This document provides an overview of social media, including a brief history, definitions, and conceptual frameworks for measuring social media impact. It discusses key platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. Metrics for each platform are classified as very useful, useful, neutral or useless. The document also notes that return on investment is just one metric among many that can prove social media's success or failure.

1. The Basics

3. Setting Expectations
 Yes:
 Overview of Social Media
 Brief background history
 Conceptual framework in measuring social media impact
 Most popular platforms and associated metrics and tools
 Emerging platforms
 Some notes in measuring social media
 No:
 Justification, strategy for social media engagement
 Answers to questions that deal with “best”, “worst”
 But I will give my opinion based on experience and research

5. Social Media
 An “old” concept (possibly as early as 1994)
 Various definitions:
 (Tina Sharkey-iVillage; 1994) “facilitating and enabling platform…
that allow people to connect, communicate, and share with each
other”
 (Darrel Berry-Matisse; 1995) “(evolving) from what was then
essentially a static archive of documents into a network of users
engaging with each other”
 (Ted Leonsis-AOL; 1997) “…places where (users) can be
entertained, communicate, and participate in a social environment”
Sources:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2010/12/09/who-coined-social-media-web-pioneers-compete-for-credit/
http://www.ncwit.org/audio/interview-tina-sharkey

6. Social Media
 Technical definition:
 From Wikipedia:
 “(A) group of Internet-based applications that build on the
ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and
that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated
content.”

7. Web 2.0 Overview
Web 1.0 Web 2.0
Personal Websites
(e.g., Geocities)
vs. Blogs
(e.g., Blogger/Blogspot)
Online References/ Databases
(e.g., Britannica Online)
vs. Wikis
(e.g., Wikipedia)
Publishing and publisher-driven
(e.g., BBC 1.0)
vs. Participation and user-driven
(e.g., YouTube)
Directories/ Taxonomy
(e.g., EYP 1.0)
vs. Folksonomy
(e.g., Tags and tag clouds/ Flickr)
Read-only
(e.g., Inquirer.net 1.0)
vs. Collaboration
(e.g., Comment features, Google Docs)
Complicated
(i.e., required HTML skill)
vs. Simple
(i.e., WYSIWYG editor)
Back Next

8. Web 2.0 Overview
 Common features of various sites and platforms:
 Users contribute, dictate, and “own” the content
 Users decide what is featured
 Users make use of various types of search functionality
to view the content they want
 Still information-rich and information-driven
 But constantly evolving to suit changing needs and tastes
Back Next

9. Next
User-Generated Content (UGC)
Web 1.0 (non-UGC) Web 2.0 (UGC)
“Packaged goods media” vs. ”Conversational media”
(John Batelle – Boing Boing)
Perusing someone’s content vs. Publishing one’s own content
Organizations (especially media):
Focused on creating online
content
vs. Organizations:
Providing facilities for “amateurs” to
publish their own content
Back

10. Social Media
 My practical definition:
 Social media are services that focus on building online
communities where people can share their interests
and activities, or where they can explore the interests
and activities of others, with the use of various tools
provided by the service.
Can all websites be social media sites or platforms?

11. Social Media
Provide
service?
Build
communities?
Allow
sharing
and/or
exploring?
Showcase
interests and
activities?
Use
various
tools?
Friendster     
Blogger/Blogspot     
MySpace     
Multiply     
Facebook     
YouTube     
Twitter     
Instagram     

12. Social Media
Provide
service?
Build
communities?
Allow
sharing
and/or
exploring?
Showcase
interests and
activities?
Use
various
tools?
Old Google     
New Google     
Old Yahoo!     
New Yahoo!     
• Google+ centralizes Google’s social
networking efforts
• Other services (e.g., Gmail, Google Docs,
Search, Picasa, etc.) are given increasingly
social features.
• Yahoo is less “coordinated” in its efforts but
has essential sites that allow formation of
social networks (e.g., Yahoo 360 or
Profiles, Messenger, Flickr, Delicious, Tumblr,
etc.)
• Recent acquisitions point to further

13. Social Media
Provide
service?
Build
communities?
Allow
sharing
and/or
exploring?
Showcase
interests and
activities?
Use
various
tools?
Inquirer.net     
ClickTheCity     
KAT.ph     
Sulit.ph     
Jobstreet     
Rappler     
Note: Not all websites are social media platforms (or social networking sites). These days,
however, ordinary websites add social functionalities by using social networking APIs
(e.g., Facebook Connect, Google+ Sign-in) to link +1’s/Likes, comments, cross-posts, etc.

