Social Media Measurement 101

By Katie Delahaye Paine

Table of Contents

Part 1: Why Every Social Media Manager Needs This eBook Now………………………….………………………...... Page 3

Part 2: Six Steps to the Perfect Social Media Measurement System………...…………………………………………..Page 6

Part 3: How To Budget for Measurement ………………….……..……………………..………...………………………...... Page 10

Part 4: How to Measure Engagement..………………………………………………………………………………………………...Page 13

Part 5: How To Calculate Social Media ROI..…………………………..………………………………..……………………...... Page 17

Part 6: How To Spot Dirty Data and Clean It Up..………………..……………..………………….………………………...... Page 19

Part 7: Six Tips to Get Insight from your Data …...…..…………………………………………………….…………..………....Page 21

Part 8: How to Write a Report In Four Hours or Less that Your Boss Will Love.…………….…………………...... Page 27

Part 9 : Five Steps to Picking the Right Measurement Vendor .…………………………..………..….…...………….....Page 32

Part 10: Checklist for the Social Media Measurement Process …………………………………………………………....Page 37

About the Author……………………………………………………………………………………………...………..……………..………..Page 39

About Paine Publishing…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..Page 40

Why Every Social Media Manager Needs This eBook Now

Over the past couple of decades the business world has adopted social media measurement and evaluation as essential business tools. Metrics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and dashboards are now standard for most marketing departments. However, while organizations have had marketing mix models and decades worth of data with which to define success for display advertising, email, and a dozen other paid marketing activities, social media has been a conundrum to many of the same organizations. Its relatively low cost, uncertain reach, and rapid growth has given rise to a host of what most think of as “vanity metrics.”

You’ll be more credible The first reason you need to read this eBook right now is to protect your own credibility. You do NOT want to be using vanity metrics in 2017. CFOs and the rest of the “numbers guys” in your organization roll their eyes when you come in with ginormous and completely meaningless numbers. This book will help you replace all those vanity metrics with meaningful measures that not only evaluate current success but also help you plan for the future.

You’ll save time and get more meaning from your data Secondly, consistent, actionable, and meaningful metrics not only boost your credibility but make your life SO much easier. I’ve watched CMO and VPs trying to sort through six different reports from six different social and digital agencies only to realize that none of the numbers are comparable so there is no way for them to

3 Why Every Social Media Manager Needs This eBook Now know what really worked or didn’t. Without a consistent agreed-upon easily, but we’ll deal with that later) that it’s easy to impress those measurement system, you end up with multiple metrics that don’t tell business types. You’ll be able to come into meetings armed with you anything. numbers AND insight.

You’ll get to say no to stupid stuff Dispelling the Measurement Myths As social media professionals, its never easy to say “no” to new The first step your measurement journey is to dispel some of the projects. If you’re the go-to person for social media it’s worse because common myths surrounding metrics. For decades, these myths have everyone thinks social media is “easy and free.” But as we’ve seen discouraged organizations from embracing measurement and evaluation:

1. Metrics will show that my program doesn’t work. First of all, there’s the fear that measurement will show that a popular program isn’t working. That’s understandable as no one wants to have their favorite program cancelled. But the purpose of any evaluation program is to determine what elements are working and which elements are not. And if you don’t have an evaluation system in place, how will you know the difference? Doesn’t it make more sense to over and over again, bad social media is at best a waste of time and at spend more money on the programs that work, and save money by worst a reputation buster. To manage social media well takes time and eliminating the ones that don’t? If research shows that a program is resources. Consistent measures of success, that tell you what worked not working, why do you want to waste resources on it? and didn’t work in terms of real business results, make it far easier to say no to the time-wasting projects so you can focus on the ones that 2. I can’t afford to measure generate great results. Secondly, there’s a belief that measurement is expensive. But consider The Bean Counters will love you this: What’s the cost of ignorance? Do you really want to invest your Historically communications professionals have been seen as “word budget in something of questionable value? Put another way, doesn’t people” who eschew metrics, numbers and anything quantifiable. But it make more sense to spend money evaluating a program so you social media is so easily measured and tracked (some might argue too don’t waste money in the future?

Why Every Social Media Manager Needs This eBook Now

the results are greater than the sum of the parts. Just because you 3. Measurement can wait until after my campaign think you know the return on investment (ROI) for your promoted Measurement is not something you do when a campaign is Tweets, don’t assume there aren’t other factors you need to take complete and all the money’s been spent. Evaluation needs to be into account. built into your plan upfront with milestones and metrics to help you understand how you’re doing along the way and make If you’re ready to take your first step into the wonderful world of modifications as needed. measurement and evaluation, read on! The basic premise of evaluation in social media is A/B testing — comparing results of one test vs another. The good news is that the speed of social media makes it easy. You do something one way, try it, evaluate it, try again with a different twist and see which tactic performs better. But you absolutely have to set a baseline to know whether you’ve moved the needle.

4. Measurement will show that I’ve failed First of all, you learn more from failure than you will from success. If you don’t know what didn’t work, you are doomed to repeat it. Have the confidence to point out what doesn’t work. This conveys the message that you’re managing budgets well and that you’re willing to make judgments based on facts, not emotions.

5. Measurement is something that I need to own

No matter how much you may want to be a hero, measurement is not something that can be done alone. You need to get buy-in from the entire organization. Please don’t groan. You might find that the quiet accountant down the hall actually has critical data that can help your cause. The point is, for any good organization,

Part 2 Six Steps to the Perfect Social Media Measurement System

Step 1: Get agreement on what problem you are Your rationale for social media may incorporate all three, but using social media to solve for the purposes of designing your first social media measurement program, pick one and only one. Each one has a Sit down with your boss, your boss’s boss, your board, or specific set of outcomes, data requirements, and metrics. whoever holds the budgetary sword of Damocles over your head and get agreement on why you are even contemplating  Sell more. social media. What’s the desired outcome? If you can’t answer This might be translated as “increase market share,” “sell this that, go back to your boss, your boss’s boss, or whoever came widget,” or “increase donations or membership.” If you are up with the bright idea of “doing social media” and make sure using social media to essentially push a product or a service, you can all agree on a set of goals, objectives, and desired then you are in the “social media as sales tool” category. outcomes. Those who desire this outcome will only be satisfied if you can show an improvement to sales/revenue/donations. That means you'll need to have access to data from your CRM system (such as Salesforce) or conversion data from Google Analytics or whatever web analytics tool you're using.

 Improve/repair relationships/reputation. Social media is often used to change your image in the marketplace or your community, re-position your brand, or Step 2: Prioritize your goals. appear “hip” to a younger generation. If your primary reason for taking the social media plunge is to change perceptions Chances are, your desired outcome or goal falls into one of about your brand or your organization, improve your three basic categories: reputation for customer service, or other awareness or 1. Sell more stuff. preference goals, you'll need to conduct a survey or a content 2. Improve/repair relationships/reputation. analysis of your social media. 3. Get the word out about a new product, initiative, event,

campaign, or senior leadership's theme of the month.

