Social media for PR - Communications - Success measurement

1. Prepared by Jose Sanchez
Success Measurement process after launching a Social Media campaign
A. Previous considerations
B. What is Social Media Measurement?
C. Terms and Concepts
D. Benefits of Social Media Measurement
E. How do we measure Social Media?
E.1.Follow goals
E.2.Choose key metrics
E.3.Choose tracking and monitoring tools
E.4.Tracking and monitoring using Dashboards
E.5.Optimization
F. Costs
G. Reliability
H. Examples of success
I. Appendix
A. Previous considerations
 This is the success measure and return of investment analysis (ROI) for after launching a social media
campaign. It may also serve to measure social media efforts that are not part of specific programs (i.e. A
Twitter account expand the company’s online presence).
 A continuous, interactive process that ensures quantitative and qualitative success in any phase of a
campaign should also be created and applied by communications/Marketing teams.

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B. What is Social Media Measurement?
As of October 2009, social media measurement is immature. It is the objective tracking, monitoring, collecting,
measurement, reporting and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, generated by participants, to optimize the
use of social media tools, services and tactics. Social Media measurement is complementary to web analytics and
it should be done in an ongoing way and after launching a campaign.
C. Terms and concepts
Social media: Media and content designed to be distributed through social interaction. Social media supports the
human need for social communication, using web-based technologies to transform traditional media monologues
(one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). Social media can take many different forms, including
Internet forums, blogs, wikis (Wikipedia, Wikia), podcasts, content-sharing (YouTube, SlideShare), content-
comments, email, instant messaging (MSN, Facebook Chat), social bookmarking (Digg, Del.i.cious), RSS Feeds,
virtual worlds (Second Life, SmallWorlds).
Social media metrics or indicators of participant behaviour vary with each technology. As of October 2009, these
are some of the most commonly used. Their definitions were written taking into account a wide variety of sources.
 Link-back: Method for to obtain notifications when other users link to one of their documents. This enables
administrators to keep track of who is referring to their articles. The three methods (Refback, Trackback, and
Pingback) differ in how they accomplish this task.
 Viral seeding: Is the viral-equivalent of media buying in mainstream advertising. In this case, much of the
placement on key websites is provided for free.
There are several primary routes in seeding. Different desired results might require different approaches.
o Natural viral seeding placement: This is placing the video into targeted and relevant blogs,
sites, aggregators, portals and social networks (i.e. Youtube, Facebook). The goal here is to
obviously get people watching. Administrator should also be part of the commenting process and
have a dialog with participants.

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o Key influencer Outreach: In each area of interest, there are outspoken key influencers, who
most often run blogs. Message to them 1:1 and make them feel special, exclusive by offering a
sneak peek of the content before it hits other media. They will “break the story” and help start the
conversations.
o Media placement: This is paying for advertisement within key influencer portals, community sites,
newsletters, etc. This is more similar to a traditional media strategy but in can be more targeted
and efficient..
o Email Notification: If there is a targeted email list available, sending a relevant message is
welcomed by the recipient. It should not be considered spam.
 Click-Through Rate (CTR): Click-through rate or CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online
advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web
page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if a banner ad was delivered
100 times (impressions delivered) and one person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR
would be 1 percent.
 Page impression: A page view (PV) or page impression is a request to load a single page of an Internet
site.
 User profile: Is a collection of personal data associated to a specific user. A profile refers therefore to the
explicit digital representation of a person's identity.
 Network growth: Number of members or participants in a specific social media service.
 Post: Entry on a bulletin board system, Internet forum or message board, blog, or other discussion forum. It
takes different names and forms depending of each technology: Tweet (Twitter), wall post (Facebook),
forum post (forums), etc.
 Status update: Allows users to inform their friends of their current whereabouts, actions, or thoughts (i.e.
"Billy visited Jen," "Sam called Jen" and "Matt dated Jen").
 Social Bookmarking / Link sharing: Method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage
bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks
that reference them.
 File sharing: Practice of making files available for other users to download over the Internet and smaller
networks.

