Friday, October 19, 2012

Social Media Inception

Pinterest has a Twitter account and a Tumblr page. Myspace has a Facebook page (gasp!).  So is the world of social media expanding or folding in on itself?  Who knows?  One thing is for sure, social media sites recognize the power of social media.  This isn't high school folks you don't have to choose sides.  As a matter of fact most people have a problem choosing just one.  This is something some of the over zealous G+ fans should have recognized.  Google plus is still around but I don't feel like it ever grew into it's potential.  A big reason for this could be the feeling that you could only be Facebook or Google Plus, when the truth was most people were doing both.  They don't have to hurt each other.

Take Twitter and Facebook for instance.  For a while there was some speculation on which would survive and which would die.  But they both serve a purpose and people recognize that.  Not only people but companies and businesses as well.  You can reach different groups of people depending on what site they use more.  A clear example of this is the rise of sites like Buffer and HootSuite.  You can schedule and send posts and tweets from all of these applications.  You can reach different social circles or different groups of customers by writing a single message.  Another great application that recognized this was Instagram. They have their own social interaction system but they also let you share to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and FourSquare (Pssst I'm still waiting for Pintrest integration if anyone is listening).

The point is that all these social media options do not lessen the interest in other if anything they increase it.  And the fact that I'm posting here means that Blogger and Wordpress are no lee for wear either.  How many more might be created?  Who might merge with who?  How many ways could you integrate?  The opportunities may not be endless but they certainly are not limited.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

What is Normal Trending

 On my corporate social media site I manage a couple of pages.  The site uses the Jive program which has recently introduced a reporting tab.  It's nice to see the trends but I'm noticing a huge ramp up and then drop off on both of my pages.  One has been around for a couple years the other is fairly new.  One is about starting new projects and the other is about sharing best practices.  Yet both show a very similar trend of participation over the last couple months.



It is important to note that these trend lines show 30 days cumulatively however I makes me wonder if participation is normally higher in July.  Does the summer time and nicer weather get people to contribute more?  This is an internal work only site so I would think all the people taking vacation in the summer would actually push the numbers down.  I've asked some other page managers to see if they have similar results but I would love to know from the outside, do you see monthly or seasonal trends like this?  How do you deal with them?  Is there a way to prepare for the downturn so that it isn't as severe?  Please let me know and I will share any findings I get from this.