Six Steps to the Perfect Social Media Measurement System

 Get the word out about a new product, initiative, event, because you can spot any seasonality in your results. Regardless, it campaign, or other key information isn’t measurement if you don’t have a benchmark. Many organizations think that by sending out a tweet or putting up a blog post they are “getting the word out.” Nine times out Step 4: Define your Key Performance Indicators. of ten, they are disappointed. Unless you are the president of a Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the specific metrics that will country, a celebrity or an organization like the Red Cross that define your success. They typically start with a percentage, as in: uses social media to warn people about a disaster, most people  Percentage of discussion in which we were favorably aren’t paying that much attention to what you have to say. positioned on the issue of diversity in the workforce Measuring this goal takes several forms. The first is the  Percentage increase in website visits lasting two or more frequency with which your topic is being discussed in social minutes. media. The second is to evaluate the change in awareness of  Percentage increase in registrations your product or issue. The third is to measure actual behavior  Percentage share of favorable positioning in the marketplace change. The table on Page 9 will help you map your goals and your metrics.  Percentage share of desirable discussion  Percentage share of quotes Step 3: Define a benchmark.  Percentage increase in awareness  Percentage increase in willing to consider or prefer

Whatever metrics you agree on, be careful and chose wisely, because one of the basic lessons of measurement is that you become what you measure.

Step 5: Decide upon a measurement tool. You have three basic research tools to choose from:

 Content analysis – Before you can begin any measurement program, you need to If your goal is getting the word out, you'll need to analyze the know to what you will be comparing your results. Ideally, you’ll conversation about your brand, product, or issue to see if the compare yourself to the competition, but if you can’t get that messages are actually being discussed. Content analysis is data, examine your own results over time. Ideally evaluate results more than just social listening. It involves the collection, over at least a six-month period or longer. Thirteen months is ideal reading, and systematic coding of the various items of

Six Steps to the Perfect Social Media Measurement System

discussion that mention your brand.

There are numerous free or low-cost listening tools if you want to track and analyze the conversations yourself. Firms like Glean.Info or Prime Research have human analysists who will conduct the analysis for you. There are also dozens of automated content analysis tools that can analyze text with varying degrees of accuracy. Test them on your specific brand and issues before committing to one to make sure it can accurately gather the data you need. Step 6: Analyze the results, draw conclusions, glean  Survey research If your goal is to increase awareness, understanding of your insight, and present your report. positioning, preference, or otherwise change your positioning All this data is mere trivia unless you analyze it for meaning. So in the marketplace, then you will need to ask your audience what if your competition is killing you on YouTube? How does that what they think. Use Survata or Survey Monkey to do pre/post affect what you recommend: Increase the budget? Shift monies testing to find out if you’ve moved the needle. away from advertising? Invest in AdWords? This is where you analyze your data, examine your results, and prepare a report.  Web and social analytics If your goal is to drive traffic to a website, increase engagement In any social media results presentation, make sure you define all in the brand, or educate your publics, then you will need to use the issues and topics right up front, or else you’ll get lots of glazed a tool like Google Analytics or Adobe Omniture to do the eyeballs. Then walk people through your methodology. counting for you. You will need to make sure that your data set is robust, consistent, and continuous in order to track activity Make sure you are clear about your benchmarks and what you are over time. comparing yourself to. Explain any anomalies and surprises. Be sure to add a “conclusionary” headline to each chart to inform and Social analytics like Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics are enlighten your audience on just what the data in the chart means. Finally, draw conclusions and make recommendations. Map your useful to track activity, but unless your goal is simple conclusions against your goals and put them into the context of the engagement, you’ll need more than just those basic tools. organization’s mission. ∞

Matching Business Goals to Social Media Metrics

How To Budget for Measurement Part 2

The rule of thumb is to allocate 5-10% of your overall project budget for measurement: Half for upfront research, the other half for evaluation. The primary driver of expense is the amount of data you collect. The more people you interview, posts you study, or articles you analyze, the higher the cost. There are many estimates of cost for both surveys and media analysis, but they change with each advance of technology. Your best estimating strategy is to prepare a detailed request for proposal (RFP) and submit it to a variety of vendors so you can easily compare them.

Budgeting for Social Listening and Analysis There are at least 300 vendors in the social listening space and prices range from free to thousands of dollars per month. You should be able to get a basic listening system for around $300 per month. For more sophisticated programs that are more customizable, plan on spending five to ten times as much, depending on the size of your organization. Check out our Vendor Selection Guide (on page 35 & 36) to see which ones might be best for your organization.

For analysis, most social listening firms use Natural Language Processing (NLP) or text analytics to automate the coding of tonality or sentiment. As a general rule, the more you pay, the more accurate the automated analysis will be.

While having humans analyze the volumes of social media data may seem cost prohibitive, it will be a necessary to guarantee accuracy. We recommend selecting 50-100 key authors who exert influence over your stakeholders and having humans code anything they write or say. Alternatively, you can random sample posts (we recommend a 10% sample) to be human coded. 10

How To Budget for Social Media Measurement

If you decide to use humans to review either all or some (i.e a random Part 2 sample) of your social media content figure $1-$4 per item depending on the length (i.e. technical blog posts will be closer to $4, tweets are generally $1 or less.) One other factor in the cost of social listening is the networks that you need to monitor. Almost all vendors capture feeds from Twitter or Facebook, but not all cover Instagram, Pinterest, or Linked In. Make sure the ones that matter to your stakeholders are covered by the vendor you select.

Budgeting for Survey Research The cost of survey tools has dropped dramatically since the release of tools like Survata, Survey Monkey and Qualtrics. The following factors influence the cost of surveying an audience:

 Number of questionnaires administered: You can probably get most of the information you need from talking to 250 people. If you’re skeptical, note that it’s possible to get a representative sample of the entire United States with only 500 people. So don’t get talked into surveying thousands of people if you don’t really need to.

 Length of questionnaires: It’s always a good idea to keep questionnaires as short as possible. This will both hold down the cost and bring up your level of response. A qualitative survey should take no more than 10 minutes to administer.

 Cost of collecting names: If you don’t have a list of names, you may want to try to collect names and emails during an event or conference. Alternatively you’ll have to purchase a list.

