On the occasion of infoShare – conference which concerns IT industry, new media and startups, we would like to present a concise analysis of IT and electronic fanpages. We took into consideration two groups of fanpages – these of UK IT brands and international technological blogs. The focal point of our interest was the communication between administrators and users. You will find out how fans react on specific types of communications and why bloggers engage fans way better than brands.
Brands – how fans react
Let’s start with the content posted by pages’ administators. We took into account such brands fanpages as Sony, HP, BlackBerry, Samsung, Bethesda and others. The tag cloud can accessibly show the content that administrators post the most often:
Word cloud – UK fanpages related to IT, administators’ posts.
You can see that IT fanpages’ communications concerns mainly brands or products – popular words such Samsung, BlackBerry, Android or Acer were posted the most frequently. Pages’ administrators also try to attract users with call-to-action wording such “check” or “take”.
When you are focused on the response from the users on such communications, you will find interesting the tag cloud presented below:
Word cloud – UK fanpages related to IT, administators’ posts.
As you can see the word SPAM is used by the users with the highest frequency. This means that direct marketing generates discontentment of users who apparently complain about spam. This may be a result of sponsored posts and adverts that are too direct for conscious users.
Bloggers – what brands can learn from them
The communication of international IT bloggers is quite similar to the corresponding cloud concerning brands. The tag cloud is made for posts taken from the fanpages of technology blogs such as Mashable, TechCrunch, The Next Web, ReadWrite, Brian Solis, Engadget, Wired, GigaOM, The Verge, SlashGear, Make Use Of:
Word cloud – technological blogs, administators’ posts.
Although the posts lack call-to-actions and names of particular brands, they still inform about what’s “new” and interesting in the world of technology. The cooperation with bloggers seems to be a great opportunity for brands – the prove for that statement is shown on the last tag cloud presented below:
Word cloud – technological blogs, users’ posts.
Mashable permits its users to post on their wall and the interesting content gets contrary response in comparison to the great “SPAM” that the brands are accused of.
Types of posts and their interactivity
Most content managers believe that photographs guarantee high engagement. The IT fanpages are no exception – check out what type of content is posted by the administrators:
Distribution of top posts’ types
The type of content which is used the most often are photos. It seem logic as they have many advantages, among which comprehensible form and ability to convey various messages.The chart below shows the Interactivity Index of posts divided by type. Interactivity Index is Sotrender’s collective, weighted rate of all activities under post:
Interactivity Index by type of post
The bars on the plot represent the average Interactivity Index of top 1100 posts published in 2013 on fanpages connected with IT or electronics of UK brands and international technology blogs. Questions are the most interactive, but it seems that the admins don’t make a proper use of that type of content as there were only 15 of them among all the publications.
At the same time, photos are second only to questions that proves the point of posting so many of them. Links on the last position trigger less interaction, but in our previous entry we have shown that content managers should take into account so called dark social media – the shareability that slip through the conventional analyses.
If you’re interested in more detailed analysis – please contact us! Want to try Sotrender out? Sign up for the 14-day free trial now!
Tim Robinson
Klaudia Żyłka
