Holy Twit – Increased Tweet Volume Drives Results
Posted on 04. Oct, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media statistics, Twitter
One of my favorite Twitter add-ons is Buffer, an easy-to-use service that allows you to quickly queue up many tweets at one time, with those missives and bon mots then automatically parceled out one at a time on a schedule you determine.(Buffer also works for Facebook)
For people like me that do a lot of curation via Twitter, this is a real workflow advantage. Instead of finding and tweeting interesting content several times daily, I can scan dozens of blogs and email newsletter and RSS feeds in one sitting in the morning, and then use the Buffer browser app to set up tweets throughout the day. Doing so allows me to focus my other Twitter interactions on engagement and response, rather than curation.
I’ve used Buffer off and on for a while now (and I REALLY want Buffer to get together with my guys at Argyle Social, which I use most often for social media marketing due to their extraordinary statistical capabilities).
When I’ve used Buffer consistently, I’ve seen my clicks and retweets increase, and new research of 2,000 users finds that effect isn’t isolated. Buffer’s data shows that within 2 weeks of starting to use the system, users’ clicks increase by 200%, and retweets by 100%.
There are two seemingly plausible hypotheses for this impact (but a fully controlled study has not been conducted to isolate or confirm, so please take all of this with a degree of skepticism).
People That Use Buffer Tweet More Often
After signing up for Buffer ($0 – $30 per month), users send 150% more tweets than they did before using the application. More tweets will almost always yield more response because unless you are very new to Twitter or particularly maladroit at it’s norms and customs, every tweet you send should generate some response.
This makes me feel good about the Buffer stat of 200% more clicks, but less happy about the 100% more retweets. If you’re sending 150% more tweets, shouldn’t your retweets go up by at least 150%? If not, then it would appear that the likelihood of a retweet on any given tweet actually goes down after signing on to Buffer. This actually makes some intuitive sense, however, because if you start tweeting substantially more, your followers won’t necessarily want to retweet you multiple times daily to keep pace – it looks too stalkerish. Except when live tweeting an event, I don’t think I’ve retweeted the same person twice in one day, ever.
People That Use Buffer Tweet in Prime Times
There is a lot of research around the “optimal” time to tweet, but these types of broad generalizations are difficult and somewhat dangerous, as they typically do not adjust for time zones and other circumstantial factors.
The idea that there are universal “best” times to tweet reminds me a lot of the long-ago rule in email marketing that you didn’t want to send on Monday or Friday because many people were on vacation. So, everyone started to send T-Th, and the volume on those days spiked so high that response rates fell through the floor. So in response, the new best practice became to indeed send on Mondays or Fridays. Madness!
Yes, you should pay attention to optimization research and social media science. But also recognize that slavish devotion to conventional wisdom 100% guarantees that you will never be extraordinary at anything. Average people worry about averages.
The fact remains, however, that Buffer automatically sets up your tweets to be sent when more people tend to be using Twitter, naturally increasing potential audience for many Buffer users. You can override the Buffer default settings (as I do) to Tweet more often, on a more diffuse pattern, to include nights and weekends, and/or to Tweet closer to the top and bottom of the hour. By the way, I’m working on a super cool Webinar with Argyle Social to reveal some very interesting, thorough research on social media timing. Join us for free on October 27.
The other issue is that while clicks and retweets are psychically satisfying in the same way a perfectly cooked In-N-Out Burger hits the spot, that’s not really your goal is it? Remember, the objective is not to be good at Twitter, the objective is to be good at business because of Twitter. And that usually means some sort of conversion event, and data on that point isn’t available yet.
Buffer saves me a ton of time. I recommend it constantly. I very much like their team personally (Leo Widrich is a one-man clinic on community management). And I like what it’s done for my Twitter results – and it appears the results of a bunch of other people. But let’s keep all of this in the proper perspective. Ultimately, it’s not about timing and volume and software. It’s about people, what you tweet, and how you treat.