 Difficulty in getting people to respond: You may need to offer incentives to get people to respond, or repeatedly ask them to respond. You also need to make sure that every person on your list

How To Budget for Measurement

has an equal opportunity to participate: the more random your means that it can be difficult to conduct research when the selection, the better. Self-selecting groups—for instance, institution is not in session. people who visit your website—are much less desirable,

because those interested in your cause are more likely to participate, thus skewing your results. What you may really be  Take advantage of free trials: Virtually every online monitoring interested in are the opinions of people who are not visiting or survey research firm offers a free trial—generally for two your website. weeks or a month. Sign up just before a campaign or event that  Syndicated Research: On any given day, thousands of research you want to measure, use it like crazy for the trial period, and projects occur which ask the general public their opinions on a then present a report using the data. Plus, it’s likely your report given topic. These are known as omnibus studies, and you can will spark leadership’s interest in measurement, thus they’ll be add questions to these studies for approximately $3,000 per more willing to fund measurement going forward. question.  Go where the audience already is: If there’s an event where Budgeting for Web Analytics your organization sets up a booth, create a questionnaire that The good news is that Google Analytics is free, so you don’t people have to fill out in order to win a prize. The person actually need much of a budget, other than your time. However, staffing the booth should encourage people to fill out the if you are trying to tie your social media efforts to e-commerce questionnaire, but they need to be consistent about when results, your organization may need a more sophisticated system during the visit they ask. If visitors fill it out before they’ve like Adobe Social (aka Omniture.) Such systems are very talked to anyone, you will get more “off the cuff” comments, powerful, but if you are tracking attribution, they may require whereas if visitors consistently fill it out after they’ve talked to advanced knowledge to make sure you are properly tagging your booth staff, you’ll learn what information they’ve taken away. content .

4 Ways to Measure If You Have No Budget  Use interns & volunteers: The Internet provides a plethora of free data, starting with Google News, Google Analytics, Become someone’s homework: Many universities with Facebook Insights, and Twitter Analytics. It just needs someone advertising or public relations degrees require students to to analyze it. This is where a summer intern or a volunteer can complete a research project before they graduate. As a result, be very handy. Give them a research assignment and then use college students are frequently looking for organizations with the report to generate an appetite for measurement. which to partner. The one caveat with using university research services is you must adhere to the school year schedules, which

How To Measure Engagement

Engagement is the process an individual goes through as they deepen their relationship with an organization or cause that interests them. It is the first step in building a relationship between an organization and its stakeholders. Additionally, in today’s era of overwhelming inundation of data and messages, an organization’s relationship may be what differentiates it from everyone else out there trying to convince people to purchase, donate, or support your cause. Measuring engagement is a way to determine whether you’re being successful in establishing a relationship with your audience.

First things first: Social engagement is not equivalent to awareness The Institute for Public Relations PR Measurement Commission has concluded that social engagement is not equivalent to awareness, and it doesn’t necessarily imply a relationship. Here’s why: 1. Awareness and engagement are two different outcomes. As Tim Marklein, founder and CEO at Big Valley Marketing, put it: “We’re typically evaluating different objects, since awareness is 'of' something and engagement is 'with' someone.” Awareness has always been the first level of the path to action or purchase. Unless you are aware of a problem or a brand it is unlikely you will take any action on behalf of that cause or brand. Put another way: Awareness is a state of mind, engagement is a behavior. You must measure each differently. 2. You can’t prove a connection between content and awareness Awareness in public relations is measured by conducting a survey. Change in awareness is measured by comparing a

How To Measure Engagement

benchmark survey to a later survey, conducted after the is a growing body of research that says that high levels of social campaign is over or at regular intervals. If you want to get very engagement do not yield revenue or sales. specific you can do A/B testing to see if one piece of content generates more awareness than another, but that requires If it Doesn’t Guarantee Awareness, What Good Is physically showing the subjects the content and asking their Engagement? opinion afterward. Even though measuring engagement can’t tell you if people are

Social engagement is a physical action (usually a click) which more or less aware of your brand or issue, it is still valuable. What occurs in response to a piece of content. You have no idea engagement does tell you is that someone out there (who may or whether that piece of content generated the awareness or may not be in your target audience, remember) is responding to whether the awareness was already there. You also have no idea your content.

how many people may become aware of your brand as a result of that content, but didn’t choose to click on it. Rather than considering engagement as a proxy for awareness or preference or consideration, use it as measure of whether your 3. That click may not have been for you. content is moving people along the path to purchase. Tracking Suppose you’re at a crowded party and someone waves in your engagement is a measure of how interesting, compelling, or general direction. Was that wave for you? Similarly, someone relevant your content is. And engagement with specific content — may click on a post that mentions several brands or topics, yours such as requests for more information or downloading of a white along with others that he or she may also be interested in. In that paper or a visitor’s guide — is a perfectly acceptable proxy for case you cannot know if the person was aware of your brand or consideration. topic in particular. Technically, engagement is the process an individual goes through 4. Clicks do not a representative sample make. as they deepen their relationship with an organization or cause that To get a valid measure of awareness you need to have a valid interests them. It is the first baby step a person takes towards sample of your target audience. With social media engagement, building a relationship with an organization. In today’s era of you have no way of knowing if the person clicking is a member of overwhelming inundation of data and messages, an organization’s your target audience, your competitor, or a robot. relationship with its customers and/or stakeholders may be what 5. Don’t confuse activity with results. differentiates it from everyone else out there trying to convince Engagement frequently crops up as a proxy for customer interest. people to buy, donate, or volunteer. However, there is no evidence that a lot of social engagement means people are more likely to buy your product. In fact, there In social media, the term engagement refers to any action taken by

How To Measure Engagement anyone who has seen your post. So a like, a retweet, a share, or a pin are all “engagement.” The Conclave on Social Media Measurement Standards dictates that engagement should be calculated as a percentage of your total following (click here to view the full engagement standard). So, take the total number of engagements in a post and divide that by the total number of likes or followers.

But raw engagement numbers don’t tell the full story. Most organizations today acknowledge that likes are less impactful than shares and that comments and retweets with edits are signs of a higher level of engagement than a simple like.

Low-level engagement

In general likes on Facebook and Twitter are considered a very low- level or engagement. But tracking any increase (or decrease) in each of these metrics could be an indicator of change in the level of general interest in your brand, product, or cause. (Or it could just be the result of a spam or bot attack.) It’s also a quick way of judging the level of interest in different posts. But to be useful, you need to categorize each post by topic, theme, or subject, and track which ones consistently outperform the others.

High-level engagement

Higher levels of engagement are indicators of someone spending more time interacting with your content, i.e. leaving meaningful comments, editing a tweet to imply your key messages.

Actions like sharing content or creating original content are considered high-levels of engagement. Even higher engagement is

How To Measure Engagement indicated by signing up for an email, downloading content, or registering for an event. That will determine the weightings and the specific elements of your index. It might look something like the suggested scoring Develop your custom social media engagement index below, and would be applied to all your content. As with all metrics, the value of different forms of engagement is In an ideal world, you would actually test the index against the goals not the same for all brands or organizations. We recommend to ensure that the weightings are correct. But for the vast majority developing a customized engagement index that weights different of cases, a group discussion with marketing, sales and social media levels of engagement based on the extent to which each helps will agree on the weightings, and once everyone agrees on the achieve your goals. components you have your index. See the sample below: At its core, an index is an indicator or measure of something. In The advantage of a single score is that you can easily compare practice, it is a shorthand way to rate the quality or value of your campaigns and programs over time according to the same agree- efforts. Typically, an index combines different metrics that are upon meaningful criteria. totaled or averaged to produce a single number that should reflect what your organization considers "good" or "bad." If you are a new organization and trying to build a following, a like might be an acceptable level of engagement. If you are an established brand with a message to get across, then a like or even a short comment may not be sufficient. Action Score

To develop a customized index for social media engagement with “Like”/Follow/Open/+1 0.5 your brand or program (i.e., any owned media), start by referring to Favorites/Opens/Views 1 your goals: Comments 1.5  What are the priorities and objectives of your specific program?  What sort of engagement do you want to encourage? Shares content 2  What types of content make your target audiences act?  What are the steps in your sales process and how does social Signs up to receive email or other owned content 2.5 media play into that path to purchase? Shares a link to an owned site 2.5  What actions on the part of the consumers of your content are indicative of person is moving closer to purchase? (You may need Total Score 10 to talk to your sales people or market researchers to define this.)

