White paper from Elon Media Analytics students. Blogging and microblogging is a key image-management strategy for athletes and teams. This paper describes some best practices for using Twitter analytics to optimize social media efforts in sports.

1. Twitter
Analytics
and Sports
Bloggers
Key Terms:
Traffic: Number of users visiting a site.
Data: Individual facts, statistics, or items
of
information.
Diffusion of Influence: The way in
which an idea or innovation spreads
through a society.
Analytics: the analysis of data, typically
large sets of business data, by the use
of mathematics, statistics, and computer
software.
Influence: the capacity or power of
persons or things to be a compelling
force on or produce effects on the
actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of
others.
Influencer: a person who has the power
to influence many people, as through
social media or traditional media.
Pass-along value: An idea or
innovation that is deemed worth
spreading to others.
Summary:
It is no secret that blogs are
losing readers to platforms like
Facebook and Twitter. As described by
the New York Times, “Blogs were once
the outlet of choice for people who
wanted to express themselves online.
But with the rise of sites like Facebook
and Twitter, they are losing their allure
for many people — particularly the
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2. younger generation.”(2)
Bloggers are
now challenged with finding new ways
to bring in consumers. One tool
bloggers should be using to encourage
site traffic is Twitter.
Blogging started roughly 15 years
ago when sites such as Blogger and
LiveJournal gained notoriety. People
flocked to blogs due to the appeal and
convenience of having online
conversations with a relatable
community. By the end of 2004,
Merriam-Webster declared “blog” the
word of the year.(2)
Sites like Facebook and Twitter
provide consumers with a social hub to
post all the things they would have
previously posted on a blog. The small
talk that was once delegated to
topic-specific blogging forums has
mostly moved to social media sites.
Thus, sports blogs have been steadily
decreasing in site traffic since the
immersion of social media
conglomerates like Facebook and
Twitter.
That doesn’t mean that sports
blogs don’t exist, however. More serious
bloggers turn to forums such as
WordPress to have productive
discussions. Toni Schneider, chief
executive of Automattic, the company
that commercializes the WordPress
blogging software, explains that
“bloggers often use Facebook and
Twitter to promote their blog posts to a
wider audience. Rather than being
competitors”, he said, “they are
complementary.”(2)
Those who are committed to
blogging should heed Toni Schneider’s
advice. Treating Twitter as a tool rather
than a competitor will help sports
bloggers reach wider audiences and
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3. increase their site traffic. All it takes is
an understanding of the diffusion of
influence through social sites.
Types of Influence:
The diffusion of influence has
never been easier to measure thanks to
the introduction of Twitter analytics.
Original theories on the diffusion of
influence predicted that by using social
influencers like celebrities, “one may
achieve a large-scale chain-reaction of
influence driven by word-of-mouth, with
a very small marketing cost.”(3)
More
recent theories suggest that the diffusion
of influence is more closely associated
with “(i) the interpersonal relationship
among ordinary users and (ii) the
readiness of a society to adopt an
innovation (Watts and Dodds 2007;
Domingos and Richardson 2001).”(1)
Testing these theories shows that
certain types of influence have more of
an impact on their audience and thus
should be used by bloggers trying to
gain an audience.
Data from “Measuring User
Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower
Fallacy” analyzes a dataset consisting of
2 billion follow links among 54 million
users who produced a total of 1.7 billion
tweets. This analysis resulted in three
major findings:(1)
1) Indegree influence represents
popularity of a user, as the
number of followers for a user
directly indicates the size of the
audience for that user. Retweets
represent the content value of
one’s tweets. If one is able to
generate content with pass-along
value, their account becomes
valued for its content and thus
has retweet influence. Finally,
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4. mentions represent the name
value of a user. Mention influence
is measured through the number
of retweets containing one’s
name. This indicates the ability of
a user to engage others in
conversation. The top users
based on these three measures
have little overlap.
2) Influence varies across topics.
The most influential users hold
significant influence over a
variety of topics. For example,
News based twitter accounts
discuss a variety of topics and
are regarded as credible sources.
3) Ordinary users can gain
influence by focusing on a single
topic and posting creative and
insightful tweets that are
perceived as valuable by others,
as opposed to simply conversing
with others.
Using this information, we can begin to
draw conclusions about how sports
bloggers should use Twitter to increase
site traffic.
Assuming the purpose of
blogging is to create the largest
community of like-minded people
sharing ideas, then the most appropriate
form of influence for sports bloggers
would be retweet influence. This is
because accounts that have a high
degree of retweet influence are valued
for the content of their tweets. If an
individual’s account is valued for the
content of its tweets, the account
becomes an influencer. Influencers have
the ability to influence other influencers,
thus creating a word-of-mouth wave of
influence described by Katz and
Lazarsfeld.(3)
As stated in the report
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5. Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The
Million Follower Fallacy, “By identifying
and convincing a small number of
influential individuals, a viral campaign
can reach a wide audience at a small
cost. The theory spread well beyond
academia and has been adopted in
many marketing businesses, e.g.,
RoperASW and Tremor (Gladwell 2002;
Berry and Keller 2003).”(1)
This is an
empirically effective way to promote
one’s business, or in this case a blog,
through social media sites such as
Twitter.
