The Longtail Value of Twitter & Social Media

We recently posted a quick synopsis of our analysis of Twitter location data via hashtags on our blog. It’s had a fair bit of traffic to say the least. But what struck our team as interesting was a comment on our post by someone who said, essentially “why would a business care about tweets more than a week old?” Good question and a hat tip to Mr. Borasky for inspiring us – sparked some good debate at the office. There is, in fact, a lot of value. Even Twitter realizes the value to the point where it sells old “tweets” to businesses. Heres some of the value of historical social media content…one we’ve recognised for three years now given our public policy research and brand analysis work. Nice to know we remain ahead of the curve.

The Value of Old Tweets:
Due to the proprietary nature of what we do (hey, our business is digging far deeper into social media than basic monitoring tools do) we’ll cover some of the main reasons only. Sorry about that, but we are a business after all and people rely on us for their mortgage payments etc.
- Past tweets can give indicators of something going “viral” in a marketing campaign
- Past tweets can lead to where something went viral and point to “authorities” and “influencers” for marketing outreach
- In public policy it can help governments understand how citizen views shape around proposed or passed legislation
- A company can understand how a PR crisis evolved and where content originated when doing debriefs

Value of Historical Social Media Content for Brands:
Case 1: In 2009 we conducted an online brand analysis for Anne of Green Gables for TourismPEI (a very sophisticated tourism department I might add) and we found, in the deep dark corners of the web (where reputation management tools don’t ever go) some Anne content from 1985. Trending that forward, TourismPEI gained some unique and critical insight into the Anne brand through time. It helped them develop a very engaging social media campaign with financial benefits to tourism operators in PEI. We could cite about 80 other examples, but that would be a longer blog post than we want to write or anyone wants to read.

Case 2: A large software manufacturer came to us to see if we could help them understand what people were saying about certain product features – for recent and old releases. As they used the Agile Development process (like we do) they wanted to identify any trends, including those of competitors. We were able to show them how competitors had sidestepped them for a lead on three occasions in 2005 and 2007 and help them identify where a release went wrong in 2009. To say this made them ecstatic would underplay the very large fruit basket that got shared around the office…what? If we sent it back the fruit would have decayed. Bad for the environment.

Value of Old Social Media Content for Public Policy
Case 1: One interesting case is research into the aquaculture industry for a provincial government in Canada. What our research into social media showed was how citizens viewed legislations and industry approaches from 2002 to 2010. That’s a good window to understand the evolution of citizen and activist group approaches to public policy.

Case 2: This case came out of the UK and the UK government looking to understand the views of farmers and citizens around Farm Trust policies in the UK from 2000 to 2010. Our research was combined with traditional survey and polling methods and showed some more detailed opinions by citizens and farmers than would have ever shown up in traditional methods.

Case 3: This was about saving lives. It doesn’t get better than that. Our research was around a flood event in New Brunswick in 2010. Our analysis was carried out in mid-2011. Access to historical data was vital. We were able to create a detailed picture on how social media was used by citizens just before, during and after a major natural disaster that would help the provinces Emergency Measures Organisation and services respond better and engage citizens.

Immediacy Means Lost Context
Those who focus on the “real-time” of content online are working in the “now” and there is definitely a place for that. That’s where social media monitoring tools like Radian6, Sysomos or Trackur come into play (although they all fail on the “small” and only work for major volumes of discussion.)  But as we’ve shown above, getting an historical view of what’s happened can be the difference between adapting to an emerging trend and repeating a disaster in both marketing and public policy.

Even in this modern age, history repeats itself.

Social Media in the Age of Corporate Social Responsibility

We’ve found a dramatic increase, over 47% over 2011 so far in 2012, in our research related to corporate social responsibility and social media. This is an area we see as becoming both important and creating a new challenge for corporations that have followed more traditional paths of communications and public relations. Such as mining companies and others in the extractive resources sector.

While a mining company might be very good with deploying technology as it relates to mining operations, they are facing a new frontier when it comes to just how social media can impact not just investor relations but how they engage with the public and shareholders on Corporate Social Responsibility programs. In an age where anyone anywhere can take pictures and videos and upload them instantly or quickly to the Web and they can be shared just as fast – it opens a new dynamic where a crisis can happen instantly. And few traditional corporations are prepared for that.

But as with every negative challenge, comes opportunity. A mining company or processor can use the same tools to provide proof and evidence of its programs in near or real-time. This can be either proactive or to better engage a community where it is or may be operating. Dialogue can be opened and these companies now have a greater chance at building partnerships with a community offline and online. Activist groups and opposing community groups can be better understood and accuracy of information is more likely. This can be especially important for North American companies operating in fragile states.

Of the twenty or so research and strategy projects we’ve done in the extractive resources sector for social media, we’ve found that in almost all cases a client has found improved stakeholder relations in the communities in which they are or are planning to operate. That is significant. It reduces the cost of engagement, improves the chance of say, a mining operation, getting approval and lowers the risk of a public relations crises. That helps reduce shareholder risk and improves profitability and that is tangible.

