Pear Analytics

Mayank Lahiri’s fabulous Foursquare gaming code challenge is an excellent write-up on a “small” problem with Foursquare’s check-in API.  You can check in from anywhere, but the system doesn’t verify where you are.  Clever programmers can get around this by taking notes of where their favorite venues are, and can then check-in whenever they want.  It may well be a long time before Foursquare learns to tell the difference between automated check-ins and people forgetting their keys.

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Thanks to my friend Steve Patti (@polarityinc) who sent this excellent whitepaper from Marketing Profs this morning entitled “The Naked Truth: Insights from the State of Social Media Marketing” dated January 14, 2010, which you can download at the bottom of this post.  This is a really interesting read if you are wondering what works and what doesn’t in social media.  I know I hear from companies on a daily basis who are scrambling to figure out how to get involved with social media the right way.  The authors of this research did a fairly large survey, and included non-social media marketers to get an understanding of who is vs. is NOT using social media.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

1.  Facebook is the most popular with 48.2% of companies having a corporate profile

2.  Twitter is second most popular with 42.8% of companies maintaining a profile.

3.  Ever wonder what industries are participating the most in social media?

4.  Check out some of the Twitter tactics that worked vs. did not work as well

Here are some social media myths that the research indicates:

MYTH:  Social media is “free”.

While the media may be free, the marketer’s time is not.  The average marketer who spends 4-7 hours per day on social media activities is earning over $130,000 per year.

MYTH: Only young people are using social media.

While more young people are consuming social media, but good content is actually produced by older, more experienced social media marketers.

MYTH: It’s a good idea to have your 22-year old intern handle all of your social media activities.

It’s better to spread the work out. Let thought leaders lead thoughts, and customer service serve grumpy customers. (<– love that one!)

You can download the entire paper here. (However, you must visit Steve’s marketing blog since he pays for the Marketing Profs subscription!)

1 Comment »Tags: facebook, Social Media, twitter

For those of  you who are wondering how many people are using Twitter, or even how many new accounts are created per week, I kind of did a hack using Tweetie2 for the iPhone.  I’m sure there are other ways you can get this information – this is just how I did it.  I also reference some other articles and research about this towards the bottom of the post

You may have already noticed that in Tweetie2 when you click on a user to see their profile there is a number under their handle.  So I did this for a few people and was shocked to see my friend @alanweinkrantz was #10,326, whereas @pearanalytics was #16,657,710.  Clearly Alan must have been an early adopter, so I asked him when he signed up for Twitter and he told me October 2006, which I “think” is right before Twitter even launched themselves at SXSW in March 2007.  Alan even joined before @scobleizer who is #13,348.

Is Twitter Growing at 1 million New Accounts Per Week?

Last week on December 18th I created a new account, @welovehosting.  That account was #97,717,227.  So I thought if I created a new account and got that number, I could compare the two and see what the growth rate was.  So today I created @iamryankelly and am #98,669,223, which is a difference of 951,996 new accounts in 5 days.  That’s a growth rate of 190,400 new accounts per day.

Note on Accuracy

It’s difficult to determine the accuracy of this method, since according to Twitter Facts, Twitter stopped using sequential ID’s by the end of November 2006.  Then there is this blog post by Jason Kottke in May 2007 which discusses the growth of Twitter, complete with various graphs and other deliciousness.  So how accurate is this?  What do you use to find out Twitter growth?

1 Comment »Tags: alan weinkrantz, Scobleizer, twitter

It’s been a little over one week since the Pear Analytics Twitter study we posted reached blogs and media outlets all around the world. We were extremely pleased with the outcome and all of the constructive feedback. As mentioned in the study, we will be monitoring Twitter usage and behavior in an ongoing manner, and part of this post will explain what we have planned next.

With the large amount of media attention and exposure our company has received as a result of this study, I would first like to take this opportunity to not only clarify a few things, but ask for your continued input so we can make the next study even more meaningful.

Setting the Record Straight

There were thousands of blog posts, comments, and general commentary about this study over the last week, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a wide spectrum of responses, and we welcome all of it.  There were people who loved it, hated it and everything in between.

First, let me say that we are big fans of Twitter.  We use it to share with friends and family, to share our products, to brag about our clients, and in general to share and receive useful information.  Personally, I have found great resources through the folks I follow on Twitter; but I admit, I can’t keep up with all of it and there are an overwhelming amount of tweets that do not interest me.

Second, we’re not telling you how to use Twitter, or that people are using it the wrong way – we simply reported on insights from what we found in an interesting way.

Third, we were not paid to do this study, nor have we made one dime on it.  We also did not spend one dime promoting it.  My friend at Sales By 5 sent one single email to Mashable to see if they would be interested in sharing the report.  They covered the story and other outlets picked up on the conversation.  We did subsequently sent additional notices to media outlets once it began taking off.

