Measuring Social Media Workshop delivered by Sean Howard of Thornley Fallis (www.thornleyfallis.ca) to CPRS Ottawa-Gatineau on April 21, 2011.

1. Measuring Social Media
April 19, 2011
Version 1

2. Agenda
1. Why it matters
2. What it is
3. The tools I love
4. Going about it
5. Common mistakes
6. Future of SM Monitoring

3. 1. Why it matters

4. Canada is Online

5. Canadians are Social

6. Your brand is social
From toilet paper
to government,
social plays a part
in the customer
experience of your
organization and
brand, whether you
like it or not.

7. Social media award-winning company…
B2B Supply Chain Management

8. A cracker’s online community

9. Even Government…

10. Social currency
The extent to which people share
information about a brand as part of their
daily lives – online or offline.
Your brand’s social currency significantly
drives brand loyalty (53% of it).
Successful brands enable their
ambassadors to connect, interact, and
benefit from like-minded users.
Source: Vivaldi Partners – Social Currency: Why brands need to build and nurture social currency, 2010

11. Government Context
Government policies are full of directives that push
for better use of these emerging channels.
Communications Policy of the Government of
Canada:
– “information requests or inquiries from the public are responded
to promptly without undue recourse to the Access to
Information Act;”
– “prompt and clear explanations are provided when information
requested by the public is unavailable.”
– “information is available on the standard of service an institution
provides to the public, including timelines for responding to
inquiries, mail and complaints;”
– g. Incorporate mechanisms into on-line services for receiving and
acknowledging public feedback.

12. “The greatest risk of social media technologies may not be a
breach of security, data loss or a denial-of-service attack. Rather,
the most significant threat is not using social media at all. “There’s
a huge risk if you’re not active in social media channels,”
Steve Ressler, president and co-founder of GovLoop.com

13. Workflow and Governance

14. Opportunities for Innovation
A personal story
A product being
removed from the
product mix
Turns out to be the
most talked about
camera in Canada

15. 2. What it is

16. “Everyone is a media outlet. We can all put things out in the public view
now.”
- Clay Shirky, author, Here Comes Everybody, NYU professor

17. Social = Content
• What people are saying and sharing
• Where they are saying and sharing it
• How they and their friends feel and act as a
result

18. Social = Content
Often overemphasized Too often overlooked
– Fans – Content being created
– Followers – Content being shared
– Influence – Content being “liked”
– Influencers – Responses to content
– Viral – Content being “linked”
– Our websites to (delicious, diigo,
reddit, etc.)
– Content as a source of
traffic to our content
properties

19. 3. The Tools I Love

20. There are lots of
tools.
They are not
created equal.
Source: http:/
/www.fatpurple.com/2010/08/22/social-media-monitoring-companies/

21. My Criteria
• Good coverage of:
– Microblogs
– Facebook
– Video
– Photos
– Blogs
– Forums
• Slice and dice
• Workflow support
• Boolean queries

22. My Favourites
• Radian6
– Radian6.com
• Sysomos
– Sysomos.com
• Have heard good
things about
– Alterian SM2

23. An Unfair, Biased Comparison
Sysomos
Radian6 Sysomos Map
Heartbeat
Pricepoint $500/month+ $500/month+ $2,500/month
Number of users $100/month per user Handful included 1 user
Slice and Dice A+ B A-
Boolean queries D B A+
Coverage A A A
Historical data A+ A+ SAMPLE BASED
captured (Twitter)
By Country filter A A A
Number of queries # of queries drive Two tiers of pricing Unlimited
increased pricepoint
Workflow support A B F
Ease of use C B B
Ease to learn D A C

24. Meet Radian6
• Ottawa Jazz Festival
– Configuration
– Multiple Dashboards
– Widgets
• Conversation Cloud: Tag cloud of most used terms
• Topic Analysis: Bar or pie charts of terms mentioned
• Topic Trends: Line graph over time with spikes to show
increased activity
• River of News: View the matching posts with workflow
options.
• New Influence Viewer: Find the lists of most active users,
blogs, forums, etc. for a topic
– Engagement Console
• Desktop extension with workflow and ability to manage
outbound social presences

25. Meet Sysomos Map
• CMA
– No Configuration
– Build a query
– Enable filters
• Boolean is our friend. AND, OR, NOT, Parenthesis and
Quotes
– Save a query
– Comparison of two issues

