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Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, will be ringing the NASDAQ Bell Friday morning from Menlo Park, California to celebrate their IPO. Facebook’s IPO will be the biggest of any tech company in history, with an estimated valuation around $100 Billion. There have only been three other U.S. companies that have had an IPO of over $10 Billion. (AT&T, GM, and Visa) Naturally, with a company that has well over 900 million users, there will be a lot of conversation regarding their IPO. Here at Loudpixel, we decided to take a closer look at what people were saying the week prior.

Posts of note:

• Eduardo Saverin Renounces US Citizenship – New York Times
• Zuckerberg Wears Hoodie to IPO Meeting - Bloomberg News
• Facebook’s First Job, Post IPO? Fix Its Mobile App - Mashable
• Facebook’s IPO already oversubscribed - Reuters
• Pay To “Highlight” Your Facebook Status Updates – TechCrunch

In an interview with Inc.com this week, Peter Shankman told us why we should consider tossing out our social media metrics. While I agree with his point that many marketers focus far too closely on new fans and followers and far too little on context and reactions from existing fans and followers, I certainly can’t endorse a full “toss out your metrics” approach (though, reading closer, it appears that Peter Shankman doesn’t truly endorse this approach either).

So which Facebook metrics matter?

Measurement is important, but measurement that is targeted at arbitrary numbers without context or goals is useless. For example, knowing that my total Facebook fan base increased by 10% last month doesn’t give me much context around my so-called “success,” but a few additional bits of context will make this much more meaningful:

• Say my fan growth from the month before was only 2%—what caused this month-to-month increase?
• Was there a particular day when growth jumped, or was it a steady increase over time? If it happened on one particular day, what did we post about or do that day that was different from other days?
• Where are new fans coming from (advertising, like stories from fan timelines, etc.)?
• What is the demographic make-up of my existing fans? True story—we worked with a brand that saw a spike in lost Facebook fans last October. It turned out that the majority of their fans are young males, and they were promoting Breast Cancer Awareness month, which didn’t resonate with this section of their audience. Make sure your messaging aligns with your fan base. Lost fans can be just as telling as new fans.
• What is the context and sentiment of fan responses on my Facebook Page? Many marketers focus simply on quantity of comments and likes and consider them all “good numbers,” but we recently started digging deeper by pulling Facebook comments into our system to tag for relevancy, context and sentiment. It turned out that a decent portion of comments were self promoting, inappropriate or negative. If you don’t know the context around reactions, how will you shape future messaging to make sure it is relevant and resonates with your audience?
• What type of media does my fan base engage with the most? I love using PageLever.com to evaluate clicks and photo views—this is another great way to tell what content is resonating with existing fans (do our fans engage more with text, videos, photos, polls, links, etc.?).

Have you ever tweeted an airline or an airport with a question or concern? In this week’s Loudpixel Hangout, the team is talking about the rise of mobile customer service and the industry that could set the standard for everyone.

Articles of Note:

• How Do Airports Use Twitter?
• A Tale of Three Airlines on Twitter

I’m not an athlete or sports fanatic by any means but last week, news that someone I have always admired, Pat Summitt, would be stepping down from her position as head coach of the University of Tennessee’s women’s basketball program grabbed my attention. After first announcing in 2011 that she was diagnosed with Early Onset Dementia, Alzheimer’s type, Summitt made the decided to move into the role of “Head Coach Emeritus” in order to focus on her health. Coach Summitt’s performance in a game was as captivating as the performance of her players. She exuded strength, control, intelligence, and respect, and symbolized those attributes for players, industry pros, and fans across the country. While Summitt will continue to serve the Lady Vols in an advisory capacity, she took a big step in confronting the seriousness of her disease by relinquishing her current role. In doing so, she brought her reality to the forefront of media coverage.

In the midst of last week’s tragic celebrity news (Dick Clark died of a heart attack; Levon Helm succumbed to throat cancer), I was curious as to what kind of attention a celebrity’s public medical struggles brought to related national causes. Summitt’s story opens up questions about her diagnosis of Early Onset Dementia, Alzheimer’s type, a disease which is hard to pinpoint without the help of genetic counseling or testing. Her announcement of her resignation as head coach on April 18th did in fact cause a spike in general conversation referencing Alzheimer’s disease and Dementia. The spike carried through the 19th and tapered on the 20th (additional spikes seen in the graph on April 11th and April 22nd were generated by a tweet from @UberFacts suggesting the use of marijuana as a preventative supplement).

Perhaps the more interesting data was the spike caused by Summitt’s announcement in relation to her specific diagnosis. As inferred from the chart below, daily conversation referencing Early Onset Dementia, Alzheimer’s type, is relatively low, and while Summitt’s announcement only increased conversation about the disease for a couple of days, the story is out there and may serve to promote awareness in the future.  Any time a celebrity (particularly those who are generally regarded with high esteem) announces an illness, it reminds us that no one is exempt from life-altering health issues. The good news with stories likes Summitt’s is that often foundations and awareness campaigns emerge from personal experiences (Summitt has established the Pat Summitt Foundation Fund). For researchers who are working diligently to find cures or alleviants to rarer conditions like Early Onset Dementia, the publicity that comes from celebrity initiatives could make a significant difference in funding. Never underestimate the power of a celebrity, especially when that power can be used for good.

