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July 31, 2017 by Stephen Foskett

Surprise! Facebook Shares Dramatically Improve Reach, Clicks, and Views

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been streaming video of our Tech Field Day presentations on Facebook Live in addition to our web site. All this time, we’ve been advising our presenting companies to share our Live video post to increase viewership. Although it’s obvious that this would increase viewership, we thought we would share some hard numbers to prove it.

More shares leads to more reach (X-Axis) and viewership (bubble size)

The bubble chart above shows what happens when companies share our Live event video posts: Reach and viewership dramatically improves. Our “baseline” is indicated as one share and colored gray. Additional shares uniformly increase reach and viewership. Our best-performing video posts had at least two additional shares, with that one purple bubble shared 8 times and generating over 600 video views.

Shares Generate Views

Over the last five events, our own posts sharing a Live Tech Field Day presentation video generated a median 623 “people reached” and 108 “video views”, according to Facebook. This is pretty strong, considering this is a single post to our Tech Field Day Facebook page. With 1,370 “follows” currently, this means that nearly half of our audience has each Live video added to their stream, and over 10% are watching at least some portion of it.

Each additional share generates about 525 more “reach” and 114 more “views”. In other words, a single share will likely double the views for a Live video post! Yet 12 of the 29 video posts included in this study were not shared by the companies presenting. But it’s not too late! This is “evergreen” content, and we have seen excellent viewership of these videos months and even years after the event. All it takes is a fresh share!

Clicks Require Shares

Interestingly, Facebook “clicks” seem to require post shares. This is logical, since a post share shows differently in the timeline, encouraging a click. But even page posts generate a few clicks: Our median click rate is 2.4 per Live video post.

What happens when a company, person, or page shares a Live video post? Median clicks went up by an amazing 25 per post, excluding our 2.4. This shows the impact of a shared post in a stream, with different behavior on the part of Facebook users.

Field Day in Facebook

We were skeptical about using Facebook for the enterprise IT content from Tech Field Day. But the viewership of our videos is incredibly strong. That’s why we added Facebook Live video to our page, and why we’ll continue working in Facebook to engage our Field Day audience.

This study includes 29 full presentations at five Field Day events in 2017. Overall, there were 5,753 video views and 26,796 “reach” for these posts.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: analytics, Facebook, Facebook Live, Livestream, reach, Tech Field Day, viewership

October 26, 2015 by Stephen Foskett

Live Streaming Video Adds to the Tech Field Day Experience

Tech Field Day is a live, in-person event for the dozen delegates selected for each event, but as that term implies, a far greater number are represented. Indeed, our latest events have drawn a far-larger audience to the live video stream, and these viewers are joining the event via Twitter as well. This hybrid approach is unusual in the IT event world, and part of what makes Tech Field Day so special.

Storage Field Day 8 drew viewers from all over the world
Storage Field Day 8 drew viewers from all over the world, even beyond the English-speaking nations one would expect

Let’s look at the numbers for our recent Storage Field Day 8 event. Overall, 2,629 unique viewers tuned in over the three days of the event, October 21-23, 2015. Some of these are likely the same people using different computers or devices, but it’s safe to say that literally thousands of people were watching!

Our live stream was “on air” for 19 hours over the course of three days, but our viewers collectively spent 1,226 hours watching the event!

Although we have been suggesting that Tech Field Day events draw about 100 live viewers, this event exceeded that number by far. There was no “down hour” with less than 100 viewers, and some drew multiples of that number. It wouldn’t be fair to compare the statistics for each of the 10 companies presenting, but all should be happy with the live viewership of this event.

The Tech Field Day staff recognizes that tech talent and interest comes from all over the world, so we bring delegates from many nations to our events. Overall, about 1/3 of the Tech Field Day delegates come from outside the USA. Our livestream viewership similarly draws an international audience: 29.5% of viewers are outside the USA, with significant live viewership coming from Canada, European nations like Italy, the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands, as well as Israel, India, and Australia. Overall, live viewers in 49 countries tuned in for Storage Field Day 8.