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3 Comments »Tags: twitter

A while back we embarked on a study that evolved after a having a debate in the office as to how people are using and consuming Twitter. Some felt it was their source of news and articles, others felt it was just a bunch of self-promotion with very few folks actually paying attention. But mostly, many people still perceive Twitter as just mindless babble of people telling you what they are doing minute-by-minute; as if you care they are eating a sandwich at the moment.  (See our last post on Twitter: Is Anyone Paying Attention?).

So we took 2,000 tweets from the public timeline (in English and in the US) over a 2-week period from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and captured tweets in half-hour increments. Then we categorized them into 6 buckets:

News, Spam, Self-Promotion, Pointless Babble, Conversational and Pass-Along Value.

See our entire whitepaper here.

Results

The results were interesting. As you may have guessed, Pointless Babble won with 40.55% of the total tweets captured; however, Conversational was a very close second at 37.55%, and Pass-Along Value was third (albeit a distant third) at 8.7% of the tweets captured.

Other Results

- 11:30a and Monday’s have the most frequent tweets with Pass-Along Value.  If you want something re-tweeted, try it at 11:30 in the morning, or try it on a Monday.  Maybe folks are feeling generous then.

- Spam seemed pretty consistent all day, everyday, but luckily was second-to-last on frequency.

- News seemed heavier at 2:00p and on Tuesday’s.  Note that we did not collect any tweets during the Michael Jackson news, in order not to skew the results.

- Conversational tweets were high between 2:00 and 4:00p throughout the study, and heaviest on Tuesdays.  Most people are busy on Monday catching up with work, so perhaps it takes until Tuesday to get into the swing of Twittering again.

Conclusion

With the new face of Twitter, it will be interesting to see if they take a heavier role in news, or continue to be a source for people to share their current activities that have little to do with everyone else.  We will be conducting this same study every quarter to identify other trends in usage.

Since Twitter is still loaded with lots of babbling that not many of have time for, you should check out the Twitter filter, Philtro.  These guys can not only help you filter the noise, but will also be allowing you to store the tweets you are most interested in real soon.

See our entire whitepaper here.

Update – August 24, 2009

Please see this post on how we plan to continue analyzing Twitter behavior and usage.  We are looking for your feedback to make the next study even more insightful!

254 Comments »Tags: Social Media, twitter

As we’ve been doing our Twitter survey, we noticed that most of what was going on was conversations and mindless babble… When we started, the homepage said “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?“

We guess Twitter also noticed there was a lot of boring babble going and was hoping to make it more useful for people, especially all those people who say they just don’t get the point of Twitter. If it’s just status updates, can’t we just use Facebook? So after the Twitter revolution of it being hailed a useful news source during the Iran election protests and talk of a Nobel Prize for Twitter, they have changed the homepage to say “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world”

Is Twitter hoping to become more useful than CNN? Are they hoping that more people will use it to promote their business or personal victories? If companies latch on to Twitter and use it as a broadcasting medium for their new products, will Twitter still be useful? Will they start charging for commercial accounts? Will anyone actually follow an advertiser? Several companies have already shown a major drop in followers after sending out product messages. On the other hand, Twitter can be a useful tool for instant updates. The Australian government used Twitter to send out a Tsunami warning following an earthquake in New Zealand.

I guess Twitter is something different for everyone. How you use it depends largely on who you follow. Some people use it for news updates. Others use it as a messaging tool. Others promote their business with it. For others it just a time waster at work. It does seem to be either an all or nothing phenomenon. Many people just don’t see the point of it. They may try it once or twice and then give up. Those that do use Twitter are fairly constant in their use. Statistics show that it’s actually about 5% of Twitterers who do about 75% of the tweets. Some people obviously either have too much time or their hands or too much self importance. Personally, I think if you have that much time to Tweet every 5 minutes, you’re probably not getting anything else done and probably aren’t that important. How much time do people have anyway. (Yes, I’m talking to you Ashton Kutcher!) Personally, I don’t care who Perez Hilton hates today. Or what Shaq is doing right now. I’m also not that interested in the daily goings on of someone on the other side of the world tweeting they just had a ham sandwich for lunch. But, I do follow people like CNN and some fellow expats that always have interesting news from both sides of the globe. I’ve also unfollowed a couple of people because I just didn’t find their tweets to be interesting. Especially those that post too too much.

Stay Tuned. Next week we’ll post the results of our Twitter Analysis. 

3 Comments »Tags: twitter

While working outside in the garden yesterday, I was watching a baby bird learning to fly while its mother chirped and moved from tree to tree trying to get the little one to follow. Occasionally the daddy bird would also join in. It was nice to hear the little tweets as they all talked to each other. It gave me something else to think about as I was pulling weeds.  There are days though, when all the crows are chirping incessantly and all I want is some peace and quiet. I’m not interested in what they’re doing, I don’t care what all the fuss is about. I just want to switch off. Their chirping is irritating as I try to sleep or work.
The same thing applies to Twitter. There are days when I like hearing that little chirp. Other days, I just want to turn it off. Some people just tweet too much. Unless you’re CNN, you can’t possibly have that much to say that you’re tweeting every 10 minutes. Asking around the office, I’m not the only one that will un-follow someone for tweeting too much. If you’re following several hundred people there can just be a brain overload. That gentle chirping can turn into feeding time at the parakeet show and a lot of those tweets are like the result of all that food…
Whilst Twitter can be a good marketing tool, it’s important to limit what you say. If you babble to much, people will turn you off and then your message is going no-where.

