iStrategyBlabs

The United States of Wireless Infographic: A Behind The Scenes Look

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On June 3, iStrategyLabs produced and released for Mobile Future the “United States of Wireless,” an infographic that highlights the ever-changing and competitive mobile marketplace.

Our approach for this infographic was a little different than the last few we have put together. Rather than depicting each stat on its own in a different section, we took a more holistic approach to the data and illustrated an overall story in a fluid, whimsical narrative.

Queueing off the original title for the infographic “Mobile Snapshot” (which was later changed, but still proved a useful starting point), we brainstormed scenes that were often heavily photographed and which could be represented in an elongated vertical fashion (to accommodate our publishing context—the Mobile Future blog). We first settled on a footrace, because as a sporting event, lots of photos were taken, and a racetrack could logically be represented in a linear vertical fashion.

Although the racetrack idea didn’t totally pan out, we still liked the idea of people running while using mobile phones. We thought—where do people run, hang out during the Spring (bringing a seasonal context into the mix), do a lot of different activities, and take a lot of pictures? The park!

With a scene-at-the-park concept in hand we brainstormed fun things people do at the park and creative ways to make them represent our infographic’s statistics.

Following that up with several rounds of Mike’s sketches and digital drawings and Sarah’s typography—our infographic was compete!

See below for some behind-the-scenes sketches:

United States of Wireless Infographic Sketches

United States of Wireless Infographic Sketches

And the full infographic here:

United States of Wireless Infographic

New Infographic Examines How Much We’re Really Paying in Taxes For Cell Phone Service

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In the spirit of tax season, iStrategyLabs created an infographic for Mobile Future revealing just how much we’re paying for wireless broadband to power our mobile devices. “Wireless Taxes” highlights the latest stats and facts around tax rates and economic growth as they relate to US taxes.

Some key stats included below:

  • In the last 10 years, wireless taxes grew almost 4x faster than general sales taxes.
  • If wireless was taxed like general goods, American wireless users would save a whopping $15 billion in taxes each year.
  • Tanning and beer — taxed at 10% and 9.2%, respectively — are taxed at lower rates than wireless.

Full infographic below:

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Want to see more? Check out some of our other mobile-focused infographics:

 

Props to Sarah Sugarman for the incredible infographic and to Zach Kahn for helping us out!

March Madness Final Four Basketball: Twitter Mentions Over Time

NCAA March Madness Twitter Mentions Final Four

The NCAA Championship game is upon us tonight, and believe it or not, 3 of us ISLers have Louisville winning it all in our own brackets. Not too shabby for a bunch of nerds!

Although none of us could craft the perfect bracket, we were able to find some interesting Twitter data around mentions of Final Four teams from the past 3 years.

2011 March Madness Final Four Mentions

Although Cinderella story Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) couldn’t muscle up enough prowess to beat Butler and move on to the championship game, it surely won on Twitter. Mentions of #vcu peaked at a whopping 124,187 tweets during the tournament – an 8,000% increase from its typical monthly showing.

Not surprisingly, the month of April saw UConn, the inevitable champion, and Butler, the runner-up, as the tweet leaders.

2012 March Madness Final Four Mentions

Kentucky stayed on top on and off the court during the 2012 March Madness. Led by Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Kentucky won its six tourney games by nearly 12 points per contest. Nothing could stop them and the mentions just poured in, garnering almost 150k mentions by championship time – more mentions than all of last year’s Twitter activity combined.

2013 March Madness Final Four Mentions

If Twitter mentions is any indication of future success, as it has been for years past, it looks like the Wolverines may take the cake this year. They rocked almost 400k mentions during the month of March, which is twice what Louisville pulled in.

Some lessons learned:

  • Hail to the victors: Winners get more mentions than losers. Since 2011, winners of their Final Four game as well as the championship games scored the most mentions. One exception: VCU, an #11-seed Cinderella story who won the hearts, and tweets, of Americans across the country.
  • Football schools get a little bit more love throughout the year. Look at Ohio State. Look at Michigan. Where other Final Four team spikes come March from an otherwise non-existent fan base, schools with prominent football programs see a steady level of activity 6 months out of the year.
  • Twitter is still gaining popularity [#duh]. In 2011, we were seeing 230 million tweets per day. Last year, it went up to 400 million tweets per day. So although it looks like March Madness keeps getting more popular – especially with more than 2 million #marchmadness tweets seen over the past 30 days – it’s really Twitter in general that is the popular one.

Mentions of March Madness #marchmadness 2011 2012 2013

Data collected with Topsy Pro <3

#SMWWDC 2013: A Success!

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AND, that’s a wrap.

From February 18-22, 2013, iStrategyLabs produced the second annual Social Media Week DC, creating a week-long festival giving thousands of Washingtonians a platform to express their interest and love for social media.

