Bluesky is a social media platform that was launched as an invite-only app in February 2023 and made available to the general public in February 2024. It joins a collection of other Twitter competitors like Mastodon and Threads, each with its own take on micro-blogging.

More recently, Bluesky made headlines as a wave of public figures joined. Promising a decentralized, user-first experience that gives people more control, the platform is seeing now impressive growth that’s worth paying attention to. Let’s take a look at what Bluesky is, how it functions, and whether it’s a viable alternative to Twitter.

What Is Bluesky?

Bluesky began as an internal Twitter project in 2019, funded by the company with the goal of building a decentralized standard for social media. By late 2021, Bluesky became an independent Public Benefit Corporation, and in late 2022 — after Elon Musk took over Twitter — its service agreement with Twitter was officially severed, setting Bluesky on its own path.

So what makes Bluesky different? The company has a great explainer comic that compares social media to islands.

We can think of traditional social media platforms as isolated islands. Each time you join a new platform — whether it’s Twitter, TikTok, or Facebook — you have to start from scratch: new account, new network, new settings, new content. Worse, your data is owned by the company running that platform, and there’s no way to take it with you if you leave. After all, these platforms don’t communicate with each other; they compete.

The idea behind Bluesky was to break down these barriers by creating an “open social protocol for public conversation.” The company developed the AT Protocol, “an open source toolbox for building social apps that can all talk to each other.” This means you can create an account that moves with you from app to app. Customize your experience on one, switch platforms if you want, and take all your content, network, and settings with you. No more starting over!

Built on the AT Protocol is Bluesky, the microblogging app. This is the platform that emulates classic Twitter — but with a few differences.

How Bluesky Works

At first glance, Bluesky feels a lot like the Twitter we all know. You follow people, scroll through short-form content, and engage in conversations. What sets it apart, though, is how much control users have over their experience. Let’s explore some notable elements of Bluesky.

Feeds: Choose What You See

Bluesky offers a basic reverse-chronological feed showing posts from people you follow — just like the early days of social media. There’s also a Discover feed, where Bluesky’s algorithm suggests posts it thinks you’ll like.

What Bluesky uniquely offers, though, is custom Feeds. Anyone can create and share a feed focused on a specific topic, content type, or community. Want a timeline full of cat memes? Breaking news? Niche industry updates? You can build (or follow) a feed for it and easily switch between them.

Lists & Starter Packs

Bluesky’s Lists lets you organize accounts into groups, whether it’s favorite creators, industry experts, or even a list of people you prefer to block. Lists can be private or public, giving users more control over content curation.

For new users, there are also Starter Packs to help you hit the ground running. These curated collections recommend up to 150 users and three custom feeds to follow, making it easy to build your timeline.

High Level of Customization

Bluesky gives users control over how replies, threads, reposts, and quotes appear in their timeline, allowing you to tailor your experience. Content moderation is also in your hands. You can set up custom keyword filters and control who interacts with you.

Profiles & Verification

Profiles come with the usual features — profile picture, banner image, and bio — but there’s no verification checkmark like on X. Instead, Bluesky allows users to verify their identity by linking their handle to a web domain, which works as a built-in authenticity check since only domain owners can set it up. For example, Netflix uses @netflix.com.

Bluesky vs. X (formerly Twitter): Key Differences

Since we’ve covered a lot of ground so far, here’s a quick summary of the differences between Bluesky and X (Twitter):

Protocol vs. Platform

• Bluesky: Built on the AT Protocol, Bluesky is a decentralized platform, meaning users have ownership of their accounts and data. If another social media app adopts the same protocol, you can switch platforms easily.
• X: A centralized platform controlled entirely by a single company. If Twitter shuts down, you lose everything. There’s no way to transfer your profile elsewhere.

Algorithm & Feeds

• Bluesky: Offers multiple feed options, including a reverse chronological timeline of people you follow, a discovery feed with recommended content, and custom feeds that anyone can create. Users can easily switch between feeds and tailor their experience.
• X: Offers two feed options: a reverse chronological timeline of people you follow and a “For you” timeline that uses a proprietary algorithm to decide what content you see. The algorithm is opaque, meaning users don’t have much control over it.

