Mama Meter

Social Media can seem like a limitless void that we toss useful information into and apparently get very little back. That is why it is so important to set goals for each media campaign and measure the results. Also, with the ever quickening pace at which new social networks are appearing great care must be taken when selecting the best channels to use when sharing the chosen message.

In honour of Mothers’ Day’s fast approach Meat of the Message will conduct a test of Facebook compared to Twitter at spreading the word about Campagnolo Restaurant’s brunch, Mothers’ Day being the biggest brunching day of the year. Campagnolo’s Facebook Page has 600 fans and the Twitter account has 2013 followers. I’ll be comparing Facebook “likes” vs. Twitter retweets (1 point each) and Facebook “shares” & comments vs. Twitter tweets and mentions (2 points each as these show greater engagement). I’ll update this post on Monday with the results.

Let the games begin and don’t forget to do something thoughtful for the Mothers in your life!

Update: Monday, May 14 2012

Well, we have a clear winner. Using Tweet Reach to assess the audience that received the tweet sent by @campagnolomain at 4:50 pm on May 10th : “Show your mama a little Itailan love for brunch, Sunday May 13, 11:30am – 2:30pm. Single stem flowers & Bar… http://fb.me/1QltmUrEW” it showed that there were no retweets, so the reach was 2017 accounts, which is the number of followers of Campagnolo’s Twitter handle. I also searched “@Campagnolomain”, “Campagnolo brunch” and “Campagnolo” on Twitter and couldn’t find any mentions.

Facebook Insights provided a few options to measure the interaction with the status update posted on Campagnolo’s Facebook Page May 10, 2012: “Show your mama a little Itailan love for brunch, Sunday May 13, 11:30am – 2:30pm. Single stem flowers & Bar Director Giovanni’s cocktails go a long way.” Right underneath the update, it’s clear that 6 people “liked” the update and one person shared it. Insights calculates that the reach as 208 unique people who have seen the update, the number of engaged users as 12 (number of unique people who have clicked on the post, so 6 who clicked “like” and 6 who clicked elsewhere), and the virality (percentage of people who created a story from the post) at 2.88%.

To calculate points for interactions: Twitter scored a big fat zero and Facebook scored 8 points. The conclusion I would make is that bigger is not always better, with more than three times the number of followers to fans, the Facebook post garnered much more attention and interaction. Also, Facebook posts have a longer shelf life of 22-24 hours, while tweets go stale after 1 hour! So, tweet, tweet again.

Interestingly, I found out that Campagnolo’s Mothers’ Day Brunch was not nearly as successful as last years. Though looking back, a very similar Facebook update (no likes or shares) and tweet (no retweets) were sent out. There are obviously other factors affecting the popularity of Mama’s brunching at Campagnolo than social media coverage. I definitely believe that by using social media channels more effectively that the brunch could have been more successful. It’s encouraging that the Facebook fans are becoming more engaged and if only a bit more effort is spent on social media it seems that Facebook would be the place to start as Twitter needs to hear things over and over. Most Mamas can relate to that!