RSS

Category research tools

Fan Page Analytics uncover value in Facebook Fan Pages

2 comments By Deb Filed in facebook, marketing, measurement, online community, research tools January 2nd, 2010 @ 11:36 am

This is Part I in a two part series.

Update: Pete Warden posted on April 5, that Facebook threatened to sue him over Fan Page Analytics and he had no choice but to take the data down. He writes about the experience here.

Pete Warden’s Fan Page Analytics is an online application that generates comparison data & geographic demographics of Facebook Fan Pages. A lot of discussion around fan pages has been that they are low-visibility, elicit little engagement from fans and are akin to a status symbol- check this box so your friends will know, you too are a fan of sock monkeys.

Gist, a social CRM, hosted the dinner at Defrag ’09 where I met Pete Warden and a host of other technies interested in creating a clearer picture of social network users from publicly available data. Based on those conversations, Pete decided to tackle the Fan Page challenge.

A couple of days ago, just after a few tweeps were discussing that number of Fans doesn’t necessarily correlate with activity or community, Pete released Fan Page Analytics.  A common perception: Fan Pages basically offer the ability to demonstrate an affiliation. And, with the exception of a few celebrities and organizations that work to build community on the page, not a whole lot happens on a Fan Page.

As it turns out, even with little activity, Fan Pages can provide useful information when viewed through Fan Page Analytics (FPA). For example, Fans of Snuggie™ are also likely to be fans of freeze pops, Michael Jackson and Twilight (Sorry, but I couldn’t resist picking a “soft” target for my first example.)

Yesterday I asked Pete a few questions to learn more about FPA.

What inspired you to create FPA?

I’ve spent a lot of time designing ads to run on Facebook for my Mailana service, and it was very tough to figure out what locations or shared interests to target since Facebook doesn’t give you access to that sort of demographic information.

Where did you find the data?

I realized that the data I’d already collected from web crawls of public profiles on facebook.com could help me build a better picture of the audience I should be aiming for.

One happy user is Markus Neuert at CycleFilm

I asked Markus what he’d learned from using Fan Page Analytics:

At first, I was very surprised by the amount of fans I share with Women’s and Ladies Cycling Mags. On second thought, I wasn’t. Through my own Fan Page analytics provided by Facebook, I knew my audience is 80% male – and males like to look at females – so what better way to do that than on the mentioned women’s cycling Fan Pages. :)   My recent DVD release of US Pro Cyclist Liz Hatch may also have contributed to that.  Either way, the analysis clearly confirmed Facebook’s own analysis data, and even expanded upon it by giving me concrete options to act upon.

Pete Warden’s Fan Page Analytics is currently in beta. If you’d like to participate here is a link to the form.

And the saga continues…Part II: Pete shares where he is going with FPA and Markus explains how he immediately leveraged his FPA data for CycleFilm.

Social Media: Your Customers are Waiting for You!

1 comment By Germaine Filed in research tools, social media September 29th, 2008 @ 8:51 am

Good morning sunshine!

Do you understand the importance of social media and its impact? Do your co-workers? Does your boss? The study I discuss below demonstrates why your company needs to have a social media presence.

Cone, a strategy and communications company, just released the 2008 Business in Social Media which found that 93% of Americans expect companies to have an online presence. (I am not making this up.) On top of that, 85% think that companies should also interact with their customers.

Wow! That’s interesting because we know that not everyone knows how to use social media applications, but they know it is important. 60% of Americans use social media on a regular basis. That number is rapidly growing- isn’t your grandma on Facebook now?

We are reaching a point where customers are expecting to not only visit your website or Facebook page, but they are also wanting to connect with your business and deepen that relationship.

How do social media applications build relationships with customers?

1. They give you an opportunity to listen to your customers. Customers are already out there talking about you in the various social media venues: Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, MySpace, Chat Boards, etc. Reading their comments helps you understand your market and your product better.

2. Jumping into conversations they have already started enables you to thank them for their kind words, or make an offer to solve a problem for them. To top that off you get free feedback to improve your product.

3. Creating interactive venues – like a Facebook group – helps your customers find one another and share their great experiences.

This just a taste of what you can do. Where do you plan to find your customers?