Verification

• Bluesky: No checkmark verification system, but users can verify themselves by linking their profile to a domain name. Since only the domain owner can set this up, it works as a built-in way to confirm identity.
• X: Moved to a pay-for-verification model with X Premium. Anyone willing to pay a monthly fee can get a blue checkmark. Gold checkmarks indicate an official organization. Gray checkmarks indicate a government/multilateral organization or official.

Monetization

• Bluesky: No ads or paid subscriptions. It’s funded through grants, investors, and public funding. The team has mentioned plans for future monetization, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
• X: Makes money through “the sale of advertising services, the sale of data licensing and other services, and the Premium subscription.”

Analytics

• Bluesky: Doesn’t offer built-in analytics, but because the platform is open-source, third-party tools have emerged to provide insights.
• X: X does offer native analytics, but only to X Premium subscribers. Professional accounts are also supposed to get a performance dashboard, but the rollout has been slow and not everyone has access.

Who’s On Bluesky?

So, who exactly is flocking to Bluesky? As of January 2025, the platform has over 30 million users. Many of the users, from actress Gabrielle Union to entrepreneur Mark Cuban, seem to have migrated from X (Twitter), often in response to unpopular updates.

For instance, you can see in Rival IQ’s social analytics dashboard that Bluesky saw a massive jump in Twitter engagement in October 2024. This coincides with Twitter announcing that the “Block” feature would change: If your Twitter account is set to public, any user you block will now be able to see your content. They just won’t be able to engage with it directly.

This X update was highly controversial, with users concerned about it enabling harassment, stalking, and other dangerous behaviors. In response, Bluesky cheekily highlighted how it approached online safety.

That first tweet ended up being Bluesky’s most engaging post of 2024, earning a 23% engagement rate by follower!

Soon after, Bluesky signups skyrocketed, with another uptick occurring after the U.S. presidential election. The app celebrated 1,000,000 people joining in a single day in November 2024 and, according to a live tracker, Bluesky is currently growing at a rate of one new user per second.

Of course, compared to X’s estimated 335 million monthly active users and Meta’s Threads 320 million, Bluesky is still a relatively small player in the social media arena. But it’s attracting a diverse and influential crowd of journalists, artists, political leaders, and more. Even brands are making their way over, testing the waters of this decentralized space. It’s quickly becoming a home for thought leaders, creatives, and people looking for a place to make meaningful digital connections.

The Wrap Up

In short, Bluesky is offering a refreshed take on social media, combining the familiar feel of old-school Twitter with decentralization and greater user control. With custom feeds, an open protocol, and a growing number of thought leaders making the switch, it’s an exciting platform — but it also has a long way to go if it wants to catch up to the sheer size of X or Threads. Either way, Bluesky is changing the conversation around what social media can be. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it.

The post What Is Bluesky? Is This Social Media Platform an Alternative to X (Twitter)? appeared first on Rival IQ.

From private profile dashboards to in-depth private post analysis to private Post Tagging (including LinkedIn!), we’ve got everything you need to go deep in analyzing your brand’s posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Here are some the features we think you’ll be most excited about:

• Your brand’s social media impact is easier than ever to understand with new Profile Dashboards for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
• Use in-depth private post analysis to see exactly what’s working on social with improved search, hashtag and Popular Topics filtering, and more.
• Use private Post Tagging to analyze reach, impressions, video views, and more private social metrics to monitor what matters most.
• We’re rolling out every kind of engagement rate, more customizable columns in your favorite panels, and an easy-to-search metrics finder so you can measure what’s important to you.

Read on for the full list of brand-new functionality in Rival IQ to help you master your private social analytics!

Watch Product Manager Tiffany Lin break down these features

See the video

Understand your impact with new profile dashboards

We expanded and reorganized profile dashboards for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to give you total access to your profile metrics.

For every channel, we’ve separated profile and post metrics to make it easier than ever to see how you’re doing on social. Never miss a follow, CTA click, or critical demographic information with new private profile tabs.

Profile-level engagement metrics

We’ve loaded up your Page/Profile tab with new views and breakdowns for insight into who’s engaging with your profile and how.

