Tierney Smith, Manager of Learning & Special Projects, TechSoup Canada
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Measuring & Monitoring Social Media Efforts Are your social media efforts paying off? Join us for this hands-on workshop where we’ll look at important metrics of success for nonprofit social media campaigns, best practices, and some useful, free and low-cost measurement tools. Please download the accompanying handout at: bit.ly/MVCESd.
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Tierney Smith, Manager of Learning & Special Projects, TechSoup Canada
- 3. ABOUT ME • Software engineer • Nonprofit technology blogger • Community manager • Social media expert
- 4. 5 STAGES OF MEASUREMENT ACCEPTANCE Data- Informed Credit: Beth Kanter http://www.bethkanter.org/learning-analytics/
- 5. WHY MEASURE SOCIAL MEDIA? • You need to know if it’s working (or not!) • Contribute to your org’s mission • Experiment & learn • You need to prove to others that it’s working • Leadership buy-in • Funding
- 6. WHICH COMES FIRST? 3600 hours = OR “OMG WTF who steals clothes from a dryer? Srsly?” Credit: Jason Shim From Phones to Facebook: How to Engage Youth on the Front Lines of Social Media
- 7. LET’S DO SOME MEASURING! • How many times did • How many emails you post on did you send last Facebook last week? week? • How many Twitter • How many phone followers do you #s are in your have? address book?
- 8. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH? Promote an Build community event among clients Get people to Share info on a topic sign a petition Tell stories about Get supporters to your work raise money for you Get feedback from supporters Recruit volunteers Credit: Idealware Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide
- 9. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO FOCUS ON?
- 10. SHARE-PAIRS • What are your 2-3 main goals for using social media? • “So what?” How do they help advance your mission? (If you have time) • What is one goal you want to focus on in the next 4-6 months?
- 11. HOW DO YOU MEASURE SUCCESS? Exposure Engagement Conversion SAY SEE DO FEEL Credit: Fenton http://www.fenton.com/resources/see-say-feel- do/
- 12. WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLE METRICS? SEE SAY FEEL DO • FB Page • FB Content • FB Shares • Donations Likes Likes with message • Advocacy • TW followers • FB Shares • Retweet with actions • RSS or • Retweets message • Event email • Email • FB or blog attendance subscriptions forwards comments • Membership -------------------- • Online • Google +1s • Volunteerism • YouTube mentions views • Bit.ly clicks • FB reach Credit: Fenton http://www.fenton.com/resources/see-say-feel- do/
- 13. SENSE-MAKING Credit: Beth Kanter http://www.bethkanter.org/sense-making/ Spreadsheet template
- 14. SHARE-PAIRS Focus on one of your goals. Choose 1 metric from each category (SEE, SAY, FEEL, DO). Don’t limit yourself to the sample metrics listed. Discuss: • What metrics did you pick and why?
- 15. THE FACTS ABOUT MEASUREMENT TOOLS • Some tools are really expensive. Also, they will overwhelm you with data. • There are lots of free & low cost tools. Use them only if they measure the metrics you want. • At the end of the day, it all comes back to your spreadsheet.
Editor's Notes
- I don’t make any claims to be an expert on social media or social media measurement. Just another community manager building relationships, figuring it out as I go along.I probably won’t tell you anything in this session that you don’t already know.But just because we know we should do something, doesn’t mean we DO IT!! I’m guilty of that too.My goal in this session is to:Give you a renewed sense of focus/purpose around why you are measuring your social mediaGive you time/space to think about what concrete things you can do starting tomorrowWhat I’m not going to do:-tell you how to run your social media-tell you about a tool that will magically measure all your social media efforts (I’m not even going to spend a lot of time on the tools, so sorry in advance)
- Everyone here is coming from different places, and wants to get something different out of this session (maybe some of you just want a nap!). Before we can even talk about measurement, we need to acknowledge where we – and our orgs – are coming from. Explain each of the stages.Do a quick poll, get examples (if possible) for each stage.
