Category Archives: Analytics

Ratios & Metrics in my personal social media adventure

Categories: Analytics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

It always interests me to understand how much I invest in building a particular medium, and how much I can get out of it. I have been working on a few Twitter profiles for years. My largest has about 9000 followers, and we get about 1.5 clicks per tweet assuming those tweets are not during the middle of the night. Sure, there are optimal times in the day for tweeting, but I can only do it when I can.

Twitter click/tweet ratio
What I learned is that it takes me about 15 minutes, three times a week to manage a Twitter profile and grow it by about 300 members per week. Sometimes I am busy and can only do it once, but if I do what I am supposed to, I get a new follower rate of about 400 per hour spent, and then put time into following people back, doing a little tweeting, and interacting. 400/hour is not a bad ratio. I can’t do much more than 15 minutes per session or my relevancy rate of targeting new followers becomes not worth it. Since my largest account gets 1.5 clicks per tweet, and has 9000 followers, you could say that it might take me 22 hours of labor spent slowly for several months to get 1.5 clicks per tweet. If I spent 100 hours of time, my tweet rate might go up to 7 or more depending on the relevancy rate. Another factor to consider is that my older followers might not be so active. New followers on Twitter tend to click and retweet a lot more than old ones.

With my other Twitter account I get .75 clicks per tweet with 2000 followers, so the ratio is very different because the followers were more recently acquired. Interesting data!

Google+ click/post ratio
On a brighter note, my Google+ account is getting me more like 4 clicks per post average with only 600 followers. This is a rough estimate. I’ll fine tune it once I get to about 1000 followers. It is hard to take a measurement because I don’t know how popular a particular post will be until afterwards. In any case, It is exciting to get all of these clicks.

Google plus makes it slower and harder to acquire followers. I have become good at it, but the actual physical process of implanting them in one of your circles is cumbersome as the load time is currently slow with Googleplus. On the other hand, unfollowing is easy if you remove the whole circle that particular followees are in. Five seconds, and I can delete hundreds of followees with whom that I have given a week to follow me back.

Comparison
It seems that with Twitter, I get about 1 click per 3000 newer followers per tweet, and a somewhat lesser ratio with older followers of perhaps 1 click per 6000. It might take 8 hour of labor to get 3000 followers to get that 1click/tweet ratio. With Googleplus, it takes more like one hour of labor to get perhaps only 60 followers. I can follow about 500, but only 12-15% actually follow me back. However, those 60 followers are much more valuable to me than 60 twitter followers. So, it might take 2.5 hours of labor to get 150 followers on Googleplus. Those 150 followers would get me the same click rate that 3000 recent (12 months or less) followers on Twitter would get me. However, for the sake of numbers, let me do a 100 hour guesstimate for both mediums.

100 hours of twitter: 40,000 followers: 12 clicks / tweet
100 hours on G+: 6000 followers: 40 clicks / post

This is purely an estimate though. Additionally, I will say that on on of my Google+ accounts, the length of visits is much higher than on other mediums. I got average visits of four minutes this month which is fantastic. My other Google+ account (for notary work) got slightly above average for minutes per visit which is also encouraging.

Based on inconclusive evidence, it seems that Google+ might be a much more efficient medium for getting clicks than Twitter, although Facebook is still the king of social media as far as vast volumes of clicks is concerned. Also, don’t overlook Twitter for SEO value as it can be the most effective tool if you get in depth interactions with others or high quantities of retweets!

Which blog entries do best on which network? Crowdsourcing examined.

Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Tagged | Leave a comment

Optimizing your blog involves a lot more than just adding the right tags and writing popular content. You need to know what types of posts work best with which types of audience. Twitter is a source for only a few hundred clicks a month to my blog, but the SEO value of each quality click that gets me a few pageviews can be astounding. This is why I created a separate category on my blog for posts that did well on Twitter. We have close to 100 such posts on my notary blog. We are going to tweet those particular posts more often on Twitter with different title variations to study which titles do best.

Next, we are going to map out which posts did well on Facebook and republish those periodically on our Facebook account, possibly using pay-per-click to further accentuate the damage.

Linked In, Google+ and others are viable networks for getting lots of traffic. Use them!

Another factor to consider has to do with basic crowdsourcing strategy. Some of our networks have mainly members who are in the industry. Take the notary business for example. Those that get our newsletter are serious service providers. They like technical notary information, stories about notaries and marketing info. However, those on our Twitter network are generally either laypeople who know little about the notary industry or are just people who rarely use their notary stamp.