This new panel breaks down your Page Views and Page CTA clicks by day. Identify exactly which days are resulting in lots of Page Views to see how seasonality, ad campaigns, or dynamic content affect your traffic on social.

We break down your Page CTA clicks by type so you can see if you’re seeing more fans looking for your website or directions than usual. Seeing a day with tons of views and CTA clicks? Be sure to click back into Social Posts to see what’s driving so much traffic to your Facebook Page.

See how your new Page Fans are finding you day by day for even more insight into whether or not your ads and organic content are working for you.

Check out the summary and daily breakdown of your Page’s impressions. See if your paid content is resulting in more or fewer impressions than your organic posts to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

Location and demographics

Get to know your fans and followers with advanced demographics for your handles.

Break down your fan and follower locations by country and city to see how far your content is reaching on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Spotting a bunch of new fans or followers in a city or country you didn’t expect? Try investing in content or ad campaigns that target that geo for even more impact.

You can now analyze your followers’ industries and job functions for more insight into the verticals and roles that are engaging most with your content.

Fan/follower locations, gender, job functions, and industries are available throughout your private data in Rival IQ.

See what’s working with better post analysis

Introducing powerful new analysis features for your private social data including analysis of popular topics, hashtags, and post times—all using your connected data like impressions, clicks, views, and more.

Filter posts, tweets, and updates by type

Fans of Social Posts in public data will be stoked to learn that you can now search all of your private posts by hashtag, keyword, or post type for even more insight into what’s working. Search or filter just about anything and we’ll make sure all of your private metrics reflect your query.

Use the new post type filter to select a specific post type, like a photo, and we’ll instantly update all your stats to reflect your photo performance. Now you can see post counts, impressions, engagement totals, your best photos by type, and tons more of your favorite private metrics without lifting a finger.

Find engaging phrases with Popular Topics

Let the robots do the hard work for you! Our natural language processing (NLP) pulls out common words and phrases from your private posts to help you see what’s grabbing the most engagement.

Easily toggle between words and phrases with high engagement totals, high impressions, high engagement rate by impression and more to see what’s doing best for you on social. Popular Topics is available throughout Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics, and LinkedIn Analytics.

Analyze private metrics with Post Tags

Post Tagging helps you analyze exactly what matters most to you, so we’re thrilled to roll it out for private posts–and LinkedIn! We hope this update will help you see exactly what’s happening in your posts by analyzing your reach, impressions, video views, and other private metrics using Post Tags.

If you’ve been using Post Tagging for your public posts, we’ll bring over all your currently tagged posts and future posts using Auto-Tag Rules. Choose from our dropdown of more than 130 private post metrics to go beyond engagement totals to measure your impressions, reach, and more.

Welcome to the Post Tags family, LinkedIn! You can now add tags to any of your LinkedIn updates and analyze using all the in-depth metrics available for Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, and Twitter Analytics. Just click the “+” button for any post on any channel to choose from an existing tag or create a new one.

Next-level metric customization options

We know many of you work hard to customize your social media metrics in Rival IQ, so we’re rolling out tons of new tweaks to help you take more control over your data, like every kind of engagement rate, more customizable columns in your favorite panels, and an easy-to-search metrics finder.

We now display engagement rate by impression, follower, and reach so you know exactly how your content is resonating with your fans.

For the same post, the engagement rate by Page Fan is just 0.31%, the engagement rate by reach is a whopping 6.45%, and the engagement rate by impression is 4.76%. The details of your analysis really matter, and now you have more control than ever over how you’re analyzing.

Can you spot the “min. Tweets” dropdown at the top right corner of the above panel? You can now set a minimum number of tweets, updates, or posts to make sure that the Popular Topics or hashtags you’re reviewing in private data are of the highest relevance to your brand.

Even more good news: customize your columns in just about any table throughout the app–no need to be constrained by our defaults! And don’t forget to use our easy-as-pie metrics search dropdown when customizing tables or custom dashboards to find exactly the metric you’re looking for.

How to access new private social data in Rival IQ

Private social data is now available in all customer and trial accounts in Rival IQ. Just access any channel in “Your Private Data” to get your hands on all the latest metrics.

