statistics

Facebook vs Google?

by David Lee King on September 14, 2010

Just saw this post and a couple others that commented on it – Facebook Passes Google in “Time Spent” – What Does it Mean?

What does it mean? Honestly, it could mean any number of things. But let’s take a peek at the accompanying graphic first:

Here’s what I think it might mean:

  1. Well, duh. Facebook is a social place where you connect with people you like. Google’s a search engine. Apples and oranges. ‘Nuf said.
  2. Related to #1 – Google’s main thing – their search engine – has been #1 for a long time. But the web has been morphing from primarily a place you surf and search for content to a place where you connect with people. You can see that in the graphic above – look at the mix of search engines, social places, email, etc.
  3. #2 leads to my last point – not certain the percentages are an accurate reflection of reality. Why? Well – they’re comparing Facebook – where you can do lots of stuff, like chat, watch videos, see pics of people, leave status updates, do Facebook PM emails, etc – to only Google’s search engine. But if you add up all the Google properties in this top 20 list – Google, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps – Google still clearly comes out on top.

Just picky this morning!

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Facebook & YouTube Demographics

by David Lee King on May 13, 2010

facebook Page stats
Facebook Insights

YouTube Stats
Youtube Insights

Yesterday, I was playing with Youtube and Facebook Page insights for my library, and found something interesting. Look at the demographics of who’s visiting us in those social networks – not 25-34 year olds. Not teens. Nope.

For Youtube, it’s 45-54 year old females. Followed closely by 55-64 year old women! Facebook looks a bit more “normal” to me – 35-44 year old and 25-34 year old females.

But wow. To me, those demographics really don’t much match up with what one’s first impression of a social network’s demographics would be. Ask anyone who the average viewer of  a YouTube video is, and you’ll hear “18 year old male.” NOT “Oh, I’m sure it’s a 50 year old female!”

What’s that mean to my library? Well, depending on our goals, a couple of things:

  • Goals. Did you read that? First, you need some goals. Take 10 minutes and figure out what your library’s goals for Youtube and your Facebook Page are.
  • Are we good with that demographic? If so, then great – we got em! Now, we need to make sure we’re creating targeted content in those social networks for that demographic.
  • If we aren’t hitting our targeted demographic, maybe our content needs to change … or who we friend needs to change.

What else? Anyone finding similar results in your organization’s Facebook Page or Youtube Insights? Do tell.

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IL2008: Defining & Measuring Social Media Success

by David Lee King on October 22, 2008

Speaker: Jeff Wisniewski

Why be social
bad reasons – it’s cool, my boss told me to, etc
better reasons – provides innovative ways for libraries to connect with ysers we may never see face to face, to encourage, promote, innovate, learn, adapt, to improve customer service, to discover and deliver what users want, to market without marketing

Listen first
is it a conversation? What’s being said?
Listen first to see what the tone is

Developing a social media plan
define a strategy
define goals – ie., increase awareness of library services, increase the number of new cards issues, etc
pick a platform or two
the right platform depends on your goals

Then – start!
start blogging/leaving comments, etc

Assessing social media success
quantitatively and qualitatively – both are needed
what you are measuring – the “trinity approach” – behavior, outcome, experience

the what (behavior)
quantitative
number of blog posts
- Boyd’s Conversation Index: posts/comments + trackbacks, should be greater than 1
number of facebook friends/fans
views/visits

Outcome: the tangible benefit of your social media activity
- higher satisfaction
- fewer help desk calls
- more searches
- increase in funding

Example – are your flickr imsages viewed? Monitor the number of users. Also monitor referrals from flickr to your website, then you can say collection use has increased by 2.1%… coolness.

Experience
put on your listening ears!
listen/engage/converse – take action
be authentic – admit problems and engage that way

Experience metric – experience CAN be measured and evaluated
stars, scars, or neutral? (positive, negative, neutral comments)

5 things to get started:
1. monitor general search engine results
- focus on google (they do the best in including social media stuff in search results)

2. monitor social media search engine results
- why?
- used by high-value, highly connected, highly influencial users
- pays great divedends if they are fans of the library
choose the specific social media search engines that match your media efforts
- delicious – see how many people bookmarked it (quant) and something else…
- twitter – do you show up? How often?
- advanced search has a local search option

3. create alerts
- check standard web logs for refers from search engines. What terms do people use?
- use quotes
- choose “comprehensive” to get results from news, globs, web, video, and groups

4. analytics
- create a conversion funnel to measure a social media action chain. It measures follow-through. IE if they go to a signup page, did they finish the process? If they did, that’s a conversion.

5. assess the nature and sentiment of activity
- what’s the stregth and tone of the social media activity?
- is it deep, is it a drive by, one-off comment?

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