How to Calculate Social Media ROI

“I can show a direct connection from this Tweet to company profit,” said no social media professional EVER. Sure there are anecdotes, but actually showing the net profit from Twitter is a complex problem that needs considerable resources and cooperation from across the organization to accurately calculate.

The problem is that in today’s omni‐media environment, attribution is complicated, influences are many, impressions are worthless, and AVEs don’t cut it any more. It’s one thing if you’re doing social media for an e‐commerce company, but quite another “bottom line” if you’re working in public affairs for a state agency, and still another if you’re a nonprofit on a mission to change society.

Step 1. Identify the desired business outcome The key is starting with clearly defined BUSINESS goals and objectives . Not what you "think" is the goal, but as outlined and agreed to by whomever signs your check. Contrary to what shows up as "goals" in most social media award submissions, most organizations invest in social media not to get "followers” but to effect change—be it constit- customer intelligence departments spend their days accumulating data uency opinions, the attendance at an event, or the volume of qualified on what makes your prospects and customers act. They will have con- leads. sumer research as well as historical sales data that informs marketers Step 2. What make your target audience act? how to create a good ad. When I was helping Procter & Gamble estab- The next step is to establish what makes your stakeholders change lish PR's role in the marketing mix, they knew that it took a desirable their mind or give you money. If you work for an e‐commerce company photo, a brand benefit and a recommendation to sway their customers or any large company with a customer intelligence team, getting this to purchase. data should be as easy as walking down the hall. Market research and If you don't have this data , you’ll need to track it down on your own.

How to Calculate Social Media ROI

Start at the top. Whatever senior leadership and or the sales man- The important thing at this step is to make sure that senior leader- agers thinks will move the needle is your best answer. If that ship buy into whatever definition of “outcome” you come up with. doesn't work, interview the folks on the front line, talk to your finance and business folks, and find someone with sufficient institu- Step 4. Connecting the dots tional knowledge to know. Alternatively, conduct a survey and ask The next step is to correlate whatever metric or proxy you’ve your stakeholders what would make them act. gotten agreement on in Step 3 with the actual social media data. The first requirement is to match the structure of the data. So if Step 3. Determine how your social media efforts impact you’re using daily data out of Google Analytics, in order to do any the behavior of your stakeholders valid comparison to earned or owned social media, you will need to In an ideal world, there would be an analyst in your marketing de- have daily data from your earned media. partment who could use a marketing mix model to determine Secondly you will need to decide which criteria to compare. Start which social actions make the greatest (and least) contribution to by examining overall volume and sentiment to web analytics, but the sales process. But if you’re not lucky enough to have those also look at messaging, positioning as well as the impact of differ- kinds of resources, you’ll need to do your own research. Start by ent platforms. doing an audit of what data you have in house. Is there data from your CRM system or do you use a Net Promoter Score (NPS)? Is Finally you’ll want to use a statistical analysis package or the statis- Google Analytics set up on your web site? tical functions in Excel to run tests of the data to see if there is a correlation.Watch our video to find out how. Then, meet with senior leadership and get agreement on an acceptable definition of success. For example, if you’re working in Step 5. Reporting results travel and tourism, you probably can’t count the number of people Once you have your data, start by reviewing what was agreed upon who visit your destination as a result of your social media efforts, with senior leadership in terms of how earned media contributed but you CAN use Google Analytics to determine the extent to which to the outcomes, and how you got agreement on those outcomes. your efforts drove downloads to the visitor guide. Then show the outcomes, followed by the details and the numbers. The point is that you don’t want to throw every bit of data up there If you’re a non‐profit, one acceptable proxy might be traffic to the and lose everyone’s attention. Start with your most significant find- “thank you for donating” page. If you’re a B2B company, you might ings and insights. Then have the other data available when they ask use social traffic to the “send me more information” page. For a questions. government agency or advocacy organization, see if senior leadership will accept online petition signings or views of the issue page as the definition of success.

How to Spot Dirty Data and Clean It Up

Today’s monitoring services are a lot like the early days of The solution: Review the search string with product managers and match.com before e-Harmony came along. In match.com you then test it. Review again, test again. It typically takes a month of entered a few basic parameters, and voila, there were matches. data testing to get a good search string. Whether or not you wanted to date them was a whole other matter. Who knew whether the real person behind that photograph The Bad Numbers: However you count them, chances are your was your weird cousin Ralph who lives in his parents’ basement, or ‘impression numbers” are wrong. a 55 year old pretending to be a 30-something? The only way you We call them OTS for opportunities to see, others call them could find out was to go beyond the search and actually start a impressions or reach. Most people use them interchangeably but conversation with them. they are anything but interchangeable.

Then e-Harmony came along and it’s “search” could factor in a Most outlets and reporting companies like Compete and Alexa use whole slew of other desired characteristics. Sure, it took hours to average unique visitors and calculate data on a monthly basis. So if complete the questionnaire, but in the end it was worth it. you look up UNICEF.org, it will tell you that it had 73,965 visitors last month. If you look up a small but potentially influential Today’s media search is exactly the same. You get what you search publication like The Measurement Advisor it will tell you that there for. So here are a few tips to keep your data clean: isn’t enough data to give you an accurate number.

The Bad Search String: Be careful what you search for Unless you pay for a professional service which will differentiate If you are just tracking a brand name like “Visa,” that big spike in between URLs, it will also tell you that a story in an obscure food coverage in June may be the result of your social media efforts on blog buried somewhere on www.nytimes.com has the same behalf of the credit card company, or it could be that there were number of unique visitors as a front-page story. new Visa requirements to enter China. Even more problematic are Never mind that many of the services put completely invalid search strings that aren’t periodically updated with new products multipliers on their numbers for no reason at all. The reality is that and new brand names. Chances are, you don’t realize you’re not when someone tells you that you have “reached” 200 billion capturing the coverage until a product manager announces at an eyeballs chances are pretty good that you haven’t. important meeting that you are missing coverage and therefore all the results are invalid.

