The World of Social Media

In the world of social media, time is critical. The three main concerns when dealing with social media are what, when, and how? I ask myself these three questions before I do anything. Thinking things through and having a justification for every decision is necessary. A lot of my decisions are based off of data insights from BuddyMedia, Radian6, and Facebook Page Insights. BuddyMedia is a database service that provide us with information of when our fans are engaging the most and on what content in order to get a better reaction from them, while Radian6 is used to filter through all online content and pick up specific keywords that are being mentioned online, such as Colour of London. These services are extremely helpful because we can monitor who is talking about Colour of London, see what they are saying, and depending on the content, we will most likely respond to it, but more importantly we can grow in a better direction in response to the feedback. I check these almost daily, sometimes multiple times throughout the day, for timely feedback. 

A huge daily concern is the time that I schedule posts in correlation to the content I am posting and the audience it is aimed at. You would be surprised at how what time and day you post content effects the engagement you receive. The goal is to get as many views as possible on your post, the more views the higher chance of getting a 'like' or comment, which in turn increases the visibility of the post, as posts that get more likes and comments appear more in news feeds and have a higher chance of being viewed or shared by even more eyes. The more eyes that see our posts, the more people that know about Colour of London, the more recognition the band receives, and so on and so forth. These three factors have to match up and make sense with one another before a post is released to the outside world. Sometimes you feel like you want to skip one step because you reached the other two, but before you release something you have to be sure you hit all of them if you want the greatest feedback, which of course we do. 

Though these insights are extremely helpful and informational, they are not always accurate in predicting the responses we receive. Just because you post something at the largest peak time during the day does not always directly signify the most engagement. That is why you have a keep a close monitoring eye on what your fans are reacting and responding to and make decisions accordingly. Social media is a balance between data and real-time personal monitoring. Analytics are extremely helpful, but at the end of the day when you are growing a fan base you have to keep a close eye on the personal connection that exists between the fans and the band's social media presence. Analytics can only tell you so much, at the end of the day social media thrives on the connection of who is behind the computer versus the data that that computer can provide us.