Facebook Counted 43M Grammy-Related Likes, Comments — Oh, And 26M Related To Super Bowl Ads Last Week
After this year’s Super Bowl, there were a number of articles proclaiming that Twitter had “won” the event thanks to the general explosion in usage, as well as the prominent use of hashtags in many of the TV ads. But today Facebook is sharing some numbers of its own — and yes, it’s still an enormous source of conversation around big events.
The most recent data is around the Grammy Awards last night. Facebook says that there were a total of 43 million likes and comments made around Grammy-related content. That’s supposed to represent the reach that Facebook can offer: It’s not measuring how many posts mentioned the Grammys, but instead the ripple effects of those initial mentions as people’s friends and followers engaged with them. (If you want an incredibly detailed breakdown of what people were actually talking about, you can read more here. And while I don’t really see a way to directly compare the numbers, you can see some of Twitter’s Grammy statistics here.)
More interesting from an advertising perspective are the numbers from the Super Bowl. Twitter announced last week that half of the national ads included hashtags, and that those hashtags were mentioned 300,000 times on the day of the game.
Well, Facebook says it took that list of 26 hashtagged advertisers and found that they were mentioned in 2 million Facebook posts from game day. Were all of those mentions spurred by the Super Bowl? Maybe not, but the number was 12 times more than the day before, so it’s probably safe to assume that the ads made a big difference. And those posts, in turn, drove a total of 26 million comments and likes. (Just to be clear — the Super Bowl number is lower than the one from the Grammys because it’s limited to a specific group of brands.)
None of that changes the fact that the game served as an impressive demonstration of Twitter’s inroads with brands and advertisers. It does, however, suggest that the conversation hardly stopped there.
How simple psychology can help increase brand engagement
Regularly engaging content is the holy grail of any social media page. However, most strategies tend to focus on posting content relevant to them without really considering what it is fans are looking for. People don’t want to be fans of faceless businesses that lack personality, but want to be entertained or amazed instead.
You should always put some thought into what type of content you’re going to post, but there are ways to turn your content from good to great. All you need to do is think about how you approach it a little differently.
Understanding your audience
Before you can start, it’s better to realise that no matter how diverse your audience is, either geographically or by age, all interaction boils down to two things: Needs and desires. Needs are something you absolutely need to survive, the basics if you will, while desires are things you don’t necessarily need, but you feel will significantly enhance your life. The second emotion is what you should be aiming for as nobody really needs to follow a brand page, they follow it because they want to. Such pages have to offer content that they find interesting, funny, insightful, nostalgic, shocking, amazing, or enlightens them.
While we like to think of ourselves as logical people, the reality is we’re more likely to respond to anything that triggers an emotional response. Understanding your audience means that you need to acknowledge this fact, and while you can post company announcements and promote yourself, you should remember that it’s a two-way street and your audience needs to get something out of it.
Give them a powerful reason to act
Nothing will get people to act more than a strong reason. From a marketing perspective, it can be difficult to find a cause that finds the perfect middle ground between inspiring and cynical, but it is possible so long as you don’t resort to “like and share” competitions – which, by the way, go against Facebook’s T&C so don’t get any ideas.
To look at a recent example, the Facebook page Two Girls And A Puppy has been getting a lot of coverage in recent times. For those who aren’t familiar with the page, two girls made a bet with their father that if they get one million likes, he will get them a puppy. Lo and behold, the page went viral, its profile photo has been liked two million times and a quarter of a million people like the page.
Another example comes from a year and a half ago with poultrykeeper.com. You might remember its tweet where a staff member made a bet with his boss (noticing a theme here?) that for every time the tweet (found below) was retweeted, he would pay him 50p. Over 22,000 people retweeted the message, meaning that staff member could have potentially gained £11,000. Both examples started off as a bet so the urge to help the underdog is great while the method of doing so – liking or retweeting – is quick and painless.
A bet with my Boss. He says Twitter is a waste of time. He will give 50p per RT I get but I give him £10 if I don’t get 10…
— poultrykeeper.com (@poultrykeeper) August 26, 2011
The caveat behind these examples – especially in the case of poultrykeeper.com – is that likes and retweets doesn’t always translate into follows or page likes. A once-off will get you coverage and will make people aware of your page, but you need to give them a reason to follow you.
Offer tasks with a clear goal
In 2011, a lot of talk centred around the concept of Gamification. It was going to be the next big thing as brands added small goals to encourage users to interact more. Things haven’t quite worked out that way, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t parts of that idea you can incorporate into your own content. For one, breaking down a task into manageable chunks with a clear main goal, and mini-goals to coax users along is more likely to increase overall engagement.
