Monday 25 March 2013

#GoodIdeaBadIdea: Saying 'hello' on Twitter

Edit: Luke Williams has offered a very insightful comment below on his experience, well worth a read.

For people of a certain age (roughly my age), the term 'Good Idea, Bad Idea' will bring back memories of  the juxtaposition and acting out of of two phrases, often using the same words, but in a different order, leading to hilarious consequences.


Yes, I did watch Animaniacs, and I hope you did too (If not, here's a good intro).

Anyway, I reckon the 'Good Idea, Bad Idea' concept could work really well when a applied to social media, I doubt I can do it as well as our friends at Warner Bros did, but here's my first stab: Saying hello to someone on Twitter.


Good Idea

Have you  just followed someone? Why not say 'hello', let them know why you've followed them, although, this isn't essential, it is polite to say hello, and that could be the start of an amazing conversation.

Has somebody followed you? If so, check out their bio and recent tweets, if you're happy that they aren't a bot, and that you might share some mutual interests, why not say 'hello'? Ask them about what they do, or tell them a little about yourself, or the nature of your tweets (just don't spam them).

Bad Idea

Setup an auto-DM to send to people as they follow your account.

Ever followed someone to receive an alert shortly afterwards? You reopen Twitter (or check your email) with eager anticipation thinking; "Has this person/org just reached out to me, do they care about me, about what I do?", and then you read something along the lines of:
"Thanks for following us on Twitter, like us on Facebook here / sign up for alerts here" 
Oh, I guess they don't care...

Thankfully most accounts I've followed recently haven't done this, but some have, and some of those are major organisations that should know better. For me, it creates an instant sour taste, it makes me regret trying to make that connection.

A personal response after a follow is great, but you don't necessarily expect that after following the account of a large organisation, and that's fine. But one thing I hate is an automated DM. I would rather have had no response.

Tips

People like people, people don't like bots. People like real interaction, they don't like automated messages. People certainly don't like spam.

Say hello, and don't auto-DM

And finally...

If this post has left you with a hankering for Animaniacs, here you go:

Monday 18 March 2013

Facebook penalising 'link posts', but by how much? About 240%



We've all heard that Facebook penalises some posts, right?

It's been clear for some time now that Facebook affords posts that encourage activity within Facebook more reach than those that drive users away from Facebook (ie - posts that link to your website), but what exactly is the difference in reach between a post that has a link that drives users off-site, and a call to action that keeps users chatting within Facebook?

According to a test I've conducted, it's about 240%

Now, this figure is the result of one, non-scientific test. I will be conducting more tests, but the stats are interesting and demand further exploration. The raw data from my test is available here.

Test set-up:


  • Posted a post to Facebook twice, one including a link, the other a carbon copy of the first post minus the link.
    • The linked post was targeted to Facebook Page fans aged 13 -34, a potential reach of 8,200. It was posted on March 14 at 11:58am and is available here
    • The post without the link was targeted to Facebook Page fans aged 35 - 65+, a potential reach of 7,160. It was posted on March 14 at 12:00pm and is available here 

Test results:

  • There was a massive difference in levels of reach and engagement between the posts.
    • The linked post had a potential reach of 8,200, but only reached 2,128. The non-link post had a potential reach of 7,160 and reached 7,251 (The 100%+ reach is probably due to the level of likes, comments and shares resulting in the post reaching an even wider audience)
    • The linked post generated one comment, 27 likes and three shares. The non-linked post generated 17 comments, 67 likes and 43 shares.

Test flaws:

As I said before, this test is not scientific, there are a number of reasons why my results/data might be skewed:
  1. I've targeted two very distinct age groups. They may have very different typical levels of response to Facebook posts.
  2. The post that I posted second came out on top - Does this have any impact on the stats (despite that fact that the posts were targeted to two different audiences)?
  3. The post itself may have been a post that appeals more to an audience aged 35+.

Thoughts:

Despite all of the flaws with the test that I have pointed out above, the difference in reach, about 240%, is very, VERY significant. I need to conduct more tests before I come to any solid conclusions but the data above strongly suggests that Facebook heavily penalises posts that drive traffic away from Facebook.

You can help:

Do you have relevant data you can share? It would be great to get a broader overview of the impact of links on the reach of Facebook posts if you can share data from the Facebook Pages you manage.

