For our analysis this semester, our group decided to delve into the social media analytics of Oceana, a non-profit organization dedicated to marine conservation efforts. Some of our most interesting findings came with our earned data report, which is based on the social media activity of others about this specific organization. In our earned data report, we analyzed the social media activity for Oceana on three platforms: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. These three platforms contained the most user activity about Oceana, but Twitter provided some of the most significant findings. These findings showed that popular trends on Twitter could lead to increased social media activity.
What we found most insightful was that the conversation about Oceana spiked during a certain point in the year. Specifically, this spike occurred the last week of July 2017, from July 23-30. After delving into this finding, we discovered this was Shark Week. This week is a popular week in which millions of people tune in to learn more about sharks, especially on prominent television networks. Posts during this week used trending hashtags such as #sharkweek.
RT: 🎶 Stop hammertime! 🎶 📷: @SharksNeedLove #SharkWeek (@SharkWeek) pic.twitter.com/GZiH0dxXBR
— Oceana (@oceana) July 28, 2017
We believe that Shark Week generated a significant rise in conversation about Oceana and its conservation efforts for marine wildlife such as sharks. Twitter saw the highest spike during this week, while Facebook—due to a general lack of conversation—did not see as high of a spike in activity. On Twitter, we also found that Oceana had over 30 million potential impressions during this week—this is the total number of times tweets from or about Oceana could appear in user’s Twitter feed. We found it to be an incredible leap in activity for our organization, which also helped us answer important questions in our overall report. From these findings, we would recommend that Oceana concentrate on popular culture and viral events, such as Shark Week, on their social media platforms to produce the most activity.
Post contributed by ADPR 5750 students Carson Faircloth, Cassie Owens, and Alison Matlack
