Social media monitoring and analytics (infographic)

Not 100% sure who I owe a hat tip to for tweeting a link to this infographic about social media monitoring (I suspect David Thackeray though).
It is exceptionally useful, anyway, and I thought I would store it on my blog as it's a reference source I will probably come back to in the future.

The World of Social Media Monitoring and Analytics

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Election apathy? Real time audiences disagree...

Chartbeat is an amazing tool. Compelling even. Today, watching the real time traffic on our site, it was obvious people were consuming the 'live' news on the site more than anything else. 
Visitors were following updated story of the 'locus in quo' jury visit to Machynlleth as the April Jones murder trial continued, the live coverage of the Anglesey elections, and the more general breaking news live blog.
This was how early afternoon traffic looked - 

Later in the afternoon, when the court proceedings ended for the day, it looked like this... 

Meanwhile, this was the Most Read widget

Local elections covered live, and covered well, are compelling content and give good dwell time on - more than 3 minutes each - per page in this case  (Anglesey, by the way, bucked the turnout trend - a breakdown of the island's voting showed: Seiriol 56.1 Talybolion 48.7 Twrcelyn 53 Ynys Cybi 45.7).

Readers of the breaking news live blog typically went on to next read the Anglesey election live blog, and then visited several April Jones articles via the jury visit article). 

Since it launched last October, our live coverage has gone down well with readers, but has had some parts of the industry (people who comment on industry websites, mostly) looking in askance.
The common theme of those unconvinced by the blog is to question where the merit - or the money - is. 
Personally, I think that's obvious; it's what readers value and want. 
We cover stories live, readers stay on our site for longer, are more likely to hop around the site more, and potentially use the social sharing - and that keeps advertisers interested. (Hint: Don't ask where the money is, ask where the audience is. We have to make sure the money-generators are in the same space...)
Last Spring, as I settled into the job and got down to meeting people, a common complaint was that the website wasn't updated enough - or at all on a Saturday. 
Now, 12 months on, as I continue to meet people, if the conversation turns to 'what do you think of the Daily Post?'' nine times out of ten the live content will be highlighted, favorably, at some point.
I love the live element of our role, and how it has helped - and continues to help - us change the way we work to meet what the audience wants. 
And, of course, with Chartbeat showing us there are 250-odd people whiling away their day following the real-time updates of a local council election, it means we can make better informed print decisions around our coverage- and promote that coverage accordingly to the online readers. 
 
 

Related articles

• Why we should all worry about national media and politicians dropping the local from local elections
• UK Local Elections 2013 - Live Data, Live Maps...
• Chartbeat's New Dashboard Plugs Publishers' Video Data Into Their Real-Time Analytics

"Will you be my contact in the world of home-baking?"* and other online influence conundrums

Social media happenings I will never understand:

1. Farmville: Agri-vation of the worst kind
2. Twitter rage: Just unfollow Piers Morgan if he annoys you that much
3. Measurements of online influence

Take Klout ('the standard measure of online influence', according to its biog); a tweet from Mo Krochmal asking if anyone understood +k sent me to the site this evening to see what he was talking about.
I still don't know what +k is, but I found myself in a section that told me what I was influential in and how long for.
Just have a look:

Oh yes, I am influential about Cupcake.
I've never baked them, I certainly don't tweet about them - hell, I don't even eat them - but I am influential about them.
It's possible Cupcake is a geographical place where tweets are enshrined in tablets of stone and Cupcakeians (Cupcakealonians?) live their lives according to 140char observations, but... possibly it's because I have two Twitter contacts - @Cupcake_Rev and @Cupcakesincity? I genuinely don't know how else to explain it.
Drilling down further into this ego-bruising data, my influence in Cupcake lasts 33 hours - the same as it does for Journalism.

The other topics are broadly there (not sure about 'business' but maybe my UCLan course links have played a part) and there may be a deeper moral here but, for me, the lesson is simply this: When it comes to social media influence measurements, take it all with a large pinch of chocolate frosting.
* If the admittedly-obscure title of this post doesn't ring any vague bell, I urge you to go and buy Pratt of the Argus by David Nobbs. Forget McNaes - this is the definitive book a regional news journalist needs to know by heart.