Twitter Analytics:
Twitter offers some basic
analytics tools to allow users to see the
impact of a tweet:
https://business.twitter.com/en/analytics/
tweet-activity-dashboard.html. If you
wish to become a media influencer and
bring traffic to your blog, you can use
the site above to monitor the following
things:
● The number of impressions: the
number of possible accounts that
can see your tweet.
● The number of engagements: the
number of people interacting with
your tweet (liking, retweeting or
mention of).
● The engagement rate
(impressions divided by
engagements): this will tell you
what percentage of people
viewing your content are
engaging with it.
● Video views: The number of
views the video in your tweet
receives.
● Link clicks: The number of clicks
the link attached to your tweet
receives. This measure is
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6. crucial for sports bloggers using
twitter to bring traffic to their
sites.
● Photo or video clicks: The
number of clicks the photo or
video attached to your tweet
receives.
● Likes: The number of likes your
tweet receives.
● Retweets: The number of times
your tweet is retweeted.
In addition to monitoring all these
things, you’ll also be able to see how
many of these engagements you
average per day, and how your
engagement rate and number of
impressions changes throughout the
month.
When you learn what resonates
with your audience, you can start
tweeting similar content and becoming a
social influencer, which will ultimately
bring new users to your site.
Twitter also offers a service(4)
that
allows account holders to analyze the
following:
● Follower growth: The number of
new followers you have gained
over a certain period of time
● Followers’ interests: What
content resonates with your
followers; what your most
successful tweets are.
● Followers’ demographics:
Language, gender, and location.
Certain accounts will also be able
to see data around their followers with
regards to consumer behaviors,
lifestyles, and mobile devices. Checking
in with your audience as it grows and
evolves will help you create content
that’s relevant, while also boosting
engagement.
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7. Conclusion:
Blogging popularity has been
declining since the introduction of larger
social networking sites such as
Facebook and Twitter. It’s simple; if
bloggers wish to increase site traffic,
they should use social media sites like
Twitter. Sports bloggers in particular
have the potential to thrive on Twitter, as
sports tends to be an extremely
common topic of discussion. By
measuring the degree of retweet
influence generated through Twitter's
analytical tools, bloggers can see how
their tweets are affecting their target
audience and how that is affecting their
blog. If bloggers don't do this, they will
likely continue to lose traffic to large
social media sites. If they do, their blog
will feasibly increase in traffic.
More Info:
1. Cha, Meeyoung. "Measuring User
Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower
Fallacy. http://bit.ly/234q5gR.
Proceedings of the Fourth International
AAAI Conference on Weblogs and
Social Media, n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.
2. Kopytoff, Verne "Blogs Wane as the
Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter." The
New York Times(2011): n. pag. 20 Feb.
2011. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.
3. Katz, E., and Lazarsfeld, P. 1955.
Personal Influence: The Part Played by
People in the Flow of Mass
Communications. New York: The Free
Press.
4. Twitter Business Analytics:
https://business.twitter.com/en/analytics/
tweet-activity-dashboard.html
https://business.twitter.com/en/analytics/
audience-insights.html
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8. Writer Biographies
Brandon White
I am a senior
Journalism major
with minors in
French and
Philosophy. As a
pre-law student, I
plan on obtaining a
law degree, and
eventually an L.L.M. after graduation.
This summer, I worked with a sports
blog called SPORTalk, writing anywhere
from 5-10 articles per week. I was also
an intern for Transitions Optical in Paris,
France during the summer of 2011. I
was managing Transitions’ social media
presence while helping out in marketing
meetings. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is
my hometown, having lived there for 14
years. However, I was born in Houston,
Texas and lived in Paris, France for
three years. My parents currently reside
in Switzerland, and my 19-year-old
brother, Connor, plays golf at
Westminster College in New
Wilmington, Pennsylvania. After
graduating from law school, I plan on
becoming a contract lawyer and
eventually working for a sports
organization managing contracts.
Brandon Wickel
I am a junior Media
Analytics major
with a minor in
Italian. This past
summer I interned
with a PR company
called BrandLink
Communications in New York City. In
this position I helped organize and
execute social media campaigns and
PR events. I was born in Riverdale, New
York but moved north to Westchester
when I was very young. My oldest sister,
Kelsey, completed her graduate degree
at the University of Pennsylvania and
now works for the NYC parks
department. The youngest of my two
sisters, Taylor, graduated from Elon in
2014 and now works in Virginia as an
event planner. Upon graduation I intend
to pursue a career in media analytics for
businesses attempting to develop an
online presence. I believe the skills I
learned at BrandLink Communications
in combination with my upbringing,
family influence, and skills I have come
to learn since BrandLink
Communications establishes me as an
emerging media analytics professional.
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