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How Engagement Differs Across Social Media

SocialTwist answers some prominent questions for marketers on how they should allocate their marketing mix.
In some great charts and graphs, Fast Company posts the highlights of SocialTwist's report shedding light on questions like:
"What is the most effective way for marketers to spread their message online? Facebook? Twitter? Company blogs? Email?"

In the last year, social networking sites saw a 10 percent increase in usage and a 16 percent bump in click-throughs, according to research compiled and reported by SocialTwist.

By the way, don't discount your email initiatives just yet. According to SocialTwist's findings, email still accounts for 55% of referrals, which is huge in the era of Like buttons, tweets/RTs and other "shareable" plug-ins online.

Read more on Twitter Crushing Facebook's Click-Through Rate: Report >>

How many tweets actually generate a reaction?

Sysomos asks a great question on Twitter engagement and reports some surprising statistics on "How many tweets actually generate a reaction?"

According to their research, Sysomos examined 1.2 billion tweets posted in the last two months to report that "29 percent of all tweets produced a reaction - a reply or a retweet. Of this group of tweets, 19.3 percent were retweets and the rest replies. This means that of the 1.2 billion tweets we examined, 6 percent, (or 72 million) were retweets."

Here's what these percentages look like.

Read more on "Replies and Retweets on Twitter," including other charts, graphs and a very trippy video on @replies and retweets from the Twitter Time Machine.

Find. Follow. Friend.
Follow @Viaspire on Twitter. Feel free to @reply or RT more that six percent of the time, of course. :)

Visualizing Your Twitter Sphere

Neuro Productions’ 5K Twitter Browser is something to marvel at and get lost within your Twitter connections. This Flash-based Twitter browser displays your follows in a much more "connective" way than you'd see on Twitter itself. You can get lost in the amazing circles of connections that continue to build with each click. If your head isn't into Monday yet, give this a try and see how you look within the Twitter matrix.

I laugh a little because our Twitter avatar essentially reflects what 5K Twitter Browser displays - spheres and connections. That's what it is all about. Who's in your sphere?

Tweet Button - Make Your Content Easy to Share

Twitter has released a new plugin similar to Facebook's "Like" button you'll see around the Web on articles and posts. View this quick video to see how easy it is to add the Tweet button to your site to make your content easy to share.

Update: As of Thursday of this week, the Tweet button is now also integrated into information services like:

• AddThis
• ShareThis
• Eventbrite

Visualize Social Media by the Numbers - Infographics

The very talented Graphic Designer, Gerardo Obieta, transforms social media stats into visual depictions that make you truly take notice of the sheer numbers of users flocking to social networks. In his latest social media infographic,  Obieta tells it like it is, Twitter on Paper.

Graphic by Gerardo Obieta

Obieta also demonstrates a great comparison of growth in social media between those who used social media for personal use in 2008 and then the growth in most places equaling or surpassing use for business/professional means in 2009.

Graphic by Gerardo Obieta

@G_Obieta, I'm looking forward to seeing how your infographic evolves with 2010 data down the road.

Great work! Súper bien! :)

RT: Retweets Get the Word Out

It was interesting hearing President Obama address the White House press corps at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He addressed the traditional news media and welcomed bloggers in the mix. He joked about his popularity on Facebook and Twitter and noted that how people choose their news sources has vastly changed the traditional business of journalism and reporting "the news."

Interestingly and most timely, at last week's 19th International World Wide Web (WWW) Conference, unprecedented research by four researchers from the Department of Computer Science at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology addressed the research question: What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? 

This study focused on the topology of Twitter and its power as a new medium of information sharing. Some of the most interesting aspects of the findings noted that Twitter:

Extends Reach

Democratizes & Shortens the Chain of Information Proliferation

Creates the Potential for "Collective Intelligence"

 

So, in these findings alone, how does the research conclude on the question, is Twitter a social network or a News Media. See the presentation for more...

What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?

View more presentations from Haewoon Kwak.

Our Voice, In a Tweet Cloud - "Feel. Love. Follow"

There's been a lot of discussion this year about how individuals and brands should represent themselves on the Social Web. Our philosophy has been if you are speaking on behalf of your organization or brand - be sure to represent yourself accordingly. Likewise, if you are true to your own personal brand, what you share online is both reflective and telling.

