Thursday, June 28, 2012

Essential dos of the Corporate Tweet

Following a study of some of the world's "biggest brands" a new study by Buddy Media has examined brand tweets from Dec. 11, 2011 to Feb. 23, 201 and revealed some essential dos of the corporate tweet.


- Tweet over the weekend
Twitter engagement rates for brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday
- Tweets over the weekend should be between 8 am and 7 pm
The study shows tweets between these times have 30% higher engagement rates
- 4 tweets a day is optimal
More than this and you start getting diminishing returns
- Include a link
Linked tweets have an 86% higher retweet rate than tweets without links.
- Use hashtags (up to two)
Tweets with hashtags get twice the engagement of those without
Using one or even two hashtags in a tweet is fine, but if you add a third, you’ll begin to see an average 17% dropoff in engagement.

- Add an image
Posts with images have double the engagement of those without
- Ask followers to 'retweet'.
Asking followers to “RT,” will give 12X higher retweet rate than not. Using the word “retweet,” makes that rate jumps 23X.



Full article here: http://mashable.com/2012/06/26/marketers-failing-twitter-study/

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Scientific Creativity

Insightful TED talk by a surgeon who examines creativity, particularly musical creativity, through science.

Expressive communication and the language of expressive music.

"It's magical but it's not magic"

Curious? Watch this neat outline of Charles Limb's study of 'scientific creativity' and innovation in the arts.




Sunday, June 10, 2012

The (Negative) Power of Social Media

Or, "there is such thing as bad publicity".

Just a quick comment on this hilariously cheesy and somewhat off-colour video which left Microsoft more than a little red in the face. It's an example of how social media can take over your event and trend in ways you just didn't think were possible!

I *particularly* enjoy the line in the song:
"I'm a software developer, I'm developing, And I'm here to party…"

But the really embarrassing lyric was yet to come…
The rap manages to proclaim, “The words MICRO and SOFT don’t apply to my penis.”

And of course this was tweeted immediately forcing Microsoft's Head of Communications to apologise.

Lessons for us all, I think…


Link/full story: http://pulse.me/s/a7MWC