How to Spot Dirty Data and Clean It Up

The Unqualified Entry: Just because it mentions your brand doesn’t mean it should count Google Panda has done a lot to reduce the number of content farms — sites designed only to generate page views that simply copy content from other sites. But it hasn’t by any means eliminated them. Which is why a story mentioning one of our financial services clients shows up on a soft-porn site, and a find-an-attorney site. And just because the site is designed to get page views, it doesn’t mean that anyone reads anything once they get there. Chances are that when someone looking for an attorney sees information about a student loan offer, they’re not going to stick around and read the whole thing. For some clients, such spammy content farm “hits” represent more than 10% of all results.

Then there are press releases, which, if you use a paid distribution service, will automatically end up on Yahoo News and a number of monitoring tool will collect them, thanks to the ever more powerful other business pages. But press releases are NOT earned media. You collection tools. paid someone to write it, and chances are you paid someone else to distribute it. So they should not count in validated results. If you’re lucky, and your brand isn’t totally generic, it will take you at least a month of searching, checking, cleaning and refining your search And, let’s face it, they aren’t hard to find. When it contains a date-line, string to get it right. and the company boiler plate, you can pretty much assume that someone paid to create it.

The Irrelevant Entry: So is it really about you? Our client SAS Software has written the book on filtering out bad mentions of its brand. Among the ineligible abbreviations: Sexual Assault Support, Serial attached SCSI, Society for Applied Spectroscopy and Students against Sweatshops. But every company has similar issues. Whether it’s your chief spokesperson getting married, or your chief salesperson volunteering at the local soup kitchen, the average

Six Tips To Get Insight from your Data

We all use data to make better decisions every day. When a father uses a thermometer to check his child’s temperature, he becomes data-informed. When your pants feel tight and you hop on a scale and then decide to go on a diet, you are making a data-informed decision. When an organization starts tracking the correlation between web traffic and “likes” on Facebook, it has acquired raw materials to make data-informed decisions.

Changing the world doesn’t happen just by accumulating data. To help your organization succeed in its mission you must achieve consensus on what success looks like. This requires getting good data that’ll help drive decision-making. Most important, it requires careful evaluation so you understand what is working and what is not working within your campaign or program.

Data-informed organizations use data on a regular basis to determine what is affecting their efforts to achieve their goals. They build data into the way they plan, manage, and operate. From leadership, to strategy, to decision-making, to meetings, to job descriptions, a data-informed culture embeds continuous improvement in its DNA. Data-informed organizations define and use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as mileposts to determine whether they’re making progress toward their goals.

One more ingredient is vital: a willing, data-informed leader. A data- informed culture flows down from leadership. There is a long history of organizations that failed when they relied entirely on the gut

Six Tips To Get Insight From Your Data instincts of their leaders—Netflix, Komen, and Penn State come to mind. So it’s critical to have a leader who is willing to embrace a What does broad array of data for decision-making. With useful data and a data-informed leader in place, the following tips will help you success understand your nonprofit’s data: look like?

Tip 1: Start at the end...what does success look like? Unless senior leadership agrees on what constitutes success, failure, and how they will be measured, you can waste a tremendous amount of time accumulating data that you are unable to use. Therefore it’s important to start with an internal conversation about the outcomes on which you will be expected to report.

Don’t be afraid of a bit of healthy disagreement. The best measurement programs are born and benefit from lively conversations about what really matters to an organization, and who can claim credit for what. Keep the conversation focused on the ultimate goals of your organization. Remind yourselves that what’s important is not “getting credit.” It’s about the “So what?” As yourself: How does this data help your organization achieve its mission?

You will also want to manage expectations. What is realistic to expect given your current investment compared to peer organizations? What do short-term, medium-term, and longer-term results look like?

Six Tips To Get Insight From Your Data

Tip 2: Find your data curator If you aren’t comfortable in the roll of data geek, you need to find someone who is. This person will guide your organization into choosing the right metrics. Plus they will report insights in a way that connects the data to organizational goals.

Every organization has people with the right skills, but they’re generally in accounting, finance, or IT—not social media. They could also be in the statistics or research department of your nearest university (chances are they’ll be looking for a nonprofit for a project). But somewhere there’s someone who’s as passionate about spreadsheets as you are about your cause. Find them and make them your data curator.

Tip 3: Find a pilot project to get buy-in If your organization is new to using data to drive decision-making, then start small. Select a project, event, small campaign, or program that is high-priority on your organization’s work plan for the year and to which you can apply a couple of good metrics. Keep the end in mind when agreeing on how this pilot project will be structured, run, and measured. The point here is to help your organization develop skills that will lead the way to bigger projects. Build metrics into the initial design by setting up some mechanism to capture names or behaviors. We recommend starting off by using unique URLs or landing pages to identify increases in web traffic.

It’s important to make sure that anyone who is going to use or

Six Tips To Get Insight From Your Data

review the data from your pilot project buys into your metrics. If there are many different decision-makers, you may want to conduct a quick survey to make sure that everyone ends up on the same page.

Tip 4: Having the right KPIs is critical Too often organizations choose Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that simply reflect activity. It’s essential to understand the difference between KPIs and measurement. KPIs are milestones— that is, they are metrics that indicate progress. Measurement is the road that leads to those milestones. Measurement can be used for many things, and some of them are undesirable, like justifying your existence or proving a point to settle a conflict. But data-informed cultures use measurement to continuously improve how their organization operates.

Tip 5: Learn from failure Here’s a simple rule of thumb: You should spend more time evaluating and learning from your data than gathering it. The purpose of data analysis is to understand what it says about why things happen. This doesn’t mean you need to prove causality; most of the time a simple correlation will do. The important thing is that you think through the results and analyze them for insights.

You can always learn more from studying what doesn’t work than what does, even though no one likes to call anything a “failure.” One way to deal with this is to rank order all the various initiatives,

Six Tips To Get Insight From Your Data tactics, or programs you measured from “Best Performing” to “Worst Performing.” To remove the stigma from failure and acknowledge that failures can provide valuable insight, why not reward a poorly performing project from which you learned the most. For instance, “Mistake of the Month” would be one that taught a significant lesson, and the recipient could be awarded a premium parking place or a coffee gift card.

Tip 6: Educate through examples Show how adding a data-informed approach to your social media programs can avoid ineffective campaigns and increase audience satisfaction. More important, don’t just develop discipline around collecting data; make sure you’re similarly disciplined about analyzing it.

Your goal is to look at what you’ve collected and generate insights. This requires reflection, not just counting. In other words, demand answers from your data. Ask questions like:

• Which channels gain us the most traction? • Are they generating the types of traction we want? • Is the traction leading to the mission’s success? • How should we adjust our workload internally to reflect those results? • How did this program help us meet our overall strategic goals? • How are our efforts supporting our programs?

Six Tips To Get Insight From Your Data

Make sure that everyone involved in a project also gets involved in the analysis; remember, every person and department should have access to the data they need in order to improve their effectiveness. This means making reports meaningful and relevant.

Don’t just throw charts up on a screen and expect people to understand them. Make sure that any reporting you do is full of illustrations and context. For example, without the pictures, the graph below doesn’t say anything other than “There was a huge spike in December.” But with the pictures, it conveys that UNICEF’s ambassadors David Beckham (along with the Dirk's Bentley video) and Mia Farrow are most effective in generating the kind of engagement UNICEF wants.

