Social Media Measurement

Shelby Thayer

Joshua Ellis

Outreach Marketing and

Communications

Where do these numbers come from?

How do these companies measure social media?

Question #1: Do you measure other parts of your business?

Social media is not the only marketing channel.

. . .

Social media is not a traditional marketing channel.

Social media does cost money – don’t forget about soft costs (resources, time, effort).

What is Social Media?

You’re seriously asking me this question?

“Dude, I’m the mayor of Otto’s. I know what social media is.”

Is it worth it?

Social Media Measurement

Source: 360 Digital Connections, 100 Ways To Measure Social Media, David Berkowitz

Let’s begin at the beginning

Why do you use social media? What is your goal?

Only 3 True Business Goals

Source: Social Media Metrics, Jim Sterne

Social media goals

Example goals:• Increase brand awareness.• Increase student enrollment.• Decrease helpdesk call volume.

How can I tell if I’m achieving those goals?

Key Performance Indicators:

Increase brand awareness• # of brand mentions• Share of voice (brand mentions/total (brand + competitor

mentions)• Reach

Increase student enrollment• % conversions from social media referrers• % increase in student enrollment

Decrease helpdesk call volume• # subscribers• % volume decrease• % tickets resolved using social media

Social Media Measurement• Followers• Fans• Friends• # of Tweets• # of Retweets• Comments

• Enrollments• Ticket sales• Application submissions• Donations

Impact

ROI

Social media doesn’t happen in a vacuum

People know Penn State, they don’t necessarily know Penn State [enter college/unit/department name here].

We are one Penn State to the outside world.

Know what others are doing.

Also … social media doesn’t happen in a vacuum

Just like you aren’t the only one using social media on campus, it’s also not the only thing you’re doing.

A silver bullet doesn’t exist.

There is no one metric, one tool, one awesome, ridiculous app that we can use. It doesn’t exist.

Steps to Measurement

Monitoring - Reputation

What are people saying about you? What are people saying about your competitors?Who are the influencers?

• Google Alerts• Radian6• Alterian SM2

Monitoring - Sentiment

• The X course at Penn State was awesome!

• The X course at Penn State was terrible!

• The X course at Penn State wasn't bad.

• I'm not going to say that the X course at Penn State sucked because it didn't.

Impact

Friends, followers, fans (likes), reach, retweets, tweet recency, tweet

frequency, influencers …

Impact - Twitter

Friends, followers, fans FTW!

Impact - YouTube

• Demographics

• How are people watching?

• "Hot spots"

Impact - Facebook

• Geo and demographic information

• Number of comments, interactions, “post quality” and more.

Impact - Facebook

Google Analytics on Fan Pages• How do people use your fan page?• How do they engage?

Social media is more than just Twitter, YouTube and Facebook

Blog Measurement• What is the purpose of the blog (goal)?

• RSS click-throughs• # of subscribers• # of comments

Use Feedburner for RSS – integrates automatically with Google Analytics

Feedburner Stats

Google Analytics - Campaign

Impact ROI

Impact ROI

Impact isn’t ROI, but it is important!

Remember Your Goals and Key Performance Indicators

Increase brand awareness• # of brand mentions• Share of voice (brand mentions/total (brand +

competitor mentions)• Reach

Increase student enrollment• % conversions from social media referrers• % increase in student enrollment

Decrease helpdesk call volume• # subscribers• % volume decrease

Track everything.

Use URL shorteners and trackable URLs from your analytics tool. Always do both.

Tying Goals to Social MediaBeyond the click-through

• Use a social media segment (all traffic from social media sites).

• Use your trackable URLs all the time.

• You must be able to track to your goal.

But My Goal Happens Off-siteI can’t track to my goal.

Track to the point at which the user goes off your site.• Use GaAddons.js• Use onClick or onSubmit event handler• Put “thank you” page on your site, if

possible.• If third party site allows it, put tracking code

on their site.

Not all my conversations contain links. How do I measure a conversation?

Not only do most your conversations contain no links, but social media engagement isn’t linear.

Facebook >>> other site >>> other site >>> your site >>> take action

How does this tie back to Facebook?

View-through

Embed an impression call in an image tag using FBML.

Facebook >>> tagged w/ impression tag >>> site 1 >>> site 2 >>> site 3 >>> your site >>> your action

The problem with click-through and view-through

Click-through:• Not all conversations contain click-throughs • Not everyone clicks through on the link.

View-through:• How do you know that those Facebook

impressions caused the user to eventually go to your site and take an action?

Activities Timeline

Activities Timeline

Activities Timeline

Track and show everything (remember social media doesn’t exist in a vacuum).

Look for repeatable patterns.

Resources

Jim SterneSocial Media Metrics - How to Measure and

Optimize your Marketing Investment

http://delicious.com/shelbythayer/psuweb10-smm

Thank You

Shelby Thayer (@shelbythayer)Joshua Ellis (@apostate)

Questions?