Who Is Using What In Social Media?

Some interesting findings from a recent Pew Research survey.  Five key revelations:

1. Facebook remains that most preferred site although its growth has slowed quite dramtically.
2.  Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn saw significant increases over the past year in the proportion of online adults who now use their sites
3. Men now use Twitter more than women.  The reverse was true in 2013.
4. More women (77%) than Men (66%) use Facebook
5. While LinkedIn is showing strong growth more than 60% use it infrequently

Related articles

• Pew: Facebook User Growth Slowed As Others Gained, But Still Has Most Engaged Users
• Pinterest Passes Twitter in Popularity

What's Hanging On The Vine?

Well not very much really.  As most people know Twitter recently launched its video clip service - Vine. To quote their blog "a new mobile service that lets you create and share beautiful, short looping videos. With Vine, capturing life in motion is fun and easy"

So  what are people posting? If you have a look at Vinepeek you can see the clips on their unmoderated service.

Source: VinePeek

Lot's of 'foodie' clips, warm cuddly pets, a guy who got 'in the money' and the occasional flash of the unsavoury.  it didn't take long for pornographers to realise the potential of Vine as Mashable  reports. So what's hanging on the vine might be not what you expect.

At least with Vine you now have the choice of sharing your communication on Twitter using 140 characters or with a six-second GIF-like looping video.  Available in Apples App store but no Android version that I could find?

Related articles

• Warning: Graphic Porn Invades Vine
• Twitter Buys Vine
• Vinepeek Is The Most Addictive New Site On The Internet

Going Down The 'Googla' - Bottom of the List For Sharing Stories

Google claims 170m Google+ users but other reports have said it is a ghost town, so what is the truth?

Findings released appear to confirm the latter – despite its large number of accounts the platform is bottom of the list of social network users’ favoured channels.

Social media agency Umpf analysed 100 random online entertainment, health, business, technology and general news stories and looked at how many times each story was shared by Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter users.

The findings show Twitter as the most active social network for sharing stories, followed by Facebook in second, LinkedIn third and Google+ last:

1. For every 100million users of Twitter, 197.3 people were likely to share an online story
2. For every 100million users of Facebook, 41.8 people were likely to share an online story
3. For every 100million users of LinkedIn, 15.2 people were likely to share an online story
4. For every 100million users of Google+, 6.0 people were likely to share an online story

Whilst Google+ is the second largest of the four in terms of official users*, and despite it arguably being the best placed of all four to succeed – it was created by Google post-Twitter, post-Facebook and post-LinkedIn, and designed to be the most socially-integrated network (“Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.”) – it performs the worst.

Jon Priestley, of PR and Social Media agency Umpf, said: “Our findings clearly show a gulf between Google+ user numbers and their willingness to share online content, particularly when compared to rival platforms such as Facebook and Twitter".

Visualising with Vizify

We live in a visual world as the recent and rapid success of Pinterest has demonstrated. Now three Geeks (their term, not mine) have come up with something after a coffee-fueled frenzy that has all the juice of a good interactive infographic.

Zuckerberg's Law states that the amount of online data about an individual doubles each year so they gathered their own data and tried to make sense of it all. They found the data disjointed and overwhelming: career history here, tweets there, check-in data everywhere.  Boring and incoherent is not a good look!

Enter Vizify, a network  acknowledging the fact  that you are more than the sum of your parts. Vizify creates one definitive, multidimensional, graphical biography.

Overview Screen

Twitter visualisation with sliding time scale

While it is early days and the network is by invitation only, getting an invite proved really easy.  The result of my 'dabbling' can be see here.

The other thing that impressed me about Vizify was its simplicity.  It is a simple matter to change the privacy settings, drag and drop content, colour your world or add new services

Easy to use editing panel

So if like me you like the idea of an interactive infographic for prospective employers and clients that presents your online biography in an exciting way, then Vizify is for you.