Thanks to @icodeforlove, you can view your tweets in a visual cloud of keywords in a month, six months, even over the course of a year.

I did a little experiment to see how the Viaspire team's personal Twitter accounts represent our personal brand and how it compares to our company brand, @Viaspire.

Feel. Love. Follow.

I was happy to see that my tweetcloud was consistent with my personality and my interests. I think as we round the corner for 2009, I think the last line of my tweet cloud reflects a new mantra... "feel, love, follow!"

For most of you who know us personally, you'll laugh as we did over Avery's personal twitterstream. If we are not working, we are eating! Like networking socially online, our offline social network, includes sitting around a table with family and friends talking about the day's events - even tweeting about them. Avery's tweetcloud reflects these conversations paired with good food from Sacramento.

Social. Policy. Experience.

For Viaspire, our firm's tweetcloud represents our focus and passion for technology and the user experience. We focused a lot this year on measuring social media and what it takes to engage people effectively and intuitively online. Every aspect of this tweetcloud is reminiscent of so many conversations, blog posts, presentations and shared resources we exchanged over the year. Naturally, the last line of our tweetcloud seems to be prophetic for next year's focus - more "social experiences" and more of a focus on social usage policies and standards.

What does your tweetcloud say about you?

Is it consistent with your thoughts and feelings conveyed this year? Do you see a pattern or a trend?

How will you use your voice next year? 

Will you share new thoughts and ideas more on Twitter than in email? Will you focus on your personal brand? Can you retain a personality within your Twitterstream or are you trying to "sell" too much of who you are or what company or product you are marketing? Is there a distinction? Should there be separation?

What can the cloud say about you?

Will there be new influencers that threaten your tweet authenticity? Are these open analytics that can be profiled and mined? What can the clouds say about each of us? This is something to consider and share to protect the integrity of the community, called Twitter.

Special thanks to @icodeforlove for creating new depth to the Twitter experience.

Is Email Dead in the Era of Facebook, Twitter & the iPhone?

Clara Shih, author of "The Facebook Era," examines the question is email dead in the era of Facebook, Twitter and the iPhone? With eight billion minutes being spent on Facebook a day, people are not only logging in, they are engaged and communicating actively there. So what role does email play going forward? Watch this BNET video to learn more:

Also, be sure to take BNET's poll: What’s the Etiquette for Social Media and the Workplace? Give them your insight.

The Listener Is As Important As the Sender in Social Media

I stumbled upon a great article this weekend written in 2006 that tells the story of a man, John Francis, PhD, who "gave up speaking" and realized how much he hadn't been listening.

When I read this article it really made me think about where we are in the era of Social Media. Like any rush to be a part of something new, the push has been to PARTICIPATE, but I don't think there has been an equal push to honestly LISTEN. We are in an age of processing information, sending out information that can be syndicated to multiple sources, pushing "our words" out to the masses.

There's communication that spins off of that, even tremendous action, which can influence local and even global groundswells.

But, yesterday, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, as I read this article, the message for Social Media has been to  PARTICIPATE, CONVERSE, INTERACT, ENGAGE, but it strikes me that the passive notion of LISTENING has been under-valued. 

Francis, author of Planetwalker, said - "sometimes we forget that the listener is as important as the person sending the message. Communication is a shared responsibility."

In 2009, three years later, when there are so many ways to communicate via post, tweet, status, DM, text message and feed - we may need to take a step back and LISTEN.

In social media it is important to PARTICIPATE, but it is also our "shared responsibility" to LISTEN.

How can you LISTEN better on Twitter, on Facebook in your blog circles? You'll be surprised what you hear and how much clearer your response is when you really can really see what's being said.

"It's not so much that we get to where we're going, it's that we're on our way there." - John Francis

Twitter Lifecycle by the Numbers

There is an interesting post on TechCrunch today on The Twitter Cycle, going from curiosity, abandonment, to full out addiction. The post reports the worldwide numbers are out from comScore and Twitter's global visitors have hit 37M.

Read on >