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?
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| 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.
Techniques to monitor Stream Flo Group of Companies social media presence and goal progress.
ReplyDeleteBy Jan Martin
As discussed in assignment 1, in general SFG management has a negative view of Google analytics. While it can be a powerful tool if you need to measure visitors, the kind of metrics management is looking for is a direct translation into action. We have a feature on our sites where clients, or potential clients, can request specific information called Engineering Data Sheets. We track these requests and while it's impossible to track them specifically to sales/value (the sales curve, from initial interaction to invoice, is generally 11 + months) we monitor the frequency, location and specific product information requested and they're all assigned an sales rep within their general area (i.e. south Asia). And can definitely report 18 requests in the last year has aided in Malaysia reaching it's 50 million dollar sales targets.
One of corporate marketing's goal is to increase our perception as thought - leaders. The tentative plan is to re-post and create relevant articles of interest within our milieu of the oil and gas industry. To that end, I see value in Kavshik’s Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause all viable metrics for us to use. And while measuring participation isn’t easily done, the impacts of the findings will guide our specific strategy for each social media channel, tailoring your message to your specific audience. Similarly, Klout, which offers a non-traditional measurement of influence - might be a good may to quantitatively measure our effectiveness. On it's face, it seems easy to use and understand, it might just be the kind of measurement management can wrap their head around and further, its inexpensive which given our economy would be another positive.
References
Kaushik, A. (n.d.). Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value. Retrieved from: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/best-social-media-metrics-conversation-amplification-applause-economic-value/
Klout Retrieved From:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/10/26/video-the-measured-life-whats-your-klout-score/
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe NAIT Women in Technology and Trades (WITT) initiative has a relatively small audience. To help monitor the WITT social media presence, growth and engagement metrics are important to this niche group such as unique audiences and amplification rate (de Bruijn, Module 2, 2016). Amplification rate provides added post reach through the WITT audiences followers, and the unique followers on Facebook or Twitter demonstrates the positive interactions and results of the amplification by tapping into a larger audience (Kaushnik, n.d.).
ReplyDeleteUsing Google Analytics, the configuration, or the most effective campaigns can be tracked to help increase the effect of future campaigns. The most important key insights from these analytics would be content, traffic, referral sources and metrics (de Bruijn, Module 3, 2016). The positive part of having a community-based social network through WITT, is that the messaging is more penetrating through this group than might otherwise be with traditional marketing tools (Katona, 2012). The qualitative metrics such as positive communications and overall engagement provides insight into goal progress.
A key goal of WITT is to connect women to other women in non-traditional fields, and one example of this comes from just last week. While setting up for a WITT Industry Night event, a woman from the Edmonton general community messaged us and asked if she could attend. We, of course, said yes. She expressed a number of concerns over Twitter, from not knowing what to wear to not knowing what kinds of questions to ask. We were able to connect with her in a meaningful way through this social media platform, and after she attended the event, she tweeted about how great it was, and connected with another female friend on Twitter. After her experience, she convinced her friend to talk to us about learning pathways for women seeking non-traditional roles. This kind of engagement may not be easily quantifiable, but the quality of the interaction proved to be just as, if not more important than the numbers. In terms of metrics, this is exactly what we want to see, and we used content to stimulate the conversation by resonating with the audience.
De Bruijn, M. (2016). The Social Lens Module 2 – Instructor Post. COMM 597 analytics blog. Retrieved from http://comm597analytics.blogspot.ca/
De Bruijn, M. (2016). Monitoring – Module 3 – Instructor Post. COMM 597 analytics blog. Retrieved from http://comm597analytics.blogspot.ca/
Kaushik, A. (n.d.). Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value. http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/best-social-media-metrics-conversation-amplification-applause-economic-value/
Katona, Z. (2012). How to Identify Influence Leaders in Social Media: Zsolt Katona. BloombergView. Retrieved from http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2012-02-27/how-to-identify-influence-leaders-in-social-media-zsolt-katona