Remember that private data is available only to those with admin or analyst access for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn and isn’t available competitively, so get ready to dive deep on your brand’s performance. And a quick reminder that you can analyze multiple handles of private data simultaneously with admin or analyst access.

Wrapping it up

Hungry for even more ways to master private social data in Rival IQ? We’ve got a webinar for that: New Private Social Dashboards For Advanced Reporting.

If you’re ready for even more detail about this feature launch, get reading our help article.

If you’re not already a Rival IQ customer, go grab a free trial and check all of this out!

The post New and Improved Private Social Dashboards appeared first on Rival IQ.

On Wednesday April 4th, Facebook moved to restrict data access to various parts of their platform, most notably many parts of the Instagram’s platform API. In an update blog post, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer described the Instagram change and the other eight areas Facebook is tightening access, including changes to the APIs for Events, Groups, and Pages. If you’re wondering what all of this means for you, fellow digital marketer, I think it’s useful to explain more fully what these changes to the Instagram Platform API mean.

How surprising was this move?

To begin, Facebook announced in January of 2018 that they were going to deprecate (end) support for pieces of their legacy Instagram Platform API. In July, they were scheduled to remove access to data about followed and followed-by users. In December, they were scheduled to remove access to the ability to read public profile and post content. That latter piece sentence about not being able to read public profile and post content is the thing that caught our eye at Rival IQ, since this is how we help you track Instagram data in your landscapes.

It is important to remember that when Facebook released this deprecation notice, they had already released the Instagram Graph API, meant to be a replacement for some of the legacy functionality in the Instagram Platform API. In their deprecation notice, they reminded developers:

With this set of changes, Facebook is aligning the relationship between 3rd-party developers, users, and businesses on Instagram to more closely mirror how Facebook works. For much of recent history, basic analytics for Facebook Business Pages have been available via API, and deeper analytics have been available to page owners via the Insights API. Through the new Instagram Graph API, similar level of analytics for Instagram Business Profiles are available.

If I’m a Rival IQ customer, what’s it all mean?

At Rival IQ, our product is all about tracking public entities in the form of businesses, universities, public figures, etc. For our customers, these changes mean that going forward, we’ll be able to track Business Profiles on Instagram in your landscapes, similar to how we’ve always done. Since our beginning, we’ve only tracked Facebook Business Pages and not individuals. We’ll now fully apply that business-only model of data ingestion to Instagram as well. If you have been tracking Instagram users that do not have business profiles, we’ll be unable to ingest data for those users from now on.

Facebook, in their update post, also discussed future changes to other Facebook APIs. One key step they’re taking is to review existing app providers that consume a wide range of APIs. Rival IQ, like all analytics providers in the digital marketing space, will be required to be re-reviewed during the next 90 days. We’re not anticipating any issues at this time regarding the already-announced future changes.

Of course, with the ongoing fallout from the scandal regarding Cambridge Analytica, Facebook is working hard to convince their users that they believe privacy and data security are important. Any of us in the social media space would be foolish to think that the world won’t continue to evolve. We’re committed to data privacy and the ethical use of data, and though we were frustrated by the timing and lack of notice regarding the recent changes, the reasoning behind the changes makes sense.

As always, we’re here to help you through the evolution of the market, particularly as it pertains to analytics and data. Don’t hesitate to be in touch. We’d love to talk more about the opportunities ahead. If have any questions, I’d encourage you to get in touch with us by email ( support@rivaliq.com ) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/rivaliq).

The post Facebook Restricts Instagram Data Access. What Does it Mean? appeared first on Rival IQ.

According to Adweek, one of the main roadblocks to a successful influencer campaign is connecting with influencers. Seventy-five percent of those surveyed said identifying the right influencers was their most significant challenge. In 2017, 84% of marketing teams allocated resources toward influencer marketing strategies. With 71% of consumers stating that they’re more likely to make a purchase based on a social media reference, that trend is expected to grow in 2018. Marketers need more tools to make this process faster and easier, so we built Discover.

Marketers can use Rival IQ’s Discover to build an influencer and brand advocate program and realize improved social media strategy. With Discover, we’re surfacing strategic opportunities with Twitter and Instagram.

