A lot has certainly changed in four years. According to stats compiled by iProspect, the number of Facebook accounts has grown 901% from 90 million in 2008 to 901 million today. The number of Twitter accounts has grown from under 1 million to 300 million. Wow!
In a blog post I wrote recently, I discussed the role of smartphones in this year's Olympics. Smartphones have grown 456% in the last four years. When Safecount surveyed panelists (US internet users 18-44), 74% of smartphone owners say they actively participate in social media on their phones. 34% say they will follow Olympics coverage on Facebook and 17% will follow on Twitter. I find these numbers amazing since the last summer Olympics probably had far less activity on social platforms. I wonder if viewers will be following specific fan pages on Facebook, specific athletes pages, or just simply interacting with friends about the Olympics. Michael Phelps has close to 5.5 million likes. The US Olympic Team page itself has about half that at 2.2 million likes.
Regardless of how Olympic fans will be interacting with content on Facebook and Twitter, they will certainly be multi-tasking. While watching coverage on TV, 43% say they are also likely to... Read more
Archive for July, 2012
Twins Know: The Importance of Being Unique Online
My identical twin sister and I have different personalities, but as children, you couldn’t tell us apart without getting to know us. We looked and were dressed exactly the same. Unfortunately, that’s what happens to many brands today...
Why Page Views Don’t Matter
I love data. Lots of data. Mountains of data. The more data, the happier I am as a marketer.
However, I’m sometimes perplexed when marketers use surface level data to try to make strategic marketing decisions. When metrics like Page Views become the centerpiece of a marketing discussion, it’s actually risky trying to identify insights without taking the analysis much, much further.
Page Views, Time-On-Site, Exits and other top-line metrics can be the start of the equation, but they require cross-data analysis to generate meaningful, actionable insights. Without a second or third layer of data, you run the risk of completely misinterpreting a hodgepodge of unsegmented data.
Instead of looking at Page Views, for example, you’ll gain far greater value by analyzing Page Views of new visitors vs. repeat visitors, or of those coming to your website through SEO vs. those through display ads, or of those who converted onsite vs. those who left without converting. It’s possible that your best site visitors are not those that look at the most pages. High Page View counts can sometimes reveal that something’s actually wrong with your site, such as complex navigation that drives extra, needless clicks. There are countless ways that surface level data... Read more
App-athy
According to ABI Research, smartphone owners around the world will download about 36 billion mobile apps in 2012. That’s an average of almost 37 native app installs per user! Even with this tremendous usage, ABI estimates that app download numbers will decrease over the coming years.
Why the decrease? The staggering numbers listed above may be to blame. Smartphone users are overwhelmed by the variety of mobile apps available. What app is best? Should I download the free app or spring for the paid app? I should probably download an app to complete x, y and z, right?
While the iTunes App Store isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sift through the 500,000 apps in the App Store, let alone other app sites. If a business “category” is already heavily populated, you might not even find an app that would be best suited for your needs.
After all of this back-and-forth, you have probably downloaded more apps than you can use which are now taking up precious memory on your phone.
The app clutter becomes overwhelming resulting in what I like to call “app-athy.”
How should you avoid this app overload? Here are a few questions to consider:
Why am... Read more
