Sunday, September 13, 2015

You just never know where something might end up - social media analytics and more


Electronic means of communications - through emails, Skype, FaceTime, or any social media - are amazing.  Most of us take them so much for granted, despite the fact that all of this is still so relatively new.  Furthermore, the ways in which e-news can get distributed, forwarded, passed on, etc. is astounding in the breadth of its reach.  People literally around the world might receive this email when they would never, ever have been able to get a printed newsletter that gets sent out via bulk mail from the faithful ol' USPS.

Another amazing thing to me about all of this is that so many of the companies that provide social media and marketing will let you find out just how widespread these kinds of efforts go.  They provide what is called "analytics," and they can spell out in minute detail most any information you'd like to know about things you post and send out.  Two months ago, in my report to the Leadership Team at their monthly meeting, I reported the results of the analytics from our outreach via Twitter, Facebook, and Constant Contact.  You, too, might be interested in these results...

1.     Twitter (@CayugaSyracuseP)
a.     We currently have 171 followers.
b.     We generated 2,507 “impressions” during April from just 52 tweets.  An impression is any time a tweet has been delivered to the Twitter stream of a particular account.  In other words, any time a tweet is sent to a follower, referred to in someone else’s tweet, or when a tweet has been retweeted.
c.     We have generated a total of 1,464 tweets during the past year.
2.     Facebook (Presbytery of Cayuga-Syracuse)
a.     A total of 137 people have “liked” our FB page.
b.     The highest post in the past week reached a total of 283 people, and in the past month the highest reached 319 people.
c.     66% of our “fans” are women, 31% are men (which means I’m not sure what happened to the other 3%!).
d.     The number of fans by age group are:
                                               i.     36% between 55-64.
                                             ii.     21% over 65.
                                            iii.     18% between 45-54.
                                            iv.     13% between 35-44.
                                             v.     7% between 25-34.
                                            vi.     2% between 18-24.
                                          vii.     0% under the age of 17.
e.     By far the majority of our fans live in New York, but we do have fans from across the country (17 other states), as well as two from the United Kingdom.
f.      I recently added ruling elder Charlie Smith as a Page Administrator on our account.
3.     Constant Contact
a.     We have 518 active contacts.
b.     We average on “open” rate of right at 50% for most of our emails, although special mailings have had an open rate of as high as 70%.  The “industry average” for “religious organizations” that use Constant Contact is just over 20%.
c.     The “click” rate (when someone clicks a link in an email) varies between 10-30%.  The industry average is 10%.

This is really the same for life in general, isn't it?  You never know when words that you say will change someone's life.  You never know who's watching when you reach with compassion to help someone on the street or in a store...or when you get mad at a clerk at Wegman's.  We always are "on display," and, as Christians, we should be careful that we always live in ways that reflect the words we say we believe.  You never know what far-reaching effects these things might have.

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