And while we are talking about new social media tools try out Skylines, which organises the world’s real-time photos. The platform indexes over 5 million photos a day sent through services Twitter, Instagram, Twitpic, Yfrog and Lockerz.

Skyline - real-time images as they happen

Related articles

• Put your business card online with Vizify
• Does Vizify Help or Hinder your Personal Brand?

'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

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

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Why LinkedIn And Pinterest Should Be Part Of Your Mix

While Pinterest's rise has been meteoric, LinkedIn has been the 'slow burner'. Both have their place in the marketing mix. I have noted that Pinterest has become increasingly effective in driving referral traffic to a corporate site and LinkedIn has a similar effect, especially when the posts have been made to targeted interest groups that content directly relates to.

In the first month of this year there were147 million users on LinkedIn and Pinterest reached the 10 million unique active users mark. LinkedIn has the highest penetration rates in the USA, the Gulf States and the Netherlands. Pinterest currently has 13. 6 million users according to AppData.

Higher referral traffic, better quality leads and ultimately increased sales result from using both of these platforms. (Awareness).

Interest in Pinterest has slackened slightly in the past year as this chart from Google Trends search results demonstrates.

By comparison, LinkedIn's search trends have remained fairly constant expect for a huge spike in June, no doubt related to the security breach that network experienced.

For the past couple of months LinkedIn  has been running a beta test for new targeting options and fifty brands have been taking part.

Companies will now be able to direct  posts to target  groups of followers with status updates based on company size, industry, function, seniority, employee tenure and geography. So for example, if your product or service is related to farming you can now segment by agriculture, the country profile and level of corporate seniority to get to the right decision maker.

Mike Grishaver of LinkedIn says that in a recent study they discovered that 67% of their members follow a company to gain industry insights, 61% for company news, while 49% are attracted by the peer community. LinkedIn's aim is to enable more relevant conversations between companies and followers.




Awareness recently produced a white paper 'Beyond The Big Three - 5 Killer Strategies to Dominate LinkedIn and Pinterest".  Here are their seven tips for increasing social reach using Pinterest:

1. Create pinboards and populate the boards with your own pins and by repinning from other users.•  Create topic-specific boards that resonate with your target audience to encourage following ofyour brand’s profile. Focus board topics on the lifestyle, history, causes, and interests relatedto your customers.•  When creating boards, use keywords developed for SEO to refine your boards and integrateyour Pinterest brand profile with your marketing initiatives.
2. Publicize your Pinterest account on all other social platforms.
3. Embed Pinterest buttons or widgets on your company website.
4. Register your profile in Pinterest directories to grow your followership:• WePin.org is a directory based on specific interests.• Repinly lists stats about Pinterest users and the most popular pinners / boards based on topic.
5. Consider connecting your Pinterest account with your brand’s Twitter profile to effectively use hashtags.Note: Carefully consider connecting with Facebook - the hashtags on Pinterest are only appropriate for Twitter and may clutter your Facebook timeline.
6. Once you've built a following, encourage users to create their own pins and repin items from your boards and your website. This will ensure that your boards are shared with your followers’ followers, increasing your brand reach on the platform.
7. Post consistently to retain and grow your social reach.

Related articles

• Everybody needs both Pinterest and LinkedIn

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• Why Google+ and Pinterest Matter to Nonprofits

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• Buying Power Of Pinterest Users 2nd Only To LinkedIn, Says ComScore [CHARTS]

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How People Choose To Spend Their Time Online

More than half of all social network users spy on their partners according to the statistics recently released by Go-Gulf.com.

The heaviest users of online shopping are the Chinese who spend the maximum time of more than 5 hours per week.

Brazilians are amongst the most sociable with averaging 480 friends per user and the Japanese are at the other end of the spectrum with an average of only 29.

Social Log-Ins Improve E-Commerce

Using a social login and social sharing will increase engagement and conversion.

According to a recent study by Monetate just under a half of all US consumers prefer to use a social log-in when creating a new or guest account on an e-commerce site.

