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GCAI’s 2011 Tips and Trends To Take Note Of

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Hey GCAI fans! Since Laura is away, this week’s Social Media News will be brought to you by myself. My name is Stephanie and I am GCAI’s  winter intern. In honor of the new year, John, Mary and I found a few of our favorite social media articles that will be sure to jump start your social media strategy in 2011. Enjoy!

Influencer Scoring – Separating Worry From Want-To-Bes

I think understanding individual influence in social space is going to be a very big issue in 2011.  Almost every day, we are uncovering posts about one of our clients – both negative and positive.  Currently, we are using redundant monitoring platforms to  discover the posts and then manually assessing and scoring the commenter’s influence. Services like Klout are doing the same calculations algorithmically – which does highlight “the way of the future.”  Blogger John F. Moore’s interview with Matt Thomson, VP of Platform at Klout is a good place to start to understand where influence scoring is and where it is going.  – John Garvey (@Jgarvey)

http://bit.ly/aAuSME

Massachusetts Twitter Usage

Massachusetts is one of the top 3 states with usage that is 69% higher than the national average which is also the greatest increase among all US states. In terms of growth, Massachusetts was 2nd with a 24% increase. I think this reinforces the fact that Twitter is an important tool that businesses can utilize, especially in areas where usage is high or steadily increasing. A few tips if you are just beginning to use Twitter: listen before engaging in order to get a feel for the Twitter community, keep tweets to 120 characters which allows them to be retweeted, and restrain from pitching. –Mary Fallon (@MFallon)

http://bit.ly/hh8v2i

Are videos and mobile applications included in the next step of your social media strategy?

This article from ReadWriteWeb.com is an excellent resource in terms of emerging social media trends in 2011. In 2010, iPhone and iPad applications were downloaded over 7 billion times and e-mail access on the iPhone is continuing to rise while access on the computer declines. In 2011, many interactions and experiences will be shared through mobile devices. Additionally, consumer engagement with video continues to grow. Consumers can look forward to relying on video to get information and learn about companies in a way they wouldn’t normally experience with tweets and status updates. I view this as the next, more interactive step in consumer engagement. –Stephanie Jackman (@stjackman)

http://rww.to/eENvbO

Do you have any of your own social media trends for 2011? Please feel free to email me. Thanks! – Stephanie

Curious Who You Are Tweeting To? Could A New Analytics Tool Kill Klout? This Week’s Social Media News Has The Answers!

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Have you ever wondered what the lifespan of a retweet was or what the average age and education level of a Twitter user is?  Who Are All Of These Tweeple has the answers and other interesting facts about Twitter and its users.  What I found intriguing was that although more women use Twitter than men, men are found to be more influential than women according to the Klout information included in the article.

Speaking of Klout, they should be on the lookout because Twitter is currently having a select group of users test out their new built-in analytics tool according to Mashable. The graphs look like they are going to provide users with lots of useful information.  I’m excited to try it out, but I will have to wait because the analytics service isn’t expected to be released to all Twitter users until the end of the year.

If you have suggestions for future Social Media News articles, want to ask questions or share thoughts, please feel free to email me. Thanks! – Laura

Curious What Your Digital Footprint Says? Need SEO Tips and Tools? Twitter Adds Ads? It’s Been a Busy Week in Social Media, Find Out What You May Have Missed!

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This week’s Social Media News features a few articles that peaked my interest and should peak yours as well.  First, Who Is Following Your Digital Footprints? from the Loopfuse blog explains how much information can be gathered about a user when they click on a website.  I’ve got to be honest, it’s a little creepy just how much information is available.  Next up, 6 Ways To Optimize Your Blog For Search Engines from the Social Media Examiner which includes some great tips and tools for determining keywords that you’re bound to find useful whether you are new to SEO or an old pro. Lastly, Twitter Begins Publishing Ads in Users’ Streams from Advertising Age confirms what everyone knew was only a matter of time; ads in your timeline.  It was inevitable that ads would invade Twitter users timelines, but do you like seeing ads mixed in with your tweets?