26. Quick segue
• Two Tools I also use
– RowFeeder
– PostRank
• Rowfeeder
– Easy to use twitter monitoring
– Great excel based insights
– Inexpensive

27. RowFeeder

28. RowFeeder

29. RowFeeder
• Inexpensive reports:
– Snapshot
– Volume and Time Analysis
– Conversational Driver Analysis
– Location Analysis
– People Analysis
– Day Parting Analysis
– Influencer Analysis
– Contest Winner Selection

30. Before URL shorteners
Great article on Google Analytics. http://www.craphammer.ca/
2011/03/google-analytics-magic-part-two.html
Loving the Craphammer.ca blog!
Blog
Google Alerts would send me links to people
talking about and sharing links to any article
that had “craphammer.ca” in it.

31. After URL shorteners
Blog
Takes my RSS and reverse engineers the URL
shorteners to find people talking about my articles

32. PostRank
• Long way towards solving the content
analytics dilemma
– Reverse engineers conversations about my
content (the source of future traffic)
– Who is talking and sharing links to my content
– Twitter, Delicious, Blogs, and more…
• Free for blog writers

33. PostRank

34. PostRank

35. 4. Going About It

36. G steps to analysis
A. Identify Terms
B. Create Search
C. Test and Refine
D. Trend Analysis
E. Pull Other Findings
F. Assemble aggregate findings
G. Identify actionable recommendations

37. A. Identify terms
Start with the client’s
terms and look to find Your client may say we need
to be looking for “residential
out what terms everyday intensification” but odds are
people and the press use that people are talking about
terms like “in-fill”, “moving
• Do some research in downtown”, and “new
condos”
Google Insights
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#
• Try Google Adwords
Keyword Tools

38. B. Create the Search
• Log into your SM Monitoring
tool (Sysomos MAP for this
class)
– Set the time period to one
month
– Switch to the Blog tab
• Start with simple searches
based on previous step.
– I find it’s best to start with a
series of “word1” OR “word2”
OR “word3” to see what types
of conversations are occurring
Quick tip: It’s a noise vs. signal
problem. There is no such thing as
100% signal.

39. C. Test and Refine
• Work in Blog tab first
– Add in language filters and
excludes as necessary
– Work towards more complex
queries
– http://map.sysomos.com/help/?
title=Query_Construction
• Test that it is giving you valid
returns in the Social Media tab
as well
– Expand the range
– Look at the Buzzgraph and
Text Analytics
– Look for outliers
• Refine the search with
excludes as necessary
• Save the search with a
recognizable name in a folder
specific to the client initiative

40. D. Trend Analysis
Pull the Trend Data
• Set the timeline filter to the
time period for the study
• Ensure any additional filters
you need are applied
(country, etc.)
• Hit the “Apply-Analyze
Now” button
• Go to the Dashboard
• Right click and open “All
Sources” in a new window
Quick Tip: Screenshot/PDF both
the dashboard and all sources
result pages and store in a
research folder

41. D. Trend Analysis
Save as a Graphic
• Go to the All Sources report
and locate the “Popularity
by Media” report.
• Click the customize icon as
shown to the right
• Update the title as fits your
purposes
– “[Topic] – Trend Analysis by
Media Type”
• Right click and save to your
harddrive as a graphic

42. D. Trend Analysis
Prep the Graphic
• Open the graphic you
saved to your harddrive
into a blank PowerPoint
slide
• Identify key peaks by media
type you wish to explore
and annotate.
– Shown by adding red
circles in the graph to the
right

43. D. Trend Analysis
Identify the Source
• Open up the applicable
tab to identify what
drove the peak.
– So if there was a spike in
blog activity around mid
June, then you would
open the Blog tab and
put in a Timeline filter for
Jun 5 to Jun 25.
– Hit Apply on the Time
Period
• Then click on the
Popularity report in the
left hand nav.
• Keep narrowing the time
period until you have
just the peak you are
looking for

44. D. Trend Analysis
Identify the Source
• Click to view the general
entries so you can determine
the “cause” of the spike of
activity
• You may need to click ahead
a page or two to get to the
date of the spike
Quick Tip: If you find that the
spike event was driven by an
OFF TOPIC conversation, it’s
time to return to step 2 and
narrow down your search and
start over. Fun times!