Take Ford’s Instagram campaign from last year as an example: The Fiestagram. Dividing the campaign over the course of a month, fans were asked to submit Instagram photos relating to a specific theme relating to the car. Each week, a winner would be chosen and at the end of the campaign, those who won were entered into a draw to win a Ford Fiesta. Not only did it mean participation, but Ford got a lot of exposure on Instagram through the #fiestagram hashtag. By giving clear objectives and a motive, you can motivate your audience to engage with your page.
Build up familiarity
A person is more likely to recommend a brand if he/she identifies with it, that much is obvious. The fact that you already have one or more social media pages already means you want to increase that sense of familiarity. However, it’s building it up that’s the difficult part. For one, it will mean that you will have to post regularly, the more posts you have, the more chances you have of appearing in people’s news feeds, further building up this sense of familiarity.
While posting and tweeting content is a good way of getting noticed, the great thing about social media is that you can take a more proactive approach. For one, look beyond the mentions you get and instead focus the conversation happening around you. Using a combination of your own company news feed and search, you can see if people are having problems or need questions to be answered. Nobody expects a company to jump in with help, but when they do (and when it’s genuinely helpful), it’s a nice surprise.
A nice touch, although it’s not strictly required is to mark your tweets with your name (or initials) when you’re replying. That way, they know there’s a person behind the account. Hertz has a brilliant idea where on the left-hand side of its Twitter page, the names and initials of its customer support team are provided.
Evoke emotion
As touched upon at the beginning, effective content appeals to people in a way that triggers a response. One emotion that always gets a positive response is nostalgia. No matter what generation you speak to, things were always better in (insert appropriate decade here). It’s the reason why posts like Buzzfeed’s posts about the 80s and 90s are so popular.
Sticking with that theme, maybe there’s something that you found in the office or at home that triggered memories. It doesn’t matter if you go off-brand, but make sure you give the post context. We’re not saying to start tweeting and posting images of typewriters and Commodore 64s, but look beyond your brand for content ideas.
In this post we published on our Facebook page, we tied the image around gift ideas since it was coming up to Christmas time. A humorous image combined with a short blurb for context gave people a reason to like and share the post.
Keep surprising
An alternative title to this could easily be “Don’t rely on the same type of content” when you’re posting updates, otherwise your fans will get bored very quickly. There is nothing more boring than predictability and once you walk down that path, you will see your engagement drop pretty quickly. Mix it up a little and keep people guessing what you’re going to post next, so that they will be curious enough to follow your page.
Post videos, ask questions, run polls, link to other interesting content. Make sure that when they see you post, it’s always something different.
The power of imagery
Nothing is more powerful at conveying a message then an image. Why? A picture paints a thousand words, has an immediate message and is obviously more visually appealing.
When compared to other mediums, images have a greater reply and comment rating. A wall of text requires you to read through it all, a video requires you to invest time if you want to watch the entirety of it. Images don’t have either of those problems, instead what you see is what you get.
As a rule, image related posts do better than other mediums when it comes to likes and shares so if it ties in with a blog post or article, include the link in the blurb so that people can find out more about the subject.
Additional resources
Considering how popular the subject is, it’s no surprise that there are numerous articles dedicated to it. All of them are worth delving into if you’re looking for a more comprehensive understanding.
- Dayna Rothman shows the hierarchy of needs when it comes to social sharing.
- Dr. Susan Giurleo talks about how pretty much all marketing is psychology, and how trust and relationships play a part.
- If you need something a little more straightforward, this Slideshare presentation from Michelle Goodwin is a good introduction.
- iAcquire look at the five psychological principles behind social media content.
- Richard Conyard gives a comprehensive review of how psychology can help improve your brand messaging.
- Dr. Rachna Jain looks at how you can use psychological influence to help your social media content.
This article is published in association with SimplyZesty, a digital marketing agency.
Image Credit: Clemens Bilan/Getty Images
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Map of 500M Foursquare checkins demonstrates how they built a “Google PageRank for the real world”
Foursquare has produced a map of the last 500M check-ins on its service, gathered over the last three months. The map, which you can check out in its full glory here, doesn’t just display the points at which users have checked in to places, though. It also shows the connections that have allowed it to build a personalized recommendation service that rivals Yelp.
Foursquare’s approach to this has been somewhat unique in this arena. Rather than setting out to ask people to rate locations and write reviews from the beginning, it simply gave them a game to play. They checked in, they got badges in return and a history of where they’ve been. Over time, Foursquare evolved that product into what it is now: a powerful recommendation engine that is supremely aware of your location, your likes and the places that are most likely to appeal to you and your friends.