9 Surprising New Facts About Social Media in America
Posted on 27. May, 2011 by Jay Baer in arbitron, Blog, edison research, facebook, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media research, social media statistics, The Social Habit, tom webster, Twitter
Social media is growing up fast. No longer a niche plaything of the digerati, social media is firmly entrenched as a societal game changer of historical importance. For many, social media and social networking are so ubiquitous and pervasive that we presume we have it figured out, that we have a finger firmly on the pulse. But we don’t. Data about how social media really works, who uses it and how, continues to surprise.
This point was driven home in The Social Habit II, a new report from Edison Research and Arbitron that follows up on their landmark study in 2010 (and their 19th study about the Internet overall).
My friend and the architect of the study, Tom Webster, was kind enough to give me a preview of the report (I also very much recommend Tom’s blog BrandSavant), and here are my personal highlights – the pages that made me say “hmmmm”.
I encourage you to peruse the entire report, which you can access for free in a day or so. Tweet me or Tom (@webby2001) to get the URL. It’s a 50+ page orgy of data based on 2,020 telephone interviews of Americans ages 12 and up, conducted in February, 2011.
9 Surprising New Facts About Social Media in America
1. More People Are Active on Social Networks Than Are Not
52% of Americans have a profile on Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace or elsewhere. This may be a tipping point for social adoption overall.
2. Twitter is a Tiny Sliver
As discussed in “Is Twitter Massively Overrated” a few weeks ago, Twitter’s cultural impact is not driven by the size of its user base, but by its real-time nature, and the types of people who use it. Twitter is used by just 8% of Americans (compared to 51% for Facebook).
3. Twitter is Incredibly Diverse
Just 55% of Twitter uses are White, followed by 22% African-American, 15% Hispanic, and 3% Asian. This is of course substantially more diverse than the population overall, and markedly more diverse than Facebook. I have read that African-Americans use the mobile Web at a much higher rate than the population at-large, and given the propensity of Twitter users to participate via mobile device, I wonder if that’s part of the correlation? Or perhaps I’m confusing cause and effect? Either way, I found it to be a very interesting statistic.
4. The Emergence of the Super Socials
One-third of Americans with a profile on a social network, use those sites several times per day or more. This group of “super socials” (my label, not Edison’s) numbers 46 million, and increase of almost 20% in one year.
5. Super Socials Love Twitter
Partially an explanation of Twitter’s popularity and role in the culture despite it’s relatively small user base, 23% of the “super socials” use Twitter, which is almost triple the rate of Americans overall. (98% of super socials use Facebook, and 45% use MySpace)
6. Super Socials use and Worship their Smartphones
56% of the super socials use smartphones, compared to 31% of the U.S. population surveyed; and when presented the choice of abandoning their smartphone or television, 64% of super socials would choose to keep the phone.
7. Super Socials Interact with Brands
Among habitual social networkers, 43% follow companies on social networks, compared to just 25% of all social network users.
8. Brand Interactions Occur Predominately on Facebook
Among the 25% of respondents that have followed a company in social media, 80% have done so via Facebook. Just 6% have done so on Twitter. This raises an interesting question about companies’ efforts to attract followers on Twitter vs. similar efforts to acquire “likes” on Facebook. Based on this data, it would seem that consumers are perhaps most interested in that type of interaction via Facebook, reserving Twitter for customer service issues (as other research has suggested, most notably from ExactTarget – a client).
9. Facebook is Where Consumers are Influenced about Buying Decisions
72% of respondents said that no social network has influenced their purchase of products and services. Personally, I doubt the veracity of that statistic, as people routinely overlook the subtle ways in which their friends and family (to whom they are probably connected on Facebook and elsewhere) influence their purchases. However, among the survey participants who acknowledged social media’s role in this regard, they cited Facebook overwhelmingly as the source of that influence.
Which of these strikes you as the most interesting? What do you take away from these findings?
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