Statistics | Media Culpa

Tuesday Twitter Topics

Here are a few interesting stories about Twitter that I’d like to share with you:

The Teen, The Tweet, And The Governor:
The story about what happens when a teenager tells a governor “#heblowsalot” on Twitter. The governor’s office reacted and the girl’s school demanded that she’d write a letter of apology, which she refused. A telling tale of how over-reaction can create a crisis out of nothing.

Marmite soars up Twitter after 20-tonne spillage
In the UK, Marmite became the top trending topic on Twitter this morning after 23.5 tonnes of it were spilled on the motorway. Lot’s of witty comments were all over Twitter, like this one by @clurr:

“there’s 20 tonnes of marmite on the m1! quick, to sheffield with toast”

In Chile, Protesting Students Tweak Tweets to Win Global Support:
Students in Chile are using Twitter to gain support for protests of the costs of education. More about this social movement can be found at http://mobilized2011.tk/

Citroën To Begin Twitter Race; Route Determined By Followers’ Tweets
Citroën recently launched a competition in which participants were asked to tweet directions and tell the driver of a car, where she should travel. By calculating which direction is the most requested, she would drive towards that direction until the next request is processed. One of the participants would then be able to win the new Citroën DS5.

Arabic highest growth on Twitter, English expression stabilizes below 40%
English no longer make up the majority of tweets on Twitter, 60% of tweets are in other languages. Arabic sees explosive growth, according to a study by Semiocast.

Access to Twitter in China during Golf World Cup
International golf stars, spectators and media at the World Cup on the southern Chinese island of Hainan enjoyed uncensored Internet access denied to 1.3 billion Chinese. The owners of the five-star Mission Hills golf complex in Hainan managed to temporarily lift the Chinese ban of sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

Six Swedish companies among the Top 100 Global Innovators

Thomson Reuters just released a new report that presents the world leaders in innovation. Companies with more than 100 innovative patens from the last three years were analyzed and six Swedish companies are among the final Top 100 Global Innovators:

Alfa Laval
Atlas Copco
Ericsson
Sandvik
Scania
Volvo

Sweden is only lagging behind the US, Japan and France when it comes to number of companies included in the list. No companies from our neighbours Denmark, Norway or Finland are included.

Full report can be found here.

Optimizing press release content for social sharing pays off

The concept of social media releases and social media newsrooms is not new. By adding photos, videos and audio and easy sharing functionality, the chances that the content is spread across different social media channels increase. At least, that’s what we have been arguing for several years. Now there is also a study that confirms this notion.

PR Newswire and Crowd Factory looked at tens of thousands of press releases, to analyze where, when and how news releases were shared across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The findings are really interesting and I include the key conclusions from the analysis below:

1. Each press release share generates 2 new views; expands total audience by 70%.

Creating shareable content and enabling sharing capabilities through the relevant channels can dramatically increase the number of views for releases. PR Newswire and Crowd Factory found that each share generates an average of nearly 2 click-backs to the original press release. Additionally, sharing of press releases across social networks increases the total audience, or social reach, for this content by nearly 70 percent.

2. Press releases are shared more on Facebook, but Twitter sharing drives more traffic.

Among the three largest U.S. social networks, Facebook is tops when it comes to sharing of press releases: 48 percent of press release sharing happens on Facebook, 37 percent of sharing happens on Twitter and 15 percent happens on LinkedIn.

But not all shares are created equal: in spite of Facebook’s greater popularity for sharing, each share on Twitter actually drives about 30 percent more press release views than a share on Facebook.

3. Multimedia press releases generate 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases.

Not surprisingly, multimedia press releases that include photos, videos or audio generate more views, shares and clicks than text-only press releases. Adding a photo to a press release increases engagement by 14 percent; adding a video and a photo actually doubles the engagement rate. Press releases that contain photos, video and audio generate the most engagement, with 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases.

How US retailers use Facebook for customer service

A new study from Conversocial describes how the largest US retailers use Facebook for customer service. The white paper, entitled Who’s Ignoring Their Customers?: A Survey Of The Largest US Retailers and Their Use of Social Media, includes findings such as these:

– Walmart, the largest retailer, was missing 41% of all customer service enquiries. Costco, Kmart and Kroger missed 100%. Safeway were doing relatively well, missing only 5%. Overall, 65% of all complaints and questions were missed by the sample group.

– Safeway was given praise for dealing with the full complaint on the wall. Safeway redirected some complaints to a Facebook dedicated email and a Freephone number, but a significant number of conversations about customer satisfaction are handled on social media outlets which means the solutions are visible to everyone.

– US retailers are generally slower at responding to customers than UK retailers. None of the ten in the US study were averaging at under an hour, compared with two retailers in the UK sample achieving a quick average time.

Read the full report below, it is worth the time.

Who's Ignoring Their Customers? A Survey of the Largest US Retailers and Their Use of Social Media

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