You’ll be able to:

• Identify and evaluate influencers and brand advocates. Discover and engage the right people who align with your brand based on the Rival IQ Influencer Rating.
• Amplify content. Find related hashtags to expand reach and engagement.
• Reveal curated content opportunities. Identify content sources and topics that are engaging audiences.

With Discover, you can find and analyze influencers, hashtags, and content like never before. Learn more about all the ways you can use Discover for a better social media strategy in the Complete User Guide.

New Feature Lineup:

You’re stretched for time, and building an influencer or brand advocate program is only possible with time investment. And we know the hardest step in that process is identifying and evaluating potential influencers.

With Discover, we’re bringing you the data you need to narrow your prospects and analyze their performance. This robust tool empowers you to dive deeper and identify previously unknown influencers and fans. Here’s a list of the awesome new things you can get done in a snap.

New Influencer Score

In Discover, each potential influencer receives an influencer score under the “Potential Influence” column on a range from 0 – 4. This proprietary approach takes into account their number of followers and engagement. It’s just another way we’re working to make identifying the best influencers simple and straightforward.

A screenshot from Rival IQ’s Discover tool that shows where you can find the Influencer Score on the far right-hand side.

Real-Time Search Outside Your Landscape

Searching via Twitter or Instagram in Discover is going to give you the most recent relevant posts based on your search. For Twitter, we’ll provide the most current 1000 tweets from the last seven days. For Instagram, we’ll show you the most recent 500 posts.

Influencer Profile Analytics

Within Discover, you’ll be able to get a quick highlight of a potential influencer’s performance in the last week. This analysis gives you an immediate sense of the influencer’s potential for your brand and helps you keep tabs on the impact your current influencers are making.

Most Engaging Posts

Based on the search, we surface the top performing posts by engagement. And just like you can elsewhere in Rival IQ, you can see this in a list view, or show posts with photos as a grid.

Coincidental Hashtags

See which hashtags other people, influencers, and organizations are using together and how they perform. This section of the tool breaks out engagement rate, the number of unique hashtags, and which hashtags drive the highest engagement in social posts. This real-time analysis will help your team make last-minute shifts to help amplify and extend your reach on Instagram and Twitter.

URL Tracking

Identify who is sharing your content or which sources of content are most popular. You can even search by specific links, allowing your team to understand which pages of your site, like blogs posts or product pages, are being shared on Twitter and Instagram.

Use URL tracking to determine who is sharing your blog content, a giveaway, or product. This extra level of exposure means you now have a better story to share about how social is amplifying your content.

Discover from Rival IQ is live and available in Rival IQ’s Free Trial. Join us for a webinar next Tuesday, December 12th at 10:00 AM PT called Finding Influencers and Analyzing Any Topic with Discover as Seth Bridges walks you through the new features and how to use Discover.

The post Identify Influencers and Brand Advocates with the New Discover Tool appeared first on Rival IQ.

We are incredibly excited to announce that HubSpot customers can now leverage Rival IQ’s social media analytics for free thanks to our integration partnership with HubSpot! We pulled the troops together to get this integration up and running just in time for INBOUND, HubSpot’s annual conference.

Free Rival IQ Social Analytics for HubSpot

Exclusive to HubSpot customers, this offer of a free lifetime subscription to Rival IQ delivers a powerful solution to refine the social component of inbound marketing, benchmark social performance against direct competitors, strengthen social marketing strategy, and discover actionable insights.

“Rival IQ provides HubSpot customers with an opportunity to benefit from meaningful social analytics, helping them identify content that resonates with their followers, which dovetails with the way they leverage HubSpot to optimize their inbound marketing strategy,” said Kevin Raheja, director of strategic partnerships at HubSpot. “Understanding social data helps marketers better manage their brand, programs, and campaigns across their social and inbound channels.”

Social marketing + @HubSpot friends, get amazing social analytics from @RivalIQ for free. https://t.co/cQ6b8FKZIL #INBOUND17 pic.twitter.com/OKdPfKqIWM

— Seth Bridges (@seth_bridges) September 26, 2017

Rival IQ enables marketers and brand managers to identify engaging content by providing critical competitive social insights, extending the value of their existing Hubspot subscription. Creating your free account and join the thousands of marketers who consider Rival IQ their secret weapon. 

