Social Analytics: Measuring How Much We Rock (or fail) at Social

       Everyone knows that social is here to stay. Sites like Facebook.com, Twitter.com, Google + and YouTube allow for communities of people to connect to one another at the click of a button. As these sites gather subscriber bases in the hundreds of millions, businesses are looking at ways in which they can leverage social to impact the bottom line. Marketers are diving head first in the race to obtain the most likes, +1’s, and re-tweets in order to provide stronger positions for their brands. An unfortunate reality of this strong push towards social media marketing is that marketers are ignorant of the means in which to quantify how every Facebook “like” or Google “+1” impacts their business. Instead of looking at how optimal their involvement in social media is, the organization focuses on insightful metrics that common place tells them are important.

What can we track?

      Marketing efforts on social media can be more than content saturation and posting pandemonium. According to Avanish [1], social media metrics can be reduced to four aspects that provide practitioners insight into the effectiveness of their social media brand promotion campaigns. These metrics provide analytical insights that allow you to understand who your audience is and how to effectively engage them.

1. Conversion Rate: # of Comments Per Post

    Where e-commerce conversions generally describe a completed sale, social conversions occur when subscribers to your social asset connect with you through comments or replies to the content that you have posted. Conversion rates are calculated by finding the amount of audience comments per posting. Achieving higher conversion rates can mean that content is engaging your audience and driving return visits and additional brand interaction. Beware posting content that artificially stimulates audience interaction and focus on obtaining genuine engagement with a message that is in line with your brand and organization.

2. Amplification Rate: # of Shares Per Post

   Many channels of advertisement provide only a limited amount of impressions per add. Social media has the added benefit of enabling audience members in your own network to provide additional exposure to audience members within their own networks. Amplification rate describes the rate at which people take your original content and distribute it through their own social networks. Amplification actions may go by different terms based on the social site (re-tweet on twitter, share on YouTube Facebook and Google +), but each action amplifies the reach of the original posting. Analysis begins by categorizing content which obtained the highest amplification rates and finding similarities in order to influence future postings.





3. Applause Rate: # of Likes/+1 Per Post

    All of today’s social media sites provide users a means to provide immediate feedback to content and comments from other user. Applause rate is the number of “kudos” (favorites, likes, +1s) per post. This metric allows marketers an insight into what content audience members like and dislike, while simultaneously notifying others in their social graph that they endorse your content. These endorsements follow your content and provide credibility to users who might have discovered it through search. 





4. Economic Value: Value Per Visitor

   Even though the previous metrics are an important way of quantifying how effectively your organization participates in social media, most high level managers need to be educated on the value that is derived from social efforts before allocating any additional resources. Social economic value is a combination of revenue generated and reduced costs that social media campaign’s produce. Before we are able to discover how social drives economic value, organizations need to define what their micro conversions are.

Micro Conversions

   Micro conversions are web site engagement actions taken by users that are not overall conversion goals for the entire site. For example, when a user comes to your site to research what comments people are leaving for your products, but fails to make a purchase (a macro conversion goal), that individual has participated in a micro conversion. Organizations who define and track these micro conversions are able to gain insight on how aggregated micro conversions influence macro conversions. (2)

   Micro conversions relate to social economic value in that once defined, our analytics tools are able to track how and quantify exactly how our micro conversions are influencing the money making conversions that mangers love. A micro conversions may look like any customer who looks at a support page, blog, or product info on our site. We then take that data and compare it to the amount of referrals from the social sites we participate in and the amount of macro conversions, we are able to prove that social participation can generate value to an organization.(3)




Take Away

   Social media analytics can and must be used as a means of objectively measuring how effectively organizations are able to leverage social media to add economic value. However, social media’s most effective role in any organization is how it allows us to define our marketing message, while providing a communication tool that allows us to build relationships with our customers. Social marketers usually don’t work for free. By correlating social media efforts to profits, social efforts can be seen as a revenue generator.

Some Social Analytics Tools

These tools can help keep track of social media efforts through the gathering and reporting of every interaction that occurs on an organizations social media assets. 