Where Twitter Apps Fail Miserably

There are a number of Social Media Engagement apps on the market, such as Hootsuite, Siesmic and TweetDeck. They all offer pretty much the same capabilities with Radian6 offering “nice dashboards” to help you, apparently, understand sentiment etc. So we tested Hootsuite, Seesmic and TweetDeck and here’s what we found…their ability to “search” and then actually find users was surprisingly limiting. In part this may be largely due to the cost of the feeds they buy. It costs upwards of US$30,000 a month to get real-time feeds from Twitter and other sources. While storage may be cheap, processing and bandwidth remain expensive.

Methodology: For all of the above tools we used 20 different account profiles with each service. We then identified 50 different Twitter accounts with a range of 30 to 5,000 followers and 20 of the top trending hashtags over a 5 day period. We also used some localisation hashtags including #Halifax, #Calgary, #Toronto, #SanFrancisco, #Chicago, #London, #Liverpool and #Boston to get an international sense of tweets.

Hootsuite: We found that Hootsuite failed to identify known Twitter accounts 46% of the time and didn’t register hashtags 39% of the time with a 3 month window.

TweetDeck: With this app we found TweetDeck failed to identify known Twitter accounts 54% of the time and didn’t register hashtags 76% of the time with a 3 month window.

Seesmic: Was the worst with failing to to identify known Twitter accounts 76% of the time and didn’t register hashtags 82% of the time with a 3 month window.

So What? You Could be Wasting Serious Money:
Well, if you’re using these apps, it means that on a mean average, you will only find 22% of the accounts talking about your brand, service or issue. That means that “keyword” analytics are nice, but are weak and have a long way to go. The fact is, human oversight and integrating third party tools along with more sophisticated software is what makes the difference. These tools that enable digital engagement and also known as “social media monitoring” apps are okay for major brand keywords but can fail when it comes to hyper-local or evolving results.

Who Won’t Be Engaging in Social Media?

There’s always the marketing hype of “everyone’s on social media, so get on board…” But not everyone is engaging in social media. Or at least, not as themselves; and we’re not talking lurkers, creepers and hackers. We’re talking every day folks. Here’s a list of the types of people you’re not likely to hear very much about or from and if they are online, they’re usually quiet and lock down their privacy.

Prosecutors: Having an open Facebook profile (or perhaps a Facebook account at all) or Google+ profile or putting their name out there in a significant form and contributing a lot – not likely. It would be easy for criminals they convicted to get information on them. This could put themselves, family, friends and co-workers at risk.

Correctional Workers: Pretty much for the same reason as prosecuting attorneys.

Military Personnel: Some military personnel work in rather classified areas. They may use anonymous avatars, but will be very low-key if engaged.

Police Officers: Some may be more visible than others, but they run the same safety risks as prosecutors and corrections officers.

Lawyers: Some are very active in social media, while others will keep a low profile or be very conscious of how and when they engage.

Government Personnel: Some government personnel, perhaps senior management, won’t be very active in social media. This may range from not wanting to engage with staff to being very busy as it is or to having to maintain a low or zero profile due to the nature of their work.

At Risk Executives: By this we mean senior management in companies that are in controversial sectors, such as the resource extraction sector or chemicals. There are activist groups that are more militant in nature and may pose a security risk, while there are others that might spam them or cause problems. These executives need to keep a low or zero profile.

Can you think of others? Why not add them here…

Why Google+ is Hot While Facebook is Cold

The pundits, journos and others all seem to focus on the “numbers” of Facebook vs. Google which, in reality, means shite. Really. Right? Obviously Facebook has seriously superior numbers. But that actually means nothing. In fact it is just a quantitative number and has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on anything of actual value. While a newspaper may have 3 million subscribers that number is pointless if only 500 people actually read the newspaper.

The Real Perspective Is Engagement
So we set out to look at activity between Facebook and Google+ and we found something very, very interesting. Of the 15,000 profiles we compared, only 24% of the Facebook profiles posted more than twice per week, while 72% of Google+ users posted more than three times per week. In other words, those that use Google+ are far more active than Facebook users.

Activity Equates to Reach
For advertisers of course, you need people to see your ad right? If they see it, they may click on it. Problem for Facebook users is…they aren’t on Facebook very much in a given week, whereas Google+ users are.

Then It’s About Demographics
But when it comes to Google+, we’ve also found that these folks are generally quite active with technology. They’re hip to new technologies and they adopt new services. But they prefer the “easier” engagement of Google+ over Facebook. With Facebook there is more “friction” involved in finding and connecting with people and there are  more restrictions on how to connect and engage. With Google+, the advantage of Circles is actually reduced friction. For advertisers this may mean more truly viable opportunities for potential click-throughs on advertising messages when Google introduces them.

The Locality of It All
The upside of Facebook is that they can, truly, get very “local” or hyper-local, with their ads. This is a bit elusive for Google+ in terms of hyper-local advertising. But what matters is those that actually click through to an ad and can be converted and this is where things equal out a little bit. But the real issue for ROI is the advertiser – just how good are they at converting a “click-through” to a purchase or whatever their goal is? That is neither the fault nor issue of Google or Facebook.

Overall
Our conclusion is that Google+ is a better platform for finding those that are actually active and engaged on a regular basis, while Facebook is a far more “latent” platform that equates to patience.

Of course, we have a lot more data behind this research, but we are a business so if you want to find out more, just give us a holler! If you’re a Halifax search marketing firm or an SEO consultant agency, this is insight to help with your SEO strategy. Firms like Norex, FreshEgg and Alpha Search would well be served by looking into data such as this.