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 Repost: Sharing a post with their followers or other kinds or contacts. Retweet (RT) is Twitter’s name for
reposts.
 Content response: Method to upload public content related to a specific previous entry (i.e. Comments,
comment replies, YouTube video responses).
 Direct Message: As opposed to posts, comments, ratings or other public content entries, direct messaging
allows participants to send content in a private way. It’s a method featured on social networks such as
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace.
 Like / Favourite / Agree-Disagree: Method for internet users to express their sentiment on a specific piece
of content.
 Rating: Method for internet users to evaluate a specific piece of content. It is usually expressed through
more than two choices.
 Sentiment analysis: Aims to determine the attitude of a participant with respect to some topic. The key to
accurate sentiment analysis is accurate text analysis.
 Online research methods: Are related to existing research methodologies but re-invent and re-imagine
them in the light of new technologies associated with the internet. Some of the most popular are:
o Interviews: Similar to face to face interviews. It mainly focuses on the conduct of one-to-one
exchanges as opposed to one-to-many exchanges (i.e. via chat technology, via email).
o Surveys: Serve to collect quantitative information about variables in a population.
o Focus groups: A moderator invites pre-screened, qualified respondents who represent the target
of interest to log on to conferencing software at a pre-arranged time and to take part in an online
focus group. Online focus groups are appropriate for research.
 Tag: Non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an internet bookmark,
digital image or a blog entry). Tags are chosen personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending
on the system.
 Feed aggregator views: Page views loaded through applications that aggregate syndicated web content,
such as news headlines, blog updates and podcasts in a single location for easy viewing (i.e. Google
Reader, NetVibes).

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 RSS: (a.k.a. "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated
works in a standard way, like feed aggregators. It benefits publishers by letting them syndicate content
automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favourite websites.
 Following (Twitter): Following someone on Twitter means aggregating a tweeter’s updates in your personal
timeline. Followers are people who receive tweets.
 Social Mention: A way to measure every time a specific word or combination of words is used in social
media websites
 Widget: Element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the
user, such as a window or a text box. The defining characteristic of a widget is to provide a single interaction
point for the direct manipulation of a given kind of data.
 Badge: Small image used on websites to promote standards, products, personal views or to indicate a
specific content license that is applied to the content or design of a website.
 Dashboard: A matrix that allows registering all key performance indicators data from a campaign (see
appendix 2).
D. Benefits of Social Media measurement
 Just like a static website, a social media tactic is not a goal but a tool when engaging with a specific audience.
Social Media metrics are a report on your performance when engaging participants online.
 For instance, Social Media measurement helps you determine how effectively you're meeting your communications
and business objectives by telling:
 Who the participants are, who participates and why they do it.
 What the participants interests are. What they are saying and what is their preferred method of
communication.
 If they are aware, interested, engaged or if they want to collaborate with specific initiatives.
 If the tactic has improved the service/product.
 How the content can fill people’s needs.

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 In terms of promotion, Return of Investment (ROI) could be considerably higher than with traditional media. Here is
an example:
 Goal: To receive 200 more calls in the company’s info-line.
 Scenario A: $2,000,000 is invested on a traditional media campaign
 Scenario B: $500 is invested on Facebook and Google ads
o Approximately 80% of Canadians use Facebook
o Facebook ads clients can pay per clicks - you only pay for the ad when people click on
the link
 Once specific audiences are engaged, communications and marketing strategies would be more efficient and
promotion costs would be reduced in the long term.
E. How do we measure Social Media?
The success measurement strategy should be applied after social media tactics are launched for ongoing and
further optimization. Here is a list of suggested steps in a relatively intuitive process:
Follow goals: Communications/marketing team should define the objective, the kind of relationship it wants to
build with specific audiences and set clear and realistic communications goals (i.e. To raise awareness among
Toronto youth about the risks of unprotected sexual relations by 15%; To increase by 20% the website’s RSS
subscriptions).
Choose key metrics: Communications/marketing team should outline a social strategy and insight to achieve
goals. Key metrics must be identified in order to describe performance and the value derived from social media
efforts. Each social media tool offers a wide variety of metrics that reveal different participant attitudes.
Metrics can be classified into three categories that respond to different goals or stages of your objectives. The
more specific the goal is, the easier it is to measure.
 Web content:

