Channel Performance Analysis

Well after four days i thought i would write something about how succesful the channels that i have been utilising in this endeavour have been.

As a recap the main channels i have created are:

A dedicated Twitter Account @IFinsurance (surprised i was able to get this user name)
A dedicated Facebook Group IF Vakuutus Social Experiment
This blog, no link required ;-)

The pre-existing channels that i am utilising are:

IF's Own Facebook Group. If Vahinkovakuutusyhtiö I am particularly trying to draw attention to mine and If vakuutus's conversation there.

As described earlier i plan to expand upon the utilisisation of If vakuutus's own social media later. Read on to understand why.

Twitter as a Channel

Prior to this experiement i was a Twitter user and had been for a few years. However admittedly i was that kind of user who was just a "follower" i was not a contributor other than the occasional retweet of content i found interesting. In all honesty i think that summarises most Twitter users. I used it as a way of getting up to date info about the things i was interested in, when i wanted it. On twitter there is always something new.

With this in mind i understandably did not have many followers around 50 of mostly people i already knew based upon around 300 tweets of my own (sorry retweets, the occasional tweet from services i had subscribed to and those that i had connected other social media to) Unsuprisingly then that my followers were low.

Just as a quick point i just do not get people who post things like "I just ran 30minutes hard via heia heia" Quite honeslty who cares! I don't even care about what my "real friends are doing". Anyway back to the point.

Well having started the new Twitter account @Ifinsurance for the sole purpose of publising this blog and story i am pleased i have been more succesful. For a while i did ponder if i should carry this out through my own @daniel_miles account but decided against it. I decided to have a campaign specific twitter account for people who just want to follow the story and not my other tweets. I also was afraid that i would annoy some of the followers of my personal Twitter account with the changed content of my account. So having balanced this against the advantage of already having a starting base of followers i decided to start from scratch.

So how has my new Twitter account performed.

Well with Just 100 tweets i managed to gain 75 followers in less than 3days merely by tweeting the story. This is 50% more followers than my personal Twitter account in roughly 1 3rd of the tweets and in 1% of the time. In this sense then i would certainly consider this a success if you were to measure this against my prior performance.

This has well been publisised else where in the blogosphere but Content is King, contributors get more followers! As well as just publising my story i have also tried to add content that may be relevant also to people who simply follow social media. Hence for example this post which has nothing really to do with the story with IF directly.

I have also managed to have the blog republished on other news sites each day. I have been retweeted countless times and have had several @mentions. I have also gained a couple of followers who seem to be pretty closely following me and retweeting a lot of what i tweet thanks for that!!

In this sense it seems i have managed to at least generate some interest among the twitter crowd. Further more by looking at the traffic statistics to the blog i can see that around 45% of the traffic has been coming from the shortened bit.ly type of link which indicates a lot of traffic from Twitter. More about the site traffic in the other sections.

On the whole then i have been pretty happy with Twitter as a channel, well at least based upon my previous experiences.

My Own Facebook Group.

This has been less of a success in terms of gaining members, i am now at 4 :-). I desribed my reasoning behind this in a previous post so won't go into it in too much detail here.

Generally though i felt that facebook groups needed to be known about and were better suited for companies than individuals as a channel to garner support for something.

In any case lookin at the traffic coming into the blog I can see that the top contributor for traffic has been facebook so although the Group has not gained members perhaps it has contributed to traffic. However i believe that the biggest contributor to the referring site was probably If Vakuutus's own Facebook group. See below.

If Vakuutus's Own Facebook Group

In my opinion this has been the best channel to utilise, even more so than Twitter. This is why,

1. By Utilising If vakuutus's own social media and existing following you are able to piggy bag on If vakuutus's own success.
2. By Utilising If vakuutus's own social media you are able to reach out to their own stakeholders. Who else would be on their social media?
3. By having a constant presence there and maintaining your position at the top of their wall you are able to get a regular stream of traffic to your blog and to your story.
4. By placing your content directly to If vakuutus's own facebook wall you are able to disrupt or interfere directly with their marketing messaging, branding and campaigning. This dilutes the power of their own social media as a tool and increases the risk and pressure upon them to act.

40% of Traffic is coming from Facebook and most likely alot of it is coming from If vakuutus's own group page.

The Success of My Own Blog

Well as i tweeted early i have now had more than 1000 visitors to the site so in that respect i am really happy.

The blog has been tweeted and shared directly from the blog in all, around 100 times so roughly 10% of visitors have spread the word further. Of course i cannot really tell how many times outside of my own social media the word has spread. I am sure though that for the 1000 visitors i have had many more have had some contact with the story even though they may not have visited the blog.

Coincidently i would like to know if If vakuutus's own traffic to their Facebook Group page has increased. I did note previously that they got 250 odd new members there after i started. This trend seems to have slowed now though.

Anyway i see the main strengths of the blog as:

1. You can have a media that you can control and tell your own story.
2. You have a single location where you want to drive traffic to (admittedly it is nice to drive traffic to the converation with IF also)
3. If If vakuutus's decide to start boycotting me or deleting my posts from their social media then there is a complete record of the story outside of their control including the Facebook conversation with them. Deleting it does not make it go away. 
4. If vakuutus cannot control this media, they can only contribute. BTW they are free to do so). It would be nice to see them trying to tell their story on my blog.
5. Long after this story is dead people will still be able to find the blog. It will be a constant reminder to If vakuutus of this event. And who knows from time to time it will get retweeted, shared or even posted back on If vakuutus's wall. In this respect If vakuutus particularly should be aware and think how they should act. The degree to which this occurs i feel is dependent upon how If vakuutus react to it postively or negatively.

Summary of Basic Stats to Date (First 4 days)

1. 1100 Blog Vistis
2. Blog republished 4 times in other online news papers (that i know about, i was tweeted to be told)
3. 40% of Traffic from Facebook and mostly likely If Vakuutus's own Facebook group.
4. 45% of Traffic from Twitter or bit.ly type links
5. 10% of Traffic from Direct Links implying they have saved the blog to their favourites
6. 75 New Twitter Followers on the new account (gained 25 on my personal) 150 people following my Twitter media related to this then.
7. Countless retweets and mentions and several avid supporters
8. 45% or so of blog traffic coming from Finland despite the English Language.
9. Only about 10% of Twitter followers are from Finland though interestingly.