Marketing Monday: Snoozefest (Twitterlytics!)

Today I'm digging this article from Hootsuite, on how not to bore your readers.

Frankly, I think not boring your readers is a large combination of smarts, current marketing wisdom, and that just-right mix of magic and mojo that's hard to put a finger on. One thing I really like about this article is that it goes into Twitter analytics a bit. I'm a big fan of analytics. Huge. Numbers tell stories we'd be foolish to ignore.

If you're not paying attention to your Twitter analytics, get on that.

From your home page, click on your avatar in the upper right corner. Scroll down and click on analytics.

Woo! Look at all that data. Hootsuite advises in this article (and I tend to agree) that your engagement rate can give you a good snapshot of where you are. They describe the engagement rate as "a number calculated based on the number of impressions (i.e. how many people saw the Tweet) and the number of engagements (link clicks, favorites, retweets, etc.) with your Tweets. Obviously, the higher the engagement rate, the better you’re doing." Access the engagement rate from the analytics, by going to the "Tweets" tab at the top of the page. Once you're on the "Tweets" page in analytics, the engagements metric is to the right, and looks like this:

Screenshot from hootsuite.com.

On that same page, you can click on 'Top Tweets' to see which of your tweets got the most engagement. The results just might surprise you.

There are some other gems in this article, but it's a good opportunity to walk you through how to use Twitter analytics. Twitter is a good platform to experiment a bit, depending on your brand and your voice, and being able to see the results of those experiments are what make it worth it. Again, you might be surprised by what your top tweets are: they aren't always the ones that you get you the most RTs or replies.

Friday Find: Letters of Note

You've likely heard about the recent passing of one of the greats, Mr. Gene Wilder. As happens when a famous person shuffles off this mortal coil, condolences and memories flooded the web. One of them was touching in its own right, but also reminded me of a website I hadn't visited in a while: Letters of Note.

This post features a letter from Wilder to Willy Wonka director Gene Stuart, detailing the way he wanted to portray Wonka in the film. Some of the iconic bits of the role, from his entrance to details of his suit, came from Wilder's own mind. This is some lovely insight into the spirit of a lovely man.

When you've got a few moments, be sure to check out the rest of Letters of Note.

Photo from lettersofnote.com.

Friday Find: 15 Years

It's hard to know how to talk about an event like September 11, 2001 in a forum like this. It's hard to do it justice or make clear that it's not something I'm doing for clicks, and frankly, it's hard for it to feel real for me. It's just something I feel compelled to write about today, so that's what I am doing. Everyone knows where they were that day. I was out of the country, having just begun my junior year of college studying abroad, in Seville, Spain. I had arrived exactly one week earlier, on Tuesday, September 4, having flown out of New York City. My parents and my boyfriend walked me to my gate to say goodbye, because you could still do that.

I've never felt more removed or isolated than I did when I watched all this unfold in Spanish while eating lunch on the couch of my homestay, wondering if I'd ever make it home and if I was in danger and what on earth I should do next. (What I did was park myself at an Irish Pub with my new American friends from my program, and watch the BBC's coverage for 9 hours.) It was truly a surreal thing to be out of the country for—both during, and for the whole year that followed. I felt then, and still feel, that everything I read about what happened that day is a way to decipher what it was really like to experience this event in America. I still seek out articles and information where I can, because I feel oddly disconnected from it, yet of course, can never be disconnected from it. I've never felt more American than I did being out of the country during one of the worst events in our country's history. Everyone has their story, and that's a little of mine.

As we approach the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, I'm thinking about all these things and wanted to share a few articles and bits I've come across that have stuck out to me and/or stuck with me.

First, the sky. The sky that day is something I'll never forget. Even on TV thousands of miles away, it stuck out to me. It was so blue. I know that blue. I'm from the northeast. I know that early fall, late summer, crisp air sky. I will never forget the blue of the sky that day. I'm not alone. It's even captured at the National September 11 Memorial Museum.

This article about the Falling Man photo. It's tough but important. I encourage you to watch the video. Per the photographer, Richard Drew, "It was the only picture that was like that, of anybody falling from the building. It was the only picture that showed any kind of human interaction like that. ...I've never regretted taking that photograph at all. It's probably one of the only photographs that actually shows someone dying that day. We have a terrorist attack on our own soil and we still don't see pictures of our people dying. And this is a photograph of someone dying."

This 12-minute piece from the tenth anniversary, narrated by Tom Hanks, about some of the helpers that day. Always look for the helpers.

Tom Hanks narrates the epic story of the 9/11 boatlift that evacuated half a million people from the stricken piers and seawalls of Lower Manhattan. Produced and directed by Eddie Rosenstein. Eyepop Productions, Inc. BOATLIFT was executive produced by Stephen Flynn and Sean Burke and premiered on September 8th at the 9/11 Tenth Anniversary Summit: Remembrance/Renewal/Resilience in Washington.