If you have suggestions for future Social Media News articles or want to ask questions or share thoughts please feel free to email me. Thanks! –Laura

Social Media Monitoring-The Game Changer, The Gap, and The Goods

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As a part of our continuing efforts to evaluate Social Media Monitoring and Measurement platforms, the GCAI team attended Monitoring Social Media Boston hosted by Influence People. There were lots of interesting presenters from both the US and the UK so we really got a good idea of what is happening on both sides of the pond in the world of social media monitoring.  As presenters highlighted, and we have discovered in our own research, there are literally hundreds of platforms available right now. We have tested, or are in the process of testing, the following: BrandsEye, HootSuite, Socialware Sync, Viralheat, and Sprout Social, just to name a few.  We have found however that with such a wide variety of prices there is, of course, a wide variety functionality as well.

Since there are so many different platforms currently available the competition is starting to heat up and some smaller companies have started being bought out by larger ones.  For example, Scout Labs recently became part of Lithuim Technologies and I would guess there are a few other mergers in the works as well. Another potential game changer that was discussed at the conference: Google enters the social media monitoring space with a free tool similar to Google analytics.  This will knock out all of the entry level tools when it happens.

The gap we have discovered, and which was supported by comments by two presenters in response to our questions, is that there does not appear to be a mid-level social media monitoring tool.  The platforms currently start at entry level – just above Hoot Suite (free) and then quickly jump to the Radian 6 level at $600/month per client. Certainly, with Google Alerts and other free services you get what you pay for and with the entry level paid platforms you get slightly more than that.  Radian 6 costs a lot, yields an incredible amount of useful information, but our clients are not at the point where they can digest and use it yet.

This is just some of what we took away from Social Media Monitoring Boston, an additional perspective on the conference is offered at this blog post. The goods that we took away, and are sharing with you, are the many PowerPoint presentations that Influence People posted.

Please feel free to email me any questions or thoughts. –Laura

P.S. If you want to see our thoughts on some of the different platforms we have tested check out my last blog post.

Moving Beyond Alerts – Social media monitoring and measurement

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GCAI Social Media News: Moving Beyond Alerts – Social media monitoring and measurement.

Like PR agencies around the country, we have moved beyond the social media management x 3 platforms approach.  Basically that means we listen with one, engage with another, and achieve with perhaps a third.  Management of the social media platforms for multiple clients has been quite labor intensive using this approach (for those who want to know we have approximately 30 plus platforms under management current and that number is expanding rapidly).

For years (okay months – but that’s like years in social media development), we have used Hoot Suite for engagement (and management-lite) for multiple client presences on social media, Trackur and then BrandsEye for monitoring (backed up by Google Alerts and Social Mention), and Socialware sync for archiving.  Our goal: do it all through one platform. Here is our review of what we have found to date:

HootSuite (free)
Exporting. Allows us to post and reply on Twitter and Facebook for multiple clients.  Convenient because everything is in one place.

Trackur (free)
Listening. Tested it for about a month, but didn’t keep it.  Could be described as a “poor man’s version of BrandsEye.”  It missed a lot of content that it should have picked up.

BrandsEye (Fee)
Listening. Allows for multiple search terms. Ability to mark each found item as relevant or irrelevant. A robust analytics package is available, but for a steep one-time price.

Socialware Sync (Free 2 year trial)
Archiving. Pulls in all Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn mentions.  Also allows for searching within the archive.  Only negative so far is that when it exports the data it is an .XML file which is not easy to read and is not presentable to clients.

Sprout Social (Fee)
Listening and exporting. We are testing this platform out with a free trial and so far we like the dashboard and the analytics it gives. We’ve had issues with some of the monitoring features and not much help from their customer service.

Social Volt (Fee)
Listening, exporting, and archiving. Recently had a live demo which looked promising.  It has not gone live yet and appears to be out of our price range.

In Research Lab Currently:

Mutual Mind (Fee)
Listening and exporting. Live demo is set up for later this week.  We’ll let you know how it goes.

Beevolve (Fee)
Social Media Monitoring and Insights platform. No data yet, but the company called us after we attended Monitoring Social Media Boston and expect to research this platform next.

Questions?  Feel free to email me. – Laura

This Week's Social Media Bark: Facebook Reaches 500 Million Members, Investor or Collector, and Watch What You Tweet

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Just wanted to let all of you know that we’re looking for people involved in Social Media to help us out with our anti-bullying effort. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact me at agauthier@askmydog.com

Facebook Reaches 500 Million Members: Facebook has announced that they now have 500 million members. This means that one in thirteen people on the planet now use Facebook. Check out this video from BBC. Read more

This Week’s Social Media Bark: Summer Heat, Facebook’s New Traffic Record, and Microsoft Adds Facebook To Your Outlook

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Summer Heat: Okay, so Al Gore told us to expect global warming…but he didn’t say we’d live in HELL all summer long! I hope you are finding ways to stay cool.

