#SnapChart: how excitement about Payday builds to that (every) Friday feeling

1st April 2016

As it's payday weekend we thought to shed some light on how people are talking about 'making it rain'.

We tracked people talking about payday over a period of three months to see whether there was a correlation in volume of mentions at the end of the month. What we found, however, was that people were talking about payday at the end of every week. Yep, excitement about payday steadily builds to that (every) Friday feeling.

Finance social data: Payday

We were surprised to see that the activity graph (above) reveals the volume of mentions peaking at the end of each week, not at the end of each month.

The graph also shows that conversations around payday decrease dramatically over the Christmas and New Year period. As expected, the volume of mentions steadily rises throughout January until the conversation crescendoes at the end of the month. Considering that the majority of people are paid just before Christmas and have to wait a very long month until their next pay, it's no surprise that mentions of payday skyrocket at this time.

We zoomed in on the activity graph to provide a snapshot of what the conversation looks like on a weekly basis:

Finance payday volume mentions weekly

The weekly activity graph reveals how the momentum of people talking about payday steadily gathers pace as Friday draws closer. This suggests that although most people are paid every month, they're not paid on the same day and not at the end of the month. And, of course, there are those who are paid weekly.

When it comes to talking about how industries can benefit from the use social data, the finance sector is often dismissed. The two activity graphs (a small slice of a large finance dataset) shows that people do talk about their finances online. It proves that finance organisations can draw huge insights from analysing social media, just like every other industry.

If you work in finance and want to get to grips with understanding audience insights, or you'd simply like to find out more about Pulsar, send an email to: [email protected].

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