1. Social Media Analytics: A few Case Studies, Tools and Tactics for Online Publishers Marshall Sponder WebMetricGuru.com SocialMediaAnalyticsBook.com McGraw Hill - April 1

2. The Medium is the Message Marshall McLuhan McGraw Hill, 1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions ofMan Social Media is transforming how communications occur and its context Analytics transforming the way Social Media communications are evaluated Data and Insights are becoming the message and can radically transform publishing by making it both profitable and enjoyable Publishing is now dominated by Social Media

3. McLuhan and Social Media Analytics ”McLuhan's insight - that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself”. “More controversially, he postulated that content had little effect on society — in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example — the effect of television on society would be identical. He noted that all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it.” – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media:_The_Extensions_of_Man Fast forward to 2011… analytics around social media has begun to fundamentally alter expectations and deliverables … the medium is transforming into analytics while the message to be shared is data instead of the usual PR/MARCOM media reporting delivered in the past. Stakeholders and clients are also becoming more sophisticated and asking for more insight and precision requiring a new approach to data capture and reporting.

4. Case Studies

5. Complex Magazine The Complex Media Network delivers every element of life young, stylish men need to maintain their position at the top of the style food chain. The 47-publisher network provides consumers with an ultra authentic and relevant deep dive into their core passion points – fashion, music, sneakers, style, gaming, sports, art and entertainment.

6. INFINIGRAPH – COMPEX MAGAZINE CS Determine relevant content across social graph (1). Discover brands audience interact with and which content is being shared (2). Determine optimal content distribution path via Friends and Friends of Friends (Consumers rely on friends and business associates to determine relevant content to share. This discovery process is propelled by social connections and influence). Use auto-feed Facebook and Twitter channels to increase click through and consumer engagement (via Social Activation). (1) (2)

7. COMPLEX – INFINIGRAPH Results Auto posting of high performers content on weekends provided greater click through as well as on the same content item. Results 1. Traffic to the Complex website increased by 30% 2. Twitter followers by increased 25% 3. Facebook Fans increased by 30% 4. Significantly increase advertiser revenue Before Infinigraph: Complex’ staff was unable to keep up with 24/7 content and posting demands. InfiniGraph provided a clear way of measuring and optimizing (strategic cross posting) this content stream automating what was truly relevant to cross-post and repost. Infinigraph’s solution freed Complex Magazine community managers and IT to be more creative and effective. http://blog.infinigraph.com/social-intelligence-drives-improved-content-i

8. Econsultancy and LinkedIn LinkedIn has over 100 million members as of last week and is a great place to promote Econsultancy’s vast array of reports and marketing insights to increase brand awareness in the right groups and forums, drive traffic to the Econsultancy web site and acquiring additional insights that could generate intelligence for additional reports. Step 1 – Find areas within LinkedIn compatible to Econsultancy research areas and set up RSS feeds in order to monitor them in NetVibes (see below). Monitoring and Curation was done by the social media manager over a 3 week period based on most relevant questions to reports Econsultancy already had; entire staff was involved by providing answers to the best questions each day.

9. Econsultancy and LinkedIn Analytics Usual Web Analytics measures using GA were initial suspects to collect but didn’t work for tracking social behavior. Workaround was using “Share This” Widget on site. Each staff member generated a unique tracking code for any page on site, including reports, membership or blog posts. Use Amazon Vouchers to reward employees for contributing based on contributions and generated traffic.

11. Total revenues for this period in region of £8,500

12. Per-visit value in excess of £1.20

14. VisualRevenue.com Front Page Automation Platform Visual Revenue’s Front Page Automation Platform provides Editors with real-time recommendations on which article excerpts/snippets, to place in which Front Page and Section page positions. VR’s predictive analytics technology allows media organizations to proactively manage the cost of exposing an article excerpt on a given front page or section page, whilst maximizing the return they expect from promoting it. Typical estimated savings per news paper ~10K – 20K USD a week.

