Taming the Social Media Beast - Social Media Analytics for Marketers

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Taming the social media beastMarianne Madden

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The Challenge

How to quantify relationships,communities, influence and engagement

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The Challenge

How to stay focused on meaningful metrics and ignore the noise --

in the midst of hoopla, skepticism or impatience

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The Challenge

How to draw a straight line from social media activities to profits

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The Challenge

How to find out what’s working and what’s not –

so you can refine and optimize

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The Challenge

How to set appropriate expectations

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But first…

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Criticism

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• Bad execution• Locked children out• Encouraged false conversations

• “The problem is that Skittles attempted to enter the social network without really engaging in it”

Effects

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It all begs the question…

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What were they really trying to accomplish?

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How much time will it take for a social media strategy to help my business?

The POST Process

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• Define target audience (People)• Define Objectives• Define Strategy– Rules of engagement– Assign responsibilities– Analytics tracking – Etc.

• Define appropriate Technologies• Launch• Measure results, optimize, repeat

Morals of the story

• Take the time to nail strategy/planning

• Quality of execution is everything

• Launch of social media engagement is only the beginning

And whatever you do…

Don’t give in to execs who try to rush deployment

Which metrics can help me assess my social media campaign for each type of objective: awareness, acquisition and retention?

Prioritizing Metrics

Measuring awareness from SM

• The basics: traffic, links, rankings, time interacting with you/your site

• Spread/sharing of assets: use tracking codes• Sustained increase in keyword volume for your

brand • Online buzz: use monitoring solution like

Radian6• Social bookmarking• Interaction with widgets/apps

Measuring acquisition from SM

• Direct links/sales from SM efforts, shared content, etc.

• Conversion rates from SM; value of SM customers

• Email newsletter subscribers, RSS subscribers, etc.

• Gain understanding of who you’re reaching via SM that you couldn’t reach via traditional means

Measuring retention

• Audience empowerment• Purchase rate/value and lifetime value of

customers from SM• Quantity and quality of conversations– How many customers are having issues resolved

through SM?• Ability to answer questions, nip customer

service issues in the bud

Measuring engagement

• Joining the community• Submitting a comment/rating/review• Contributing UGC, incl. questions/replies• Saving a social bookmark• Favoriting videos• RSS subscribers• Clickstream data

Measuring ORM from SM

• SERPs• Content of online chatter• How your content is tagged • Keyword trends

Rules of thumb

Define concrete KPIs beforehand; zero in on your real objectives

Rules of thumb

Allow campaign (and its KPIs) to evolve

Rules of thumb

Look at the campaign holistically

Rules of thumb

Keep your eyes peeled for unintended consequences

Rules of thumb

Use SM to gain an understanding of who you’re reaching

Pesky qualitative considerations

Engagement Audience empowerment

InfluenceCommunityTrustTransparencyInstant feedbackAbility to flip the scriptCoolness factor

How to beat back the monster

• Focus on what’s important, and what you can reliably

measure

• Study others

• Do projections

What’s important? ROI!

ROI =

Value of benefit --------------------------------------------------------Planning and development + Ongoing costs

Projecting ROI of a forum

Baseline numbers:• Number of customers• Number of customers participating in forum (~1% annually)• Additional customers viewing content (Spectators) (~5% annually)

Then estimate:• Total support calls these customers would have made (~1 call per customer)• Support calls avoided b/c of forum (assume 33% find answers on forum)• Cost savings from avoided calls (assume $10 per call)

Projecting ROI of ratings/reviews

Baseline numbers: • Site visitors• Sales at typical conversion rate and transaction value Then estimate:• Visitors seeing reviews (~20%)• Increased conversion rate and transaction value• Net additional sales

Projecting ROI of a company blog

• Advertising value (visibility/traffic)• PR value (press stories written about/driven from

blog content)• Word of mouth value (referring posts)• Support value (support calls avoided)• Research value (customer insights)

Parting thoughts

Measurement must evolve beyond web analytics and now focus on community insights.”

- Jeremiah Owyang

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

- Albert Einstein

Thank you

Marianne Madden

Marianne.madden@gearyi.com

619-756-6729

Twitter: melondrama

References

• Chart, slide 18

• Slides 32-35: Groundswell