Recently, a ratings system was added to the site, but instead of letting users arbitrarily tap a number, Foursquare assigns them based off of a bunch of signals to deliver a personal rating. In the future, the rating that Foursquare gives you, and the one it gives a friend for a the same restaurant may be very different.
In a blog post today, Foursquare says that it likes to think of its recommendation system as a “Google PageRank for the real world.” The PageRank system is a closely guarded algorithm that determines the worth of pages based off of a bunch of mutable and constantly-being-tweaked factors. That worth valuation is what surfaces one link over another when you plug something into a Google Search box.
Delivering that kind of weighted personal recommendation based on what was originally a game is what continues to impress me about where Foursquare is taking its product.
There’s also a nod to the business aspects of things. “If you like a cafe in your neighborhood, or a boutique shoe store, we want to build tools so they can keep you up to date with their latest menu items, shipments, and sales. And if you’re looking for a museum to go to this weekend, we want them to be able to share their latest exhibits and special admission hours with you.”
Obviously, that can add some value to the user, but it also offers some strong monetization possibilities, something that Fourquare sorely needs if it’s going to get over the hill into its next growth cycle. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Apple will just buy or integrate them.
Visit link: Map of 500M Foursquare checkins demonstrates how they built a “Google PageRank for the real world”
Instagram Reports 90M Monthly Active Users, 40M Photos Per Day And 8500 Likes Per Second
Instagram reported a few usage stats today, marking the first time it has talked about numbers on its own site since the kerfuffle raised over its terms of service change following the Facebook buy-out. The internal stats show strong engagement, and user growth, rather than a decline in active Instagram members, as first reported by AllThingsD. Part of the discrepancy between the these numbers and third-party doom and gloom reports may have to do with the fact that Instagram is tracking monthly active users, of which it has 90 million, versus the less stable daily active users stat often cited by others.
Other stats listed by the mobile photo sharing app tackle the specific ways users engage with Instagram. 40 million photos are posted daily to the service, for instance, and its users manage to rack up 8,500 likes and 1,000 comments per second. That’s a strong indicator that whatever the reaction to Instagram’s proposed TOS changes, plenty of them are still interacting with the service at a breakneck pace. Mike Isaac at AllThingsD also points out that while the 90 million figure being reported today may look weak compared to the 100 million users it reported last September, these are specifically active accounts, where previously the company only shared data on straightforward registrations, which means total registered users is probably much higher at this point.
For perspective, Facebook itself has 37,037 combined Likes and comments per second, according to stats released by the company in August when you break down the daily average they reported at the time. Instagram’s 9,500 similar actions per second definitely trail, but are nonetheless impressive given that Instagram is mobile-only and a much younger service. Facebook also reported in October that it had crossed the 1 billion monthly active user mark (based on users who log into the service at least once a month), which means that its MAUs on average engage more with the service in terms of likes and comments than Instagram’s, but that’s also not very surprising given Instagram’s emphasis on passive enjoyment of a stream of images.
Instagram is reporting these just two days before its revised privacy and user policies go into effect, which are the result of the feedback it received after changing its terms the first time around.
View post: Instagram Reports 90M Monthly Active Users, 40M Photos Per Day And 8500 Likes Per Second
Instagram reports 90M monthly active users, handling 10k likes per second at peak
Instagram has, for the first time, reported an active user number on its website. In the new stat list, noted by All Things D, Instagram reports that it has 90 million monthly active users of the service.
The statistics continue, showing off that Instagram handles some 40M photos per day, 8,500 likes per second and 1,000 comments per second. An engineering post that also went up today notes that it is actually handling 10,000 likes per second at peak levels now.
The reason for the release of these numbers is no doubt to quell fears that recent terms of service changes at Instagram have cut user numbers drastically. Some sites had claimed a falloff of 50% or more using numbers from AppData. But those numbers, gathered as they were through a combination of outside monitoring and Facebook connection data, were never extremely accurate.
Our own Robin Wauters took a look at those numbers and noted that almost all Facebook connected apps monitored by AppData took a ‘holiday plunge’ and that Instagram’s dip was likely not due to an exodus over the TOS changes.
The switch to MAUs instead of total users, which was said to be 100 million a few months ago, marks a shift for Instagram, to a model that is more in line with how most other services are measured.
After initiating changes to its terms of service that appeared to give it far too expansive access to users’ photos for advertising purposes, Instagram recanted and rolled back those sections to earlier versions. Ironically, the earlier versions are actually worse for users, and the whole issue was largely a matter of tech press making an enormous deal over TOS changes that they did not fully understand.
Either way, the new/old version of the TOS goes into effect this week, and it doesn’t look like the hubbub affected Instagram much, if at all.
Link: Instagram reports 90M monthly active users, handling 10k likes per second at peak