Data for this article was gathered using Radian6 software.

This month, Social Times published an infographic about how mobile devices have redefined media consumption. Our team got together to discuss the findings and how they might impact the future of content.

(This one ties in nicely with Lesley’s post on timing social media last week)

Using social data to target consumers is nothing new, but how do you feel about syncing your finances to your social media accounts? That’s the latest push from American Express, and they’re hoping you’ll buy into it. In our latest Hangout, the Loudpixel team discusses the pros and cons of the Link, Like, Love program from AMEX which links your social accounts and credit cards to give you targeted deals.

Articles of Note:

• Social Media ROI Arrives (Digiday.com)
• How AMEX Grows its Massive Social Media Presence (Mashable.com)

OK, so you’ve decided to take the reins and blast full speed ahead with the social media portion of your marketing campaign. Great. Feeling overwhelmed? That’s completely normal. There are multiple theories around how best to connect with a social media audience. We’ve talked previously about targeting your audience by producing relevant content that spans several platforms, but perhaps the trickiest element of creating a successful social media presence is timing. For example, let’s take a closer look at the most optimal tweeting times.

Researchers seem to be in favor of tweeting in Eastern Time. In fact, we usually tweet during the obvious commute times (7:30-8AM CT/8:30-9AM ET; 4:30-5PM CT/5:30-6PM ET), but what about the rest of the day? There are plenty of tools featuring scheduling tips for both Twitter and Facebook posts—but beware; we found in testing that different tools may provide different scheduling suggestions. For example, Timely, a tool that will examine your previous tweets to determine the best posting times in relation to audience reach, suggested that we tweet at 10AM, 11AM, 2PM and 3PM Eastern Time. On the same day, Crowdbooster suggested that we schedule tweets for 5PM, 9PM, and 10PM Eastern Time.

The truth is, none of these companies explain in detail how they come up with these determinations (for obvious reasons), which only furthers the idea that there is no set formula in social media. We’ve actually tested all of these times on a weekday, and have not found significant response during just one or two time periods. The one thing we do notice is that our strongest or most relevant posts are (naturally) the ones that receive the highest response. Our conclusion: always make relevant content a priority, experiment with posting times (perhaps with the exception of obvious commute periods) and, eventually, determine what works for you and your audience.

Aside from the timing suggestions, the tools below are pretty handy when it comes to basic scheduling components.  We believe in getting help where you can and encourage you to check out these recommendations. If you’re on Pacific Time, scheduling a tweet for 7:30AM Eastern Time the day before might make your life a smidgen easier.

Crowdbooster: This tool provides relevant metrics, recommendations, post scheduling, weekly account summaries, and support via community, email, live chat, and phone for your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The Personal account (one Twitter account, one Facebook account) is free while the Professional (10 total accounts; $39 per month) and Business (30 total accounts; $99 per month) are available at a cost.

Hootsuite:  The ad-supported version of this tool is free and allows you to schedule posts for multiple accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The Pro Version ($5.99 per month) is ad-free and allows you to track metrics, collaborate with additional users, and schedule a higher number of messages in bulk.

SproutSocial: This software can do all that Hootsuite does and more, but there is no free version. While SproutSocial has the capacity to suit the needs of larger corporations (the Premium Version is $899 per month), they offer a Small Business Version for $39 per month. This version allows you to schedule posts across multiple platforms, analyze your social media data, and target potential customers/followers.

Timely (Twitter only): This relatively new and free app will not only schedule your tweets, it will pinpoint your most optimal posting times. Timely reviews responses generated by your previous tweets to determine when you will most likely drive engagement.

Image via Earl37a

The Loudpixel team discusses Pinterest’s decision not to release its finished API just yet.

The issue: third party developers can develop on a platform’s API more quickly than the internal team, but this may cause issues for the platform later on when the internal team wants to build out its own features.

Articles of Note:

• Pinterest is Scared of Having a “Twitter Problem”
• Why Investors Think Pinterest Will Easily be Worth $5 Billion

When it comes to measuring personal fitness, “get fit” is a vague goal. In order to measure our progression toward better fitness, we have to choose a specific goal and metrics to measure against over time (e.g. improve my mile time by 10% over the next month, beat my competitors in a race next month, lose 10 pounds by next month, etc.).

The same is true for measuring program success for a brand or organization (e.g. improve my positive share of conversation by 10% over the next month, have a higher share of positive conversation than my competitors next month, drop negative conversations by 10% over the next month, etc.).

Everyone wants to find the social media measurement “silver bullet.” Tourism Ireland decided that they cracked it this week, and they wrote about their approach on Forbes. Herein lies the problem:

“If this was an academic paper on this new formula for measurement, this guy would have to cite everyone involved in his field or that work would be completely disregarded…”

- Jeff Siarto, Loudpixel

Social media measurement is far too fragmented. Though some are making clear efforts to create basic industry standards, these standards are too often ignored. Our team took on this issue in this week’s Loudpixel Hangout.

Articles of Note:

• A New and Simple Way to Measure Social Media ROI
• Katie Paine’s rebuttal: Social AVEs are not value, they are Blarney
• The Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles

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