Facebook was by far the most popular with 60% of US consumers preferring to log in through this platform. LinkedIn was the least popular at 7%

Product reviews figure highly on social media habits with 68% of consumers preferring to use social media for this purpose.

Being able to comment after signing on using social media also increases the time exposure a site has. Consumers who can't sign on and comment or share spend two thirds less time on a site compared to those that can.

One of the big attraction of a social log-in is that it is rapid and this increases user adoption. Spamming is also reduced as social networks are rigorous in eliminating duplicate accounts and auhtenticating people who sign up.

If you are not sure how to integrate social log-ins into your site you might consider using a third party service such as Gigya.

Related articles

• How do social logins and sharing affect e-commerce: infographic (econsultancy.com)

Ready For The After Life - As A Hologram?

The topic may seem a tad morbid, but in the event of 'Digital Death' what does happen online when you shuffle off this mortal coil?

This video is an interesting reflection.  You could of course do a little forward planning by deploying the free service Immortum which lets you store messages and memories and publish them later from a 'Postlife Journal'.  It describes itself as "A Memory Box Like None Before" which is no doubt  a bit of an understatement.

In many respects Immortum is a sad site to visit; people suffering the last stages of terminal disease expressing their thoughts and reflections.  However it must also be said that having such a Memory box plays an important role for people who have potentially limited life and their family members.

As the site states: "It is one of the ways to help manage the emotional aspects of the imminent loss of life. It also helps in the grieving process."

Of course the worry about all such sites and entrusting them with your precious memories, is whether they themselves will live on in the future?

More on Facebook's Dominance

Source: Vincenzo Cosenza 

This recent map from Vincenso Cosenza graphically shows the dominance of Facebook in the social media world. Facebook is ranked #1in 127 countries out of a total 136 listed.

Equally interesting is how this landscape has changed in the past three years.

Note how Twitter and LinkedIn are contesting for second place.

Vincenzo Cosenza has also mapped the the connections between Italy’s blogs and their Influence.  His aim is to understand the bloggers relationship and how blogosphere is evolving into a complex information ecosystem.

A Social World

The daily social activity of various social networking sites
Original Source: XKCD.com

Download a copy of the large version here.

As the article at DailyInfographic remarks: "Not surprisingly, the ubiquitous Facebook sprawls across the top of the map, dwarfing its neighbors, and leading to the “Northern Wasteland of Unread Updates.” A place I have been, many times."

Facebook For Life

The new Facebook Timeline will allow you to promote your key life moments, from birth.  Whether this is a good or bad thing is very much a matter of personal preference, but given the global interest in genealogy they could be on to a winner. The new profile is clean and uncluttered in its design and usability.

Click here to see the promotional page and sign up.

On The Shelf

How effective is the links that you have shared? Looking for a longer 'shelf life' for your content?  It might pay to use video as it has been reinforced yet again, that the internet has a very short attention span.

YouTube has a half-life of around 7 hours as viewers need to concentrate more than reading simple text.

The news is worse, according to Bit.ly,  for links posted on  direct web pages and social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter . If you haven't captured their click-throughs when three hours have passed then your chances of doing so get a lot slimmer.  Click rates drop by half after this period of time

Breaking news that generates wide interest has an even steeper drop-off rate. The first five minutes of release results in half of the click-throughs these items will ever receive.

Distribution of half-lifes over four different referrer types. Facebook, twitter and direct link (links shared via email, instant messengers etc.) half lifes follow a strikingly similar distribution

Bity looked at the half life of 1,000 popular bitly links and the results were surprisingly similar.

"The mean half life of a link on Twitter is 2.8 hours, on Facebook it’s 3.2 hours and via ‘direct’ sources (like email or IM clients) it’s 3.4 hours. So you can expect, on average, an extra 24 minutes of attention if you post on Facebook than if you post on Twitter."

Their key finding is "that the lifespan of your link is connected more to what content it points to than on where you post it: on the social web it’s all about what you share, not where you share it!"

Twitter would appear to be the better channel if you want people to view your content quickly.