- I’m not here to tell you to go nuts and measure everything. After all, the 5th stage is not “delight” – it’s “data-informed”.Measurement for its own sake is pointless and a waste of time.Stay focused on the purpose of measurementIf you can do both of these, then you’re good to go. Anything else is a waste of your time.Depending on where you are at, one of these might be a bigger focus for you right now. But the first one is always important.
- Real life isn’t as simple as setting up some goals & metrics and then making it happen.In practice, you try stuff out, see how it goes, get a better idea of what you can achieve (what goals to be aiming for), need to create metrics, measure, learn, repeat…Story: Jason and Pathways-Started using FB because thought it might be an easier way to communicate w students-Quickly found: yes, it was! Staff say “it saved us a bajillion hours”. Clearly it’s working, but not a good metric for leadership buy-in.-In particular realized that it saved many phone hours. Went back & quantified this metric to get buy-in. Used this to convince other Pathways sites to do the same thing-Tried Twitter, didn’t go anywhere. Based on hearing from youth, started Twitter again recently & have been having success. Story about youth who got all of his clothes stolen, tweeted about it.-Track conversations in case management system
- Let’s do some measuring… see if anyone has an approximate answer to these questions.How about the second set of questions? No one knows… because no one tracks this kind of thing.Lesson: metrics without goals are useless.Note:The # of followers you have on twitter does matter… in the sense that if you have no followers, you have no one to talk to. Like having no contacts in your address book.
- So clearly we need goals to make sure that what we do is tied back to our org’s mission.Here are some examples of goals.
- Everyone should have big goals outlined for their social media. Which links back to your mission. You might also have metrics for them.If not, focus on that.If you have that, maybe you need to focus on a more specific areaStory: Girl Guides of Canada-One of their big goals: get members (adults & girls) to interact with each other and organization. Focus on FB.-Have metrics to measure this, were successful in getting engagement (comments, % reach)-BUT: most members of FB page were adults. Where are the girls?-Small goal: get more girls engaged on FB-In the last year have shared content targeted to teens and young adults, and have seen a lot of growth in this area. Using FB Insights to measure.
- 5-7 minutes for discussionGet some people to share their goals with the big group.Asking “so what?” will help you to eliminate useless goals like “having a presence on Facebook”
- What metrics should you use?Here’s one framework I liked. There are others out there if this doesn’t work for you.SEE: people see your stuff. Only useful to help you get the other metricsSAY: people repeat your message. Shows that they have some interest in itFEEL: people comment on your message. Shows even more interest/buy-in, gives you even more insight into what people think.DO: what you want at the end of the day, what everything else is leading towards. Actual actionsMake sure your metrics have leadership buy-in – don’t want to go to the trouble of measuring it if you don’t have agreement that what you’re measuring is useful.
- Note that not all metrics are created equal. For example, there are different types of SEE metrics in my opinion. Some are more general (followers) – you really don’t know if they are getting the message, it’s very vague and not too useful.Some actually indicate that someone did something specific to see your content – it’s still “see”, they haven’t DONE anything, but it shows more engagement. E.g. email opens, bit.ly click, etc.
- No matter what metrics you capture and how you capture them, the key is how you use them to learn & get insights.Metrics are nothing without insights!!Beth Kanter has a great walkthrough on how to do this. Always ask “what did I learn?”
- Remember that the metrics have to all support your “do” metrics, and work towards your goal.There’s different philosophies; some people would say that you don’t need one from each category. For the purpose of this exercise, try stretching yourself to pick one from each category.
- I’m sure what everyone wants right now is for me to tell you which tool to use. Sorry, I can’t.There are 1,000,000 tools out there for measuring & monitoring social media. Many have a free version, or are low cost. Some are really expensive.There is no 1 perfect tool that does everything.No matter what you use, it’s probably all going to come back to your friend the spreadsheet. In one of Beth Kanter’s blogs, she shared input from various social media managers at well known organizations. Even the ones that could afford some of the fancier tools (a) put in a caveat about having to be focused because they give you so much, and (b) still used a spreadsheet.I’ve linked to a few good lists of tools on the handout.One great tool is Google Analytics. Eric will talk to you about it in the next session-can see how much traffic is coming to your website-can see high-value traffic i.e. conversions e.g. donation requests