Measuring Social Media

April 19, 2011 Version 1

Agenda 1.  Why it matters 2.  What it is 3.  The tools I love 4.  Going about it 5.  Common mistakes 6.  Future of SM Monitoring

1. Why it matters

Canada is Online

Canadians are Social

Your brand is social

From toilet paper to government, social plays a part in the customer experience of your organization and brand, whether you like it or not.

Social media award-winning company… B2B Supply Chain Management

A cracker’s online community

Even Government…

Social currency The extent to which people share information about a brand as part of their daily lives – online or offline. Your brand’s social currency significantly drives brand loyalty (53% of it). Successful brands enable their ambassadors to connect, interact, and benefit from like-minded users.

Source: Vivaldi Partners – Social Currency: Why brands need to build and nurture social currency, 2010

Government Context Government policies are full of directives that push for better use of these emerging channels. Communications Policy of the Government of Canada:

–  “information requests or inquiries from the public are responded to promptly without undue recourse to the Access to Information Act;”

–  “prompt and clear explanations are provided when information requested by the public is unavailable.”

–  “information is available on the standard of service an institution provides to the public, including timelines for responding to inquiries, mail and complaints;”

–  g. Incorporate mechanisms into on-line services for receiving and acknowledging public feedback.

“The greatest risk of social media technologies may not be a breach of security, data loss or a denial-of-service attack. Rather, the most significant threat is not using social media at all. “There’s a huge risk if you’re not active in social media channels,”

Steve Ressler, president and co-founder of GovLoop.com

Workflow and Governance

Opportunities for Innovation

A personal story A product being removed from the product mix Turns out to be the most talked about camera in Canada

2. What it is

“Everyone is a media outlet. We can all put things out in the public view now.”

- Clay Shirky, author, Here Comes Everybody, NYU professor

Social = Content •  What people are saying and sharing •  Where they are saying and sharing it •  How they and their friends feel and act as a

result

Social = Content Often overemphasized

–  Fans –  Followers –  Influence –  Influencers –  Viral –  Our websites

Too often overlooked –  Content being created –  Content being shared –  Content being “liked” –  Responses to content –  Content being “linked”

to (delicious, diigo, reddit, etc.)

–  Content as a source of traffic to our content properties

3. The Tools I Love

There are lots of tools. They are not created equal.

Source: http://www.fatpurple.com/2010/08/22/social-media-monitoring-companies/

My Criteria •  Good coverage of:

–  Microblogs –  Facebook –  Video –  Photos –  Blogs –  Forums

•  Slice and dice •  Workflow support •  Boolean queries

My Favourites •  Radian6

–  Radian6.com

•  Sysomos –  Sysomos.com

•  Have heard good things about –  Alterian SM2

An Unfair, Biased Comparison Radian6 Sysomos

Heartbeat Sysomos Map

Pricepoint $500/month+ $500/month+ $2,500/month

Number of users $100/month per user Handful included 1 user

Slice and Dice A+ B A-

Boolean queries D B A+

Coverage A A A

Historical data captured

A+ A+ SAMPLE BASED (Twitter)

By Country filter A A A

Number of queries # of queries drive increased pricepoint

Two tiers of pricing Unlimited

Workflow support A B F

Ease of use C B B

Ease to learn D A C

Meet Radian6 •  Ottawa Jazz Festival

–  Configuration –  Multiple Dashboards –  Widgets

•  Conversation Cloud: Tag cloud of most used terms •  Topic Analysis: Bar or pie charts of terms mentioned •  Topic Trends: Line graph over time with spikes to show

increased activity •  River of News: View the matching posts with workflow

options. •  New Influence Viewer: Find the lists of most active users,

blogs, forums, etc. for a topic –  Engagement Console

•  Desktop extension with workflow and ability to manage outbound social presences

Meet Sysomos Map •  CMA

–  No Configuration –  Build a query –  Enable filters

•  Boolean is our friend. AND, OR, NOT, Parenthesis and Quotes

–  Save a query –  Comparison of two issues

Quick segue •  Two Tools I also use

–  RowFeeder –  PostRank

•  Rowfeeder –  Easy to use twitter monitoring –  Great excel based insights –  Inexpensive

RowFeeder

RowFeeder

RowFeeder •  Inexpensive reports:

–  Snapshot –  Volume and Time Analysis –  Conversational Driver Analysis –  Location Analysis –  People Analysis –  Day Parting Analysis –  Influencer Analysis –  Contest Winner Selection

Before URL shorteners

Blog

Google Alerts would send me links to people talking about and sharing links to any article that had “craphammer.ca” in it.

