweets have stopped coming, even temporarily.

Truth be told, social media is not like taking vitamins; it doesn’t have to happen every day to maintain a healthy social presence.

As much as we may enjoy social media and benefit from participating in it, it’s not a daily necessity. In fact, I would argue that if the inability to take a break from social media is unhealthy and counter-productive.

What’s interesting is how a growing number of people are starting to talk about how we use social media and how we may have to embrace a new approach.

In a recent blog post, Seth Godin said the focus on quantity – following lots of people, and pumping tons of links through social networks while offering no value or context – is a “double-edge form of losing”.

Instead, he counselled people to: “Relentlessly focus. Prune your message and your list and build a reputation that’s worth owning and an audience that cares”.

At the recent Le Web conference in Paris, Forrester CEO George Colony also put the spotlight on the current state of affairs by talking about how many time-consuming social media services will disappear because people have run out of time.

My sense is more people are beginning to struggle with how they want to approach and use social media. While social media can be a valuable professional and personal medium, the question is whether being too engaged or active is a good or productive thing.

Godin and Colony appear to be suggesting quality is more important than quantity. Do you agree? How do you think our approach to social media is changing or evolving?

By Mark Evans - December 14th, 2011 - 5 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

al-Shabab Takes to Twitter

Recently one of Somalia’s militant Islamist groups, al-Shabab, has embraced Twitter in an attempt to gain a digital voice and combat their opponents.

This is a significant and strange development for Twitter and social media as a whole.

Some African nations (specifically Kenya) have used Twitter to announce and denounce events and opposition but it still feels very peculiar to see a militant rebel group use the same mainstream tactic.

Maybe the issue is optics as we label these groups as rebel, yet social media is a tool for all and tends feature more “fluff”. Amidst all the lightness, there have been polarizing figures that have come to Twiiter, but none of this nature.

For awhile, al-Shabab has been locked in a military battle with Kenya, and overall they control much of southern and central Somalia. Does it not strike you as odd they have the time and strategic marketing foundation to even consider social media as a proper conduit to further their cause?

The real question is what do they hope to gain? Their fight is localized and their existence and actions controversial so it seems the broad reach of social media would have not necessarily have a profound affect on their day-to-day operations.

Their tweets have mainly been about their opinion of Kenya’s military failure in Somalia. On the surface, it doesn’t look like they plan on communicating much else.

Many believe this will compel other militant groups to take to social media. Based on the current al-Shabab model, I don’t see this happening at this juncture.

It’s possible that al-Shabab was compelled by the active Twitter account of Kenyan military personnel, but the cause does not always justify the means. The difficult part is that outside of Kenya, the world might not take to the complexity of the situation throughout Twitter.

It’ll be interesting to see this develop, and what the fallout will be. For now, the consequences exists but the action isn’t leaving a pronounced mark on the social media world beyond raising a few eyebrows.

By Mark Evans - December 13th, 2011 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

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