Hootsuite: 
http://hootsuite.com/features/social-networks

Tool Demo

Google Social Reporting
http://www.google.com/analytics/features/social.html

Tool Demo

References:
1) http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/best-social-media-metrics-conversation-amplification-applause-economic-value/

2) http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-13-measure-macro-and-micro-conversions/

3) http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/how-to/5-tactics12

A Four Step Program for Creating a Social Analytics Framework

 

It’s time to get social! In today’s hyper-connected world, organizations are increasingly relying on social media and online consumer interactions to change the way they do business. Companies and brands have recognized that their customer base is vocal about products and services and are openly sharing brand experiences in online conversations every day through social channels.

What is Social Analytics?

Until recently, social monitoring lacked the sophisticated analytics capabilities needed to determine important business insights. This is where social analytics has stepped in. Social analytics has become a primary form of business intelligence used to identify, predict, and respond to consumer behavior. This type of analytics has reached a point where nearly every click that is made online generates valuable data that is collectible.

Social analytics helps brands and companies identify which social media tools and strategies are measurably benefiting the goals of the business. These analytics help in determining what has a neutral or negative effect on the objective. This data also helps in determining the return on investment (ROI) of social media strategies. This will allow the company or brand to continually plan how to best use social media to its advantage.

Difficulties Measuring Social Analytics

While social analytics have become mainstream, companies still struggle with how to measure, analyze, and act on social data and insights. The data from social media can be viewed as intensive, messy, or unstructured. There are an increasing number of new behaviors that must be captured, measured, and interpreted over time. In fact, despite the advances in integrating social media into business, a majority of companies do not have standard frameworks in place to measure the value of social media.

Four Basic Steps in Creating a Social Media Framework

There are four basic, yet commonly overlooked, steps a company should explore when beginning to create a social media framework.

1.    Align the Social Strategy of the Company with Business Objectives. The first step in social media measurement is to determine the core business objectives. Then create business strategies that support these objectives. This should be done before the company begins to develop or assess social strategies. While it is important to think in terms of the future, the reality of this market means that a company must plan for the present.

2.    Determine How the Company Will Measure Success. Determine how success will be measured from a business perspective. It is incredibly useful to determine whether the goal is to drive brand and/or product awareness, improve search engine placement, generate leads, or just to simply to learn from the generated data.

3.    Evaluate the Organization’s Readiness to Measure Social Media. This is one of the most critical elements of social media measurement strategy. Assess your resources, the level of domain, analytical and tool expertise needed, and the current state of internal collaboration. Many companies lack sufficiently trained staff for social media measurement and delegate it to overcommitted and under-prepared employees. This is, quite simply, a recipe for failure.

4.    Choose Tools in Light of Strategy, Metrics, and Organization. Once the company knows what it’s trying to accomplish, how it will measure success, and what resources are available, it’s time for tool selection. This is still a very new industry, so a company should be aware that social analytics tools change quickly. While there are a large number of social analytic tools available, there is no single best tool for every objective or every business.

Once the Framework is in Place

If a company keeps these four simple framework steps in mind as it begins to create a social media strategy, a baseline and foundation for targeting useful social analytics will also be created. Moving forward, the company or brand will be able to more accurately assess customer activity - not just on social networks but all over the web. This will allow the company to more accurately determine how customers can potentially be engaged in ways that will be more meaningful. When this happens, advertising ceases to be viewed as just a commercial endeavor and instead combines into useful interaction with the consumer.

For more information about creating a social media framework see:

Our Social Media Framework:  http://thirdwaveberlin.com/2012/04/our-social-media-strategy-framework/

Social Media Strategy Learning Curve and Framework:

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy-learning-curve-and-framework/

Video - Social Media Strategy Framework: Explanation and guide

References Include:

1)     http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2011/02/10/spend-wisely-finally-an-investment-roadmap-for-social-business-buyers-altimeter-report/?goback=%2Egde_1852106_member_46420305

2)     http://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/social-readiness-how-advanced-companies-prepare

3)     http://mashable.com/2012/05/05/adobe-digital-selves/

4)     http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/social-analytics-isnt-just-for-social-ne/240142166

5)     http://www.slideshare.net/setlinger/social-analytics-2012-at-social-media-week-sf

6)     http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/10925-80-of-online-retailers-are-using-google-analytics-incorrectly

7)     http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/