7. Prepared by Jose Sanchez
o Questions: Was the social media tactic popular among the target audience? How did they get
to the social media tool’s page?
o Metrics: web analytics, traffic, page views, unique visitors, etc.
 Audience:
o Questions: Who is our audience? Is it growing? Where do they come from? How are individual
profiles? What are the larger audience trends?
o Metrics: User profiles, surveys, application forms, user I.P.
 Participation metrics
o There are numerous metrics, they indicate different levels of participation and answer to
different goals. Here is a suggested list of them, ordered by levels, possible goals and
attitudes. It may change or evolve as different technologies are incorporated or abandoned.
Participation Participation Underlying Metrics
category level / goal attitude
Inactive Unaware Audience doesn’t  Total potential social media
don’t know of your audience for your campaign
existence
Exposure Spectate Audience  CTR generated by first generation
experiences content seeded/paid placements
created by you  Unique profile and page
impressions
 Web analytics
Appreciate Audience values  Social bookmarking statistics
the content that you (Diggs)
create or share.  Votes
Audience respects  Recommends, likes
your contributions  User ratings
or debates  Qualitative research interviews
 Dynamic Logic surveys

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 Brand (Ministry/Services)
mentions, public servant’s names
 Repeat profile and page
impressions
Collect Audience  Number of times your content is
bookmarks your favourited
content locally and  Types of tags created by people
online, subscribes  Number of saves to Social
to your feeds or Bookmarking sites
downloads files you  RSS subscribers
share  Number of file views/downloads
(Podcast, Vodcast, PDF or jpeg
views)
 Number of Feed aggregator
views
 Twitter followers
Engagement Active Interest Audience  Fans, Friends & Follower
participates: posts numbers
Twitter replies and  Positive/Sentiment tracking
talks about you,  Content tone
clicks the links you  Content emotions, share of voice
share, comments  Daily Volume of mentions
on your website or  Wall/Blog Posts
external ones,  Comments
mentions you in the  @replies to tweets
course their online  Discussions
activity  URL shortening reports
Share assets Participants share  Blog reposts, ReTweets, Tumblr
your content by reposts
republishing on  Links shared to social feeds
different other (Facebook, Tweeter, FriendFeed)

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websites, use your  Widget embeds
content and ideas  Badges used on profiles
to add value to their  Alexa or Technorati ratings of
network external sites featuring your
generated assets
 CTR generated by shared/passed
on placements
Public dialogue We exchange  Number and sentiment of
content via profiles, spontaneous public messages
websites, feeds,  Official forum threads
etc.  Live Discussion subsequent posts
 Video Responses created
(YouTube)
 Blog Post responses created
Private We exchange  Direct Messages
dialogue private email, IMs,  E-Mails
DMs  Panel research
 Surveys
 Interviews
 Focus groups
 Customer service activities
Advocacy Participants  Perception shifts
encourage following  Conversion uplift
& getting involved  Network growth
with you.  Voluteering increase
Participants
encourage people
to buy your
products

10. Prepared by Jose Sanchez
Collaboration Investment We share wins Partnerships created
Choose tracking and monitoring tools:
 Communications/marketing team may track and monitor social media campaigns in-house or an external
company could be paid to do it (See appendix 1.b.).
 If done in-house, tracking and monitoring tools should receive key metrics data, it should be further
analyzed and determine if goals are being reached.
 Different tools serve to measure specific metrics (appendix 1). As new tools are created, new
measurement instrument may also arise.
Tracking and monitoring using Dashboards:
 Communications/marketing team may collect outgoing data can be collected using a suggested
Conversation Impact Dashboard (see appendix 3). Dashboard should include participation levels
according to goals and key metrics to measure them
 It is useful to create timelines to reasonably measure the ongoing progress of the campaign.
Optimization:
 Outcome analysis. A series of questions should be answered by the comm.unications/marketing team:
o What is the impact of the social media tactic? Did it add the expected value?
o Is it helping to achieve the company’s business objectives in a more efficient way?
 How much did the comm.unications/marketing team invest in this tactic (staff, technology)?
 How much would it have cost to achieve the same goal through other means?
o If goals have not been met, why is it? How can the strategy be improved?
 Follow up and redesign strategy
F. Costs
 Social media promotion is low-cost compared to traditional media