“Rival IQ’s social media analytics complement the robust reporting on inbound marketing already available in HubSpot,” said John Gallagher, head of marketing at Rival IQ. “With free lifetime account access to Rival IQ analytics, HubSpot customers can immediately begin benchmarking social performance to the competition and start making more data-driven decisions based on comprehensive channel-by-channel engagement analysis.”

Get your free Rival IQ account

Do I qualify for a free Rival IQ account?

Active HubSpot customers who are subscribed to a Basic, Pro or Enterprise HubSpot account can sign up between now and September 30, 2017, for access to Rival IQ social media analytics for as long as they maintain a paid account with HubSpot.  

How do I access my free competitive social analytics?

Qualifying HubSpot customers can access their free Rival IQ social analytics by logging into Rival IQ with their HubSpot credentials at https://www.rivaliq.com/product/HubSpot/

Step 1: Follow link

Step 2: Click “Connect Rival IQ and HubSpot”

Step 3: Read through permissions. Click “Grant access”.

Step 4: Indicate whether your company is a brand or agency, then enter the website URL of your top 3 competitors, influencers, or any other organizations you’d like to compare your social performance with. Click “Continue” when you’re finished.

Step 5: Once Rival IQ has finished populating your landscape data, you’ll be redirected to the Rival IQ dashboard where you can dig into the data! Enjoy!

My account is set up. What Happens Now?

Within Rival IQ you’ll track yourself and up to 4 competitors across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Going forward you’ll receive regular emails that include reports like Social Summary Report, Cross-Channel Performance Report, Social Post Report as well as intermittent alerts with noteworthy activity in your landscape.

Rival IQ gives you the power – you’ll be able to:

• Improve your social strategy with the right data for actionable insights to increase engagement, traffic, customers, and revenue
• Predict social performance, maximizing your social success
• Outshine your competitors with insight over your industry, performance, and strategy

Put your social analytics to use

Start by analyzing what social content is working across your landscape, and discover what you can do to drive your social strategy and tactics.

Social Posts summarizes social activity and engagement by pulling every post in your competitive landscape and presenting it in one comprehensive view. Use the breakdowns that matter most to you — hashtag, emoji, keyword/phrase, and more. Get started with social posts now.

Reach your goals with Rival IQ. Start benchmarking your social and understand how others are finding success with social media. Landscape Comparison gives you a solid comparison of the overall social performance. Use it to determine where your brand is compared to your competitors. See your comparison now.

The post Free Rival IQ Social Analytics for HubSpot Customers appeared first on Rival IQ.

Boasting over 79,000 students between its two core campuses, it hosts sixteen highly-ranked colleges and schools. Between respected research faculty, students, and alumni and nearly 200 team championships it’s no surprise the Hoosiers have much to be proud of.

Show Worth

Like any university, it’s always a good day on campus when you’re beating your rivals. For Indiana University, having the ability to report on how they stack up to the competition on social media isn’t just about bragging rights. “Our engagement metrics speak for themselves,” says Kristofer Karol, director social media strategy, “with Rival IQ we can show our worth.” In the last few years the marketing team has grown, and with growth is the necessity to prove value. In a competitive industry such as higher education, showing the strength of Indiana’s social channels is compelling.

Congratulations from Hoosier Nation to the 2017 UCA D1A All-Girl National Champions: our Indiana University Cheerleading Program! ? This makes an amazing 5 wins in 6 years for the Crimson squad! Go Hoosiers!​ ?

A post shared by Indiana University (@iubloomington) on Jan 19, 2017 at 12:51pm PST

But Indiana recognizes they can’t always be on top – so it’s important to identify not only what they do well, but also where opportunities reside and how to tackle them.