How to Write a Report In 4 Hours or Less that Your Boss Will Love

The key to great reports is to use your data to tell a story. However, teasing that story out of a pile of data is not as straightforward as you might think. Whether you are summing up your accomplishments for the year or summarizing a bad day in social media, your report writing will be faster and of better quality if you approach your work in a strict sequence with specific intermediate goals along the way. Once you gain a little experience at this, you will be able to write a clear and effective report in four hours or less. Here’s a guide for how to plan your time that details the steps you need to accomplish.

Hour 1: Get Your Mind Around the Problem Let’s make a pretty safe assumption that the request for the report came from somewhere higher up in your organization. So first, put yourself in the head of the boss of the person who requested the report. Ask yourself what type of person he or she is:

 Are they a “word” person, like a former journalist, editor, or PR person, who is most comfortable getting descriptive data?  Are they a “numbers” person, who will want just the facts and numbers and maybe a chart or two?  Are they a more visual person, who will need to see data in graphs and word clouds?

And if you really don’t know what kind of person they are, then make sure you use all three forms of presentation in your report.

How to Write a Report Your Boss Will Love

Next, make sure you know what questions you need to address. If different, use the tables to help you decide which charts or graphs you’re reporting in the middle of a crisis, then what data will people you will want to generate. need to make the right responses going forward? Scenario 2: Reporting after a crisis If you’re reporting after an event, then what data do you need to make the event better next time? Or, if it was a dreadful affair, Questions that need Data you will need Charts you will need what data do you need to not make the same mistakes twice? to be answered to create If you’re preparing a monthly or quarterly report, then what  What worked and  Tone of coverage  Share of desirable decisions and actions do you want people to take after reading it? what didn’t work?  Website analytics voice vs the compe- What data does your team need to make better decisions and get  How badly did it  Pre/post preference tition hurt the business? survey  Share of desired better at their jobs?  What should we do  Word cloud positioning vs the differently next  Author and media competition In Scenarios 1, 2, 3, and 4, we provide an easy guide to deciding time? type by tone  Increase in online or what charts you’ll need, depending on the scenario. While each is  Which authors and  Competitive data website engage- media outlets  Presence/absence of ment over time Scenario 1: Reporting in the middle of a crisis should worry us messages (pre/post event) going forward?  Increase/decrease in Questions that need to Data you will need Charts you will need preference & be answered to create consideration  % coverage in top  How bad is it really?  Volume of coverage  Increase/decrease in tier vs lower tier  Do we need to re- by hour and by day volume of coverage media spond at all?  Tone of coverage by hour/day  Share of quotes by  Do we need to re-  List of key media  Increase in negative your spokespeople spond differently? outlets sentiment by hour vs the competition  Is it really a crisis or  Competitive data (if  Sentiment by author  What’s the gist of just internal panic? you are in a competi- and media outlet the conversation?  Which authors and tive battle  Share of voice vs. the media outlets should  List of authors. competition we be worried about?  Share of undesirable voice vs. the competition  Top authors by tone  Word cloud

How to Write a Report Your Boss Will Love Scenario 3: Reporting after a product launch Scenario 4: Reporting Monthly or Quarterly

Questions that need Data you will need Charts you will need Questions that need Data you will need Charts you will need to to be answered to create to be answered create  Did our efforts pay  Qualitative data on Share of desirable Did we get our mes-  Message content Share of desirable off? your brand as well as coverage vs. the sages and positioning analysis voice vs. the  What worked, what the competition competition over time. across correctly?  Competitive tone and competition didn’t?  Tone of coverage data Share of undesirable Did we outperform positioning data Share of desired posi- What should we do  Message content coverage vs. the the competition when  Spokesperson track- tioning vs. the differently next month/ analysis competition over time they launched their ing and quote competition. quarter?  List of top tier vs Message delivery product? analysis Increase in online or second tier media over time by message How well did our  Demographic or website engagement outlets % of items containing spokespeople get reach data over time (pre/post  Quote/spokesperson one or more key messages across?  List of reporters who event) analysis messages over time Did we reach the covered the launch % of coverage in top  List of initiatives/ % of top tier vs. lower audience we were and the outlets they tier vs. lower tier campaigns /programs tier media over time aiming for? wrote for. media  Geographic reach data % of items containing Did the reporters we Share of spokespeo- one or more quotes briefed report ple quoted vs. the from internal accurately? competition spokespeople over time What’s the gist of the % increase in social conversation (e.g. a engagement over time word cloud) % increase in unique visits to targeted URL over time % change in awareness/ preference compared to last reporting period Coverage of specific programs or initiatives by tone and message content (ranked from best to worst) Desirable vs. undesirable coverage by geographic region

How to Write a Report Your Boss Will Love

Assume the worst about your data and plan to deal with it. Read the clips from your key publications, and review the writing of There are bound to be some inaccuracies in your data. Chances are posters or authors with the most followers. good that:  What topics or coverage were capturing editors’ interest? What You won’t agree with the coding, or were people commenting on?

You can’t find a clip that you know should be in there, or The purpose here is not just to check every clip, it’s to become familiar with the media landscape in the time frame you’re There’s a key publication missing. reporting. Your goal for the end of the hour is to have a pretty good idea of what story your data is telling. And if you’re using an outside vendor and haven’t used their data before, then you should assume there will be more than one thing Hour 2: Illustrate the Story wrong. There’s always a learning curve. Don’t panic. It is very likely This might also be titled “Analyze the Data,” but, unless you have that one or two problems won’t make all the data invalid. days instead of hours to work, you want to be careful not to get lost in the analysis. Virtually any platform out there will generate dozens Read over the data with a skeptical eye. of different reports in all shapes and sizes. You don’t need dozens, so We’re not suggesting that you sit down and read thousands of clips, resist delving too deeply into the crosstabs. posts, and Tweets. But you do need to spend at least an hour digging around in the data to see what you’re dealing with. The point is not You only need the charts that will illustrate the story you’re going to just to make sure it’s accurate, but to also get a feeling for what is tell. Depending on what your analysis finds, throw out any charts happening and why. that don’t contribute to your story line. Also eliminate any charts that have insufficient data to make your point. Never put a chart in  Start with what everyone will focus on first, the negative mentions. there just because it was there before. I recommend no more than Make sure they are accurate. 10 charts. If you include more than 10 charts, you’ll need more than Then scan the positive clips. What’s happening to make the media an hour for the next step, which is to write or your customers say good things about you? Hour 3: Write the Headlines and Summary Now filter out the dreck. Use the Excel filter function to search for Your third hour should be spent writing. First, write a conclusionary phrases like Viagra, Free, and PRNewswire (reprints of press headline for each chart. Conclusionary headlines should inform and releases should not be included in your metrics.) enlighten. Never write a headline like, “There was a big spike in

How to Write a Report Your Boss Will Love

coverage in June.” Instead, say, “Because we/media did x, y, or z, media coverage increased by xx% in June.”

