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Social Media Automation: The Good & Bad

Look Before You Leap!

Dr. Aaron M. Wester, PhD@aaronix

@aaronix

Goal: Maximize engagement & conversions through automated content sharing

@aaronix

Goal: Maximize engagement & conversions through automated content sharing

BEWARE OF ASSUMPTIONS!

@aaronix

Goal: Maximize engagement & conversions through automated content sharing

BEWARE OF ASSUMPTIONS!• Productivity Inefficiency • Resource creep• Non-alignment• Cost overrun• Negative SERP impact• Engagement suppression

Leads to pitfalls such as:

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Usability Focused Paradigm:Know Thy User

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Usability Focused Paradigm:Know Thy User

Through automated/manual hybrid tracking, visualizations, and analysis

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Usability Focused Paradigm:Know Thy User

Through automated/manual hybrid tracking, visualizations, and analysis

• Social Influence (NetVizz / Gephi: GraphML / NodeXL with Social Importer Plug-In)

• Social Reach (FQL/Twitter Search API v1.1 & OAuth/Google Docs)

• Social Engagement (Click Tracking & Heat Maps)

• Social Geolocation (Traffic Data / Google Fusion Tables)

• Competitive Advantage (NetVizz / GraphML)

The effect that an individual’s thoughts and actions has on others

The extent of an individual’s effect on others

The involvement of others resulting from an individual’s contribution

The location of engaged involvement

Benchmark insights into how competitor’s social communities thrive

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Social InfluenceNetVizz / Gephi: GraphML / NodeXL with Social Importer Plug-In

NetVizz is a free data extraction app for Facebook sections (groups & fan pages) Creates a .gdf formatted file that can be imported into GraphML

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Social InfluenceNetVizz / Gephi: GraphML / NodeXL with Social Importer Plug-In

Gephi (open source) enables the creation of insightful visualizations that help content curators gauge key social influencers and level of engagement through GraphML format. Algorithmic correlational inferences may be analyzed.

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Social InfluenceNetVizz / Gephi: GraphML / NodeXL with Social Importer Plug-In

Uses repulsion, centrality, clustering coefficient and modularity algorithms to help identify associations between nodes (variables) and edges (dependencies).

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Social InfluenceNetVizz / Gephi: GraphML / NodeXL with Social Importer Plug-In

Similar to NetVizz, except for data extraction from Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook personal network and fan pages (not groups).

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Social InfluenceNetVizz / Gephi: GraphML / NodeXL with Social Importer Plug-In

Important Considerations!

• NetVizz exports to .gdf, not graphml format• NetVizz data cannot be exported into NodeXL, or vice versa• NetVizz data does not include user comments posted• As a result, use NodeXL to conduct sentiment analysis• Facebook only returns up to 500 names from a group• As a result, the extracted group followers are somewhat random• As a result, a network view of a group is limited• Twitter only returns up to 100 friends• Sample population results are still significant and representative of the normal distribution

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Social ReachFQL: Graph API / Twitter Search API v1.1 & OAuth / Google Docs

Analyzing social reach data (such as social referrals, engagement, and followers) will enable key stakeholders to determine which social vertical channels are lagging or leading so tactics can be determined and applied to increase engagement.

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Social ReachFQL: Graph API / Twitter Search API v1.1 & OAuth / Google Docs

FQL (Facebook Query Language) is quick (450ms avg. per query response time) alternative to extracting substantial volume of FaceBook data stored in Insights dashboard through Graph API.

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Social ReachFQL: Graph API / Twitter Search API v1.1 & OAuth / Google Docs

Create a social inventory list in Google Docs, including ID. Export the list to .csv or create data bind to list. Include sessionized Graph API Access Token. Setup array to query each parameter. Then dump results into exportable .csv file. Push results through Google Charts API to create automated dashboard reportlets.

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Social ReachFQL: Graph API / Twitter Search API v1.1 & OAuth / Google Docs

• Facebook Graph API Acces Token is sessionized with an expiration of 2 hours before time out error is generated with no results.• Either manually copy/paste the Access Token into web-based input field, and store result in a variable that gets plugged in and evaluated, or….. • Use a JSON query to automatedly pull the Access Token provided you can supply the Client ID, Redirect URI (Your Post LogIn URL), and authentication App Secret• Your PHP scripts in your automated batch process can only access your Google Docs spreadsheets provided you’ve first set your file to make it public, and receive a link to share.• Use a JSON query to decode and iterate the entries in your array using a foreach loop.

Important Considerations!

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Social ReachFQL: Graph API / Twitter Search API v1.1 & OAuth / Google Docs

Suggested Variables for helping determine Social Reach include: •page_fans – total number of people who have liked the page (likes)• page_storytellers – 28 days people talking about this (shares)• page_stories – 28 day page stories (comments)• page_impressions_paid – 28 day paid reach (paid reach)• page_impressions – 28 day reach (reach)

Important Considerations!

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Social EngagementClick Tracking & Heat Maps

Provides insight into how users are interacting with site content by link position, not by URL (for dynamically positioned content that moves relative to time range or trending popularity).

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Social EngagementClick Tracking & Heat Maps

Steps to create custom heat maps:

1. Assign Click Tracking Variables2. Export CSV Data Dump for Entire Month (200K+ rows)3. Dump CSV into Excel and create pivot table4. Group by Row Label to aggregate totals5. Establish % CTR from # of clicks / total clicks6. Normalize measure with % of Total (100% max)7. Map positions in layout by targeted variables8. Apply 3 tiered color gradient based on % thresholds

Important Considerations!

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Social EngagementClick Tracking & Heat Maps

Important Considerations!

• A Visual Basic (VB) Macro may be used to create automated process for Extract/Transform/Load (ETL) emulation routine.• An executable VB Controller (shell script) may be created in Visual Studio to invoke the Macro automatedly.• Task Scheduler can then be used to target the executable on a recurring cycle.• This process only tested for Heat Maps based on static link position.

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Social GeolocationTraffic Data / Google Fusion Tables

Show density data visualizations by exporting traffic or campaign data correlated to location from Adobe/Omniture, Google Analytics, or other into Google Fusion Table, then establish markers or by imported coordinates (KML shape files).

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Social GeolocationTraffic Data / Google Fusion Tables

Show density data visualizations by exporting traffic or campaign data correlated to location from Adobe/Omniture, Google Analytics, or other into Google Fusion Table, then establish markers or by imported coordinates (KML shape files).

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Social GeolocationTraffic Data / Google Fusion Tables

Important Considerations!

• Embed FusionTablesLayer object into web based dashboard with Google Maps API.• Fusion Tables is a designated data source for Google Chart Tools.• Authenticate with OAuth to gain access to your Google Fusion data.• Only five Fusion Tables Layers may be added to a map.• Up to five styling rules may be applied.• Only the first 100,000 rows are mapped from query results.• Total size of data set sent in single API call cannot exceed 1MB• If using KML shape files for city lines, a cell of data may only support a maximum of 1 million characters

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Competitive AdvantageNetVizz / GraphML

Similar to Social Influence tactics, use NetVizz and GraphML to capture competitor data and visualize.

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