Great article on Google Analytics. http://www.craphammer.ca/2011/03/google-analytics-magic-part-two.html

Loving the Craphammer.ca blog!

After URL shorteners

Blog

Takes my RSS and reverse engineers the URL shorteners to find people talking about my articles

PostRank •  Long way towards solving the content

analytics dilemma –  Reverse engineers conversations about my

content (the source of future traffic) –  Who is talking and sharing links to my content –  Twitter, Delicious, Blogs, and more…

•  Free for blog writers

PostRank

PostRank

4. Going About It

G steps to analysis A.  Identify Terms B.  Create Search C.  Test and Refine D.  Trend Analysis E.  Pull Other Findings F.  Assemble aggregate findings G.  Identify actionable recommendations

A. Identify terms Start with the client’s terms and look to find out what terms everyday people and the press use •  Do some research in

Google Insights http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

•  Try Google Adwords Keyword Tools

Your client may say we need to be looking for “residential intensification” but odds are that people are talking about terms like “in-fill”, “moving downtown”, and “new condos”

B. Create the Search •  Log into your SM Monitoring

tool (Sysomos MAP for this class) –  Set the time period to one

month –  Switch to the Blog tab

•  Start with simple searches based on previous step. –  I find it’s best to start with a

series of “word1” OR “word2” OR “word3” to see what types of conversations are occurring

Quick tip: It’s a noise vs. signal problem. There is no such thing as 100% signal.

C. Test and Refine •  Work in Blog tab first

–  Add in language filters and excludes as necessary

–  Work towards more complex queries

–  http://map.sysomos.com/help/?title=Query_Construction

•  Test that it is giving you valid returns in the Social Media tab as well –  Expand the range –  Look at the Buzzgraph and

Text Analytics –  Look for outliers

•  Refine the search with excludes as necessary

•  Save the search with a recognizable name in a folder specific to the client initiative

D. Trend Analysis Pull the Trend Data •  Set the timeline filter to the

time period for the study •  Ensure any additional filters

you need are applied (country, etc.)

•  Hit the “Apply-Analyze Now” button

•  Go to the Dashboard •  Right click and open “All

Sources” in a new window Quick Tip: Screenshot/PDF both the dashboard and all sources result pages and store in a research folder

D. Trend Analysis Save as a Graphic •  Go to the All Sources report

and locate the “Popularity by Media” report.

•  Click the customize icon as shown to the right

•  Update the title as fits your purposes –  “[Topic] – Trend Analysis by

Media Type”

•  Right click and save to your harddrive as a graphic

D. Trend Analysis Prep the Graphic •  Open the graphic you

saved to your harddrive into a blank PowerPoint slide

•  Identify key peaks by media type you wish to explore and annotate. –  Shown by adding red

circles in the graph to the right

D. Trend Analysis Identify the Source •  Open up the applicable

tab to identify what drove the peak. –  So if there was a spike in

blog activity around mid June, then you would open the Blog tab and put in a Timeline filter for Jun 5 to Jun 25.

–  Hit Apply on the Time Period

•  Then click on the Popularity report in the left hand nav.

•  Keep narrowing the time period until you have just the peak you are looking for

D. Trend Analysis Identify the Source •  Click to view the general

entries so you can determine the “cause” of the spike of activity

•  You may need to click ahead a page or two to get to the date of the spike

Quick Tip: If you find that the spike event was driven by an OFF TOPIC conversation, it’s time to return to step 2 and narrow down your search and start over. Fun times!