15. VisualRevenue Editorial Curation Value VisualRevenue estimates an online publisher makes approximately 410 decisions a day related to the front page that can be largely automated by it’s platform. Here are some conservative constants for the less aggressive publisher: 50 New Articles published a day 1 Primary Front Page which updates every 1 hour 5 Section Front Pages which updated every 2 hours 10 Article boxes (positions if you will) are updated in every cycle 1 full content refresh every midnight Remaining set of Article boxes are updated automatically, based on Time (newest on top) This leaves the front page team with the task of taking 410 accurate decisions (50+((24+12)*10)) that are fully aligned with the objective of the media property – whilst maximizing the value of the content at the same time.

16. Article Curation includes Virtual Front pages which show a part of the actual front page on a section page – these links are also chosen for the most highly engaged by the online readership. Social Media Modules are in the process of being added at this time.

17. AOL HuffPO / Adaptive Semantics for User Generated Content Management Adaptive Semantics grew from a comment moderation system for large publishers (see above) to become the back end intelligence, once acquired by HuffPO last June, of the Huffington Post and ultimately, will probably be used across all AOL properties – and therefore, is worth taking a look at.

18. Adaptive Semantics flags abusive content – but the technology has other uses such as influencer identification – and may have uses in manuscript review processing Recent Abuse on USA Today: Posted In Response To: 'Idiotic': Sheriff disappointed in Lake Erie fishermen brody wrote: 58m ago Comments: (91)Showing: Mortage Payer wrote:8m ago How could the lake be frozen? Has Al Gore not told the ice that it cannot exist because of global warming, melting ice caps, ozone holes, climate change, rising oceans etc. Oh wait, what's that? No one gives a rats A$$ aabout the fake, made up BS called global warming because theres a DEPRESSION brewing...Sorry Al, aside from the fact that the entire global warming thing is NOT TRUE, you also ran into another problem, we are all going broke and dont care....It looks like it's back to the Weejee board for you and Tipper === Hilarious What the hell does this have to do with Al Gore? ************* You have to understand, these mentally deficient Rep-Cons take every opportunity they can to show thier ignorance by infering Al Gore is getting rich off of global warming, although they have no real concept of what global warming really is in the first place. erniejt 100% Abusive Adaptive Semantics uses its technology to rank members of the Huffington Post community.

19. Other AOL Huffington Post improvements using Social Media - Klout Klout’s API has been integrated into Huffington Post. A twitter response to the “white iphone” story shows influencers to that story from Klout –this was done to improve readers stickiness and satisfaction with the news site.

20. Huffington Post integrates the Social Graph with news as well as categorize the stories by emotion.

21. Huffington Post uses the social graph to further engagement with site

22. Summary – McLuhan -the medium is changing the message – many media communications new challenges and opportunities focused around the handling of DATA Barry Fleming // Feb 17, 2011 at 5:26 PM We live in a world of hyper convergence - especially in Digital - and most especially in the availability of vast repositories of data via Web services / APIs. Many big pipes. Growing by the day. And just because there's available data - doesn't necessarily mean that you've got the right Org Chart and Culture to leverage it appropriately. PR / Marcom or otherwise...Hence, the ascension of the Web Analyst towards the executive ranks. It's indicative of the (hyper)evolution.This hyper convergence also means a blending of R&Rs in Analytics: Search, Media, Web Analytics, Social Media, Market Research, Mobile, etc.And those of us that can effectively develop the full qualitative and quantitative solutions spectrum will be in the best position to develop the appropriate attribution and ROI models - that everyone SCREAMS for.

23. Advanced Platforms for Publishers Infinigraph – www.infinigraph.com VisualRevenue - www.visualrevenue.com Adaptive Semantics – www.adaptivesemantics.com

24. For More Information Marshall Sponder www.Webmetricsguru.com SocialMediaAnalyticsbook.com Now.seo@gmail.com @webmetricsguru Publication Date: August 19, 2011