Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Social Media - But is there an ultimate answer to the perfect time to post? Time may or may not be on your side, but it is at your disposal and direction.

...So what’s the best time to post:  weekday, weeknights or weekends?  Unfortunately, if you survey enough reports you may find that the definitive answer is a bit murky.  Frankly, nothing beats your own analytics (via Bitly, Argyle, HootSuite, SproutSocial, Google Analytics, etc.) to assess the posting times that work best foryour content and your followers.

Bitly metrics may provide some guidance, and they are extensively quoted.  For Twitter, Bitly rightly noted that you should assess the volume of people who are active in conjunction with the total number of posts vying for attention.  Translation: pick a slow time with maximum user vigilance....

What factors influence whether or not a tweet is perceived as credible? According to this recent study, users have “difficulty discerning truthfulness based on con-tent alone, with message topic, user name, and user image all impacting judg-ments of tweets and authors to varying degrees regardless of the actual truth-fulness of the item.”

For example, “Features associated with low credibility perceptions were the use of non-standard grammar and punctuation, not replacing the default account image, or using a cartoon or avatar as an account image. Following a large number of users was also associated with lower author credibility, especially when unbalanced in comparison to follower count [...].” As for features enhan-cing a tweet’s credibility, these included “author influence (as measured by follower, retweet, and  mention counts), topical expertise (as established through a Twitter homepage bio, history of on-topic tweeting, pages outside of Twitter, or having a location relevant to the topic of the tweet), and reputation (whether an author is someone a user follows, has heard of, or who has an official Twitter account verification seal). Content related features viewed as credibility-enhancing were containing a URL leading to a high-quality site, and the existence of other tweets conveying similar information.”...

Each new year offers new possibilities, and considering that so much happened in 2012, it's a good time to think about what the next twelve months will bring us.

There are so many different areas that you could cover, but here are what I believe will be the trends that will define social media in 2013:

-       Return of location

-       Reclaiming of data

-       Improved image editors

-       Focus on retention, not growth

-       Foundations for social research

-       Rise of augmented reality.