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INSTRUCTIONS
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OBJECTIVE
The objectives of this group discussion are to help you:
- Discover resources for online analytics
- Analyze social media metrics
- Improve online content based on your findings
INTRODUCTION
It is very important to analyze your social media content, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. By studying your habits and seeing how the audience members interact you can make necessary improvements for both personal and professional accounts. Thankfully there are many free resources out there that will help you with the data.
You will have two options when doing this discussion board activity (just pick one of them). Either you will analyze Twitter metrics or Instagram metrics.
If you are not active on these social media platforms, or don’t have a lot of data to analyze from your personal accounts, do not stress. I suggest setting up a temporary Twitter account, and analyzing the data of a role model or public figure’s account. Then, you are welcome to delete your new Twitter account after this assignment.
Option A: Twitter
Please visit the website
http://www.twitonomy.com
. On the homepage there will be an option to sign-in and it’s completely free. You can always sign-out afterwards if you are concerned about privacy issues. There are many tabs at the top of the screen once the data loads, but you are only concerned with the Profile tab.
Once you select the Profile tab you will see some useful metrics based on your Twitter activity. If your numbers seem very low and insignificant, you can select someone you follow or someone who follows you and their data will be presented instead. Just locate and select them on the right side of the page.
Option B: Instagram
There are actually two possible resources for Instagram. Please visit either
https://www.socialbakers.com/free-tools/tracker/
or
https://squarelovin.com/instagram-insights/
. I’ve noticed that the second site (i.e. squarelovin) may produce a few zeroes and/or blank graphs if your account is private.
If visiting the first link you will see an option to login using your Instagram username and password. Some other basic info may be required, including your name. After this quick process you will see all data conveniently displayed in a single location.
For those using the second link you will quickly create a free account. This process will be very similar. Once the results are displayed you will need to select different options (or tabs) on the left side of the page in order to see all available data.
INSTRUCTIONS
First Post – due Wednesday by 11:59pm EST
- Answer the following questions (minimum of 4-5 sentences each):
- Which option did you pick (Twitter or Instagram)? If you chose Twitter did you analyze your account or someone else’s?
- Explain the metrics that are displayed. You can pick and choose what you want to discuss since it would be impractical to cover everything. However, I would like some thoroughness and variety. For the items you address I will need to see screenshots of the information.
- Are any results surprising? Do you disagree with anything?
- Please provide a proper reference of the site chosen (i.e. twitonomy, socialbakers or squarelovin).
Second Post – due between Thursday and Sunday by 11:59pm EST
Do not limit the second discussion post to “I agree,” “That’s great” and so forth. Substantiate the position by using meaningful observations to corroborate it, such as professional experiences, relationships, and citing scholarly sources etc. when appropriate. As a guide for high quality response posts, use the RISE model, which encourages the steps as outlined in the rubric.
(For your Response Post)
1. Select a student’s post and provide your own assessment of at least one item. Try to point out something new that hasn’t been addressed already.
2. What tip can you offer that would help improve the student’s numbers?
3. Second post must be a minimum of one paragraph and must be made on a separate day than your initial post.
I am very active on Twitter and have been since 2012. I used my personal account for this activity since it’s the one I am most active on rather than my “professional” one where I share industry-related articles (follow my professional account if you want to connect:
@TASouders
). I “grew up” on Twitter as weird as that sounds. So, with having this account for so long, I have more tweets and followers than a regular user. In no way am I a popular account, but I love Twitter and spend so much time on it every day. I don’t disagree with any of the numbers here, though it is a little embarrassing!
The analytics that came from Twitonomy didn’t really surprise me, but it was definitely interesting to look at. One of the things I was interested in was the days of the week that I tweet most and the hours of the day I do tweet. The days of the week showed that I don’t particularly tweet more or less on a specific day. Since I use Twitter daily, the curve is flattened because there’s not a specific day I tweet more. It was surprising to see Tuesday’s are at 16.5%, which is the most out of the days of the week. The only reason I think this would make sense is that I usually relax on Tuesday’s and take a break from schoolwork.
The hours of the day chart is actually quite funny to look at. Just looking at these analytics you can tell I am not a morning person! I feel like these results aren’t shocking because I am most active after my workday is done which is usually around 4 pm. A reason for this is because that’s when the people I follow are most active as well. I try to stay off social media while I am working on schoolwork so the time between 10 am to 3 pm being low makes sense.
The last chart I looked at was my tweet history over the months. I was curious because of the large spike in between January and February but after scrolling over the peak, I saw that it was my birthday that day. I had a total of 89 tweets that day which then makes me wonder if it includes retweets as well in that number because I like retweeting pictures that people post of me for my birthday to share with others. Another spike was in March because one of my favorite artists released his second album and I was really active that week to help promote it and get his attention. This day was specifically March 13th-14th and I had 74 tweets from those days combined.Source for Twitonomy:
https://www.twitonomy.com/profile.php
I am very active on Twitter and have been since 2012. I used my personal account for this activity since it’s the one I am most active on rather than my “professional” one where I share industry-related articles (follow my professional account if you want to connect:
@TASouders
). I “grew up” on Twitter as weird as that sounds. So, with having this account for so long, I have more tweets and followers than a regular user. In no way am I a popular account, but I love Twitter and spend so much time on it every day. I don’t disagree with any of the numbers here, though it is a little embarrassing!
The analytics that came from Twitonomy didn’t really surprise me, but it was definitely interesting to look at. One of the things I was interested in was the days of the week that I tweet most and the hours of the day I do tweet. The days of the week showed that I don’t particularly tweet more or less on a specific day. Since I use Twitter daily, the curve is flattened because there’s not a specific day I tweet more. It was surprising to see Tuesday’s are at 16.5%, which is the most out of the days of the week. The only reason I think this would make sense is that I usually relax on Tuesday’s and take a break from schoolwork.
The hours of the day chart is actually quite funny to look at. Just looking at these analytics you can tell I am not a morning person! I feel like these results aren’t shocking because I am most active after my workday is done which is usually around 4 pm. A reason for this is because that’s when the people I follow are most active as well. I try to stay off social media while I am working on schoolwork so the time between 10 am to 3 pm being low makes sense.
The last chart I looked at was my tweet history over the months. I was curious because of the large spike in between January and February but after scrolling over the peak, I saw that it was my birthday that day. I had a total of 89 tweets that day which then makes me wonder if it includes retweets as well in that number because I like retweeting pictures that people post of me for my birthday to share with others. Another spike was in March because one of my favorite artists released his second album and I was really active that week to help promote it and get his attention. This day was specifically March 13th-14th and I had 74 tweets from those days combined.Source for Twitonomy:
https://www.twitonomy.com/profile.php