I'm just passing on a mini-insight I found out today from Quora. I was wondering how to find the most popular groups on Linked In. The answer is obvious, but I didn't think of it... Simply select "Groups" from the search drop down and then search without any query in the box.
The number of members is given under the listing. It seems there are nearly 900,000 groups on LinkedIn - that's quite a few.
The popularity of some these groups is amazing, many of them are jobs related, which is no surprise, but I was interested to see that the Emarketing Association was the third most popular - this was one of the earliest groups created around our topic:
Finding the most popular LinkedIn groups within a category or industry
This is most relevant if you work…
Though the big networks continue to grow, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr, this data from Ignite indicates a maturing (to some extent) of the social media space with some big 'web 2.0' businesses in decline. What does this mean? Only time will tell, and though Facebook is the default choice for most I think it's both natural and encouraging that platforms find a niche, after all isn't that the nature of things? Let us know what you think...
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With more than 30 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook each month, have you ever wondered how to optimise engagement on your brand's Facebook Page and get more people to come back? When's the best time to post, how often and are there variances by industry?
I am currently working on a social media campaign for a client that will use Buddy Media to manage a Facebook page as a part of the project, having taken a look into Buddy Media (my first experience of using it) I came across this interesting white paper and thought that it was worth sharing and summarising for you.
Caveat first: The data Buddy media used is across 200 large brands, this data will change (effectiveness will alter if everyone does…
Created by Jess3 and Brian Solis "the Twitterverse is a single graphic designed to inform brands, individuals and organizations about the thousands of Twitter applications available today", so reads the intro on Jess3's web site (I love Jess3!).
The idea of Twitter, like Facebook, as an industry in itself speaks volumes - and this graphic does a great job to map that out.
The Jess3 approach also reminded me about oneforty.com who write great material and publish rated lists of tools for Twitter specifically, like this one for brand tracking. Be sure to check it out.
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LinkedIn Today - the features and implications
The professional's choice of social network, LinkedIn, has launched a new product: LinkedIn Today. It works out the main news within sectors interesting to us i.e. marketing and online media and then based on what's most popular and shared within Linked In prioritises the stories. It's like Google News really, but more relevant to the interests of marketers. The example below shows how it identified the new Google Analytics launch as the "biggest news". So it looks a great time-saver!
So, it's a social news product specifically aimed at professionals, leveraging their 90 million strong network of users it delivers the top stories you need to know from your network and industry. LinkedIn wants to be considered the ‘profile of record for professionals’ and it wants LinkedIn Today to be the first place business professionals go to get insights into their jobs and…
I came across this post by Jeremiah Owyang. His comments resonated with me regarding what I too have noticed is the mis-use of micro-blog media - namely Twitter. Whereas Jeremiah sees it as over-using Twitter, becoming reliant on it, I wonder if it's a symptomatic content issue with sales promotion thinking being a big example. In that case Twitter is but the most recent channel to suffer mis-use.
Are you short serving your audience?
Jermiah comments "I’m seeing an unbalance in how individuals are trying to get the word out, and an excess focus on micro tools, resulting in some bad behaviours". It's a serious point because if so you only hurt your own brand as your audience will refuse your messages and content and go elsewhere.
What's causing this problem?
Jeremiah calls it shish kebab in his analogy, essentially serving…
Facebook Insights for domains feature now lets you tag your site to show interactions of Facebook users with your site
We know how important social plugins are now (specifically the Facebook social plugins such as the 'Likes' and 'Comments'). Their usage is constantly increasing with over 2.5m web sites now using them since early 2010, and with 600m consumers in Facebook, it represents a huge source for creating awareness about your brand and traffic to your site. This week Facebook just made visualising, monitoring and managing that a whole lot easier with an upgrade to Insights for Facebook - see this post from the developer blog for an explanation of the analytics and how to set it up. We've done this and it's relatively easy - just adding a Facebook specific meta tag to the header of your home page.
Insights (Facebook's analytics tool) isn't new, it's just been…
Words to use and words to avoid to write more engaging email subject lines
Selecting the best subject line, headlines and content types for emails is a constant challenge for email marketers as they write copy for their campaigns and newsletters.
Which are the most engaging words on Facebook post headlines?
I recently found a good source of insight for words to consider by the excellent Dan Zarrella who analyses consumer Facebook behaviour. I hope this inspires you when you're next writing or reviewing email copy or trying to devise ideas for emails. Of course it should help with Facebook and blog posts too! These are the words that the research showed were popular for sharing.
Source: 7 Ways to Get Your Blog Posts Shared On Facebook
What can we take from this? Well, we have to remember this is an analysis across a massive range of…
What you post on Facebook stays on Facebook. Err, not anymore.
The new Facebook plugin allows asynchronous posting between web site comments and Facebook posts. This is the first time Facebook has enabled this kind of automatic external posting - and in truth it's also something that nobody else can currently offer - a killer feature? We think so.
This means that the new Facebook comments system enables you to leave a comment on the host site (SmartInsights.com, if we had it installed) and opt to have that comment shared to Facebook, too. If a friend in Facebook then leaves a comment on Facebook about my comment, their comment will be posted back to the host site, SmartInisghts.com. In other words, any discussion that my comment sparks between my Facebook friends in Facebook will be seen on SmartInisghts.com as well. That’s very powerful I think.
[caption id="attachment_4376" align="alignright" width="568" caption="Using the Facebook comments…
The somewhat surprising Number 1 is eBay - really!?
Well, according to the guys at Yomego (who run social media monitoring software from Alterian SM2) that's the case. Certainly not the first brand to jump to mind, and not one of the company's that we hear much off on the social sites like Mashable.
[caption id="attachment_4248" align="alignright" width="399" caption="Snakes & ladders: The social top 50"][/caption]
The SMR Index gauges brands' social effectiveness using reach (social noise surrounding the brand) and satisfaction (popularity). Also factoring in the "recency" of social interactions, the index then ranks companies…
