Web 2.0 and Social MediaBusiness in a Connected World

Chapter 8b

© McHaney and Sachs 2016

Social Buzz and Viral Phenomenon

Appealing as a place for a business presence

Tumblr

Online Destination Place where content can be quickly posted, particularly from mobile platforms.

BackgroundFirst appeared in April, 2007. Tumblr has over 555 million active monthly users with a high user retention rate.

Fills the gap between Twitter’s microblogging features and Facebook’s overarching social media capabilities.

Made for fast blogging

Tumblr

Main IdeaThe idea behind Tumblr is to refresh the medium of the blog and to renew it with a better format, centralized management, and higher levels of interactivity.

ToolsTools have been added to Tumblr to enable users to post photos, videos, audio, text, bookmarks, tags, and embedded pages for sharing.

Tumblr does not require posting media on other sites (for instance posting to YouTube and then embedding it in a blog entry). It allows material to be uploaded directly from a number of sources including mobile devices

Easy for users to find and view material on mobile devices

Offers minimal customization options Does not permit self-hosting Most businesses view Tumblr as supplement

to primary Web site Ideal for reaching user demographic hard to

contact via print media Tumblr’s demographic is under 34 years old

and mobile device users Organizations find coupons, product

information, sales notices, and other material. All are shared among users on Tumblr

Very Desirable Demographic

Tumblr Users

Tumblr refreshes the medium of the blog and renews it with a better format, centralized management, and higher levels of interactivity.

Made for fast blogging

Tumblr

Examples

Tumblr

Tumblr populated with tumblelogs. These ‘blog entries’ may take the form of a stream of Tweets

Entries also may appear as multimedia blog entries

Many people use a tumblelog to represent a personal view of their lives (like an online diary or journal) Tumblr users can follow each others' blogs and restrict viewers with privacy settings

Follow and develop a community around content

Tumblelogs

Not traditionally envisioned for business use

Poor choice for many industries

Banking, financial services and those seeking to develop a traditional business reputation might not find the ‘flash and glitter’ of Tumblr compatible with business objectives

Not a good choice for many businesses

Tumblr for Business

Excels in businesses seeking fast paced, social network optimized for quick consumption

Best with multimedia

Mainly concerned with photos, videos, quotes and questions

Members known for being edgy, artistic, and inspirational

Tumblr for Business (Continued)

Example Tumblelogs That Work!

• Use of social media is inexact • Creating content and posting it can be controlled but what happens after

is not predictable• What may happen with postings or community interaction can be

derived by tracking social interest• Tools have been created to help monitor social media activity and detect

the attitude toward a brand, product, or organization• Social interest tools are competing for leadership and use a variety of

approaches• Each tool provides different social measures

Inexact and tricky

Tracking Social Interest

Mentions can be posted to a service such as Scoop.It

Example

Tracking Mentions

www.scoop.it

Trying to track every social media mention related to an organization can be daunting and may not be completely possible. The combination of keywords, abbreviations, foreign language translations and so forth makes it very hard to anticipate every way an organization, brand, product, employee and related entity might be mentioned by anyone, anywhere. Budgetary constraints are a reality for all businesses and impact tracking efforts.

Most social media platforms provide a set of metrics on an account holder’s dashboard

Challenges of Tracking

Facebook pages use a comprehensive analytics suite called Insight to enable site owners to better understand fans and their use of the site.

Facebook Insight provides basic user information including likes, unlikes, active users, traffic counts, and referrers.

Information helps an organization acquire data regarding the reception of its posts and gives a better understanding of posts or updates with the most impact.

Insight

Trackable Links Provide Analytics

Web site-based social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content into a single stream of information

Social Mention

www.socialmention.com

Monitors more than 100 social media Web sites including Twitter, Facebook, Digg, WordPress, Google, and YouTube. Its sources come from blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, video, audio, Q&A, and networks

Social Mention provides measures of passion, of whether the mentions are positive or negative, and which keywords are most related to the mentions

How often does your business get mentioned in social media?

Social Mention (Continued)

Users create recipes for anything deemed noteworthy (e.g. from Facebook posts to weather service updates). Recipes are rules sets. Each recipe has a trigger channel (relates to the “if this happens”) and an action channel (relates to the “then do that”). Text messages, emails, and other actions can be taken.

Automates finding mentions and taking actions based on what is found

If This Then That (IFTTT) Is A Helpful Tool For Monitoring Online Mentions

Klout takes a different approach to understanding social buzz by developing a measure of online influence. It provides insight on the following: Do others trust your opinions online?What topics are you the most influential on?How do you compare with your friends?

Influence Measure

Klout

Klout uses metrics from interactions within Twitter, Facebook and other social media. Then looks at reach (e.g. audience size) and amplification (e.g. how others reuse and interact with posted material and tweets) and network (measure of connected community’s overall influence).

Find out if your posts are being noticed

Klout

Klout provides data regarding connections and allows a business to understand who they influence or who their competitors influence. Understanding how online information flows and which sources provide the most influence becomes possible. This can become excellent business intelligence that will help guide the direction of future social interactions.

Klout Analysis

Klout Measures User Characteristics

Social influence

Other Measures

Viral activity can result in a ripple effect where a Tweet is passed in ever-widening circles.

Social media such as StumbleUpon and Reddit can enable even broader exposure to posted content.

New visual and mobile device focused content can be posted on social media Web sites such as Tumblr and Pinterest.

Businesses are interested in understanding viral phenomena and how particular content is received, discussed, and used by its stakeholders.

Social media buzz measurement tools can provide metrics and benchmarks for determining the types of posts, comments, videos, and content which exert the most influence.

Tools such as Social Mention, IFTTT, and Klout decipher the complexities of social media activity and provide a framework to enable businesses to better target their communications and improve effectiveness.

Chapter 8 Summary

Contact: Roger McHaney, Kansas State University, mchaney@ksu.edu