Not Such A Pretty Picture

It may look like a pleasing pattern but each of these red dots represents a bomb that fell on London during the Blitz (derived from the German term ‘Blitzkrieg’) from October 1940 until mid June in 1941.

The Bomb Sight project is the work of The National Archives in the UK. They scanned original 1940's bomb census maps , geo-referenced the maps and digitally captured the geographical locations of all the falling bombs recorded on the original map.

The data was then been  integrated into 2 different types of applications - an interactive web-mapping application and an Android App with an Augmented Reality view to reveal the locations of the bombs projected into the current urban landscape. So if you are visiting London you can stand on a street holding your phone  and point it in the direction you are interested in. The Bomb Sight App uses your camera and GPS to display all the bombs that fell nearby to where you are.

One can only be grateful that Time Travel has yet to materialise - actually being in the Blitz in real life would have been anything but entertaining!

Related articles

• Blitz interactive map unveiled
• Bomb Sight - Mapping the World War 2 London Blitz Bomb Census

'Like' Chocolate? So Does Facebook

If your Facebook content strategy is to pepper your text with words such as 'Like' then you may have to think again.
According to a recent report from Sotrender, “like”, and similar call-to-action words such as “look” and “click” no longer encourage engagement as they once did.

After analysing 111 UK Facebook pages that contained 2800 different posts, across four different industries they came to the realisation that while pictures and graphics work best, there were some some words that draw a better response than others.

Among those ranked highly by Sotrender are chocolate, cream, daily, most, shop, winter, wardrobe, and today.

Other key findings include:

• Using catchy words in posts doesn't seem to increase engagement as Facebook users become 'immune' to constantly repeated phrases
• For food brands words that express emotions draw a higher response rate
• While providing links in Twitter posts works well this survey found that doing the same in Facebook drops fans’ engagement to below average

Source: Sotrender

• A picture is worth a thousand (or so) words when it comes to engaging with people on Facebook. Asking questions in posts works but an image or graphic is far more effective as the chart below shows.

Source: Sotrender

The recently introduced Timeline in Facebook has also had two beneficial effects:

• Posts now have have a longer shelf-life
• Engagement has increased for individual posts 

"80% of all comments are made in circa 8 hours and 30 minutes (2 hours more than before Timeline)" - Sotrender.

But don't fall into the trap of posting too often. Less is more, and too many posts over a short time period could well result in a loss of interest and, by extension, fans.

Related articles

• Facebook Users Like Food Pages

  ---

• Study shows Facebook Timeline extends post lifetime, increases engagement by 13%

  ---