Chris Boudreaux Chris Boudreaux on Social Media Governance

Charts That Show Twitter as The Most Popular Medium Are Useless

Posted on February 1st, by Chris Boudreaux in . 3 comments

Nearly every social media tool and research report has a chart showing brand mentions, by venue, and they almost always show Twitter as the venue with the highest volume. This is useless data.

Why? Twitter’s short post length make it the venue with the most posts in almost every category on the Internet. The only way a chart like this has any value is if it shows twitter NOT holding the most posts for a category. THAT would be interesting.

useless-social-media-chart Anyone who publishes a chart like this is just going through the motions, and needs to kick it up a notch.

Chris Boudreaux

Chris Boudreaux helps large organizations develop and implement social media strategies and capabilities, including governance, measurement and operations.

His new book, The Most Powerful Brand on Earth, shows you how to transform teams, empower employees, integrate partners and mobilize customers to beat the competition in digital and social media. Buy the book on Amazon.

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  • http://orgspring.com/ OrgSpring

    I’m so happy someone is calling BS on some of these ridiculous SM statistics. I read a report by Blackbaud which everyone is sharing online, blindly, because it references nonprofits and social fundraising. The report goes so far as to tell nonprofits not to send capital campaign e-newsletter blasts on Sunday’s at 6 am because that is typically a time of low social media engagement.  Really blackbaud? People in the US aren’t engaging or donating at 6am on Sunday? I’m glad I read this report.

  • http://www.socialbakers.com/ Michal Smetana

    I’m glad you pointed out that issue. There is just so much to look at in social media and generalizing it like this will give you only skewed data.

  • lc828

    I agree that it’s a useless chart but don’t you think it has more to do with the fact that the majority of Facebook mentions can’t be tracked by metrics providers due to the fact that they are private?

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