Explain in one short sentence or phrase what conclusions they should draw from the pictures or charts. The titles on the individual charts should describe what data they represent.

Once you’re done with the conclusionary headlines, write your executive summary and methodology. The executive summary should capture the 5 to 7 points you want your audience to remember. The methodology should be as detailed as necessary and goes at the end of your report.

Hour 4: Proof, Edit, Revise, and Rehearse Clean up any graphical inconsistencies and proof your report thoroughly. Grammar counts. No typos, no misspellings. Now, sit down and read the report aloud to someone. Also, give it to someone else to read aloud to you. As your review it ask yourself these questions:

 Does it sound smooth and reasonably eloquent? Is it readily understandable? If not, refine as necessary.

 If you were presenting this in the board room, would everyone understand all of it? If not, refine as necessary.

Congrats, you’ve written a solid and effective report in four hours. Take a well-earned break. ∞

Five Steps to Picking the Right Measurement Vendor

Step 1: Ask Yourself These Questions... • What are, or were, the specific goals and/or objectives of the social media program, and can these be all stated in a quantitative or measurable fashion? For example: ✓ To double the number of inquiries received from one year to the next ✓ To increase media coverage by achieving greater “share of voice” in one year than in a previous year ✓ To have XYZ legislation passed or defeated ✓ To enhance or improve brand or image • Who are, or were, the principal individuals serving as spokespersons for the organization during the social media effort? • What are, or were, the principal themes, concepts, and messages that the organization was interested in disseminating? • Who were the principal target audience groups to whom the messages were directed? • Which channels of communication were used and/or deemed most important to use in disseminating the messages? (e.g. social media, word of mouth, direct mail, or special events?) • What specific social media strategies and tactics were used to carry out the program? • What were the specific components or elements of the campaign? • What is, or was, the timeline for the overall program or project? • What is, or were, the desired or hoped-for outputs, outtakes, and/or outcomes of the social media effort?

Five Steps to Picking the Right Measurement Vendor Step 2: Check out “Nine Typical Problems and the Vendors to Solve Them” Chart This detailed chart, located on pages 18 and 19, presents the nine most common types of measurement needs along with suggested vendors for you to consider. If any of the projects sound familiar to what your organization needs, you'll know which vendors to check out.

Step 3: Use the “Sources & Methods Transparency Template” Print out this template before you start a new measurement project and before you commit to a vendor. The template was designed specifically to address the challenges clients face in knowing “what’s in- side” PR/social media measurement reports from vendors, various agencies, and research providers.

Step 4: Write up a Request for Proposal (RFP) If you work for a large organization, managing the RFP process can be complex and time consuming. Purchasing may well manage the process, but if you want it to go smoothly, go back to the answers you found in Step 1 and make sure everyone who will use the measurement system agrees on the details. Specifically make sure there is agreement on the types of media to be monitored, the search terms, the specific top tier publications, the metrics everyone wants to see, and the budget. How often you get reports is a major driver of cost, so get agreement on timing of reporting as well. Another major cost factor is how much of your data collection process you want to automate. Computers do a really good job of putting words into buckets. Any good Natural Language Processing

Five Steps to Picking the Right Measurement Vendor system can go through the torrent, pull out mentions of your or- not a way to compare them. Most vendors will provide you with a ganization, and put them into a database complete with the date trial period to test the data. Take advantage of it, but make sure of the mention, the source, the author, and the title. Some can you have criteria to judge whether the trial is a success. achieve pretty accurate results with basic sentiment. For analysis If you want to haggle over the price, make sure that the full pa- of sentiment, messaging or positioning, you’ll need human cod- rameters are spelled out to the vendor before a final price quote. ers. Make the contract for as short a time period as possible, so you have as much flexibility for future change as possible. Sometimes First, see the list of vendors who have pledged to support industry more clips come through than anticipated, so get clarity over what standards (find the listhere ). If a particular organization is not happens if the scope begins to creep. listed, then don’t consider them. Now narrow down your list of possible vendors to the ones that can deliver on all the agreed- Once you’ve made your official decision, give the good or bad upon criteria. news to the vendors who have responded. When you call the win- ner, set up a meeting as soon as possible to have the handoff be- If your requirements dictate that you need both traditional media tween the salesperson and the people who will actually work on and social media, then go with a vendor that has strength in both, your account. When you call the losers, explain your decision and like Glean.Info or Prime Research. Many of the social listening your rationale. No vendor wants to lose and not learn anything firms like Crimson Hexagon and Sysomos have little expertise in from it. And you never know when you may need a replacement. traditional media, so what you get might be spotty. Note that many automated systems do not offer human coding. Now go ahead and send out your RFPs!

Step 5: Make a decision Once the deadline for responses has passed, it’s time to begin screening. Try to compare apple to apples, or at least apples to pears. Too often people try to compare apples to sheep, i.e., the capabilities between vendors are so completely different there is

Five Steps to Picking the Right Measurement Vendor

Figure Eight: Nine Typical Problems and the Vendors to Solve Them Click here to download the printer-friendly version.

Solution Some vendors that do What to look for Problem What I want most is a You need a good customer -Cision It’s not the size of the media database, it’s good way to manage relationship management -Salesforce how accurate it is and how often it’s updated. my media lists. (CRM) system that can -GlobeNewswire (Nasdaq) If you are selling spectrometers, you don’t keep track of all your media -MarketWired want to be sending releases to The Measure- contacts, what you’ve ment Advisor. pitched them on, and whether they’ve run any What I want most is a You need a wire service or -Business Wire You need a service that does more than send good way to distribute press release distribution -MarketWired out a release. You need one that can send out my press releases. service. -Cision the right kind of content to the right influenc- -BurrellesLuce ers. -GlobeNewswire (Nasdaq)

What I want most is a You need a monitoring -Glean.Info For daily alerts, timing is often as critical as daily alert from media company. -Customscoop content. Make sure they can deliver the alert outlets around the -Cision when you need it and that they get the key world so I know what’s -GlobeNewswire (Nasdaq) media outlets you need. being said about us. -BurrellesLuce -Meltwater

What I want most is to You need a social listening -Glean.Info Make sure that they have good filters. The know what people are platform with automated -NetBase problem isn’t getting all the posts, it’s getting saying about us on sentiment analysis. -Sysomos the right ones. If they don’t have good, easy Twitter and other social -Crimson Hexagon ways to filter out spam, porn, and dreck, run platforms. -Trendkite in the opposite direction. -Talkwalker -HootSuite

Five Steps to Picking the Right Measurement Vendor

Problem Solution Some vendors that do it What to look for I want to know what lo- You need a traditional clip- -BurrellesLuce Other companies provide it but chances are cal dailies and other ping service. good the data comes from BurrellesLuce. traditional print media -Glean.info outlets are saying about -Talkwalker us. -Prime Research I want to capture all my You need a broadcast mon- -TVEyes (pending court rulings) Most people are happy to just get links to television and broadcast itoring company. broadcast coverage on their monitoring coverage and be able get -Critical Mention feed. But if monitoring broadcast is im- broadcast quality videos I portant, and you may want to download a can save and show to my real video, you’ll need to go with one of boss. these two.