Mary says the results are in on Gregg and John’s “Potty Mouth Over Strategy” video in last week’s update (camera woman Steph Jackman was in on this too): 10 views as of yesterday! Since they feel it was a HUGE success, apparently they are at work on another one. Steph, for our neighbors’ sake, please stop them from filming in the men’s room!

And in other news, here’s my Social Media “Bark” for this week…

– Amanda G

P.S. – If any of you have any questions, or something specific you’d like me to discuss in these updates, please let me know! I can be reached by email at agauthier@askmydog.com, on Twitter at @GarveyComm, or on Facebook on the @Garvey Communication Associates Inc. Page!

Facebook’s New Traffic Record: According to comScore, Facebook had over 141 million unique visitors last month. In June of 2009, there were 77 million. Facebook just keeps growing! If you have any thoughts on if/when the growth may end, we’d love to hear it.

Microsoft Adds Facebook To Your Outlook: You can now read status updates, look at photos, and review wall posts in real time right in Microsoft Outlook. At this time, you are not able to comment or “Like” anything but you can sync your Outlook contacts with your Friends on Facebook. (Note: this is only in Outlook 2010 – so please let John know that GCAI needs to upgrade!).

YouTube Requires Linking Username With Google Account: If you created your YouTube channel before May of 2009, you now need to link your YouTube username with a Google account. Some of you may have already noticed this if you logged into YouTube recently. More information can be found here.

This Week’s Social Media Bark: Local Search on Smartphones, John and Gregg Get Potty Mouth Over Strategy, Twitter Search up 33%.

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This week I’m writing to you from Ridgewood, NJ! The heat down here has been ridiculous, and I’m actually hoping for some rain soon! My summer has been quite exciting so far, and I hope you have all been enjoying yours as well.

Local Search on Smartphones: According to research firm Compete, one third of Android and iPhone users learned of at least two new businesses they were not aware of after turning to local search applications. The most common of local search apps is Google Mobile (66%). This is a good reason to double check that your Google Places listing is optimized correctly! Other local search apps to keep in mind are: Citysearch, Mobile Yellow Pages and Yelp.

John and Gregg Get Potty Mouth Over Strategy:

If you are interested in how Gregg approaches social media strategy, email him at gtobin@askmydog.com.

Twitter Search up 33%: Twitter Co-Founder, Biz Stone announced on July 6th, that Twitter is now supporting 800 million search queries every day! This is an increase of 33% from what they were handling back in April. Twitter is actually beating Bing and Yahoo in the number of search queries they receive.

Tweetup For Facebook Fan Page Administrators

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As you may already know, GCAI recently held a Tweetup for Facebook Fan Page Administrators. It was a great event and we hope everyone who attended had a great time and was able to learn something new! We had three panelists that were selected due to their outstanding Fan Pages: Tara Tetreault from Jackson & Connor, Kelly Galanis (AKA the Red Headed Diva) from Westfield State College, and Don Anderson from the Cruise Store. Dave Sweeney from Viz-Bang was there to shoot videos of the panelists and other attendees talking about the success they’ve seen with their Fan Pages and the types they like to see. The conversation was extremely engaging as everyone chimed into the discussion.

To thank participants, we handed out some useful prizes. Tom Galanis from Westfield State College and Suzanne Boniface from the Children’s Study Home both won some “Garvey Gear.” Dan Buendo from Reminder Publications, Moira Murphy from Coldwell Banker, and Mary Wiseman from Wiseman Designs were the winners of “Engage!” by Brian Solis. The grand prize winner was Mychal Connolly from Stinky Cakes who won a video shoot with Dave Sweeney and Marty Langford of Viz-Bang. We’re looking forward to seeing it!

Thanks again to everyone that came to the event. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Photo: Don Anderson from the Cruise Store, Kelly Galanis from Westfield State College, Tara Tetreault from Jackson & Connor, and Mychal Connolly from Stinky Cakes