No Comments »Tags: marketing, twitter

Outside of my job at Pear Analytics, I’m also a producer, so I know my opinion is slightly biased, but I believe video is an increasingly important tool in getting your message across and driving traffic to your website.

We haven’t posted too much video from Pear yet, but we did go to a major video outlet, current.com and linked back to our site in the comments field. In one day we had over a 200% increase in traffic to our website analyzer tool. It disappeared pretty quickly, but it was a nice little pop in traffic. I’m going to test again in the next few weeks by uploading a video and testing to see how much traffic that drives to the website. I’ll also be helping some of our clients to post their videos to different sites to help with their traffic.

I believe video is important because people like to watch and listen instead of just reading. For example, we did a screecast video of how to use the visitor mapping feature in Clicky Web Analytics.  If you can incorporate video into your blog or have demonstration videos on your website, it greatly enhances the user experience. Posting them on other sites like current.com, blip.tv or YouTube can also drive traffic back to your main website. Most other video sharing platforms will host your video and let you embed it onto your own website.

As we post more videos, I’ll update whether we see any more success from this method. We’re actually thinking of doing “whiteboard Fridays” where we do two minute video clips on the SEO tip of the week.

Have your used video on your website or used it as a tool to link back to you? Did you notice it helped?

No Comments »Tags: video

The following is a blog post by Nan Palmero, Chief Inspriation Officer at Sales By 5, a San Antonio firm that helps companies achieve dramatic increases in sales.

Last December, seeking to enhance sales, Gary Vaynerchuk offered free shipping and promoted it three ways. As a result, he said, a direct marketing mailing cost $15,000 and brought in 200 new customers; a billboard ad cost $7,500 and won 300 new customers; and tweeting the promotion on Twitter attracted 1,800 new customers.

Are you using social media to get your story out there? You don’t have to pay for attention anymore.

5 Comments »Tags: cost per acquisition, direct mail, twitter

I’ve been wondering lately about Twitter.  I wonder when I send a tweet to my 800 followers, who is actually paying attention not only reading my tweet, but clicking on the link I provide.  In reality, it seems to me that we only have a small window of opportunity to be “noticed” or else the tweet just gets buried in the time line.

My guess was that any tweet has a “shelf life” of roughly 2 hours, and assuming about 5% of your followers are considered to be “active followers” (meaning they usually respond to things you post or at least consistently read them), I could expect about 20 click-throughs to the link I provided in my tweet.

The Test

I sent a post at 1:38p CST (right in the middle of the day, when hopefully most are actively using Twitter) entitled “Test: How I Evaluated the Effectiveness of Print Ads: http://bit.ly/19GkSz”; a blog I posted on this site on April 21st.  I used bit.ly to track the results, thanks to my friend @bolora.  I was using BudURL and was getting frustrated with it, so Bo said to try bit.ly and by inserting “/info” right after the .ly, I would get a full report on clicks, etc.

The Results

Right after the tweet posted, it was re-tweeted by friends @erikdarm (678 followers) at 1:53p, and then 2 of his followers re-tweeted the post; @blellowj (2,047 followers) at 1:54p and @stephenlynch (712 followers) at 1:57.  It is now 3:19p and there have been no further re-tweets, so the pass-along value may have reached its limit within the Twitter time line.

Total reach = 4,235 potential Tweeple to read and click on my tweet (my 798 followers, plus the followers of the re-tweets).

If you go to the bit.ly link, you will see a screen like the one below:

So the “Now” screen looks like this and refreshes every few seconds, so the time line keeps moving to the right.  (It would be cool if you could go back and see the clicks at the beginning – there was more activity around 2:00p with one time about 6 clicks came in simultaneously).

I think it’s safe to say the post has now exhausted it’s useful life, with the last click at 2:41p CST (it is now 3:29p and no click activity since then).

This shows the activity for the “full day”, with a total of 34 clicks at the 2:00p mark, and 15 at the 3:00p mark for a total of 49 clicks to the link in the tweet (i.e. 49 potential new visitors to our blog/website).

Conclusion

We would have to do several tests to prove this out, and I’m sure would vary if you were Robert Scoble or Guy Kawasaki, but in general (for the rest of us), from this small experiment we conclude that a “useful” tweet has the following characteristics:

-a shelf life of about 1 hr 15 min, and then it “dies”
-1 to 2% click-through rate on links

Which means that this is not a whole lot different than direct mail for example, without out the cost of course.  What do you think?  Is Twitter really a good way to communicate and share useful knowledge, or is it simply getting lost in the mix?

24 Comments »Tags: tracking social media, twitter