Live streaming video is an important component of the Tech Field Day experience, to be sure. But it is only one of the many benefits of participating. Our recorded video viewership keeps climbing, with over 21,000 YouTube views that same week. We also recorded thousands of tweets, and are cataloging blog coverage on Facebook and Reddit. Learn more about Tech Field Day at our web site, and get involved!

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Facebook, Livestream, Reddit, Tech Field Day, Twitter, video

October 29, 2010 by Stephen Foskett

How To Get People To Share Your Tweets, Blog Posts, and Updates

Want a lot of retweets? Be interesting, personable, and have something to say!

It’s funny how powerful the thoughts of individuals have become. A reasonably popular blog can post an item on a new product and outrank the company that made it in the all-important first page of Google results. Corporate blogs, Twitter accounts, social networking sites, and the rest have sprung up everywhere, all trying to fight it out with “just plain folks” for “social media” mindshare. But most corporate shills fail miserably and are forced to resort to extraordinary means to make their content “go viral.” This is ironic because the secret to getting people to share your tweets, blog posts, videos, updates, etc is really quite simple!

Why Are You Here?

Most real people get into “social networking” because they enjoy networking in a social environment. They want to chat, gossip, laugh, cry, and do all those normal social things. And sites like Twitter and Facebook enable this kind of socializing like nothing we’ve ever seen before. They’re like a mind-bogglingly massive coffee shop where everyone has a favorite table full of friends.

Corporate marketing folks see social networking entirely differently. They see it as a way to influence public perception and drive purchasing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s just what corporations do. And it’s not a new thing either; companies have been buying billboards and sponsoring events as long as there have been companies.

What Are You Doing?

Societies develop social norms to smooth all sorts of interactions. We are taught from youth to avoid interrupting the conversations of others, intruding on their space, or shouting inappropriate comments.

People are happy to discuss deeply personal topics with total strangers in the right setting. And they’re happy to share the thoughts and aspirations (and even product recommendations) of others if they find them compelling. But people are instantly turned off when these social actions are directed or demanded by outsiders.

Interacting As People Not Corporations

I always shudder when I hear a corporation saying they want to “join the online conversation.” My reaction is not because I want corporations to stay away but that they so often fumble these interactions.

A failure to be human is the main error made in online corporate communications efforts. Companies are full of passionate, committed individuals who are genuinely interested in tires, snack foods, or computers, but too often fail to let these folks be themselves online. Instead, they compose bland, self-interested marketing pablum and wonder why the world doesn’t care to read it.

The Secrets

My “secrets” to online communications aren’t really all that difficult. But it seems like many of us need constant reminding of what we already know when it comes to personal interaction:

  1. Say something interesting if you want to get your blog post shared, your video “liked”, or generate some retweets. It’s as simple as that. Have some personality, focus on the reader rather than corporate messaging, and watch what happens.
  2. Be genuine when writing, sharing, and tweeting. My rule for blogging is to write about things I care about. This helps me generate content ideas but also automatically filters out marketing nonsense.
  3. Don’t barge in where you’re not wanted. Don’t expect people to react kindly to obvious advertising. Would an auto garage owner interrupt a conversation about ski vacations to promote snow tires?
  4. Be transparent when talking about work-related topics. Don’t worry – disclosing your employer will make you seem more genuine and personable, and failure to do so will backfire in spectacular fashion.
  5. Have patience and humility and wait for things to “click.” You can’t force people to pay attention to you without seeming like a fool. Be real and give it time.

So write some corporate blog posts and tweet from the corporate account. But do it in a way that shows the human being behind the keyboard. Your efforts to be you will be well rewarded! And if you want me to retweet, reshare, or “like” your corporate posts, you had better keep the sales-speak in check!

Image credit: The Birds by edu_fon

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: blogging, communications, Facebook, marketing, social media, transparency, Twitter

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