May 24, 2011
All views are not created equal: How to make sure your digital content hits its target
An eyeball is an eyeball is an eyeball. Falser words were never spoken. Every time I hear someone brag about the success of their digital creative by pointing simply to the number of fans they have on Facebook as proof, I want to poke mine out. Sure, determining the impact (and value) of “engagement” with digital content in social media is still tricky, but when it comes to measuring exposure to content through social media campaigns, old rules still apply – the quality of eyeballs can’t be overlooked.
A recent post column in AdAge (Sorry, but Counting Facebook ‘Fans’ or Video Views Won’t Help Your Brand), correctly identifies a troublesome practice that too many marketers follow – using topline metrics like the quantity of Facebook fans or video views as the only measures of success rather than also considering the quality of these impressions and engagements. It’s this question of quantity versus quality on which the effective analysis of social media impact hinges.
A look at our analysis of traditional media metrics is instructive. We needn’t necessarily change how we look at data when it comes to examining quality of impressions. Neilson and other auditing systems allow us to look at demographic information to see how efficient our ads have been in reaching the desired target audience in traditional media. In much the same way, many of the major social media platforms now offer a tremendous amount of data about users who engage with our content. Facebook and YouTube insights offer demographic information on fans as well as viewers of ads. Twitter has been the slowest to offer robust analytics, but recently announced intentions to do so in the near future. (more…)
Filed under: Communications, Research and Evaluation, Social Media
Tags: evaluation, facebook, Research, Social Media
May 6, 2011
Can You Guess the World’s Best and Worst Places To Be a Mother?
Originally published on HuffingtonPost.com on May 3, 2011
I love being an American mom, but guess what, being a mom is even better for women in 30 other countries around the world. In the world’s best place to be a mother, I could expect an extra year of life and I would have enjoyed a year of paid maternity leave after the birth of my children. My own daughter would be expected to complete an extra year of school — for a total of 18.
What is the top-ranked country I’m talking about, where 40 percent of national elected officials are women (as compared to 17 percent here) and maternal and child mortality rates are among the very lowest in the world?
If you guessed it’s somewhere in Scandinavia, you’d be right. According to the State of the World’s Mothers 2011 report, released today by Save the Children, Norway ranks as the world’s best place to be a mother.
On the other hand, in the world’s toughest place to be a mother, I would be far better off than the typical mother there. Frankly, there’s a good chance I’d be dead. I’ve already outlived this particular country’s female life expectancy of 45. And as the mother of four, it’s very likely that one of my kids would have died from a preventable cause, like pneumonia or diarrhea. One in five children there dies before turning five.
In this bottom-ranked country, girls only complete an average of five years of school, and access to the most basic health care is extremely limited. Imagine giving birth alone or with only a neighbor or relative at your side. In the country I’m talking about, 86 percent of mothers deliver this way. As a result, pregnancy complications kill one of every 11 women.
Any guesses where this country might be? Eight of the 10 worst places to be a mother in the rankings are in Africa, but not this one. It’s a country that’s been at war for almost a decade, and civilian casualties are rising. Even so, women in this country — Afghanistan — are 200 times more likely to die during childbirth than from bombs or bullets.
Here’s a snapshot of the 2011 rankings of 164 countries analyzed in the Mother’s Index:
Filed under: Events, Research and Evaluation
Tags: mother's day
April 17, 2011
The Weekend Worker Gets the Worm
Buddy Media recently released “Strategies For Effective Facebook Wall Posts: A Statistical Review.” As stated in their blog:
“We analyzed all Facebook Wall posts from the Buddy Media Platform by a sample size of more than 200 clients over a two week period: January 30, 2011 – February 12, 2011. “Likes” and comments made to these posts were also analyzed.
This sample size represents the world’s largest brands in the entertainment, media, retail, automotive, business and finance, fashion, food and beverage, healthcare and beauty and travel and hospitality industries.”
One of most interesting findings was that brands miss out on a lot of action by not posting on the weekends or after work hours. As stated in the report: “Brands that posted outside of normal business hours had 20% higher engagement rates on their posts.”
The question here is — are people more active at these times because that’s when they aren’t overwhelmed by brands? If all brands get hip to the weekend action could this change? Whatever the case, I say we should benefit from this new insight while we can.
In addition to posting on the weekends, the study found that posting near the end of the work week – Thursdays and Fridays – is also more effective. So don’t post your best content for the week on Monday, drop the big news later in the week, or Sunday, if the time peg allows.
Suddenly community managers’ hours are looking more like the service and entertainment industry, which makes sense. I know that scheduling posts may sound like a good solution here, but I think that’s not ideal. Because it’s engagement we are after, posting and then responding in real-time to those who engage is key.
Another interesting finding was that you need to ask for what you want. Imagine that! It sounds so obvious, but not a lot of people do it, including myself. So may I say now, like the Ad Council on Facebook, comment on this blog, follow us on Twitter, please and thank you!
Finally, I believe what could be the best way to pump-up engagement is to have more interactive opportunities on your Facebook page through developing custom pages. This is exactly what Buddy Media does. Recently Buddy Media has become a partner of the Ad Council and taken another step towards becoming an affordable tool for social marketers. So if enough of us get on board, the next report could give us specific results for nonprofits and the like. In this respect, I find Buddy Media to be the biggest finding.
Filed under: Research and Evaluation, Social Media
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