We had a fantastic turnout:

Approaching SMWWDC 2013, our planning team decided that it was most important to put the power in the hands of the people. We thus encouraged members of the community to curate discussions, host panels, throw events, and engage with social media in its established and emerging forms. To make this happen, we:

  • Recruited an advisory board of amazingly talented social media and tech people to curate their own events, in addition to promoting others;
  • Anchored the week with events such as our opening party and closing party, while putting together an awesome keynote line-up featuring Steve Case, Linda Abraham, and Aneesh Chopra;
  • Actively monitored and mentored our community organizers, assembling DC’s events in one cohesive SMWWDC package;
  • Constructed a 30+ member editorial team to produce fresh, engaging content during the build-up to and throughout SMWWDC;
  • Constantly pushed for more engagement with our social audiences through SMWWDC’s Facebook & Twitter accounts;
  • Sourced multiple community venues to provide space for event organizers in need of a place to host;
  • And partnered with multiple sponsors to provide an official SMWWDC hub for the week in its entirety, opening its doors to many an community event organizer to use as a canvas for their respective events.

In sum, SMWWDC was truly a social media phenomenon for our Nation’s capital.

Our Presidential Trivia-themed opening party was the place to be on Monday night. Sponsored by Twitter and moderated by iSL's very own Katie Lancos, this event was full of surprises.

Our Presidential Trivia-themed opening party was the place to be on Monday night. Sponsored by Twitter and moderated by iSL’s very own Katie Lancos, this event was full of surprises.

 

Thanks to a partnership with Onomonomedia at our SMWWDC hub provided by Popularise & Fundrise, we captured some of the quirkier moments in-between sessions.

Thanks to a partnership with Onomonomedia at our SMWWDC hub provided by Popularise & Fundrise, we captured some of the quirkier moments in-between sessions.

 

Some of the members of our advisory board even jumped in on the action.

Some of the members of our advisory board even jumped in on the action.

 

And with Onomonomedia's innovative .GIF feature, there was no shortage of fun to be had.

And with Onomonomedia’s innovative .GIF feature, there was no shortage of fun to be had.

 

The Closing Party thrown at Malmaison by iSL and No Kings Collective attracted hundreds of people to a sold-out party, where DC's best and brightest mingled, celebrated the events of SMWWDC, and danced the night away.

The Closing Party thrown at Malmaison by iSL and No Kings Collective attracted hundreds of people to a sold-out party, where DC’s best and brightest mingled, celebrated the events of SMWWDC, and danced the night away.

 

Couple our exciting venue and partiers with a live band, and you had one night to remember in our Nation's capital. #SMWWDC #2013

Couple our exciting venue and partiers with a live band, and you had one night to remember in our Nation’s capital. #SMWWDC #2013

Lessons Learned from Promoted Tweets: Tips To Maximize Engagement

Lessons Learned from Promoted Tweets: Tips To Maximize Engagement

We recently executed a promoted tweets campaign to enhance visibility around select videos and infographics we produced. Through the combination of using a dozen individually targeted campaigns and up to 20 different tweets in each of them, we collected engagement data from over 100 instances of tweets.

In order to understand what methods were most successful over the course of our campaign, we looked at the most common characteristics found among the top 20% most engaging tweets. Below is a summary of the most engaging attributes of our promoted tweets.


Most Effective Targeting Type: Search (and/or Handles)

Target Type Impressions Engagement
Search 3,281 2.32%
Handles 19,089 1.38%
Interests 3,533 1.31%

 

Targeting search proved to be the most engaging targeting method, as we targeted hashtags around specific events that already had an active conversation occurring. This produced 68% and 77% more engagement than targeting handles and interests.

However, opportunities for search-targeted tweets to show were far less than targeting handles because of its smaller potential audience size, causing it to earn almost 6x less impressions than handles and lowering its overall effectiveness.

Overall, tweets targeting the followers of other relevant handles were 5% more engaging than those targeting general interest groups.


Most Effective Call to Action: “Check Out”

Call to Action Impressions Engagement
“Check out” 173,995 2.15%
“Watch” 5,307 1.81%
With Call to Action 89,651 1.98%
Without Call to Action 4,271 1.34%

 

A significant attribute of the varying engagement level of a tweet was whether there was a call to action present. Tweets with any call to action had 48% more engagement than those without a call to action.

Between the tweets using a call to action, “Check out” preformed 18% better than tweets using ‘Watch.”


Most Effective Mention of Media: Video

Media Type Impressions Engagement
Video 4,429 2.18%
Infographic 23,057 1.43%
Mention of any media 13,743 1.80%
No mention of any media 3,657 1.14%

 

Our analysis shows it’s critical to share with your audience what exactly they are looking at. Tweets that revealed the type of media they were linking to produced 58% more engagement that those that didn’t.

Among the top 20% most engaging tweets, we found that promoting a video was 52% more engaging than promoting an infographic. (However, among the top 50% of tweets, videos only produced 10% more engagement.)


The Name of the Game is…

Title of the Campaign Impressions Engagement
Tweet includes title of the campaign 13,265 1.72%
Tweet does not include title of the campaign 8,716 1.34%

 

A big insight is that mentioning the title of what you’re promoting proved to be 28% more engaging than saving those precious characters for something else. Overall, being as specific as possible in promoted tweets is proving to yield higher engagement levels.