CIRCLE to evaluate social media, how do you think?

Over the past few years, social media has blossomed from the solo show in the online forums (BBS), to the current blogs, wikis, weibo, SNS and various LBS applications, but there is no unified standard to evaluate them And contrast, and then analyze the applicable scenarios of various tools and platforms.

In this article, I give six qualitative indicators abbreviated as CIRCLE, and combined with the birth of three social media such as BBS, blog, and Weibo.

Content richness (Content)

Definition: The amount of information that a content can potentially contain, including the amount of space allowed, the amount of multimedia it can contain.

Blog will not limit the content space and illustrations, audio and video, so the potential to have the greatest expression; BBS second, depending on the specific site; microblogging relatively weaker expression, because there are strict word limit, you can only add Very limited multimedia content.

Clearly, content richness is actually inversely proportional to the cost of creation, which is the amount of time and effort that users spend from idea to creation to final publication.

Interactivity

Definition: The original author of the content, and other readers to facilitate the degree of interactive discussion.

This is the strongest microblogging, the original author and readers and readers can discuss between, and each other can be notified; BBS second, while the blog is basically a one-way release channel.

3. Redistribution (Redistribution)

Definition: When the reader wants to transfer the content to others, it takes time and effort.

This champion is naturally a microblogging, just click on the "forward" button; and blogs and BBS you need to copy the content or link, the latter's cost is far greater than the former.

4. Context richness (Context)

Definition: In addition to the content itself, whether to attach other information, such as geographical location.

A light writing like Weibo would make it easier for users to post on handheld devices and naturally carry the geo information that their handsets are capable of providing; and while there are no technical hurdles, few would be willing to publish long-form blogs and BBS articles on their phones.

5. Life Cycle (Life Cycle)

Definition: After the content is released, it is no longer easy to be concerned about.

Weibo's life cycle is the shortest, and microblogging which is still being reviewed or forwarded for more than a month is quite rare; even some popular microblogs that are heavily forwarded in a short period of time will soon be overwhelmed by other hotspots; most of them BBS has posted on the top of the mechanism, that is sorted by the final reply, so even if a long time ago, as long as someone reply, still can be long-term entrenched in the forums home page; Considering the blog reading source generally three: random visitors, through RSS Readers subscribed to a fixed reader, as well as readers from a search engine dedicated to reading an article, so the blog post once issued, the degree of concern there will be a long period of decay.

6. Exposure (Exposure)

Definition: how many people can read directly after the content is released in a short period of time?

This indicator actually depends on the specific website and author.

Weibo's exposure is quite polarized, according to Yahoo research, Twitter, 0.05% of users attracted 50% of the attention, so unless there is a good reputation in advance, or after a period of time to get enough business Fans, or want to attract attention on the microblogging is very difficult; blog has a similar characteristics, the exposure depends largely on the chain from others; and BBS is very different, everyone in the forum have the same discourse The exposure of an article depends on the flow of the forum itself during the sending period. Therefore, an unknown writer also has the same exposure as a big man. As long as the article itself is of high quality, there is an opportunity to greatly increase the period for declaring the article. BBS a war fame.

It should be noted that this set of indicators is only personal observation and reflection on the proceeds, there is not enough data to support it, but I believe the future industry will need such a social media evaluation system.

Apart from comparing different social media types, the value of such an evaluation system lies in that new social media can be developed or derived from the actual needs and scenarios, focusing on the development or reduction of certain indicators.

Another interesting trend now is that various media have begun to converge, for example, some sharing buttons can be easily BBS and blog articles to share microblogging or SNS, to make up for the lack of BBS and blog itself can be forwarded. This topic is left to be discussed later.