I attended a webinar this week that provided some interesting stats. The data came from one of the leaders in social media marketing, Hubspot. The data came from their rather large database so the sample size was extensive. The results provided some surprises, both with what did happen and what didn’t happen.
It is my hope that I won’t bore you too much with this info, but I think there are some takeaways that we can implement in our own social media marketing.
Starting with Twitter, the key to successful tweeting are links. The click-through rate is significantly higher when including links in the body of your tweet. Not surprisingly, conversational tweets don’t do much for moving your platform forward. Your goal should be to have links in about 70% of your tweets.
What words are most effective in your tweets? The top three in achieving a click through are #1) breaking (as in breaking news), #2) sports and #3) free. Conversely, the three worst words to have in your tweet … iPhone, giveaway, and photography. That is significant; how many times do we use giveaway? Going forward, it might make sense to plug in “free” instead.
Shifting to blogging, there were a few interesting tidbits. I’ll start with the day of the week for posting. Monday through Friday averaged about the same when it came to views and click-through rate. Saturday had the lowest number of views and click-through rate. I think I need to talk to the Evil Mastermind and get my blog post day switched from Saturdays!
The most read time of day for blogs was 10:00 a.m. Morning was statistically significantly better for posting the blogs with the peak at 6 a.m. – 7 a.m.
When looking at headlines with the best click-through rates, the following words must be included to come out on top:
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The least clicked on titles included these words—franchise, special, and futures.
An interesting side note that the research illuminated is regarding comments on blogs. Many times, we look at the comment quantity as an indication of the strength of the blog or popularity of the blog, but their research showed that there was no significant difference with click-through rate to the number of comments. In other words, blogs with few comments were being read as much as blogs with many comments.
When looking at the most effective ways to get people to your site, paid advertisement ranks number one. So, I guess all those Facebook ads are paying off.
Surprisingly, email was number two followed by social media. That shows us how important it is to capture emails in subscription links or online offers like free eBooks, white papers, etc. In their research, email links were clicked far more frequently than social media links.
Lastly, when offering a download or opportunity from your site, the “button” plays a big role. You will see the highest click-through rate with either a “Click Here” or “Go” button. What types of buttons should you avoid? There was a statistically significant decrease in click through rate with “submit,” “download,” and “register.”
I’m sure many of you look at these stats and say, “So what?” I give some credence to the research; it was well thought out and analyzed with statistical methods and the sample size was bigger than anything that I’ve seen to date.
I won’t offer much in the way of editorial comments. Take what makes sense to you. I know that I’ll think twice now when constructing titles and links. I hope that you find some of this interesting and can tweak your online presence for the better.
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Interesting. Thanks.
This is informative and something to think about. Would be wise to keep your post handy, Jim. And I read at all times of the day or night, depending on breaks from writing, taking care of mother or needing to get out of the house for a day or two, lol. But I could use some way to spruce up my blog and this is helpful; most helpful for it, of course, would be to write something for it.
Thanks
Interesting about the blog page views. Guess I need to start paying more attention to which posts on my blog get the most views. Thanks, Jim.
Sometimes too much info can be confusing, so I picked a few choice things that we can implement easily. Hope it helps.
Jim,
You always provide good insight into social media, especially how to use twitter. I like the idea of adding a link, but I find that some of the people I follow overdo this. Did they talk about linking to a photo? I've noticed that more and more.
Also, I like the point about the quantity of comments. I always appreciate the well-thought out comments people post on my blog, but I know that others are reading it and not commenting. This is fine. A friend of mine the other day said to my husband, "Tell Lois the difference between love and lust is if you pay for it." I didn't even know he was reading my stuff.
Thanks!
Photo or link to a site are considered links in the grand scheme of things. The power of photo's are getting more attention lately. The research suggested no more than 70% of the tweets include links. So you could overdo it.
Isn't it great when someone responds to your blogs that you had no idea about. I had someone text me the other day with a comment from one of my posts. Pretty cool, didn't even know he paid attention!
Thanks for the feedback Lois.
Great information, Jim. The times you mention, are those Eastern time? Thanks for sharing all this interesting data.
Thanks Kat,
They times were in Eastern time, yep.
Very curious. Thanks Jim.
Curious indeed …