I want help analyzing and You need a measurement -Carma You want to find someone with highly measuring my media and company. -Glean.Info trained analysts that can code relevant cov- social media coverage. -Cision Global Insights erage accurately. You should demand a -MediaMiser minimum 88% accuracy in a Scott’s Pi -Prime Research intercoder reliability test. (Call me, I’ll be happy to run the test for you.) I want to hire a company You need a company that -SocialBro Make sure that whatever channels matter that can provide detailed can take the API from a va- -Simply Measured to you are tracked by the vendor you social media metrics. riety of sources and auto- -UnMetric select. matically extract all the -Glean.Info data that Facebook, Twitter, etc., compiles. I want to hire a company You need to check the -BurrellesLuce The rest will probably push you to use AVEs that has pledged to sup- measurement stand- -BuzzMonitor and other dubious metrics. port the industry standards pledge list before you -Glean.Info ards. begin your search. -Carma -Research+Data Insights (part of Hill+Knowlton Strategies) -Prime Research -SeeDepth -Universal Information Services

Social Media Measurement Checklist

This checklist is designed to be used alongside any campaign or company brands, spokespeople, initiatives, topics issues and if ap- program you plan to measure. Click here to download the printer- propriate competitors.  Decide what you need to report on, for example: friendly version.  Topics  Issues Step 1: Define your measures of success and KPIs  Peer organizations  Benchmarks  Make a list of people who influence your budget and set your prior-  Other: ______ities. Add in anyone else who will want to see a report on the cam-  Make a list of channels you need to monitor, for example: paign/program  External blogs  Set up a meeting with those people to reach consensus on organi-  Facebook zational goals & measures of success, then create meeting agenda  YouTube  In this meeting, discuss/define the following:  Twitter  Your target audiences  LinkedIn  Goals  Pinterest  Instagram  Who/what the benchmark will be  Periscope  The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)  Make a list of quantitative data you’ll need  After meeting, summarize the agreed upon definitions in a docu-  Comments ment. Also include a list of the key metrics (including the KPIs)  Likes you’ll be reporting on in your dashboard  Reactions  Ask senior management to sign off on the KPIs and dashboard  YouTube Views/Podcast Listens  Based on approved KPIs, make a list of data you’ll need  % of video watched/% of Podcast listened to  Followers Step 2: Select a research methodology  Retweets  Shares  Look at each metric & pick the most appropriate measurement  Pins tool: media content analysis, survey research, and/or web & social  Snaps analytics  Consult the chart “Nine Typical Problems and the Vendors to Solve Them” to narrow your search

Step 3: Select a listening/monitoring tool

 Make a list of search terms . The list should include all important

The Social Media Measurement Checklist  Make a list of qualitative data you’ll need  Analyze the reslt and draw conclusions  Tonality/Sentiment  Once the results are in, write up the results of the survey and map  Message presence (or absence) them to your activities  Topics or issues discussed  Products /Services mentioned F. Analyze & report results  Lines of business metnieond  Put all relevant data into an Excel spreadsheet  Spokespeople quoted  Based on your KPIs and definitions of success, force rank all your pro-  Recommendations (or lack thereof) grams from 1 to however many programs you are measuring  Brand benefits mentioned  Assign a “resource investment” category to each program that re-  Accuracy of mention flects the total amount of resources that the program required. We  Estimate volume of mentions using Google News or a prior monitor- recommend the following 4 categories: Low, Medium, High, and Very ing program High  Decide if you need an automated system with random sampling and/  Create a quadrant chart and plot where each program falls in terms or human oversight or manual review of engagement and resource use  Decide if you will be doing this work in-house or with measurement  Look for failures: Where did a program not deliver? partners  Look for exceptional successes: Where did a program really deliver?  If you need partners, create a Request for Proposal (RFP)  Drilldown into the data to determine cause & effect in order to accurately compare vendors  Put the most relevant data, along with charts, into a PowerPoint  Use the Sources & Methods Transparency Template presentation D. Select a tool  Report results, draw insights, and make actionable recommendations

 Decide on specific campaign or program you need to measure  Define specific goal conversion criteria (link to video to learn how to set up conversions)  Define the source of your list of desired respondents  Form a clear, accurate understanding of the social media habits of your desired respondents (e.g. if they are primarily online then an online survey is acceptable)  If you are planning to use an outside research firm, give them your budget  If you are using a free online survey tool, make sure it has the capaci- ty to ask the questions you need answered  Identify a professional, academic or internal or eternal partner to review and test your survey instrument  Test your survey on a sample of your respondents, review their feed- back, and fix any issues  Officially start the survey, then check results after 5 days to verify it’s working and collecting the data you need  Review the Cross tabs to make sure you have the data you need

About the Author

Katie Delahaye Paine, CEO of Paine Publishing Katie, also known as the Measurement Queen (@queenofmetrics), has been a pioneer in the field of measurement for roughly three decades. She founded two measurement companies and has written three books (all available on Amazon). Her most recent company, Paine Publishing (established in 2013), is the first educational publishing firm entirely dedicated to creating more Measurement Mavens. Its bimonthly newsletter, The Measurement Advisor, is the world’s most comprehensive source of information about best practices in social media measurement. In her consulting practices, she designs measurement dashboards for some of today’s most admired organizations. Katie has also been a leading promoter of standards in the PR and social media measurement field, most recently as the initial organizer of The Conclave that released social media measurement standards. Katie is a Senior Fellow and Advisory Board member of the Society for New Social media Research (SNCR). She was also a founder of the Institute for Public Relations Measurement Commission (IPRMC). Measurement aside, Katie is happiest on her sailing dinghy, a vintage 1960 Merrimac, or moseying around Shankhassick Farm in Durham, New Hampshire, where she lives with her cats Toulouse & Fergie, and a flock of chickens.

About Paine Publishing

Paine Publishing, LLC is an educational publishing company that helps organizations establish effective, meaningful social media measurement programs that are compliant with industry standards. We publish The Measurement Advisor, a bimonthly newsletter for professional communicators who want to create and improve their measurement programs and need the information to do it effectively. Each newsletter contains the latest news, tips, and resources for everything you want (and need) to know about the measurement of PR, social media, marketing, internal & corporate social media, and more. Additionally, Paine Publishing offers a range of downloadable resources including: ◦ Measurement 101 Course-in-a-Box ◦ Measurement 101 Course-in-a-Box for Professors ◦ The Measurement Sherpa’s Essential Guide ◦ Barcelona Principles Compliance Tutorial ◦ The DMO’s Ticket to Barcelona Principles Compliance Tutorial ◦ 50 Shades of PR ROI

For more, visit us online: www.PainePublishing.com