**Update** I have been asked a couple of times about who participated in the study. When I asked how they selected participants for the study, Cone, Inc. Spokeswoman, Andrea Larrumbide, gave me this response via email: “Opinion Research Corporation selected them from a pre-existing panel of respondents. We screened for prior usage of social media.”


Here’s looking to another great week!

-I Can’t Keep Up

Finding your way around…how do you learn about social media?

1 comment By Germaine Filed in learning, research tools, social media September 16th, 2008 @ 10:09 am

I am sorry for the lack of posts! Work on my new site has taken me away from blogging. It will be up and running soon.

A recent post by GroundFloor Media got me to thinking about how I learn about and find new social media resources. Probably my chief research method is browsing the web and reading various blogs that cover topics related to my work. I want to learn from the best, but how do I find them? Not everyone can spend their time randomly searching the web. There are a lot of different ways to go about finding the best folks to learn from and I’d like to share a few of them with you.

GFM highlighted Spotlight Ideas’ list of the Top 100 Advertising, Marketing, Media & PR Sites – a great list with a range of sites across multiple fields. But one reader questioned the selection criteria.

If you want to find a site based on sheer numbers- The Viral Garden posts a weekly list of the Top 25 Marketing and Social Media Blogs. Mack Collier selects the top 25 based on their Technorati ranking- the number of websites and blogs that link to each blog on the list.

You have several options if you use Mashable a site that follows the social media industry. The site often puts together theme-based lists. I did a search for “women’s blogs” and got a link to their article on the Top Ten Social Networking Sites for Women. Another way to mine the site, click on the “Tags” button and select the keywords that match your search keywords.

A random method to use when you have the time to kill- head over to Alltop.com’s Social Media page. You can browse the various sites listed to see their most recent posts. Alltop.com is meant to be a type of online “magazine rack” for readers to browse while searching a particular topic, or to “just browse.”

My other method? Reading friends’ blogs. Most of my buddies have amazing curiosity and instinct and teach me something new everyday! Check them out on my blogroll!

How do you find social media sites? Share your wisdom with us!

-I Can’t Keep Up

Guy Kawasaki Launches Alltop.com

0 comments By Germaine Filed in alltop, bookmarks, consolidation, research tools March 16th, 2008 @ 1:45 pm

One of my favorite topics as of late is news consolidation – how
individuals consolidate their news sources tailoring them to their
personal tastes. Interesting dilemma for marketers & news publications.
The days of browsing pages of a newspaper and being randomly exposed to
all sorts of things are slowly fading. Marketers can now target to the
users they know share their interest, but organizations looking to reach
a broader audience have more of a challenge. One site now combines the
two – you can browse the topics you love most, but get exposed to the
best information from 50 sites on that topic. Kawasaki describes the
site as a web-based “newsstand” for users to browse.

Alltop.com aggregates 50 sites for 39 topics
5 stories on each topic- updated every ten minutes

Guy Kawasaki‘s new site Alltop.com was launched at SXSW this week. In a video interview on mashable.com, Guy explains the site lists all the top stories from 40 to 80 sources for 40 topic areas, such as “green,” “food,” “social media,” etc.

Topics are grouped into eight categories and list five stories for each topic.
The site is updated every ten minutes. Unconventional topics include “Cute” (pictures of babies, puppies & all things cute), “Egos” (no need to elaborate) and “Twitterati” (again self-explanatory).

Does alltop.com work for an RSS feed?
Kawasaki explains that given the volume of info and the frequency with
which it is updated, this won’t work as an RSS feed; it works more for people who bookmark. It is also serves as a great research tool when you are looking for top sites/blogs on a given topic.

Power of crowd-sourcing? No. Power of Twitterati? Yes.
Kawasaki demonstrated an effective way to use the “twitterati” when conducting research on the most popular sites in a given topic. His team sent out a request to the top “twitterati” and asked them to list, for example, the top “green” sites. His team received tons of great suggestions and more keep coming. Instead of sending out a request to the masses, it went to a targeted group who are obsessed with all things
instantaneous (and compulsive – in a good way).

Bang for the Buck
The Kawasaki interview is a great learning opportunity on starting a news site and how social media enables that effort. Through the interview, Kawasaki leads us through the process of building the site and the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of social media, research tools and launching a site. Well worth the time
and it is short!

Copyright © Rudy Media
emerging media- it's not just social media

Built on Notes Blog Core
Powered by WordPress