Twitter adds Analytics to Track Performance (and it’s free)

Twitter has had analytics for any advertising that you may have done on their platform, but now they have opened up those tools for use with your regular tweets and to look at your followers in more depth.

To access the analytics, go to ads.twitter.com – the advertising platform on twitter. Login using your Twitter account login. You will click on the Analytics tab on the left part of the navigation. You can select either Timeline Activity or Followers. (Followers only provides information when you have a large enough group of followers.) Selecting Timeline Activity displays a dashboard like this:

You can choose to view All, Best or Good. Best shows you the top 15% of tweets with some level of engagement within the date range you are viewing. Good shows the top 66% of tweets with some level of engagement within the date range.

You can now easily gauge referrals now since the tool shows you how many people clicked on a link in your tweet. You can even download the data as a CSV file to track behavior over a longer period of time and use it to build compare with other tools and data.

As Twitter continues to figure out ways to make money with advertising and other options, I’m certain that the analytics will get more extensive, but this at least gives a nice, easy way to track performance and help determine engagement with your tweets. And best of all, it’s free.

Facebook introduces Hashtags

Facebook has stated that they will be rolling out more features to help surface the larger conversations and topics that people are talking about. The first of these will be the use of hashtags.

Thankfully if you have already been using hashtags on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., you will just continue those same efforts now on Facebook. They will be used the same way to add context to your post or indicate that it is part of a larger conversation.  (If you haven’t started using hashtags, see our blog post, Hashtags – They’re not just for breakfast anymore, to help you get started.)

According to Facebook you can:

• Search for a specific hashtag from your search bar. For example, #NBAFinals.
• Click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as Instagram.
• Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.

As always, you control the audience for your posts, including those with hashtags.

As an event marketer, the benefits are that you now can begin to see similarities and differences in the behaviors around your conversations across all of your primary social media efforts. #lovesimplification

Instagram adds Video Functionality

Instagram launched an update for their app which now includes video support. The new feature allows you to take video from 3 seconds to a maximum of 15 seconds, apply filters similar to how you have always done with photos and share out on Instagram and other social site. Another cool feature is built-in image stabilization to take out the jitters from moving your cell phone around. You can select a still image from within your video to represent it rather than being stuck with just the first frame.

We had mentioned Vine, Twitter’s 6 second video sharing service, a while back. This is Facebook/Instagram’s competitive response. With as popular as Instagram has become, I’m sure this will take off like crazy.

Techcrunch put together a nice comparison on Vine and Instagram:

The great thing for events is that rather than adding yet another social site, you simply can start sharing more rich content with the same services that you likely have been focused on.

One of the best things about working with events is seeing all the fantastic photos from each event. It truly makes you feel like you are at the event while visiting the website. As we have touched on before, Pinterest can be another fantastic way to showcase your event photos and attract potential customers. Mom’s love Pinterest, and as we can all agree, control the pocket-book in many families. So even though you should keep your razor-sharp focus on Facebook in your social media efforts, it might pay to spend a little time making sure your Pinterest page is up to snuff.

 

 

Pinterest now has over 49 million users who spend an average of 14.9 minutes per visit to the site. That’s a lot of time checking out, curating and organizing photos and ideas! By having great photos on your website and Pinterest page, Pinterest continues to be a great way to showcase your event and drive traffic to your website.

As you may have heard Pinterest recently announced the addition of analytics to their site. This gives you an easier way to determine the impact of your images on your website and the contribution of Pinterest users to your traffic. To get started, you’ll need to convert your account to a business account in order to access the analytics dashboard. Go to business.pinterest.com. It is very easy to convert. Just need to make sure that you input some basic information and description. Likely you already did this when you set up your site the first time. (Company UserName, About You Section, Reference Link, Differentiate your Pin Boards) Only slightly tricky step is verifying your website. Go to Settings >> Click Verify Website>> Download HTML Verification >> Upload this to your webserver in a subfolder (super simple for your tech person) >> Click “Click Here” on the verification screen (once code has been uploaded). Once verified, then Pinterest analytics begins tracking what is being pinned from your website. You will see a check mark next to your site name and you will have the option to select analytics from the dropdown menu.

Key Metrics to Watch:

1. Pins from your site (Site Metrics tab) – Informs you of the daily average number of pins from your verified website.  Helps to determine whether the visual content is interesting enough for your visitors to pin to your boards.
2. Repins from your site (Site Metrics tab) – Informs you of the daily average number of pins from your website that were repinned. Helps to determine whether your visual content is resonating with your Pinterest audience. Repins give your content a chance to be seen by people that don’t follow you directly.
3. Reach – (Site Metrics tab) – Informs you of the success of your content. Helps you understand how large an audience your content reached for branding purposes and as a comparison to how much traffic did or did not generate to your website.
4. Visitors/Visits to your website – (Site Metrics tab) – Clicks is visits to your website and Visitors is the total number of people who visited your website.  Some pins drive engagement on Pinterest and others will drive traffic to your website. You want engagement on both.  Comparing Clicks to Repins helps determine what types of action your different content helps to drive.
5.  Most Repinned – (Most Repinned tab) – Informs you what content is resonating with your audience the most. This tab shows actual pins that were repinned for that specific date range. Look for patterns in your content which will help you determine what types of content to create in the future. Try new things and experiment; then use the report to see if it was successful.
6. Most Clicked – (Most Clicked tab) – Informs you what content drives the most traffic to your website. If you are selling online, this could help you to understand the potential to generate revenue from Pinterest (concerts, merch, etc. ) Helps determine if the Pin It button on your website is driving your visitors to pin specific images to their boards.

All of these are easily accessed from the dashboard that Pinterest provides.

    By watching your Pinterest analytics, you’ll gain insight into what types of content is resonating with your customers which can help guide you on providing more of what they like. As with any of the tools in your marketing toolbox, Pinterest Analytics now gives you one more tool to help you determine how your website content is performing.