Recently we have:
- Finished work with Western Power Distribution to help them to plan, iterate and promote their 5 year business plan consultation. We’re now evaluating the project
- Undertaken another round of training for RAF storytellers
- Launched the next phase of our social media training for non-communications staff at one of the world’s largest tech companies
- Been hard at work planning for a series of crisis simulations in May
Our latest round up of Helpful Links follows with a theme this month of testing and evaluating.
Testing and Evaluating
We’ll start with this short but productive format for a post-project review from Emily Webber. Useful whatever you have been working on lately.
Plans for a new European football Super League lasted less than 48 hours (although many expect it will be reintroduced at a later date). Which English club handled their about-turn best? We liked Arsenal’s open letter to fans, a nice contrast to other clubs who simply issued a one sentence club statement.
Testing, testing … headlines, subject lines, copy and graphics are all worth A/B testing. This is a look at real-world A/B testing of New York Times headlines.
Hootsuite has shared this useful summary of the Instagram algorithm. They’ve also done an interesting experiment about whether using ‘Link In Bio’ affects the reach of your posts.
Does Twitter’s algorithm penalise external links? This study suggests it may be smarter to keep more of the content within a post if you want to benefit from the algorithmic timeline for greater exposure.
Studies like these are really useful to help plan campaigns and content, but it is always really important to test performance from your own accounts and see if it matches the research.
Audience Behaviour
Another useful planning aid is knowing where your audience spend their time. In the US, Pew Research have just published their latest update on social media usage. Ofcom have updated their detailed analysis of Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes in the UK.
For a global perspective and a wide range of country by country analysis, Hootsuite and We Are Social’s insights are fascinating.
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report is a detailed analysis of the changing ways people around the world consume news.
Channels, their audiences, and the content shared changes over time. This post by Toni Cowan-Brown shows how TikTok has evolved and highlights some seriously good examples of educational TikTok accounts.
Finally if you want to quickly find where something is mentioned in a video, You-TLDR automatically pulls out the transcript from any YouTube video.
News from Helpful HQ
We have our own news here at Helpful HQ. Two of our longest serving team members have become the new owners of Helpful. Tim Lloyd steps up to Managing Director, supported by Chris Malpass as co-owner and Executive Director. If we already work for you, it won’t feel like much of a change. We’re not rebranding or stopping anything that we already do. Our ambitious plans for growth mean we can help more and more people, from organisations based all around the world, build their confidence in a digital world.
We have also welcomed Sonja Sponholz to our New York team, and are in the final stages of appointing a new Platform Manager.
If you have any questions about any of these links or anything else digital please get in touch, we love to help.