Improve Content

“Rival IQ gives us the data to determine what resonates and where to invest our limited resources,” said Karol. With a growing team of three full-time social media marketers and student interns who work alongside the communications, creative, and web teams, organizing and prioritizing the best content from multiple sources is a challenge. Many of the university’s schools and colleges have their own marketing and communication teams which mean Karol’s team must balance their content with the content from other departments. It’s the hardest decision for Karol and his staff, but one that is made easier with Rival IQ.

Indiana University has been able to combine their research with the data from Rival IQ to hone in on the most successful social media content. The data backs up their strategy of live-tweeting events and, using video and infographic-style images to increase their likelihood of being shared. This information helps them report back to leadership and balance the needs of multiple campuses and his department. Identifying successful content has enabled the team to focus more on how to do more with what they have – creating content that resonates across channels and maximizing its value.

Save Time

Before using Rival IQ, Karol’s team tracked their own metrics manually. However, he knew that to get a better handle on the competition, they were either going to need more bandwidth or find a solution that did the work of a market researcher. Without the ability at the time to grow his team, he needed a tool that could gain insight, and easily report on social activity. This is where Rival IQ stepped in. “The interface is straightforward,” says Karol “it’s easy to pull data and make sense of it.” Karol was confident that his team would be able to use Rival IQ and understand the data.

“Our engagement metrics speak for themselves,” says Kristofer Karol, director social media strategy, “with Rival IQ we can show our worth.”

Indiana University refuses to fall into the social media traps that plague many campus marketing teams. As they strive to engage their diverse audience, the social media team focuses on leaving behind the typical ‘travel brochure’ style of so many university social channels. As they continue to beat out other universities in their region, they rely on Rival IQ to help shout their successes and build an effective strategy for continuous improvements.

Learn More

Discover how your school is doing on social media in our latest Industry Benchmark Report. You can download your free copy here.

See how you're doing on social with benchmarks that matter.

Download the full report

The post Indiana University Masters Social with Rival IQ appeared first on Rival IQ.

While social media is responsible for much of that fragmentation, it’s also a useful platform for building a dynamic and engaged community.

We wanted to find out which publishers are killing it when it comes to social – Who’s growing their audience? Which organizations see the most consistent engagement? What sort of content are they posting? How can other publishers use this data to help them build smarter social media strategies?

We used Rival IQ to analyze 662,000 social media posts across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram from the top 50 legitimate news organizations in the United States across the 90 day period commencing February 1, 2017. What we found may surprise you.

Key Takeaways

1. The news outlets with the most followers performed the worst when scored on engagement

The top three news organizations with the biggest audiences, BBC, CNN and the New York Times, didn’t even make it into the top 20 when it comes to engagement. Incongruency between audiences and engagement rates is a trend we see across most industries we study, but it’s even more pronounced in the news business.

2. Smaller, newer organizations like Mic and Axios are winning the engagement game

Founded in 2011, Mic has quickly grown its following and is leading the pack on engagement rates. Axios, founded in 2016, is nipping at Mic’s heels in third place. It’s no surprise that younger, most Millennial and Gen Z-focused organizations are finding unique ways to engage with their followers – and win new ones.

Both Mic and Axios tend to use more videos and photos in their posts, as well as occasionally boosting their Facebook posts to help them broaden their reach and acquire fans (and subscribers).

3. Instagram is where the engagement is – but not where the media is

Instagram’s average engagement rate across the top 50 news outlets was 9x the Facebook rate, and 16x the Twitter rate (Instagram 0.66%, Facebook 0.07%, Twitter 0.04%). However, the organizations we studied tended to focus the majority of their activity on Twitter (67% of posts) and Facebook (43% of posts).

There’s a huge opportunity for media companies to create engaged Instagram communities that, in turn, build loyalty to the brand.

Your Free Report:

The full report includes 38 pages of in-depth analysis, best practice recommendations and a complete ranking of the top 50 companies we studied. Download it today for free.

The post The News & Media Social Engagement Report appeared first on Rival IQ.

Metrics That Sell

Defining your brand’s social best practices is an endeavor, testing the strength of any marketer. It goes beyond understanding best practices on each social channel to fully identifying and understanding the tactical approach best suited for your brand’s social presence.

