Posts filed under ‘Social media monitoring’
When is a social media “visitor” not a visitor?
I’ve been looking into recently what constitutes a ” visit” or “action” on social media platforms. This may seem straightforward as on websites it’s well established what constitutes a “visitor“. However, in social media there is a lot of variation in what constitutes a “visitor” or “action”. Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in the Dealbook blog about what Facebook considers as a “visit”. He notes that Facebook says it has 483 million “daily active users”. Within this it counts visits to its web and mobile websites – which seems legitimate. But it also includes those who visit third party websites and click on a Facebook “Like” button; those who share a Twitter post on their Facebook page; and those who leave a comment on such a website that then gets fed into Facebook. Rightly so, Sorkin is astounded by including such “visits” (which largely inflates visitor numbers of course).
For me, Facebook should count these so called “active users” as “actions” – they are more so actions using Facebook features/tools but not actual visits to the website.
Measuring activity on Twitter also throws up some interesting questions. There are many services that measure activity on Twitter, mostly based on the use of the Twitter #hastags. You can find out all sorts of interesting statistics such as how many people used a hashtag, how many people and how many times they received a Tweet containing a hashtag, etc. For example, you can see that a hashtag generated by a campaign was used by 1000s of people that then reached millions. But what does that actually mean? In reality it means that millions have received a Tweet containing a hashtag that they may or may not have looked at – and the hashtag may or may not have been used in a Tweet in a way compatible or not with the original intention of the campaign that created it. So there is more work to be done as to what is the impact of message exposure through Twitter and other social media.
For those interested in this subject, here is an interesting post from Metrics Man on three fundamentals of social media measurement>>
Progress on Setting Social Media Measurement Standards
There is an ongoing debate about setting standards for social media measurement. Here is an interesting contribution from the Measurement Standard that reports on a recent meeting of specialists in the US organised by PR measurement guru K.D Payne.
One conclusion which I agree with is the need for the so-called “Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP)” for social media reporting, particularly in defining the following areas:
- Content
- Reach /Engagement
- Influence/Relevancy
- Sentiment/Advocacy
- Impact and Value
Read more on the Measurement Standard >>
Global standards for social media measurement?
Three leading leading communications associations have formed a new coalition to define, develop and promote industry-leading standards for social media measurement. The coalition is comprised of the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC), Council of PR Firms and the Institute for Public Relations.
Coalition chair, Tim Marklein commented:
“Too many of the social media measurement options available today are based on proprietary tools and methods that can’t be easily replicated across brands, campaigns and organizations. As a coalition, we intend to break down those barriers and map out a path to standards that address key social media measurement challenges, including content sourcing, influence, sentiment, engagement and ROI among others.”
We couldn’t agree more. It will be interesting to see what the coalition comes up with as they move now into the consulting phase.
Social media measurement – standards or ritual measurement
I am currently at AMEC’s 3rd European Summit on Measurement in Lisbon where a major discussion about social media measurement was held today - the Dummy Spit blog by Tom Watson provides a good summary of the debate.
Measuring success in online communities – part 2
Further to my earlier post on measuring online communities, I had the opportunity last weekend to present a module on this subject to a group of students following the SAWI diploma on “Spécialiste en management de communautés & médias sociaux”.
The slides used for this presentation are found below – they are in French – English translation will come….soon!
Measuring success in online communities
At the Lift conference this week in Geneva, I heard a lot of speakers mention the need to measure and evaluate how online tools are being used, for what purpose and with what impact (about time!).
One speaker, Tiffany St James spoke on “How to encourage involvement in online communities”. The above illustration shows the main aspects of her presentation, where she suggested some key performance indicators for measuring online communities, notably:
Outputs: how many visits, referrals, subscribers, loyalty, web analytics, bounce rates
Outtakes: messages and experience for user satisfaction, measuring change of attitude
Outcomes: action-what do you want the user to do?
You can view a video of Tiffany’s presentation here>>
(illustration fabulously done by Sabine Soeder of Alchemy).
Measuring the influence of Twitter
As Twitter becomes more present in communications, is there any way to measure how influential it is? Well, there are plenty of tools to monitor Twitter usage. But the MetricsMan blog has some wise word of caution about these tools. He warns that the tools are not really measuring influence, as he puts it well:
The problem here is no one is actually measuring true Influence – the ability of one individual to change another’s opinions, attitudes or behavior. You can’t surmise whether or not an opinion or attitude has been impacted, you have to conduct research. Opinions and attitudes exist within individuals. You cannot assess this by proxy, looking strictly at online metrics. Online behavior can be measured without primary research, but offline behaviors have to be observed or reported.
84% do not measure ROI of social media
I just read some interesting survey results that found that 84% of professionals don’t measure the Return-On-Investment for the social media programs that they run.
It’s not a surprising result, but is it the right question? I would have asked how many professionals are measuring the success of their social media programs and what and how they are measuring. That would be a good starting point before an eventual ROI measurement. Follow further the debate on Mashable.
Thoughts from the Berlin Measurement Summit
The 1st European Measurement Summit was a great success. Delegates are busy doing a survey (organised by Benchpoint), and the feedback is looking very positive.
My Highlights:
Neil Martinson, head of press and PR in the UK Government’s Central Office of Information (COI), spends £25million (€29.3 million) on PR every year, so is fairly interested in knowing which half is wasted. He asked five media measurement and evaluation specialists to do some test measurements on a recent campaign. The result? Five very different measurements, and no agreement on criteria or methodology.
David Rockland’s sprited defence of AVE’s (Advertising Value Equivalents). Actually, it’s quite a good measure of penetration, reach and performance. The only trouble is the V word. People manipulate the figures to give the impression that editorial is worth more than advertising, which is hardly objective or honest. And no two people seem to do it the same way (see above) But there has to be a way of integrating this figure with other measures to give a true index of success. By the way David is MD of Ketchum’s global research network, and knows a thing or two. Methinks the detractors are a little over the top on this one.
Social Media. Half the conference were struggling to understand what Social Media is and how to use it, while the other half were on line to each other commenting on what each speaker was saying, without the bother of joining in the discussion with other delegates. I was chuffed when the delegate in front of me started reading this blog during one of the presentations. Should I join Twitter? Or is it just people shouting, and no-one else listening?
I shall be returning to more serious content in future posts. But meanwhile, please comment or contribute to the ongoing debate.
Richard
Measuring social media – Twitter
For those interested in measuring social media, here is an interesting tool to monitor Twitter and its users – the Twitter influence calculator. You can discover the most influential users and compare yourself to others. Plus, they present the information in graphs and tag clouds as seen above.
Glenn
