How to increase Twitter engagement

Nice infographic here on Twitter engagement. I’ve seen a lot of the stats before, but there’s no harm in being reminded of them, and there are some new points too.

Key points:

• Engagement is generally higher on weekends.
• Engagement is generally higher between 8am and 7pm.
• Tweets with less than 100 characters receive more engagement than longer tweets.
• Tweets with 1 or 2 hashtags get more engagement. Tweets with more than 2 hashtags show a drop in engagement.
• Feeds that post 1-6 tweets per day get more engagement, 7+ tweets per day result in less engagement. 1-4 seems to be best.
• Tweets with image links get more engagement.
• Asking for retweets gets more retweets. “Please retweet” is more effective than “Please RT”.

While these are great general tips, we also need to keep refining and testing to make sure they suit our target audiences.

Social Media Developments – 1st March 2013

Twitter Mobile Study

Twitter has released statistics on mobile usage. Mobile users are more likely to use Twitter than those that check it on any other device. This means we must ensure that everything we do on Twitter is optimised for mobile. Also, mobile users are more likely to log on during the morning, on their commute and in the evening – meaning we can broaden the hours we post.

Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet

In case we need sizes for designs, click here.

Bit.ly Link Insights

Recently, I think I’ve come across a few reasons that moving to bit.ly as our URL shortener would be a good idea. Here’s another. They have just introduced additional insights to show information like what time of day users clicked on the link, no. of clicks over the past year etc.

Social Media Developments – 15th February 2013

Twitter has enhanced photo and video viewing

You may have noticed this on Twitter, but it’s now easier to view photos and videos, in particular on profiles and in search results. This only makes it more important for us to be using images/video in as much content as possible.

Facebook has added voice messaging and video recording to iOS app

This could make for an interesting addition to content, and vary what we can do through Facebook to include voice and video. We may need to see how this roles out across other services and how people use it, but could be interesting.

New YouTube channel design

YouTube is how it’s channels appear across a limited number of profiles. There will now be a channel trailer which can entice non-subscribers to subscribe to the channel. There is also a new banner image across the top (which is making YouTube look more like Facebook and Google+), and can display social media buttons, which will be good for promoting our other channels – interestingly it doesn’t look like Google+ is an default option. This is also optimised for mobile viewing, so is good from a mobile branding perspective. We will have to look into creating trailers and banners for our channels. When this roles out, we will also have to check our channels to see if the backgrounds are affected.

LinkedIn has reached 200 million users

There’s a good infographic here about its userbase.

Pinterest is testing a new look

This is currently only with a small number of profiles, but is worth watching out for.

Instagram launches on PCs

Instagram has now branched out beyond mobile and can now be used on desktops. This could broaden its user base.

Social Media Developments – 1st February 2013

Vine

In the last couple of weeks, Twitter has released it’s new 6 second looping video service – Vine. Already it’s being claimed that this service is mostly being used inappropriately, but could be a great medium for video distribution on Twitter – of course assuming we can fit a concise message into a video.

LinkedIn’s Survey

LinkedIn has conducted a professional survey of its users to find out their goals in 2013. Most people want new skills rather than new jobs this year. Find out more here.

LinkedIn shuts down Answers

LinkedIn claims this is because they are finding new ways for users to engage in discussion – no suggestion yet of what this may be though.

Embedded Tweets

Twitter now allows you to embed tweets. This allows for faster loading times and easier sharing, i.e. retweeting from websites outside of Twitter itself.

Quora introduces bloggers

Quora has now expanded its offering to include bloggers. This could be a useful new way to distribute content.

New MySpace is open

We’ll see how this goes…

Vine: A new way to share video

Twitter have introduced Vine,  a mobile service that lets you capture and share short (6 seconds or less) looping videos, similar to animated gifs.

The process is easy and involves no editing. When you hold your finger to the screen, the app is recording. When you remove your thumb, recording stops and can be started again by replacing your thumb to the screen. This lets users record multiple short clips that are threaded together into a continuous video.

Vine have their own blog [http://vine.co/blog] and the app is available for free on the iPhone and iPod touch. They are working on making it available on other platforms. Whilst Vine has been acquired by Twitter, you don’t need a Twitter account to use Vine.

