Between Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and external blogs, which creates more engagement on your site? By analyzing the visitors and visits generated by various social media sources, patterns emerge that can guide audience development initiatives. By analyzing the relationship between social media sources and engagement in B2B publishing, Scout Analytics has discovered an influential audience member type that creates engagement in other visitors. I will refer to this type of audience member as a “maven,” similar to the role described by Malcom Gladwell in The Tipping Point.
According to Gladwell, “mavens are really information brokers, sharing and trading what they know.” In the context of B2B
publishing, mavens are a special sort of fan (see my previous post on fans vs. fly-bys). Mavens are experts that are passionate about their industry, the issues facing them AND they blog. The maven is usually focused on tackling his own issues, but wants to share insights and ideas with others. Mavens start and frame visits for publishers through the use of their blog.
So how did we find mavens? The short answer is through the publisher’s other fans. In analyzing a B2B publisher’s site, Scout Analytics found that of the various social media sources fans made FIVE times as many visits to the site by referral links from audience members’ blogs as compared to audience members’ Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn referrals. Additionally, fans that were referred by mavens to the publisher site were TWO times more engaged (i.e., they consumed twice as many page views per visitor). The engagement statistics point to the fact that a maven’s blog post providing context and motivation (by using more than 140 characters) creates a better and more engaged visitor for the publisher. Additionally, the statistics point to the importance of mavens and blogs in building industry connections and loyal visitors.
To further understand mavens, I looked into their impact on fly-bys. Even though fly-bys tend to make up more than 70 percent of an audience compared to fans, which make up less than 5 percent of an audience, fans had more blog-sourced visits than fly-bys did. In other words, fans are engaged with both the B2B publisher and mavens, while fly-bys are not.
Further statistics point out the strong connection between fans and mavens compared to the weak connection between fly-bys and mavens. Fly-bys made twice as many visits from Twitter and Facebook as compared to blogs. The page views per Twitter- and Facebook-sourced visits from fly-bys were a third of page views/visit from blog-sourced fan visits. In other words, fly-bys don’t engage mavens for information.
Do you know your mavens? Do you know their interests? Do you know their influence? How are you leveraging that? I will continue to elaborate on the sources of engagement in the next couple of blog posts.
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