Category: Twitter

  • My Citizen Analyst Tweetchat Summary

    Yesterday I had the opportunity to be a special guest for IBM Watson Analytics’ Citizen Analyst Tweetchat, answering 8 interesting questions about the role and power of the Citizen Analyst. I’ve expanded my original 140 character answers below. What is a Citizen Analyst? Like a citizen journalist, a Citizen Analyst is a person with analytical

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  • Clarifying the Twitter App Family

    Twitter made waves again recently with its launch of Dashboard, the latest app to join its already confusing app family. The intent of Dashboard and Engage appears to be to narrow down Twitter’s feature set for specific kinds of users. This is built on the premise that the platform overall is perceived as too difficult

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  • Google Analytics + Google Sheets = Twitter Impact Analysis

    A question I’ve seen various publications bat around recently is, “Is Twitter engagement/impact falling?” I’m honestly surprised that journalists are not given at least read-only access to their Google Analytics data to make these assessments themselves. If you do have access to Google Analytics, let’s look at how to determine Twitter’s impact. First, you’ll need

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  • Twitter audience marketing growth hack

    Twitter, despite its woes as a company, has plenty to offer marketers, including what may be the most amazing competitive intelligence hack ever. By hack, I mean a usable trick, not a violation of law. Want to know how your audience stacks up against a competitor? This Twitter audience marketing growth hack will help. We

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  • Why is Twitter over-represented for influence?

    One of the recurring questions people asked yesterday about my post on influence was why agencies and marketers focus so much on Twitter, when other channels like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook are equally, if not more impactful. The answer comes down to data. We manage what we can measure, and we give preference to what

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  • Do Twitter direct messages boost sales?

    One of the ‘best practices’ touted by social media ‘experts’ is to never use direct messaging features in a social network to advertise. This has become such an ingrained belief that social media users take umbrage when it happens to them. Why? If the end user doesn’t want to hear from someone, unfollowing is a

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  • What Twitter’s algorithm change means for marketers

    Past advice can be dangerous in digital marketing. What was effective even a day ago can suddenly become ineffective or counterproductive overnight. Why do things turn on a dime in digital marketing? Unlike human-based mental algorithms, machine algorithms change in a nanosecond and the change is absolute. Humans take a while to accept a new

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  • What does Twitter’s missing shares mean for your marketing analytics?

    What does Twitter’s missing shares mean for your marketing analytics? In case you missed in, on November 20, Twitter eliminated the public counts of shares on its buttons and in its infrastructure. You can no longer see how many times a URL was shared on Twitter. Much has been written about this topic, and I

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  • Polls on Twitter Gone Wild

    Marketers are abuzz with polls on Twitter. To quote The Flash’s Harrison Wells… I do caution restraint. Here’s why: Twitter polls are no more scientific or representative than sending out an email to your mailing list. Additionally, Twitter does not provide any kind of data which can be used for weighting. Let’s look at an

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  • Summarizing Seth Godin at #INBOUND15 in 16 tweets

    The opening keynote of INBOUND15 was none other than Seth Godin. In 16 tweets, here’s what he had to say: "Our job as marketers is to amplify things, to double them. That's what we do." – Seth Godin #inbound15 pic.twitter.com/8ThA4bjiUi — Christopher Penn (@cspenn) September 8, 2015 A concise summation of marketing’s role. "Who do

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