Social Media analyticS pdf

Search drives a lot of traffic to branded content, of course, but once there, people are more likely to share branded content than content produced mainly for search results such as ‘how

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Social

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EFFECTivE TooLS For BuiLDiNg,

iNTErprETiNg, aND uSiNg METriCS

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Going beyond Monitoring:

Content Creation and

Content Tracking

It is one thing to create social media and quite another thing to measure it so as to optimize content creation That’s almost a requirement as platforms become more intelligent and people become serious about using social media as a marketing tool

Some of the case studies in this book, such as the one

on InfiniGraph (Chapter 4), discuss changes in online

con-tent that are detected by measurement and cycled back to improving content It’s best to think of the entire process as

an ecosystem similar to the SEO organic search ecosystems

I wrote about in late 2010,1 however, in that social media (recent tweets, Facebook discussions, check-ins, etc.) become search content with the Google Search Engine indexing that often result in displaying the latest postings of an individual

in search results What is good for social media also tends to

be good for search engine results

According to John Battelle, founder and CEO of Federated Media, social media provides “branded content,” while search

engines provide information “Branded content, however, is far

more social [than content mills like Demand Media’s] because

branded content is written with a human voice and published

by a branded entity [you, a friend, campaign, cause, company,

brand, etc.] Search drives a lot of traffic to branded content, of

course, but once there, people are more likely to share branded

content than content produced mainly for search results such

as ‘how to tie a tie.’ The former is socially shareable (‘hey, check

this out, it’s interesting’), and the latter is specific (‘I need an

answer, and I don’t think my friends have the same need right

now’),” according to Battelle.2

Arguably, “branded content” is measureable using social media monitoring and Web analytics, and can be considered

to be “more social” than nonbranded content (in that people

will have more interest in sharing branded vs unbranded

con-tent) But once social media content surfaces, it should fit into

a longer-term strategy, where valuable content becomes

ever-green Setting up social media analytics with clear

measure-ment goals will assist in achieving that strategy

Looking at search keywords typed into Web sites ing out what people are looking for using Web analytics site

(find-search reports) and mashing up that information with social

media monitoring of content emerging from site search leads

to more and better content for the brand, based on case studies

tracking Old Spice and Delta Airlines.3 Imagine if the content

team could prioritize content based on not only this historical

demand from search query volume, but also real-time input

from social media monitoring.4

One way to harness social media in order to get your message out: use Google to find bloggers (who are influencers

on a subject of the search query by appearing within the top

10 search results) while looking at relevant search queries.5

In addition, by using Google Webmaster tools, Web ics, or a social media monitoring platform such as Radian6 (Radian6 can integrate with Web analytics platforms such as Adobe Omniture, WebTrends, and Google Analytics), a site owner will have the means to identify and write about what is engaging on its site

analyt-Determining Your Social Media

Analytics Readiness

Social media is a emergent communications medium that is considered to be free and available to everyone Sometimes this incorrectly leads to an assumption by many on the con-tent creation or on the agency side that measurement of social media can be set up as more of an afterthought Tracking con-tent can often require just as much enablement work as enter-prise and large e-commerce sites have put in place to track their users and content using site analytics for many years

The usual data on the radar are easy to capture: hits, lowers, page views, and so on Additional metrics, including knowing the results of efforts in terms of which were the most effective in bringing in sales, expanding the customer base, and increasing exposure of the brand, are also required Infor-mation is available to show that social media outreach is effec-tive in driving new business and revenue, although often those supporting data are difficult to capture

fol-This elusive quality is what I referred to earlier as violet data,” we can’t see ultraviolet light, yet it’s present all around us The same holds true of much of the data a business

“ultra-or “ultra-organization should capture; the data exist, but they are not being captured properly for use in site analytics or social media analytics

Another common challenge for social media ment is that most business processes are misaligned with the

measure-business’s goals for measurement The work I did with

Ceci-lia Pineda Feret and Havana Central, which led to my white

paper with Compete.com on spectrum analytics, mentioned

in an earlier chapter, provided two examples of misaligned

measurement processes

1 Communications issues between marketing and

com-munity management leading to lost sales and analytics tracking

2 Missed opportunities to engage with Havana Central’s

enthusiasts, who check in using Foursquare while having

a meal

The case of Havana Central involved individuals who were communicating (or not) while interacting in ineffec-

tive ways using incompatible business processes These

indi-viduals were also using out-of-the-box analytics that had not

been thoughtfully configured to track the results of their

specific business processes This often happens when using

free platforms such as Google Analytics, and it often leads to

lackluster business performance measurement The insights

analytics can deliver need careful setup, but it’s not just about

measurement; we also should consider tuning the business

process itself

Through my work with Havana Central, I came to see that business and measurement goals and tactics that are core

to a business need to inform one another, need to be coupled

and folded, so to speak, much as we fold our hands together

When we fold our hands, there is no room for misalignment,

and that is true of any structure, such as a table, chair, or

building Misaligned table legs will cause the table to collapse

Misalign a building foundation, and the foundation cracks

This same level of alignment is needed in social media

measurement, yet I find it is hardly given any thought, and is

often treated incidentally by content creators, agencies, and brands, which is one of the principal reasons I wrote this book

To audit a business’s readiness for full-spectrum analytics tracking, one should list all the sources of data the business has and which campaigns and marketing initiatives the busi-ness is running; the data sources should be listed vertically, and the marketing campaigns and initiatives should be listed horizontally (I have written about how to merge these in my white paper on the subject, which you can view or download and read at http://www.scribd.com/doc/38176762/tracking -social-media-roi-using-spectrum-analytics The information in the following section is based on that white paper.)