For Kevin Darst, New Belgium Brewing’s digital and media manager, it’s gotten a lot easier. What is typically a daunting process, no longer has to be. “Getting data the right way speeds the process,” says Darst “Rival IQ delivers the data in a convenient way, which significantly speeds up the process.” Data that gives Darst the insight to create a content strategy built upon New Belgium best practices. He looks deeper into the data to uncover why people follow and why they engage with specific posts.

For New Belgium’s social followers it’s about the brand, and what the brand represents. Darst’s team translates that into high-quality product shots, engaging employee stories, and advocacy efforts.

“Using Rival IQ is like having an extra marketer on staff who can take a deeper dive into trends that we’re seeing and determine if we’re directly influencing social performance or if there’s an external force moving the needle,” said Darst. “What’s great about Rival IQ is that you can spot trends in algorithm changes. For instance, if engagement suddenly drops, we can see if it only happened to us, or if everyone in our landscape experienced the same trend.”

With Rival IQ, the numbers tell the story and help the team continue to roll in the right direction. With their engagement rates increasing by over 150% on Facebook, and 40% on Twitter, it’s the secret ingredient making it all come together.

Patterns That Pop

Keeping a close eye on top beverage brands is part of creating the New Belguim content strategy. Outside of regularly reporting on their content, Darst relies on the breakout post alerts. “The alert emails from Rival IQ are extremely valuable,” says Darst. “They help me spot patterns in successful content and keep tabs on their social campaigns.”

If anybody out there knows Jason Momoa please tell him that: 1. He has excellent taste in beer. 2. We agree that emergency cookies are a great idea. 3. He’s got friends at New Belgium if he ever swings through Colorado or North Carolina. #SomeoneTellTheMan

A post shared by New Belgium Brewing (@newbelgium) on Feb 19, 2017 at 5:53pm PST

Identifying patterns in the competition’s success gives New Belgium an opportunity to re-evaluate their own content. The team considers their own ability to play on that content. They ask themselves:

• What is it about that content that makes it work?
• What is it about that content that makes it work?
• Can they tell that story in a New Belgium voice?

Other patterns emerge as well, like what is no one else doing? With Rival IQ, New Belgium can spot the gaps and capitalize on what’s missing. They can take what other have tried or missed and do it better.

Benchmarking All of It

When you’re out to tell great stories like New Belgium, engagement matters. Understanding what is relevant to your audience is critical, but how does that success look?

20 years ago, before sour beer was a thing in the U.S., our brewmaster, Peter Bouckaert, created La Folie, a sour brown ale from our then-small collection of oak barrels. What did that mean for American craft beer? Our friends @foodandwine say it was one of the 25 most important craft beers ever brewed, and we’re honored to share that list with some beer icons. See La Folie and the full list in the link in our profile. Got a favorite New Belgium beer? Comment and let us know. #beer #craftbeer #sourbeer #puckerup #sourpower #NewBelgium #PeterBouckaert #Instabeer #LaFolie

A post shared by New Belgium Brewing (@newbelgium) on Jan 27, 2017 at 11:01am PST

“It’s easy to get stuck comparing yourself to yourself,” said Kevin Darst, digital and media manager, New Belgium Brewing. “If you’re only analyzing your business’ metrics, that data isn’t informing you about your progress in the market or the industry. With benchmarks from Rival IQ, we can compare our performance against industry leaders, premium beverage brands, and other craft brewers. Benchmarks give social metrics power; a reference point.”

Until adding Rival IQ, success was a measurement of improvement over time. The continuous improvement still matters, but now the team can layer in competitive benchmarking. But New Belgium doesn’t limit their comparison to the top beer brands – they want to measure against the top beverage brands. Rival IQ alleviates the gap in competitive benchmarking.

“The process was quick, easy to set up, the price is right, and Rival IQ does exactly what we need,” said Darst. New Belgium now can understand their performance compared to other top performing beverage brands.

New Belgium isn’t just another beer brand. Their fans love them for the beer, for the company ethos, and so much more. This employee-owned company has set forth to blaze a new trail, and their social strategy reflects that. Those are the stories they seek, and New Belgium strives to tell those stories and live up to their fan’s expectations. The data says they’re successful, and we foresee a winning streak for New Belgium Brewing.

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