Social Media Roundup: Reader Attention, the New Online Metric

How can you really tell whether readers love the content your association is putting online? In today’s Social Media Roundup, find out what’s fueling the latest accredited metric for evaluating online success:

A Better Way to Evaluate Your Content

“Fifty-five percent of all pageviews on the web get less than 15 seconds of attention.” Can a new metric change that? http://t.co/qtzmD9inr2  (opens in a new tab)

— Nieman Lab (@NiemanLab) September 29, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

In the race to better evaluate readership, the publishing industry has taken up page views, sessions, unique visitors, bounce rates, and more as their banner indications of success. Earlier this week, real-time analytics provider Chartbeat announced it would be promoting a new analytics focus: reader attention.

On Monday, Chartbeat received accreditation from the Media Rating Council  (opens in a new tab) for attention metrics for both online advertisements and content.

“Instead of trying to value ads on the fact that the page loaded with the ad on it, it’s: Can you accurately measure how long the actual amount of attention you’re able to capture and then value it? If you can do that, brands will more effectively allocate capital,” Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile told Fortune magazine  (opens in a new tab).

Chartbeat’s initiative is another effort to stamp out the prevalence of clickbait content online, following Facebook’s recent decision to alter its algorithm to deemphasize the popular online tactic.

The Event That Endured an Earthquake

How One Event Withstood a 6.0 Earthquake http://t.co/fsdf9EbK6S  (opens in a new tab) #eventplanning  (opens in a new tab) #eventprofs  (opens in a new tab)

— BizBash (@BizBash) October 1, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

Every event has mishaps, but few event planners must tackle a problem as big as an earthquake. BizBash reporter Alesandra Dubin takes a behind-the-scenes look  (opens in a new tab) at how the team responsible for the GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma  (opens in a new tab) race in Northern California handled the 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa Valley on August 24, just seven hours before the event was set to begin.

“Assessing the event’s production elements, the team checked every bolt and put a level to every span of truss to ensure nothing had shifted,” Dubin writes, chronicling the team’s efforts from 3:20 a.m. onward.

“The biggest takeaway is the responsibility we have to the people that attend our events. We need to make sure that the structures and other event elements we are building meet and exceed safety standards, even in an earthquake,” Liam Smith, president and creative director of event-producing firm Pen & Public, told Dubin  (opens in a new tab).

(lukas_zb/ThinkStock)