The Heath Mullikin Project

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Social Media Research Part 1

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Daily Social Media Clicks

I decided to do some Social Media research to find out if the information I was reading on when is the best time to post on Facebook and Twitter was true.  My goal was to see what times and days people were more likely to click on a posted link and to see what types of links people would click on. HootSuite makes this all possible.  It enables me to schedule tweets throughout the week and track my clicks using their ow.ly link shortener.  Their new “Hootlet” button(which ironically was released soon after Buffer came on the scence) makes tweeting out web articles and pages a snap.

What were some of my goals?

1.  I wanted to be generous with my links.  

I wanted to direct people to blogs they may not have found yet.  Were there some product links and posts from this blog scattered throughout?  Of course.
One of my goals is to take the Me out of Social Media. (click to Tweet)

2.  I did not want to post too much.

My parameters were to post hourly from 9 am-4 pm for a total of 8 scheduled posts a day.  This did not include my twitter @mention conversations with people, retweets that I posted, or time sensitive stuff I needed to get out(like my weekly Tech Talk Tuesday conversation with David Gould on The Good Morning Show.)  All posts went to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Right now, Hootsuite doesn’t work with Google Plus profiles(works with pages just fine).  There are ways to do scheduled posts to Google Plus using Chrome, but it would add another step to this entire process.

3.  I wanted to see how long this would take.

Between scheduling all the posts on Sunday night and checking the stats throughout the week the process took about an hour. Now I’m doing a better job of keeping my eyes open throughout the week for good articles so my goal is to cut that time in half.  Through some connections I made on Twitter this week I made 2 affiliate sales totaling $30.  $30 for an hours work doesn’t sound too bad to me plus the connections are priceless.

What were the results?

As the picture above shows, the clicks went down as the week progressed.

Clicks by Day:

  1. Monday-73
  2. Tuesday-74
  3. Wednesday-66
  4. Thursday-55
  5. Friday-43

By Time:

9 am-51

10 am-21

11 am-30

12 pm-30

1 pm-36

2 pm-53

3 pm-38

4 pm-38

Other-20

Curious as to what got the most clicks?

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My Top 10 Social Media Clicks this week

 

85% of my clicks came from the United States and most of the clicks came through Facebook.  There were 0 clicks on LinkedIn so I’m rethinking how to best interact on that platform.  I’m interested to see how adding Google Plus to the mix would change everything so part of my research this week will be on how to add that.

People are clicking on Wesleyan and tech stuff.  I am not surprised by this.  Being a trusted source for news on these two fronts is certainly a goal of mine.  I want to narrow my focus to give people the information they are looking for(even if they don’t know it).  This will be an ongoing project for me as I strive to build my platform, produce life changing content, and connect with great people online.

What about you?  When are you posting to Social Networks?  What information are people looking for from you?

 

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