Enabling Data Collection

In some cases, enabling data collection in business is easy and straightforward But often it is awkward and difficult to patch data holes, or blind spots, where needed information is miss-ing, resulting in an inability to measure business effectiveness

Enabling Ultraviolet Data

Taking a closer look at a specific campaign or marketing tive against the sources of data available is the best way to find tracking solutions that address weaknesses in the campaign’s current analytics For example, an analytics enablement audit was set up to track online reservations at Havana Central that were made via its Facebook fan page using the OpenTable

initia-application on it.6 Using additional codes suggested by the

audit process, Havana Central was able to capture

impor-tant reservation information within Google Analytics This is

a built-in function of analytics packages, but often it is not

utilized With that information, Havana Central was able to

evaluate the marketing effectiveness of Facebook to drive

cus-tomers to the restaurant

Going through each campaign and finding ways to use analytics tracking, a business moves toward a 360-degree view

of its data, where everything needed to show return on

cam-paign investment is present and accessible, ultimately in a

dashboard

All that remains is to ensure that the collected data can

be overlaid, that a common key (such as an e-mail address,

Twitter handle, social security number, address, and so on)

identifies all transactions—no mean feat in itself

In more advanced cases, a data cube or data warehouse can be built to marshall a company’s business data into a pro-

gramming structure that allows deeper insights than

conven-tional analytics software allows for

Employing a data cube or data warehouse allows a pany to perform “what if” and predictive analysis on a com-

com-bined dataset containing all company data, leading to insights

such as the number of times a customer visits a

brick-and-mor-tar store or outlet to make a purchase, or how many times that

same item was searched for online Any information within

a data cube can be correlated and analyzed using predictive

analysis and regression statistics, leading businesses to save

money and resources by optimizing their products, services,

and offerings

However, when a common key (such as common record locator for Google Analytics, OpenTable, SeamlessWeb, direct

e-mail marketing, and so on, as was the case in many smaller businesses like Havana Central) is lacking, the information needed to populate the data cube will be spotty, noisy, or hard

to translate to the right structure for it to be effective In fact, most small and medium-sized business cannot afford to build

a data cube today, and even if they could, they would not know how to use it In the future this may change as businesses become more measurement savvy and platforms evolve to sim-plify and bundle data collection tasks in a way that makes it easier for businesses to implement tracking

According to Gary Angel, the CTO of Semphonic, “When you integrate data into a data warehouse, you open up new questions, targeting opportunities, and analysis methods that otherwise don’t exist.”7 In fact, business intelligence tools (of which a data warehouse is a part) allow business owners to see relationships in the data that ordinarily would be impossible

to detect, and therefore open up new possibilities for analysis

Enabling Business Goals, Strategy, and Tactics

Brian Solis, a well-known voice for PR 2.0, has stated that the case for new metrics can’t be made until there is an intrinsic understanding of how social media engagement affects us at every level.8

In 2010 on the “MP Daily Fix” blog, Paul Williams shared

a very well visualized image of what business goals, strategies, and tactics look like for a business campaign.9 Many times, people fail to formulate their business goals in a clear way; this complicates the measurement of their goals and tactics

Once the diagram or map of instructions is created and vetted, it should be used for enabling social media business strategy along with social media metrics (and other metrics, as

needed) Filling in the gaps and correcting erroneous

assump-tions is much easier than trying to devise a program with no

idea of how it is to be structured or flowed

Creating a Tagging Strategy

Once a program outline is approved, it is time to put goals,

strategies, and tactics into place, along with analytics

track-ing (such as Google Analytics, Adobe Site Catalyst, or

WebTrends) This provides a significant part of the

analyt-ics tracking needed and is not difficult to implement

pro-vided that analyst understands how to create, assign, and add

tagging to Web sites and URLs Enabling social media

mea-surement by using Google Analytics,10 it is possible to

cap-ture key performance indicators such as traffic (quality and

quantity), engagement level, goal conversions, e-commerce

direct sales, and cost savings by comparing social media with

other marketing channels

Google Analytics tracks campaigns, advanced tation, goals, and custom reporting through structures built

segmen-into the platform and enriched by using custom URLs and

Google Analytics URL Builder.11

Creating Custom Tagging in Google Analytics

Generally speaking, a tagging strategy for analytics should

include the following traffic definitions12:

Source: Web site sending traffic

Medium: Traffic type, such as social media or cost per click

Campaign: A campaign name determined by user

Context/Term: Unique identifier used for split testing purposes

The Econsultancy case study in Chapter 11 is an example

of campaign tracking with social media in mind

Using URL Shorteners to Capture

Offsite Campaign Traffic

Bit.ly and similar URL shorteners provide another good way

to track social media using truncated URLs These can be used for campaigns that site analytics cannot track (such as market-ing effort), but that do not register as a hit on the company’s

“landing page.” Much of the content created for consumption does not result in direct visits to the brand Web sites; shortened URLs are one way the site analytics could track this content as

it moves around the Web

Setting Up Advanced Segmentation

Google Analytics has additional features, such as advanced segmentation, used to create custom segments such as “social media traffic” or “e-mail traffic” based on URL strings or other parameters These can be very useful in supercharging reporting and insights by creating a custom segment within site analytics around the tagging, and correlating it with mar-keting efforts and social media mentions

Setting Up Goals in Google Analytics

It is fairly easy to assign goals to campaigns in Google ics (although you need administrator privileges), which help track such goals as successful completion, goal value, channel value, and e-commerce transactions