Note: Obviously this requires further tests, and we should also test the impact of images and videos on reach and click-throughs. It isn't scientific, but it is very interesting.

Monday 11 March 2013

Recipe for your Twitter background picture stew (downloads)




Update 12/03/2013: Updated to correct a couple of errors including a new download link

So, I've spent my evening messing about with Photoshop to create one of those personalised Twitter background pictures that includes URLs for my other social media profiles, the result is the picture above. They seem popular, although I'm not sure of their value, but in any case I thought it was worth sorting mine out (just in case).

Anyway, if you're interested, here's how I did it.

Ingredients:

  • Get some lovely pictures - I'm not saying that my profile picture fits that bill, but I do like my main background picture.
  • Get Photoshop - If you don't already have it and are as skint as I am, you can download CS2 for free here: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html

Method:


  1. Create a new Photoshop document. I went for 1800 x 1024 pixels at 300 ppi (To ensure I avoided any ugly tiling - It probably needn't have been as wide)
  2. Paste in your lovely background picture, resize and move until you are happy with what's on show.
  3. Work out how much space your Twitter feed will take up, and insert a rectangle to the left that's about 194 pixels wide.  Using my rudimentary Photoshop knowledge I inserted a black rounded rectangle and then rubbed that out with a 50% opacity eraser, leaving a semi-transparent shape. 
  4. On top of that, paste in a picture of yourself, and any links you'd like to include.
  5. If you're lucky, you're good to go. When you upload the image to Twitter, make sure you centre align it.

If all that sounds like too much of a faff, don't worry, I have some useful links:


Notes:

  • I'm not convinced many people actually use twitter.com to tweet anymore, but it can't hurt to have a personalised background anyway
  • I have yet to test this background on various screen-sizes / resolutions, if it proves to be unsuitable, I'll edit the files in the download to a format that works better

Additional Notes

The dimensions above don't quite work at the moment, will update when I have better dimensions fixed :)

Sunday 3 March 2013

"Hi, you're bad at your job, buy our service" #SaleFail

Picture from FailFunnies.com
I took a really weak sales call last week, it went a little like:
Salesperson: "Hi Paul, I'm John Smith from Agency XYZ, we'd like to draft nine Facebook posts for you, free of charge, that will increase your engagement levels."
Me [In firm, confident tone, suggesting contempt]: "I think we're pretty well covered on that front."
Salesperson [slightly sheepishly]: "Oh....... ok. Goodbye."
Me: "Bye." 
Does this conversation sound familiar to you? I'm feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. Sales calls like this come in far too regularly, and I'm convinced that rather than generate sales, those receiving these calls blacklist these companies.


Why do these calls fail? Well, there are a number of reasons:

You can't do your job


That's what that call said to me. John Smith was offering to do my job properly, because, y'know, I can't.

I know your community better than you do


I've spent almost two years getting to know the Girlguiding online 'community'. The more I've learnt, the more I've realised I have so much more to learn. The people that Follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook are a really diverse group of about 30,000 people, they are uniformally passionate and amazing people, but they have a range of interests, cares and concerns. This salesperson implied that the experience I have gained in almost two years at Girlguiding was worthless in the face of his amazing post-writing, hyper-engagement powers.

Agency is better than in-house


Now, this might be contentious. I fully believe that agencies are great for all sorts of work. They bring new angles, fresh perspectives, and they are outside of any 'bubbles' that you may have developed from long-term in-house work. Even with social media, they can be great for developing amazing campaign-focused ideas (and all sorts of other stuff), but I am firmly of the belief that long-term 'community management' is something that should sit in-house. Your community manager needs time to learn about your organisation, and time to learn about your online communities. Community management is not something that should be farmed out to an agency bod with several other accounts that s/he manages.

Result


Another agency/service blacklisted.

Lesson


John Smith from Agency XYZ may have had a great service to sell me (I doubt it, but it's possible). It's unlikely we would have bought that in, but still, it may have been worth looking at. The thing is, we never looked at it because the salesperson went out of his way to offend me. 

If you have a great service, optimise your sales pitch. John Smith offended me within about three seconds, and the call ended within 10 seconds. Damage done.

What do you think? Have you had any interesting, offensive or hilarious #salefail calls?