Tim’s week in social media

This week: two useful pieces of advice about monitoring and measuring social media, one from the USA and one from the UK; the personal data of 100 million Facebook users was published; social media users in America are getting older and are spending more time social networking and Foursquare create their own “Mile High Club.”

Maria Ogneva at Mashable posted “10 steps for successful social media monitoring”. She pointed to the folly of monitoring and measuring without objectives. Doing something because everyone else is serves no purpose. Whether your campaign is targeted at mainstream media or social, you need a clear reason for doing it. In summary you should, according to Ogneva:

1. Define an objective
2. Decide where to monitor – where your target audience is
3. Decide what to monitor
4. Prioritise – focus only on what is important
5. Develop a plan – how will you respond to specific scenarios
6. Involve others – ensure social media engagement isn’t limited
7. Listen first
8. Inbound versus outbound conversations – different rules apply to each
9. Build relationships – work out who is driving the conversation
10. Select the tools to match your strategy

I was pleased to read this well thought out advice. At Metrica we always advise our clients that you need a purpose and an objective if you are to get any value from monitoring and measurement.  Despite the headline, similar conclusions can be drawn from Wolfstar’s Jed Hallam’s recent post. He stated that: “social media monitoring is completely useless without context of clear outputs.”

Last week saw the publishing of the personal data of 100 million Facebook users by security researcher Ron Bowes. He published the personal details from information users have made publicly available. What this shows is that huge numbers of Facebook users are quite relaxed, or oblivious, about sharing their personal data online. Facebook allows users to restrict the information they share, though not by default, meaning many are likely to be exposing their personal information without realising.

USA Today has reported that the age of the social media ‘audience’ is increasing, with twice as many over 50s visiting social media sites as under 18s. Nielsen’s findings also show that online gaming is now more popular than personal email, becoming the most popular online activity in the US and that Americans are spending almost a quarter of their time on social networks.Foursquare’s deal with in flight internet service provider Gogo is one of a growing number of special offers for users of location based social media tool. Those who check in to Foursquare through Gogo will receive a “Mile High Badge”. That social networking sites have latched onto in-flight internet isn’t a surprise though it will be interesting to see how quickly special offers to partners of Gogo and airlines are marketed at Foursquare users.

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