Strategic Social Media: Intro to Social Media Monitoring

Professor Matthew Kushin, PhDShepherd University | Department of Mass Communication | 2012

Review

Last Class Real Time Web

Today Content sites (blogs, websites)

Determining influence for sites

Traditional perspective Some sites get more traffic Perceived as more credible and authoritative

Case

Burt’s Bees Scenario Burt’s bees has new lip balm Wants to get the word out

Exercise

Would Does Burt’s Bees care about this site?

http://www.missnattysbeautydiary.com

Go to the site, you have 2 minutes with your team to decide yes or no – and what your reasoning is.

Influence?

Did you check her about page? Claims 250-300k page views (that’s not individual

people, but total views) per month

She did review their lip balm! http://www.missnattysbeautydiary.com/2012/04/revi

ew-burts-bees-lip-shimmer-lip-balm.html

Page Rank

Let’s look up her site ranking on Quantcast & Technorati: Technorati search Quantcast search

Limitations

Technorati and Qualtrics are very limited

Sites must be very popular to make ranking

Have to be registered to Qualtrics to be measured

The size of networks to cause effect is irrelevant. The idea that only large networks can cause effect is a myth. You must understand how influence spreads. Now, you can connect with people based on common interests through the influential voices who are frequently the hub of important conversations…”

Source: David Armano, Executive Vice President, Global Innovation & Integration at Edelman Digital, as cited in Solis (2012)

A Strategic Debate

Keep goals in mind Are you better to get the word out to a lot of sites

like missnattybeauty with a targeted audience in the interest graph?

Or to stick with the mass appeal, social graph of wanting as many people as possible to learn about the new balm?

It is a decision you must make, try, & evaluate

Influence Measurement Tools: Content Sites

Page Rank Sites Quantcast Technorati SiteTrail

Other Blogs Socialmention.com – blog section Google.com/blogsearch <- Most relevant and top

end up high in search results

Traffic / Authority/ Popularity

Sites offer relative measures of traffic, authority, popularity

Site Demographics

Considerations

Site Stats

Is traffic volume important?

Authority (make sure you’ve read Technorati article!)

Are people engaging with this site?

Via comments in posts.

Is the demographic of the site in line with your target demographic?

“Influencers” Competition, Part 2

Your employer, Burt’s Bees, has a new lip balm and wants to get the word out via social media….

NEW OBJECTIVE!!

Burt’s Bees want people to TRY the new lip balm

Outcome type: Behavioral – take action to purchase a new lip balm

Goal

Burt’s Bees has a new lip balm that doesn’t taste bad!!

Answer the question: What 4 sites influencing the conversation about

Burt’s Bees should we contact given the objective of getting people to try the new lip balm?

Your team’s goal is not only identify influencers – but to find the most relevant influencers!

Summary: Influence

Interpersonal influence impacts decision-making; media content influences knowledge gain

Similarity in characteristics essential to influence

Digital influence is difficult to determine and measure

Prioritize Goals and desired effect

Determining important influences = trial & error