Looking for Local Social Media Statistics: Twitter Use, Content & Reach
To prepare for a few local (and on-the-ground) inbound marketing and social media workshops for local businesses I have been hired to do in this fall, I’ve been drilling into local social media use statistics.
Have you researched stats for using online tools to support local business goals?
Today I am looking closer at Twitter statistics.
I started with doing some simple Twitter Search queries using the “near” and “within” functions, e.g.
near:”lafayette, CA” within:15 mi
But that yielded a very low volume of Tweets.
Twellow: Estimating Geo Statistics
For a first quick count of Twitter accounts, I landed on Twellow, a Twitter yellow pages. A first search of some of our local towns came up with the following statistics — the count of Twitter accounts self-reporting into each respective (Northern California) location:
- Walnut Creek — 510
- Lafayette — 131
- Moraga — 61
- Orinda — 51
Meanwhile, a search for San Francisco yielded 59,964 accounts.
I wouldn’t trust this data, though. At least not the individual town numbers.
The Twitter geographic location info is self-reported.
Originally published by Robin S. Fox in the Lamorinda Weekly, Spring 2009
Many of us who do business in this area are listed as being in the “San Francisco Bay Area” as opposed to any other specific town because that better represents our local business zone.
That makes the San Francisco numbers bloated and the local statistics under-reported.
Plus… It’s clear that geographic locations are also not always updated.
Twellow reports its results in order of who has the most Twitter Followers.
Right now #1 on the Moraga list is Patty Mills, with 5,913 followers. But he’s not in Moraga any more. Hasn’t been since Spring 2009.
That former Australian Olympian turned Saint Mary’s College basketball star is probably at this moment on a court overseas.
Clearly, I have more work to do. And given Twitter’s power as a search engine, it’s going to be even more complicated.
Any advice: What’s your favorite source of local Twitter statistics — use, content and reach?
A former Corporate 750 client manager and journalist, Certified Social Media Coach and Inbound Marketing Specialist Robin S. Fox helps clients achieve their business goals.