University Business - October 2009 - (Page 56)

internet technology in tracking web visitors referred by your social media initiatives. 4. Capture the data at preset intervals. Once the right tools have been selected, it’s time to get started with implementation of initiatives. Given the very dynamic nature of social media, plan to capture measurement data at preset intervals— every hour, every day, every week, every month, etc.—depending on the type of activities. This “on-the-fly” measurement will help you make necessary adjustments quickly and ensure a record of the full life cycle of your video, slideshow, or post. Once again, Facebook and YouTube have made life easier by offering easy access to archived data, which should help save some time. With Twitter, you will have to keep track of your metrics on your own. What Can Be Measured? Facebook Facebook provides extensive analytics to page administrators. With your Insights Page, you can track over time the following metrics: total fans, unsubscribers and resubscribers, new and removed fans, top countries, age and gender demographics, page views, media (photo, audio, and video) consumption, interactions (total number of comments, wall posts, and likes), post quality, click-through and engagement rates, discussion posts, and reviews. YouTube YouTube also offers comprehensive statistics about your channel as well as each of the videos you upload. With YouTube Insight, you can measure views, unique viewers, relative popularity for all your videos, top videos by percentage of total views, age and gender demographics, and community engagements (total number of ratings, comments, and favorites). All these metrics can be filtered by geographical area (countries and regions). YouTube also provides two other specific metrics for every video: discovery (a breakdown of the source of views) and hot spots (ups and downs of viewership compared to other videos of the same length). Twitter The only metric Twitter makes available to every account holder is the number of followers, followings, and tweets published since the beginning. Several third-party applications like TweetDeck will help you keep track of mentions (retweets and @ replies). You can also use the Twitter search engine, but you will need to do it on a regular basis. In both cases, it’s important to keep track of your results. If you want to compare your institutional account with that of your peer institutions, try using Twitter Grader, which gives a “grade” when you submit the name of an account. LinkedIn LinkedIn Groups only provides a few metrics, including the number of members, new members, new discussions, and news postings for the last seven days. You will have to keep track of these metrics beyond that point, as no historical data is available. 5. Don’t forget some benchmarking. While you should not live and die by what your competition is doing, competitive analysis can also help in assessing relative performance. For certain metrics publicly available, you can rely on industrywide reports, such as the Blue Fuego Research Files published last summer. Or you can adopt a do-it-yourself benchmarking approach for two or three competing institutions. It doesn’t take too much time to track numbers of followers, fans, posts, or comments on a monthly basis. And doing so can help you make sense of your own numbers by reflecting broader trends. 6. Share your measurement data. Collected data shouldn’t sit on your desk. You need to share meaningful results with decision-makers. Try to come up with a one- or two-page report or dashboard that will provide output and outcome metrics for a given period along with a quick snapshot of the related social media initiatives launched. In other words, you need to report on what you do—the direct general results in terms of followers, fans, comments, etc.—but also the more targeted results in relation with your KPIs. Don’t overwhelm the recipients of reports with numbers, and remember to add some short narrative to explain results and suggest actions to be taken. 7. Use measurement data to craft your next moves. If your reports include action items suggested by the results, make sure required changes and adjustments are implemented—and then rinse and repeat. Due to the lack of a definitive body of knowledge on social media, a measurement program should be a key component of a social media strategy. Following these basic steps will provide enough information to decide which platform is worth your time and which type of initiatives work best. universitybusiness.com Resources Blue Fuego Research Files, http://bluefuego.com/research BudURL, http://budurl.com Facebook, http://facebook.com Get Shorty, http://get-shorty.com Google Analytics URL Builder Tool, http://tinyurl.com/38vqpg HootSuite, http://hootsuite.com LinkedIn, http://linkedin.com Tweet Deck, http://tweetdeck.com Twitter, http://twitter.com Twitter Grader, http://twitter.grader.com Twitter Search, http://search.twitter.com YouTube, http://youtube.com WordPress Short URL Plugin, http://tinyurl.com/5dpo2z 56 | October 2009 http://linkedin.com http://bluefuego.com/research http://tweetdeck.com http://budurl.com http://twitter.com http://facebook.com http://twitter.grader.com http://get-shorty.com http://search.twitter.com http://youtube.com http://tinyurl.com/38vqpg http://hootsuite.com http://tinyurl.com/5dpo2z http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - October 2009

University Business - October 2009
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Financial Aid
Lessons in Video
Dining Halls of Distinction
Lost in Space
Independent Outlook
Internet Tech
End Note

University Business - October 2009