Tag Archives: analysis

Social Content Optimization Requires Looking at Micro Trends

What time should we be posting our content? What messages are resonating best with our audience? Is there a day of the week where our content performs best? How do we truly optimize our content on Facebook or Twitter? What kind of content generates the most clicks or interactions? How long does it take before we receive interactions after publishing a piece of content?

If you are managing your brand’s social media presence or working for an agency on behalf of a brand, you’ve no doubt heard these questions from your boss. All of those questions are things we’ve helped to solve in traditional marketing and PR for years, but the question of how we “scientifically” optimize our content in social is relatively new.  Continue reading

Generalizations are Broad Guidelines, not Gospel

Let’s get something straight: generalizations are not gospel. I’ve seen too many blog posts and articles lately which use broad generalizations to show how to be successful with social media, particularly Facebook.

For example, analyzing when your brand’s Facebook page community is most active (time of day, day of week) is incredibly valuable. This can help you time your own activities to catch the most people at the exact right time. But writing posts at noon because you read a blog post that says that’s when people are most active is lazy.

Studies like that look at Facebook brand pages across industries and categories. Their core consumers are likely vastly different, and each page likely has very different fan bases. Averaging these numbers doesn’t tell you anything for your own brand. It tells you the average time of day people across 30 different Facebook pages are most active. Continue reading

Using Twitter as a Pulse, Not a Firehose

In case you’re still not convinced about Twitter as a research tool, Twitter’s CEO, Jacky Dorsey, recently gave some wise advice at The Economist’s Ideas Economy: Innovation event:

It’s never been easier to start a company since Twitter exists. We get this instant pulse of what’s happening around any topic.

Let’s face it: Twitter is not for everyone. Not every company or every brand should have an official Twitter handle. I think we will all be happy if our toilet brush never says hello to us in 140 characters.

One thing is pretty universally true, though. With more than 450,000 people checking it out every day, there are bound to be people talking about your product or your core consumers talking about other products they love. Continue reading

PR Measurement for Startups

We all know that even the smallest startup needs PR. (And we hope they know it, too!) But what many may be overlooking is the need to measure their PR efforts, no matter how small.

Agencies and larger corporations are already measuring the effectiveness of their PR campaigns and programs, and while these measurements may not be realistic for startups (too much time or money), they can still offer some lessons and best practices.

I know the list below is not exhaustive by any means, but the measures below are the most important for startups to adapt when analyzing PR. Some of the measures I have suggested are not scientific and by no means as accurate as what we may like. But keep in mind that the point of measuring is to reduce error and uncertainty, not completely eliminate it. Any reduction is valuable, no matter how small. Continue reading