1. KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR SUCCESS MGT 489 May 13, 2015

2. Overview How do we know whether our strategies and campaigns are working? What can you measure? How do you justify your social media actions?

3. The BIG THREE Increase revenue Lower costs Increase customer satisfaction

4. How do you figure out if a campaign worked? It’s hard to connect the dots between (social media) marketing and the Big Three Sometimes it’s easy to calculate returns For instance, @DellOutlet But these cases are very rare Sometimes it’s difficult, but not impossible For instance, BlendTec’s consumer blenders But in a lot of cases, there just isn’t a way to directly calculate returns For instance, the Pepsi Refresh project

5. Sometimes a number is just a number When it comes to social media, you can measure lots of things and get lots of numbers Every once in a while, the numbers will be meaningful on their own If there’s a way to directly connect them back to the Big Three But in most cases, your job will be to decide which numbers matter, and which don’t Your implicit theories of marketing will have to connect the outcome to the Big Three

6. Goals, again It is difficult to know which metrics are meaningful without clear goals But it is also difficult to know which goals are meaningful without clear metrics When designing a strategy, think about your goals and their possible metrics simultaneously This is what separates analysis from pure measurement

7. What are little goals made of? While you may have clear end goals, it will take time to see whether you achieve them Ask “Are we going in the right direction?” rather than “Are we there yet?” Your data can tell you three things: What, So What, and Now What It is often helpful to start out with the main goal of your strategy, and work backwards to set sub-goals Then set metrics for those sub-goals What might this look like?

8. What were Obama’s social media goals? Main goal: Get votes Sub-goals: Get people registered, get people engaged, etc. Sub-sub-goals: Get donations, organize events, etc. Sub 3 -goals: Get people registered on MyBO, get people signed up for the email list, etc. Sub 4 -goals: Get people to become fans on Facebook, get people to watch videos on YouTube, etc.

9. Social Analytics Framework ROI Engagement Sentiment Influence Reach

10. It doesn’t matter how good your content is, if no one sees it, it is useless Your first question: How many people are exposed to your message? There are two basic metrics in traditional advertising that can help us think about the problem Reach is the percentage of a population of people that were exposed to a medium in a given time period Frequency is the number of times you have produced an opportunity to see your message in a given context Defining these for social media is a bit complicated

11. Measuring your blog audience

12. Facebook reach

13. Twitter reach over time

14. How else might you measure reach?

15. Reach summary Step 1: How many people are being exposed to your message? What are all the different ways people might be exposed to it? Answering this is part science and part art In the end, you’ll need to accept that numbers aren’t perfect, and focus on general patterns and broad comparisons

16. Influence Reach is important, but in the end you’re running a business, not a popularity contest Once you know what your reach is, the next step is to measure whether people share your content Sharing increases the reach of your content Sharing also lets you know whether your followers …read your content …like your content …find it interesting or broadly appealing enough to pass on

17. Facebook influence

18. Twitter influence

19. How else might you measure influence?

20. Influence summary Step 2: Once you know the reach of your message, you need to measure how influential you are The more people reference you and share your content, the more influential your message will be It is often useful to examine the influence of those referencing you (and those who should be)

21. Sentiment Reach and influence measure how much people are talking about you It turns out, though, that having lots of people talking about you isn’t always a good thing The next step is trying to measure whether the conversation is generally positive or negative There are two broad measures of sentiment Polarity Intensity

22. Polarity I love shopping at Walmart! Positive! I hate Walmart. They destroy neighborhoods. Negative! The nearest Walmart is 3 miles away. Neutral! Target sells higher quality products than Walmart. Negative! Or neutral! Positive?

23. Intensity I’m indifferent to Walmart I don’t care for Walmart I dislike Walmart I hate Walmart I despise Walmart more than anything else in the world

24. Tools for textual analysis

26. But, a caveat… I never said she stole my money.

27. But, a caveat (or two) It’s not bad. Two negatives I’m not going to say this sucks. Irony The latest episode of Real Housewives of New Jersey is a work of art. Sarcasm The keyboard is impossibly small, but the display is the best I’ve seen. A combination of polarities and intensities

28. How else might you measure sentiment?

29. Sentiment summary Step 3: Measure the tenor of the conversation There are many emerging tools to do so But these tools are imperfect, and are best at detecting and tracking major shocks In many cases, a human being is best

30. Engagement It is good if people are seeing your message, passing it along, and speaking of you positively But a true measure of whether your strategy is working is whether your customers are engaged with it Engagement can be defined as when somebody cares and interacts There are many ways to measure engagement, depending on the channel being used

31. Twitter & Facebook engagement Are people talking directly to you? @ mentions Are people posting on your Facebook wall? Are people uploading pictures, answering polls, creating lists, etc.?