45. D. Trend Analysis
Annotate the Graphic
• Once all the peaks are
identified and found to be
valid, then we fill out the
drivers of the spike event
• Finally, we export the
powerpoint slide as a
graphic image and put the
final chart into the final
report
• Be sure to write up the
insights we gained from
this analysis.

46. E. Pull Other Findings
• Make sure your time period
is correct.
• Then go into the Social
Media, Blog and other
pertinent tabs and pull key
reports to identify the
overall trends.
• For Twitter, I tend to pull a
Reach, BuzzGraph and Top
Sources report
• For Blogs, I tend to pull a
High Auth+Recency,
Buzzgraph and Key
Conversations report
Quick Tip: be sure to grab
screenshots of example posts
for your final report

47. E. Pull Other Findings
• Use text analytics or
trending topics to
identify interesting
phrases
• Then use the Sub-
Keyword filter to find out
what the actual
conversations were
around both expected
and unexpected phrases
• This helps to ensure we
know what some cryptic
phrases reference while
also giving us real
examples of key
conversations

48. F. Assemble Aggregate
• We then need to create a
chart in excel or other
charting tool where we
show the summation of all
the different issues we were
investigating by medium.
• MAP can create the raw
data by issue group using
the “Compare” tool

49. G. Actionable Recommendations
• These questions are a good starting point
– Who are the top individuals to engage on key issues and by what
medium?
– What kind of reach and interest is there and in what?
– What content is being created and shared?
– What share of the conversation do we have with our content and
actions?
– What is the overall sentiment on each topic?
– Where are people more likely to engage and on what topics?
– Where is the organization present and not present?
– What actions can the organization take to support organizational
goals and better leverage their investment in social?

50. Structuring the report
My approach
1.0 Topic 1
1.1 Scope of search
1.2 In Aggregate Findings
1.21 In Aggregate: Blogs
1.22 In Aggregate: Twitter
1.23 In Aggregate: Facebook
etc.
1.3 Trend Analysis
1.4 Sentiment Analysis
1.5 Recommendations
2.0 Topic 2
etc.

51. 5. Common Mistakes

52. Common Mistakes
• Company Mentions only
– vs. issues
• Simple queries vs. Boolean queries
– digging into conversation drivers by topic
• Canada only
– cheaper and fine but only if aware of sample and self
identification bias and errors
• Automated sentiment
– it still doesn’t work.
• Sampling errors
– http://bit.ly/socialsample
• Use our language not theirs

53. 6. Future of SM Monitoring

54. Source: 4 Ways to Measure Social Media and Its Impact On Your Brand. Social Media Examiner. 15 June
2010.

56. Source: http://crm2.typepad.com/brents_blog/2008/07/social-crm-in-p.html

57. Put everyone in CRM tool?
• Not everyone is a customer
– Future “of age” citizens
– New Immigrants
– People unaware of our services/offerings
– Individuals who have not engaged with our
brand, service or product
• What is doable with the tools we have
today?

58. What if we don’t
throw away
all our social data?

59. Report 1
A baseline report is created based on an
analysis of brand names, competitors, and
relevant issues.

60. Report 1 Report 2
The next report is created from new data. If
comparisons to the first report are made,
they are aggregate or trend-based.

61. Report 1 Report 2 Report 3
With each subsequent report, the process
remains the same. The data from previous
periods is thrown away.

62. Lots of pretty charts.
“More people spoke positively
about kittens this week.”
1500
1000
Positive
Negative
500
0
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4

63. …and analysis.
“Here are our top kitten
‘influencers’ this month.”
Twitter name Kitten Tweets Klout Score
@justinbieber 618 90,194
@aplusk 6 12
@britneyspears 42 315
@oprah 9 120

64. We need Deeper insights.
With web analytics and
email marketing, we
track unique and repeat
visitors.
And traditional CRM
programs track
preferences, purchases,
and engagement.

65. We need Deeper insights.
Why not track the same
things on social media?
Who are your brand
advocates/ambassadors
and what do they care
about?
Do the most passionate
individuals have
anything in common?

66. Most Passionate on Top

67. Just the beginning
What if we started to wonder
about the people consistently
talking (or not talking) about our
brand or issue?
What could we learn if we
weren’t wiping the slate clean
every time we run a new search?

68. Colophon
Sean Howard is VP, Digital
Communications at Thornley Fallis
and spends his life searching for what
drives and identifies the most
passionate online and offline.
Twitter: @passitalong
Email: howard_at_thornleyfallis.ca