D. Trend Analysis Annotate the Graphic •  Once all the peaks are

identified and found to be valid, then we fill out the drivers of the spike event

•  Finally, we export the powerpoint slide as a graphic image and put the final chart into the final report

•  Be sure to write up the insights we gained from this analysis.

E. Pull Other Findings •  Make sure your time period

is correct. •  Then go into the Social

Media, Blog and other pertinent tabs and pull key reports to identify the overall trends.

•  For Twitter, I tend to pull a Reach, BuzzGraph and Top Sources report

•  For Blogs, I tend to pull a High Auth+Recency, Buzzgraph and Key Conversations report

Quick Tip: be sure to grab screenshots of example posts for your final report

E. Pull Other Findings •  Use text analytics or

trending topics to identify interesting phrases

•  Then use the Sub-Keyword filter to find out what the actual conversations were around both expected and unexpected phrases

•  This helps to ensure we know what some cryptic phrases reference while also giving us real examples of key conversations

F. Assemble Aggregate •  We then need to create a

chart in excel or other charting tool where we show the summation of all the different issues we were investigating by medium.

•  MAP can create the raw data by issue group using the “Compare” tool

G. Actionable Recommendations •  These questions are a good starting point

–  Who are the top individuals to engage on key issues and by what medium?

–  What kind of reach and interest is there and in what?

–  What content is being created and shared?

–  What share of the conversation do we have with our content and actions?

–  What is the overall sentiment on each topic?

–  Where are people more likely to engage and on what topics?

–  Where is the organization present and not present?

–  What actions can the organization take to support organizational goals and better leverage their investment in social?

Structuring the report My approach 1.0 Topic 1

1.1 Scope of search 1.2 In Aggregate Findings 1.21 In Aggregate: Blogs 1.22 In Aggregate: Twitter 1.23 In Aggregate: Facebook etc. 1.3 Trend Analysis 1.4 Sentiment Analysis 1.5 Recommendations

2.0 Topic 2 etc.

5. Common Mistakes

Common Mistakes •  Company Mentions only

–  vs. issues

•  Simple queries vs. Boolean queries –  digging into conversation drivers by topic

•  Canada only –  cheaper and fine but only if aware of sample and self

identification bias and errors

•  Automated sentiment –  it still doesn’t work.

•  Sampling errors –  http://bit.ly/socialsample

•  Use our language not theirs

6. Future of SM Monitoring

Source: 4 Ways to Measure Social Media and Its Impact On Your Brand. Social Media Examiner. 15 June 2010.

Source: http://crm2.typepad.com/brents_blog/2008/07/social-crm-in-p.html

Put everyone in CRM tool? •  Not everyone is a customer

–  Future “of age” citizens –  New Immigrants –  People unaware of our services/offerings –  Individuals who have not engaged with our

brand, service or product

•  What is doable with the tools we have today?

What if we don’t throw away all our social data?

Report 1

A baseline report is created based on an analysis of brand names, competitors, and relevant issues.

Report 1 Report 2

The next report is created from new data. If comparisons to the first report are made, they are aggregate or trend-based.

Report 1 Report 2 Report 3

With each subsequent report, the process remains the same. The data from previous periods is thrown away.

Lots of pretty charts. “More people spoke positively about kittens this week.”

0

500

1000

1500

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4

Positive Negative

…and analysis. “Here are our top kitten ‘influencers’ this month.”

Twitter name Kitten Tweets Klout Score @justinbieber 618 90,194 @aplusk 6 12 @britneyspears 42 315 @oprah 9 120

We need Deeper insights. With web analytics and email marketing, we track unique and repeat visitors. And traditional CRM programs track preferences, purchases, and engagement.

We need Deeper insights. Why not track the same things on social media? Who are your brand advocates/ambassadors and what do they care about? Do the most passionate individuals have anything in common?

Most Passionate on Top

Just the beginning What if we started to wonder about the people consistently talking (or not talking) about our brand or issue? What could we learn if we weren’t wiping the slate clean every time we run a new search?

Colophon

Sean Howard is VP, Digital Communications at Thornley Fallis and spends his life searching for what drives and identifies the most passionate online and offline.

Twitter: @passitalong Email: howard_at_thornleyfallis.ca