32. Facebook Insights

33. Out of the blue When measuring the effectiveness of your strategy, don’t focus only on how much people share your content Track what people say in general, regardless of whether you initiated the conversation People talking about you out of the blue is another sign of true engagement Here is another place where any listening/pretesting that you did at the beginning of the campaign pays off You have a baseline to use to track changes in the conversation!

34. Original content and engagement

35. How else might you measure engagement?

36. Engagement summary Step 4: See how much people talk with and about you Look to see how many conversations occur between you and your customers Don’t forget that people can start conversations on their own, too Look for content they create about you—it shows they care

37. ROI This is the hard part! ROI is not so much a metric as it is an argument you make to justify what you’ve done or are doing Remember how it’s hard to tie real-world outcomes to social media? The typical formulas you might use to measure it are hard to apply to marketing outcomes

38. How to calculate social media ROI Don’t Choosing what to measure is complicated, and there is no one formula that will work for everyone Social media is largely branding, and the value of branding is extremely hard to measure You may not even get direct ROI from branding or content marketing Pick a metric, follow that, and don’t worry about costs Traffic, email list members, time on website, new visitors, etc.,

39. Calculating ROI in 6 “easy” steps Step 1: Choose a (conversion) goal One thing to note: ROI is much each to calculate for campaigns rather than channels (or your presence in general) For example: A purchase (online, especially) Fill out contact form Sign up for newsletter Download a PDF or other material Shares, likes, follows, retweets, etc. Watch a video Spend time on the website (especially certain parts of it)

40. Calculating ROI in 6 “easy” steps Step 2: Track those conversions All of the things we’ve talked about today may suffice Traffic to your website can be informative Leads, of course, should be trackable Customers from those leads, too Conversion rate per platform

41. Calculating ROI in 6 “easy” steps Step 3: Assign $ value to each conversion You can either: Use historical data (you might know customer lifetime value, for example Guesstimate (you’ll probably end up doing this)

42. Calculating ROI in 6 “easy” steps Step 4: Measure total benefits by channel Figure out how many conversions came from each social media channel Multiply that by how much each is “worth”

43. Calculating ROI in 6 “easy” steps Step 5: Figure out your total costs Add up costs for each channel (here they will be different) Don’t forget all your costs Prizes/discounts Advertising Manpower (you’ll want to know your hourly wage for this) Platform (do you pay for a publishing tool, analytics, etc.?)

44. Calculating ROI in 6 “easy” steps Step 6: Calculate the results ROI = (Benefits – Costs) X 100 Costs (500% (5x) is good, 1000% (10x) is better)

45. Multitouch campaigns Consumers will typically be exposed to many ads through various channels before making a purchase One of the biggest questions is how to attribute success to each of the channels It’s an open question in marketing in general, not just social media marketing Firm often use simple heuristics First touch Even splits The last ad gets half the credit, the rest goes to the others

46. Test and retest! The only true way to measure value is through controlled experiments You can also use controlled experiments to optimize content Online tools make it easier than ever to create experiments Unfortunately, most firms do not experiment enough

47. Examples of experiments Use an AB(A) design to see if a post/campaign/new channel makes a difference Show the same content to two different groups, see if that matters Show different content to the same group, see if that matters Try different materials on different channels (don’t forget your trackbacks) (An important lesson here—think carefully about your control group)

48. Let’s argue for ROI!

49. Summary There are a few key metrics to follow to know how you’re doing They will be support for your case that your social media effort is worthwhile You can calculate ROI, but it’s likely there will be some guessing involved—learn the best arguments to make Or, experiment! Next time: What’s new in social media? What’s fair in social media?

50. Assignments Let’s help other social media managers I’ve compiled some important questions for marketers We’ll put together a guide to help out small business owners interested in social media And after that, presentations!