Marketing metrics within the social media space have created a dizzying lexicon with ‘metrics’ termed: followers, fans, lists, likes, plus 1s, tweets, retweets, references, scores, social sentiment...and on and on.  These metrics can be haphazardly and dangerously thrown around in business contexts (e.g. the more ‘likes’ we get the more we sell...let’s get more likes so we’ll generate more sales!

 

Apart from wild claims of attribution, why are we so concerned with these numbers?  The reason (generally): funnel math.  We’re very concerned with our top-line numbers (i.e. followers) because it serves as the foundational element in our conversion funnel math.  The more followers, the more conversions...the wider we go top-of-funnel the greater our returns (views, clicks, leads, customers, etc.).

We, as marketers, aspire to ‘rock star’ like engagement among our audiences.  The belief is that that fans (a term, thanks to Facebook, now also has a semantic marketing meaning) are such a strong, organic base which will be highly receptive to a message and proportionately more likely to take an action.

Let’s look at the numbers...sampling click-through rates on Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna tweeted links March 2011 through May 2011.

Poor Britney...Your Twitter Followers Don’t Have Rock Star Engagement.

From the infographic above, it certainly seems that Lady Gaga and Rihanna have strong click-through rates (okay...maybe it’s not what we thought rock stars would generate...but they are relatively strong rates) and Britney Spears is dramatically under-engaged with her audiences.  

But wait...let’s look at the relative momentum of click-throughs independent of the funnel math...

Dry Those Tears Britney...Maybe No One Has Rock Star Engagement

From the above, we may be adding another layer to the story of our rock stars’ engagement with audiences.  Britney Spears may have the lowest click-through rate (sampling March - May 2011), but she has a much higher initial engagement.  Britney's followers seem to respond much faster to links posted in her tweets, 

Equally curious, Lady Gaga and Rihanna share an interestingly similar distribution of engagement.  What may this pattern illustrate?  

• Highly viral posts (retweets, shares, etc.) that extend click-through engagement beyond three days?
• Or perhaps it sheds some light on the posting ‘strategy’ of their respective PR, communications, and marketing teams (e.g. re-posting messages to capture more click-throughs).

Apply These Concepts - Final Thoughts

Is this wholly representative of audience engagement?  Certainly not, it is merely a single observation in a complex, multi-channel engagement model (as well documented by Brian Anthony Hernandez in a recent Mashable article that presented pictorial examples of Lady Gaga’s marketing mix).  

We marketers fantasize about having an all-powerful brand that commands such brand affinity that audience engagement is a certainty.  The reality is however that we are competing for attention...attention that is severely fragmented...even among rock star brands.

That reality supports a renewed focus on marketing fundamentals:

• Multi-channel, multi-threaded communications are needed to cut through the noise.
• Relevant, personalized, and emotive messages still are the key to audience engagement; even in the rock star world, where self-centered attention is expected and cultivated, those messages don’t draw as well in the single dimension of social spaces.
• Total Competitive Awareness - Britney, Rihanna and Gaga are not in direct competition, their products are not mutually exclusive...I can purchase and download Britney's, Rihanna’s and Gaga’s new albums (provided I have the purchasing power)...but it’s likely that all three artists are competing for the finite attention of overlapping audiences.
  • Segmentation and targeting are key - a broad message, even one cast from the pulpit of a rock star, can fall victim to the over-saturated attention of audiences.