Monitoring

Module 3 - Instructor Blog Post

What can be accomplished through Google Analytics?

Take a brief tour of Google Analytics via this video: 



- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keZAQZ1nkoc

There are four main components of Google Analytics:

1. Configuration - track which of your promotions or campaigns are generating the most traffic/conversions. 

2. Data collection – user interaction data collected through multiple channels.

Web JavaScript data: tracking code placed on every page view of website to show how users engage with websites such as URL viewing, language used, browser, device used, referring source.

Mobile app data: tracking is specific to operating system on the device – collects data after each activity. You need to add a code to each activity you want to track. The data not always sent in real-time but instead stored and collected when reconnected.

3. Processing – transformation of data (categorize devices as mobile/non-mobile and add filters to include/exclude data).

4. Reporting – google.com/analytics or you can access data from your account using api.

There are two types of data available through Google Analytics:

1. Dimensions – describe characteristics of users, their sessions and actions

2. Metrics – quantitative measurements that describe user behaviours to help you understand your users

Some of the key insights that can be gleamed from Google Analytics include, but are not limited to:

• Visitors: how many overall?
• Content: what resonates?
• Traffic: where are they going?
• Time spent: bounce rate, overall time
• Referral sources: is social media working?
• Metrics – are they doing what we want them to?

Example of the Insights Admin Panel.

What be accomplished through Facebook Insights?

Take a tour of Facebook Insights via this link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixmkJRnQB0g

• Content: What’s engaging & why?
• Receptivity: What audience is the content resonating with?
• Traffic sources: How are people finding you?
• Engagement: People taking about this (PTAT) is interaction
• Likes: Who are you fans and friends of fans?
• Demographics – Likes & PTAT

As the boundaries between marketing and customer service become increasingly blurred by “social”, measuring trust and influence (instead of quantitative ROI) becomes more important.

This is especially true for brands wanting to measure the impact of social media, but who are not able to directly link social activity to sales.

Waite (2011) explores the concept of NPS – Net Promoter Score: 

The metric is measurement of customer satisfaction in order to calculate brand loyalty. This is usually done in social media via a survey. Consumers are usually rated on a scale of 1-10 and ranked as promoters, passive or detractors. Users are incentivized to take a Facebook or Twitter survey (often anonymously), asking customers, fans and non-customers of certain brands, how likely they would be to recommend those brands to their friends. This is how some companies try to understand how satisfied people are with their product or service. Often they assign labels to help differentiate between the followers or fans.

Detractors – people who complain or share information but attach a negative experience to the product or service.

Passives – people who simply follow or are a fan of the company but passively consume any messages or information. They don’t share or comment or “like” or “retweet” for example.

Promoters – these are your influencers. They share your information, invite people to follow or be a fan, and they provide context to their promotion by sharing experiences with your company that are positive to encourage others to be a part of the group.

Waite (2011) suggests that the measurement of Net Promoter Score is based on the “word-of-mouth” process. Social media multiplies ‘word-of-mouth’ both in velocity and reach. It is through social media that both influence and scale are amplified in a way that traditional media could not achieve given its one-directional focus of communicating (push marketing).

And word-of- mouth, in order to be effective suggests Waite (2011), must be relationship-based: Influence and trust within peer-to-peer networks are earned not bought. The chief currencies of peer-to-peer networks are trust and relevance.

Compare the cost of reaching one million people just once through traditional (bought) media to the cost of touching one million people once through earned social media, where the public spreads your content and message for free because they want to and because they can, very easily.

This is why companies are integrating social media into their businesses. Social media enables companies to build relationships through influence and trust that is achieved through peer-to-peer networks.

One social media tool that offers its own version of the Net Promoter Score is Klout. 

Klout

Take a look at this video file-  http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/10/26/video-the-measured-life-whats-your-klout-score/

Klout offers what it calls an influence score.  When you sign-up for Klout, you receive an influence score that represents your ability to influence others online.  Klout takes a broad look at how you engage online through a variety of platforms, although Klout is the entity that determines which social media tools are worth including or excluding from its ranking.  

What are the strengths and weaknesses of a tool like Klout?

Strengths:

• Looks at a variety of tools
• Offers a non-traditional measurement – influence is the ability to get others to take action relative to your online contributions
• Provides a quantitative means to measure someone’s standing in society
• Is based on the activity of others and not the personality themselves
• Relates directly to the personality associated with the account
• Shifts and changes over time – adaptable time (not just one snapshot in time)
• Inexpensive
• Easy to use

Weaknesses:

• Still a quantitative tool, doesn’t look at the type of messages that the influence is spreading
• Klout decides what type of activity is valued, not the company or person using the data
• Klout decides which social media tools are worth including in the score
• Klout is free but it would be very expensive to create this type of tool on one’s own
• Influence might not be a metric that is valuable to helping a company’s objectives along
• Doesn’t consider weak ties and strong ties in the relationship or even the reality of the quality of the relationship, just the online interactions

Considering your work on Assignment #1 what techniques would you apply to help monitor your organization's social media presence and goal progress? Use our course materials, Twitter interaction and Modules posts to support your position. Include references.