The key in attracting laypeople to our blog is to write articles that are about the notary profession, but interesting and understandable to a regular person. I just wrote an article about a guy in New York, who runs a notary business from his parked car. It is very interesting, and filled with facts that every a grade school child will easily be able to appreciate and understand. We will be writing more “relevant,” but also layperson attractive type articles in the future to reel in people who are in the business community, but are not necessarily zealous notaries!

Blogging gets me clicks from the USA

Categories: America, Analytics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

As I promoted my outsourcing directory, I got lots of clicks from India, but found it hard to find browsers from the USA. I found that PPC programs delivered me clicks from whatever country I wanted, but at a hefty price. As I did more with blogging and wrote more popular entries, I saw my clicks triple from the United States. My overseas clicks didn’t go up that much, except for some reason in Bolivia. Maybe they need call center services in Bolivia.

As someone who operates websites, click volume is a huge concern. Quantity of clicks is something I battle for daily. Every time I write a blog article, or modify my site, the only thought that goes through my head is click volume. But, quality and targeting of clicks matters more. On our outsourcing directory, we have lots of overseas providers in India and the Philippines for Call Centers, programming, social media, data entry, BPO, medical transcriptions, and other tasks. But, we had too few service “buyers” from wealthy western countries. I am happy to announce that our clicks from the West are finally going up, and as we promote our blog more and more, not to mention do it more intelligently, our clicks from America will continue to rise!

How to gauge someone’s learning speed at work!

Categories: Analytics, Hiring & Firing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Although I have hired several dozen people in my lifetime for various tasks, I lack a clear method to quickly determine someone’s learning speed. I developed methods to test work competency. However, when I hire people to do tasks they have never done before, they will all fail the first time around. If you hire people to do what they already know how to do, then test their communication and their work, and don’t forget about meeting deadlines! But, if you hire people to do customized tasks like I often do, then the most important factor is how fast they learn.

Imagine that one person has worked with you for a year. They know how to do most tasks that you require of them, but they don’t cooperate, they pester you, and they never completely follow directions. Imagine that you don’t want to fire them, because then you will be left with someone else who doesn’t know how to efficiently or correctly do the tasks that you require. Please keep your eyes closed — I saw you peeking. Yes, that’s better. Now, imagine (seriously, keep them closed) that a new person arrives who doesn’t know anything, but has the capacity to learn quickly. I had a miracle unfold before my very eyes (which are closed because I’m doing an imagination drill) today. My newly hired help, learned to be an expert at a phone task in a week. Ten days ago she couldn’t function at all or get a single result after two hours of work. Today, she is doing flawless work and getting time efficient thorough results too.

Rather than just hiring someone, it makes sense to try them out and give them multiple tasks and instructions plus some coaching. See how fast they learn. If they learn fast and follow directions, you might be in luck. If they don’t, then get rid of them before you hire them. Save yourself a headache. If you give four separate tasks to someone with four separate instructions, see how they do. After thirty minutes on each task, evaluate their work and give them a coaching session. See if they learn effectively from your teaching session. Let them do another hour on each task, then evaluate again. See how they do after three coaching sessions. Three is the magic number. If they do okay, and don’t run away or procrastinate getting anything done, then hire them!

Don’t try this at home
Try this at work!

You can open your eyes now. We are done with the imagination exercise.

Tweets:
(1) Test a newly hired person’s learning speed. Give them an assignment + 3 short coaching sessions.
(2) Assign, coach, review, evaluate. See how fast your new employees learn new tasks!

You might also like:

Each rep gives a different answer!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/04/21/each-rep-gives-a-different-answer/

Hiring people who can really think!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/03/01/hiring-people-who-can-really-think/

Twitter’s algorithm for “people” under keyword search doesn’t add up!

Categories: Analytics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Dormant accounts galore!

Suggestions for Twitter’s algorithm

Twitter’s algorithm for who shows up under “People” in a given keyword query has some serious drawbacks. Results include many dormant profiles that haven’t posted in months. I’m not sure what the other components of the algorithm are. It might include how many posts they made with the tag / keyword in question along with how many relevant followers they have. It is complicated indeed.

I think that what makes more sense is to see who has been the most active in the last month. For those who have been active, then another layer of how well they have been doing in the last six months, and how many relevant followers they have might compliment the algorithm.