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 The knowledge and talent in using the free tools however is not
 If the comm.unications/marketing team wants live analysis of the performance it would need to pay for the
technology, get skilled staff or train the existing one to do it
 Social media is effective to reach targeted audiences. Since approximately 4 out of every 5 Ontarians use
Social Networks, the opportunities for promotion are countless and could be designed according to the
ministry’s specific strategies.
G. Reliability
 Most raw data comes right from standard sources, hence it’s considered to be reliable
 Tracking and monitoring tools are used by respected organizations and companies (i.e. P&G, Pepsi and
Coca-Cola, among others.)
H. Measuring success examples
 Campaign results for War Child Canada1
i. Objectives: Generate awareness and engagement for War Child Canada; establish a War Child
presence in Social Media; and drive donations.
ii. Specific tactics: Viral video, campaign website, Facebook page, blogger relations, Twitter network
and newsroom.
iii. Each tactic had its own specific goals, effects and metrics
iv. Results:
o Delivered a 38% increase in donations and 300 new volunteers
o War Child’s website traffic was increased by 60%
o 17,000 blog referrals, 38 Twitter mentions that influenced over 10,000 members and 200 new
Facebook members
o War Child’s message was picked from the internet and published by Canada’s mainstream
media outlets (CBC, Toronto Star, Globe & Mail, National Post)
1
"War Child: Social Media and ROI” SlideShare. 2009. 11 Oct. 2009. http://www.slideshare.net/PRworks/war-child-ali2-for-slideshare

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o Although specific investment numbers were not revealed, War Child informed that the
campaign’s costs would have been considerably higher if they had paid for media placements
I. Recommendations
 The comm.unications/marketing team should turn measurement into a key part of their long term
communications strategies.
 Comm.unications/marketing teams should consider the possibility of including social media success
measurement as part of its staff main duties
J. Appendix
1) Tracking and monitoring tools:
a. Free tools usually provide simple metrics data. Here are some examples for each suggested metric.
 Analytics.google.com, Omniture.com (CTR, Page views, page impressions, profile
impressions, visitors location)
 Delicious.com, Digg.com (social bookmarking, diggs)
 Surveys widget box (Votes)
 Google.com, Blogs.google.com, News.google.com, Yahoo.com, search.twitter.com (brand
mentions, locations names)
 Backtweets.com (links from Twitter to your site)
 Referer.com (links to your site)
 Feedburner.com (RSS subscriptions, feed aggregator views)
 Youtube.com/t/advertising_insight (video analytics)
 Flickr.com (photo views)
 Feedburner.google.com (subscribers)
 Pipes.yahoo.com, NetVibes.com (Dashboards, Mashups)
 Alexa.com (comparative traffic)
 Commentful.blogflux.com, cocomment.com, (comments from different platforms, including
YoutTube, Flickr, Blogger and Digg)

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 Xinureturns.com (PageRank, Backlinks, Indexed Pages)
b. Paid tools interpret, build dashboards and sometimes provide analysis of the data. They also trytry to
measure other qualitative elements such as tone, sentiment, emotions, etc. Examples:
 Diydashboard.com (Social media)
 Radian6.com (social media)
 BuzzLogic.com (social media)
 Omniture.com (web analytics and social media: Twitter and Facebook)
2) Conversation Impact Dashboard Example
Tactic: Q&A between the company’s president and its customers
Suggested goals:
 To reach 25% of target audience (Exposure)
 To receive 20 questions and answer all of them in a timely manner (Public and private dialogue)
 To receive positive sentiments from at least 50% of the subsequent replies (Active interest)
Metric / Goal Data Active Share Public Private dialogue
Interest assets dialogue
Total visitors
Time on site
Volume of received
questions (comments)
Volume of answered
questions (comments)
Questions tone
(comments)

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Participants’ Reply
tone
Potential audience: ____________ Total participants: ____________
Participants’ characteristics: _____________________________________________________________