Twitter’s vice president of product, Michael Sippey, said: “Like Tweets, the brevity of videos on Vine inspires creativity.”

Users can also explore video categories with a hashtag. Mashable describe it as as “a new storytelling format”, encouraging users to create their own stop-motion works of art and tweet them with the hashtag #VineArt.

Vine could be an interesting way to create new content. It’s hugely creative and 6 seconds is certainly a challenge to deliver a message. We could use the app to create content ourselves or ask fans/ followers to create short videos accompanied by a campaign hashtag.

The opportunity for creative content is there, but may be risky due to the possibility of inappropriate content.

Unfortunately, Vine already has a number of users posting graphic sexual content. Twitter have apologised for one such video becoming one of the ‘Editor’s Picks’ and have stated that users can report inappropriate videos. They are also said to be banning searches for explicit content and deleting X-rated users.

Fortnightly social media review

Twitter introduces Vine for creating GIF-like looping videos

Vine is a new service, that allows people to create and share looping videos. The videos are only six seconds long, designed to encourage creativity. Could be a nice little piece of extra content for clients.

How to ensure you’re getting the most out of your link posts on Facebook

Some nice suggestions on how to get more clicks. Posting an image then including the link in the description is probably the best way around this. People really love images. We need lots and lots of images. I’ve been wondering if we can create more images around particular job posts – image based job specs? Images of people doing the job? Tag cloud of job titles with links to the jobs mentioned? See also [INOGRAPHIC] The impact of photos on Facebook engagement and The shift to visual social media [Infographic] for why photos are so important.

1 million Facebook Likes can get you laid

Further proof that with social media, people are more likely to respond if you a) ask them to and b) give them a reason to.

Twitter for recruitment – how can we improve for 2013?

1. Be yourself and not a brand – start tweeting using a employee’s personality rather than a brand personality. Talk about your interests and what you do outside of work (this could help promote relocating). Candidates are more likely to engage and interact with you outside of working hours.
2. Watch! Watch competitor Twitter channels or successful Twitter feeds. Find out what they are tweeting about and how they are communicating with passive and active candidates.
3. Don’t follow back everyone. Determine whether a Twitter feed will bring value to your Twitter account by analysing there bio and tweets. Following Twitter accounts can reflect your interests as a brand and their appeal to potential candidates for possess the same interests.
4. Even out followers and who you’re following. Successful Twitter feeds have similar follower and following counts. Candidates are more likely to engage with you, if they believe others are following you too. It looks odd if you’re following a large number of Twitter accounts yet hardly anyone is following you back. This could suggest that your Twitter account is not engaging enough.
5. Add social media buttons to your website – enable social media updates to your webpage and social media share/like buttons to your job descriptions.  Active candidates who visit your website can then follow your Twitter/Facebook feeds. This will get shown in their news feed, therefore potentially attracting passive candidates. Furthermore, those who know a friend is searching for a job could share and tweet this to them easily.
6. Search for location hashtags e.g. #Nottingham. Tweet jobs when these locations are trending on Twitter. Therefore, more candidates will be reached successfully.

 

Do you have any other suggestions?

Social Media Developments – 4th January 2013

Twitter Passes 200 Million Active Monthly Users

Here is how it now compares to some of the other social media networks:

Google+ – 135 million users.

Facebook –  over 1 billion.

Tumblr – over 77 million blogs and 3.4 million unique visitors (per comScore).

Instagram – 100 million users – though it will be interesting to see how many users defect as a result of the new changes to their terms and conditions. I deleted my account with them this week in favour of another similar app.

Though I have also found this interesting article on Twitter growth vs. that on Facebook.

I’ve also read predictions that SlideShare will be the biggest growing social network in 2013 and here are some others to watch.

Google+ Improves Integration

Now when you upload a video to YouTube, you have the option to automatically share with your Google+ account. Google+ will also show all your public videos on your profile.

Google have also made it possible to start adding links Google+ profiles and pages into Blogger posts when you want to mention them.

I think this is a sign of things to come as the two channels become closer to one super-network.

New YouTube Design

YouTube has changed its design to make the Subscribe and Watch Channel functionality more prominent. This should help everyone who owns channels as it should encourage high numbers of subscribers. I imagine this will be particularly noticeable on the paid branded channels.

