taming the social media beast - social media analytics for marketers
DESCRIPTION
Presented at Web Analytics Wednesday on 3/25/09 in San Diego. Ideas for defining concrete KPIs for social media initiatives, projecting ROI, setting realistic expectations and more.TRANSCRIPT
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Taming the social media beastMarianne Madden
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The Challenge
How to quantify relationships,communities, influence and engagement
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The Challenge
How to stay focused on meaningful metrics and ignore the noise --
in the midst of hoopla, skepticism or impatience
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The Challenge
How to draw a straight line from social media activities to profits
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The Challenge
How to find out what’s working and what’s not –
so you can refine and optimize
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The Challenge
How to set appropriate expectations
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But first…
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Criticism
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• Bad execution• Locked children out• Encouraged false conversations
• “The problem is that Skittles attempted to enter the social network without really engaging in it”
Effects
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It all begs the question…
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What were they really trying to accomplish?
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How much time will it take for a social media strategy to help my business?
The POST Process
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• Define target audience (People)• Define Objectives• Define Strategy– Rules of engagement– Assign responsibilities– Analytics tracking – Etc.
• Define appropriate Technologies• Launch• Measure results, optimize, repeat
Morals of the story
• Take the time to nail strategy/planning
• Quality of execution is everything
• Launch of social media engagement is only the beginning
And whatever you do…
Don’t give in to execs who try to rush deployment
Which metrics can help me assess my social media campaign for each type of objective: awareness, acquisition and retention?
Prioritizing Metrics
Measuring awareness from SM
• The basics: traffic, links, rankings, time interacting with you/your site
• Spread/sharing of assets: use tracking codes• Sustained increase in keyword volume for your
brand • Online buzz: use monitoring solution like
Radian6• Social bookmarking• Interaction with widgets/apps
Measuring acquisition from SM
• Direct links/sales from SM efforts, shared content, etc.
• Conversion rates from SM; value of SM customers
• Email newsletter subscribers, RSS subscribers, etc.
• Gain understanding of who you’re reaching via SM that you couldn’t reach via traditional means
Measuring retention
• Audience empowerment• Purchase rate/value and lifetime value of
customers from SM• Quantity and quality of conversations– How many customers are having issues resolved
through SM?• Ability to answer questions, nip customer
service issues in the bud
Measuring engagement
• Joining the community• Submitting a comment/rating/review• Contributing UGC, incl. questions/replies• Saving a social bookmark• Favoriting videos• RSS subscribers• Clickstream data
Measuring ORM from SM
• SERPs• Content of online chatter• How your content is tagged • Keyword trends
Rules of thumb
Define concrete KPIs beforehand; zero in on your real objectives
Rules of thumb
Allow campaign (and its KPIs) to evolve
Rules of thumb
Look at the campaign holistically
Rules of thumb
Keep your eyes peeled for unintended consequences
Rules of thumb
Use SM to gain an understanding of who you’re reaching
Pesky qualitative considerations
Engagement Audience empowerment
InfluenceCommunityTrustTransparencyInstant feedbackAbility to flip the scriptCoolness factor
How to beat back the monster
• Focus on what’s important, and what you can reliably
measure
• Study others
• Do projections
What’s important? ROI!
ROI =
Value of benefit --------------------------------------------------------Planning and development + Ongoing costs
Projecting ROI of a forum
Baseline numbers:• Number of customers• Number of customers participating in forum (~1% annually)• Additional customers viewing content (Spectators) (~5% annually)
Then estimate:• Total support calls these customers would have made (~1 call per customer)• Support calls avoided b/c of forum (assume 33% find answers on forum)• Cost savings from avoided calls (assume $10 per call)
Projecting ROI of ratings/reviews
Baseline numbers: • Site visitors• Sales at typical conversion rate and transaction value Then estimate:• Visitors seeing reviews (~20%)• Increased conversion rate and transaction value• Net additional sales
Projecting ROI of a company blog
• Advertising value (visibility/traffic)• PR value (press stories written about/driven from
blog content)• Word of mouth value (referring posts)• Support value (support calls avoided)• Research value (customer insights)
Parting thoughts
Measurement must evolve beyond web analytics and now focus on community insights.”
- Jeremiah Owyang
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
- Albert Einstein
Thank you
Marianne Madden
619-756-6729
Twitter: melondrama
References
• Chart, slide 18
• Slides 32-35: Groundswell