I think they should hire Janet Jackson to put her 2 cents worth in when creating a new algorithm. Her suggestion might be — what have you done for me lately?

I gasp as see my Twitter clicks go from 2 a month to 42

Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Twitter is a very simple, yet complicated social media platform. It is easy to tweet. Any idiot can tweet, but the problem is that most of the people who do tweet — are idiots. I looked at my analytics for previous months and years on Twitter. As I see my evolution unfold, I am painfully reminded of how I used to not have a clue of how to effectively use Twitter. Effective use of Twitter is like an art form. You get gradually better at it over time, but nothing happens all of a sudden.

Many novices are fooled by the top line number. They think that having lots of followers is a good thing. More followers is not bad, but it doesn’t translate into any SEO realities either. The key in Twitter is to have good tweets going to good content that your audience likes! Our worst several months we were getting only about two clicks a month. After I started really taking Twitter more seriously and spending more time creating more artful tweets, my click rate went up a bit. But, after I hired a professional comedy writer, that is where I saw the real results. We peaked at 42 clicks a month and had over a dozen different people retweet us.

I used to count straight retweets, but now I am more interested in how many different people retweet us. I retweet myself from my various accounts, but that means very little to me, and even less to you. I take pride when strangers retweet my content at least once a month. If the same guy keeps retweeting me, but nobody else does, then I lose interest.

Honestly, my twitter analytics for the outsourcing site are very poor. I often question whether it is worth it to even continue with such small numbers. I want hundreds of clicks and hundreds of retweets, not a dozen new people retweeting me on a good month. My Notary Twitter on the other hand is getting thousands of clicks using the PPC program. What works for one account doesn’t necessarily work for the other. So, I’m going to have to strategize here about what to do.

My gut feeling is that it makes more sense to create more content and let Google do the work rather than slaving away trying to create great Tweets and wondering why the retweet rate is so low!

Tweets:
(1) Effective use of Twitter is like an art form. You get gradually better at it over time.
(2) The key in Twitter is to have good tweets going to good content that your audience likes!

You might also like:

Social Media Optimization: Checking the effectiveness of each of your campaigns
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/12/20/social-media-optimization-checking-the-effectiveness-of-each-of-your-campaigns/

Your last four tweets count the most
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/12/09/your-last-four-tweets-count-the-most/

I tried using airport hashtags on Twitter, the result was not good

Categories: Analytics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Using airport hashtags on twitter for travel destinations or businesses near an airport can have its advantages. Airport hashtags are short, which means you can fit more of them on a tweet. You need one space, one hashtag and a three digit airport code, and you are done.

The problem I experienced is that airport hashtags do not pick up fast traffic like more heavily used hashtags. The other problem is that the airport terms pick up a lot of irrelevant traffic as well.

Changi Airport in Singapore is regarded as one of the best airports in the world. You can shower, nap, see a movie, drink wine, enjoy Chinese dumplings, see an indoor lake, and more. But, the hashtag #SIN is very sinful! You’ll get the wrong type of followers. Then Bombay airport is #BOM, that didn’t attract good people either. I tried #KUL which didn’t get me anywhere, but at least didn’t have all of the nonsense tweets using that combination of letters.

It is a little too early to judge if airport hashtags are a good idea to use for travel tweets!
For now, my vote is against them unless you use only one airport tag when blogging about that specific airport!

Twitter Analytics; For every 1000 I follow, I get 3 clicks to my site

Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Ladies and Gentlemen — this might not sound like much, but if I follow 1000 relevant people on Twitter, I get 3 clicks to my site. Since I do a lot of following and do it very quickly, I get many clicks to my site every month from my addiction to following and unfollowing people. What you need to remember is that a click to your site from Twitter can become a regular follower. You might get a lot more blog visits, and you might get retweets on a regular basis. It is difficult to assess the value of a single click, but a click that turns into a repeat visitor is very valuable to me. I have noticed that clicks from Twitter tend to result in a lot of reading and thus could be deemed “quality clicks.” A blog click can be judged by how many minutes they stayed on your blog and how many pages they viewed. But, a click to your site from Twitter is a little different. Since I don’t know how to assess such a click, I often just meditate on it and the answer comes to me.

But, putting aside the value of these clicks, that is another side effect of following people on Twitter that adds value to the time you put into it. Not only do you get more followers and a base for retweets, but you also get visits to your site which will make you popular on Google!