Top LinkedIn Company Pages

LinkedIn has named what it considers to be the top 12 company pages. These are (in alphabetical order):

1. Abode
2. Aurecon
3. CNBC
4. HireVue
5. HubSpot
6. INSEAD
7. The IT Media Group
8. Magna Powertrain
9. Pacific Dental Services
10. Tata Consultancy Services
11. The Walt Disney Company
12. Xactly Corporation

 

It’s worth taking a look at these to see if there is anything we can incorporate into our client company pages to improve engagement and increase followers.

New Twitter Design is Mandatory

The new Twitter design was previously an option, but over the past few weeks, Twitter has made this compulsory across all profiles. You’ll be able to see the real Twitter users by whether or not they have updated the header photo on the top of their profiles.

Facebook Tests Single Column Timelines

Facebook looks to be testing yet another type of layout for profiles and pages. Apparently this is very early days though, so look out for more on this.

Fortnightly social media review

Twitter improves its search results

Twitter has made a few changes recently to its search results, in an attempt to make the function actually useful. One of the most interesting ones is that photos and videos will now be shown first – this means we should definitely be tweeting more photos and videos, to appear highly in Twitter search results.

Yet another new social media site…

Identified.com is aiming to be LinkedIn, but for the Facebook generation (i.e. actually social). It claims to be the fastest growing career site for young professionals, that will “make managing your career not boring“. There’s no indication of how many users they have, but there’s quite a lot of buzz around it. They also have an “Identified Employer Solutions” section, which is under-developed but surprisingly similar to LinkedIn in format. I have registered to be notified about product updates…

Edit your LinkedIn profile on your mobile

LinkedIn has clearly been pushing mobile for a while now and there is a general upward trend. This new step might help to further this – it is now possible to edit your profile in the go, including your headline, skills or add a new position. It’s definitely worth thinking about what we do and how this appears on mobile devices. We have been trying to use status updates more, which is positive as these will be clearly visible on mobiles, but we need to make sure we continue to take it into account going forward.

Twitter promises downloadable tweets

Twitter CEO has promised that by the end of 2012, it will be possible to download all your tweets. At the moment, only the last few thousand tweets from each user are accessible on the site. Not massively exciting, but might be worth mentioning to clients in case they want this information for any reason.

Twitter offers $1 million in advertising credits for Small Business Saturday (US only)

Twitter is giving away $100 in free credits to each of the first 10,000 businesses who apply and are eligible for the program in an effort to help businesses promote their brand. This is particularly interesting as the main barrier to Twitter advertising used to be its price. Whereas the enquiry form for Twitter advertising used to have a $5,000 per month minimum requirement, there is now an option for $0-$999. Twitter advertising is becoming more widespread, and I wonder if promoted tweets could actually be worthwhile for clients who have the budget.

Social Media Developments – 29th November 2012

Facebook launches its own job board

In November 2012, Facebook released its own job board, the Social Jobs Partnership app. This is a collaboration between Monster, Jobvite, Work4Labs and BranchOut.

Currently, the activity is mostly focussed in the USA and the job search is not hugely accurate, however, this is likely to improve over time.

Bearing in mind the companies involved in the set up, it is likely that the Facebook job board will provide similar standards of application, i.e. posting a job will result in quantity, not quality of applications.

The job board relies heavily on Facebook members wanting to search jobs through this channel, and in the immediate future, we do not believe this is true. However, they may get more used this this in the future.

Pinterest Business Accounts

Pinterest has now introduced business accounts, allowing brands to set up their own pages. Existing accounts can be converted to a business account. In addition to the normal functionality, you also have access to:

• Pin It button – making it easier for people to pin images from your website.
• Follow button – encourage visitors of your website to follow you on Pinterest.
• Add a board widget – so users can follow boards from your website.

Facebook rolls out a pages-only feed

This new functionality allows Facebook users to view only posts from the brand pages that you follow. This is a great way to increase the visibility of page posts, however it is yet to be seen how many users will actually view the page. The feed can be accessed in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the homepage, so is not hugely obvious to the normal user.

This will have no effect on the main News Feed.

Twitter adds a share button

You can now email a tweet to anyone, regardless of whether or not they use Twitter. This can be done straight from your Twitter stream.

Facebook ads launch ROI Tracking Tool

This aims to track what users activity after they have clicked on an advert.