prepared by:

Mark Higginson Director of Social MediaFebruary 2012

How attention scales

Analysis

• ‘Facebook will hit one billions users’ achieved:

• Featured on 300+ websites

• 10,200 tweets (on Mashable)

• 2,326 ‘likes’ (on Mashable)

• 122 ‘+1’s’ (on Mashable)

• However, this resulted in only:

• 3,800 unique page views to our blog

• 158 trackbacks

• 6 comments

Summary

• We are here to win attention

• Distractions are ever-growing

• Time is ultimately finite

• Popularity determines relevance

• Attention is concentrated in popular places

• Create assets in volume for social platforms…

• … to build credibility and demonstrate consistency

• Work on relationships with ‘hub’ websites

• Promote what proves popular to these hubs…

• … by showing you understand their audience

• ‘Social proof’ is all important

References / Further reading• Remembrance of links past

• Internet as cure for boredom

• You just shared a link: how long will people pay attention?

• Linked by Alberto Barabasi

• The starfish and the long tail have trouble getting along

• Nerd talk: the tale of the life of a link on reddit

• Top UK websites (via Quantcast)

• ‘Engagement’: fashionable yet bankrupt

• Debunking the unique visitor: finding your real visitors

• The social graph is neither

• Exploding the ‘influentials’ myth

• Why Instagram is so popular: quality, audience and constraints

• Why Gawker is moving beyond the blog

• How the Boston Globe pulled off HTML5 responsive design

• Three lessons news sites can take from the launch of The Verge

• Nowness

“Attention equals life, or is its only evidence.”Frank O’Hara