#Tip: Three handy Twitter tools

An article by the Guardian last week sparked a discussion on Twitter about the difference between the numbers shown on a ‘tweet’ share count button and the number of retweets.

Retweets

Official Twitter RTs have been around since 2009. When a tweet is retweeted in this way Twitter does not treat it as a separate tweet so the RT does not have a separate URL. Twitter measures RTs by the number of times the original tweet was RTed.

Share count buttons

The share count buttons on a news story show the number of times the story URL has been tweeted out. It includes RTs as the they carry the URL. This number will therefore be greater than the number of RTs.

Example:

For example, this Journalism.co.uk story on 100 Twitter accounts every journalism student should follow received 131 RTs, according to My Top Tweets (see below).

The URL of the story was shared 1,735 times on Twitter, according to LinkTally (see below).

Three handy Twitter tools

Online tools for analysing your top tweets, the number of times and article has been shared and how many people your tweet has reached.

My Top Tweets

This shows the most RTed tweets from a particular Twitter account.

LinkTally

This measures how many times a URL has been shared. It shows share numbers for Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

TweetReach

This measures how many people each tweet reaches.

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#Tip: Become a Google Analytics Real-Time addict

If you use Google Analytics to track traffic to your news site, make sure you use Google Analytics Real-Time, which tells you the number of people on your site right now.

It shows referrals (such as those coming via Twitter) and you can also see how many people are reading on a desktop, tablet or smartphone device.

You can access ‘real-time’ via the main dashboard in Google Analytics.

The content breakdown, which shows the percentage of visitors reading on desktop, tablet and mobile, is accessed by clicking on the ‘content’ tab (below ‘real-time’). It is a relatively new feature which was announced at the end of March.

Have a go – but be aware that it is rather addictive…

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#Tip: Add the ‘send to Kindle’ button to your site or blog

Image by kodomut on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Yesterday we reported that Amazon has created a ‘send to Kindle’ button that news sites and bloggers can add to their sites to allow readers to save the article for reading later.

Websites can get the button here and a WordPress plugin is at this link.

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#Tip: Driving traffic to your big interactive project

Image by ullrich.c on Flickr. Some rights reserved

If you have invested a great deal of time in an interactive project, how do you ensure it gets seen by as many people as possible?

Danny Sanchez has written a tips post on his blog Journalistopia answering just that question.

His 13 pointers are at this link.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – building communities and traffic

On the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism site Maria Perez outlines some of the key takeaways from s session at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo about “strategies for creating and building a community people will participate in”.

In a post she gathers together some of the pointers shared on growing a community and building up traffic.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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Olympic figures: BBC reports 12m video views via mobile

The BBC has revealed the figures showing the number of people consuming Olympics news across four platforms: desktop, tablet, mobile and television.

The BBC Internet blog reports that the broadcaster saw 9.2 million browsers to its mobile site and iPhone and Android Olympics app over the course of the Games.

The post also reveals the BBC clocked up more than 2.3 million browsers using tablets.

Writing on the blog, Cait O’Riorda, head of product, BBC Sport and London 2012, said:

Consumption of video content on mobile has been perhaps the key takeaway from the two weeks: we saw 12 million requests for video on mobile across the whole of the Games.

Overall the broadcaster had “106 million requests for BBC Olympic video content across all online platforms”.

The blog post has several interesting graphics, including one to demonstrate how people used each of the four platforms at different times of the day.

The key findings are:

• PC usage maxes out during the week at lunchtime and during mid-afternoon peak Team GB moments
• Mobile takes over around 6pm as people leave the office but still want to keep up to date with the latest action
• Tablet usage reaches a peak at around 9pm: people using them as a second screen experience as they watch the Games on their TVs, and also as they continue to watch in bed

The blog also reports that the video “chapter-marking feature, enabling audiences to go back to key event moments instantly, received an average 1.5 million clicks per day. The chapter marker for Bolt’s 100m final win was clicked on more than 13,000 times”.

The most-watched livestream of the Games was the tennis singles finals. There were 820,000 requests for live video of the matches that saw Serena Williams and Andy Murray take gold.

O’Riorda states in the post:

The peak audiences for Team GB’s medal moments were bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. Over a 24 hour period on the busiest Olympic days, Olympic traffic to bbc.co.uk exceeded that for the entire BBC coverage of FIFA World Cup 2010 games. On the busiest day, the BBC delivered 2.8 petabytes, with the peak traffic moment occurring when Bradley Wiggins won gold and we shifted 700 Gb/s.

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Media release: BBC.com records 15m unique users across Europe in first quarter

In a press release issued yesterday the BBC announced the latest traffic statistics for BBC.com, which was said to have recorded 15 million unique users across Europe in the first quarter of the year.

Figures relating to accessing BBC news on mobile devices were also reported, with visits of “around 8.5 million users” across the world visiting the BBC News websites and apps on mobiles or tablets “in an average month”.

See the full release.

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Mike Rawlins on how Pits n Pots offers ‘a proper good pub discussion’ around politics online

Mike Rawlins, founder of the Stoke-based political hyperlocal site Pits n Pots spoke at the regional Society of Editors meeting today, on the site’s origins and where it plans to move to in the future.

Born out of a desire to “see the city improve”, Rawlins argued that the site aimed to cater for a what he felt was a need for more discussion around local politics, adding that the site’s highly active comment threads today are like a “a proper good pub discussion”.

Pits n Pots holds a simple ethos:

• no editing in audio interviews
• no editing of video interviews
• no spinning stories: it’s always just straight down the line
• any political parties get to use the platform

As Pits n Pots is run by enthusiasts, rather than journalists, it focusses on providing the information, and allows the community to read into it. Not editing interviews also minimises the need for technical expertise.

The site has seen a rapid growth in traffic, moving from around 1,900 unique visitors a day, with 6,000 pageviews in December 2009, up to approximately 12,000 unique visitors and 30,000 pageviews a day in April and May of 2011 as the site provided far more comprehensive coverage of the local elections than the local press. Other successes for the site include providing live coverage of a Stoke on Trent EDL rally, and posting videos from their coverage of the day which resulted in them being the 2nd highest news channel on YouTube globally for two days.

Now supported by the Journalism Foundation, April 2012 saw Pits n Pots attempt a print format, produced by the journalism students at Staffordshire University, printing 50,000 copies. Journalism.co.uk reported that this one-off print edition, which was created as a marketing tool, helped to double Pits n Pots web traffic.

Rawlins says that the site will never be a full time job for him, but he hopes to employ a journalist in the future to progress the site, to facilitate better use of data, more investigative content, and allow better scrutiny of the local council.

He concluded that hyperlocal sites like Pits n Pots would never replace the local paper, and that they can coexist.

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App of the week for journalists: AnalyticsPro

App of the week: AnalyticsPro

Devices: iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch

Cost: £3.99

What is it? An app to track Google Analytics.

How is it of use to journalists? If you have an iOS device and regularly use Google Analytics to track visitors to your news site or blog you should get this app.

It is well worth the £3.99 fee as once you are logged into your Google account you can check stats and dig deep into the visitors, traffic sources, and content of your site.

Do you have a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – how to measure the impact of Google+

Daniel Waisberg, founder and editor of Online Behavior, has written a guide to Google+ analytics.

He states that he will be updating the article as Google releases new features.

The detailed guide is at this link.

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