14. Social Media
 Essentially:
 In the past, it was about shouting the LOUDEST…
Look at MY brand!!!

15. Social Media
 Essentially:
 Today, it’s about leading the Tribe(s)…

16. Social Media as a Biz Strategy
In the early days of SM… Today…
 A fad? A passing gimmick?
 For early adopters, no impact
on their revenue
 For the networks themselves
like Friendster and
MySpace, unclear how to
monetize
 Measurability is questioned
 Essential tool for doing business
 Platforms can come and go, but
presence (and influence) must
be maintained in whichever
platform/s are currently most
popular
 Metrics (and the tools for
measuring) are widely available

17. A conceptual framework

18. Conceptual Framework
 Steps in measuring success/ failure of Social Media
 1. ESTABLISH your baseline/s
 2. CREATE activity timeline/s
 3. EXAMINE using F.R.Y.
 FREQUENCY – how often customers transact (transactions per month)
 REACH – how many customers were reached (net new customers)
 YIELD – how much they spend ($ per transaction)
 4. MEASURE transactional precursors
 5. OVERLAY all timelines
 6. LOOK for patterns
 7. PROVE relationships
Notice that focus seems purely on ROI (but more on this later)…
Sources:
Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) http://www.smroi.net/
http://www.thesocialmediaadvocate.com/2011/08/12/how-to-track-and-exemplify-your-return-on-social-media/

19. Step 1 Establish baseline(s)
Start of social media integration
Number of website visitors

20. Step 2 Create activity timelines

21. Step 3 Examine F.R.Y.
Start of social media integration

22. Step 3 Examine F.R.Y.
Start of social media integration

23. Step 3 Examine F.R.Y.
Start of social media integration

24. Step 4
Measure transactional precursors
Start of social media integration

25. Step 4
Measure transactional precursors
Start of social media integration

26. Step 4
Measure transactional precursors
Start of social media integration

27. Step 5 Overlay all timelines
activities
transactions
social data
web data
loyalty metrics
etc.

28. Step 6 Look for patterns
Before After
Impact
No Impact
Uncertain Impact
Social media integration

29. Step 6 Prove relationships
Social media integration
Social media activities timeline
Before After
How was this group
touched by social
media?

30. Blanchard’s Conceptual Framework
Investment Expected returns

31. Blanchard’s Conceptual Framework
 Criticism:
 Gives much weight to ROI
 Tries to justify spending on social media
 Justify cost, prove impact
 ROI is activity specific
 No such thing as “(what is the) social media ROI”
 Rather: what is the ROI of X activity in social media undertaken in Y
time frame
 “If we spend this much money on a social media activity, how much
money do we get in return?”
 ROI is just one element in the social media measuring toolkit
 We will discuss this at the end…
 There are other metrics that can prove social media’s success (or
failure)
Source:
http://dcsbu.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/social-media-r-o-i/

32. Which is best?

33. More notes:
 Survey of the most popular social networking sites
 Some up-and-coming sites included
 Metrics will be classified as:
 Very useful, Useful, Neutral, Useless
 Open for discussion
 Tools for tracking

34. Facebook
 Outstanding characteristics
 Current benchmark
 Ubiquity, most active users, most “comprehensive”
 Unique features
 Extensiveness of service
 Comprehensive profiling
 Games/ apps
 “Unlimited upload”
 Built-in analytics dashboard (Facebook Insights), additional APIs
 Interconnection with different APIs
 Facebook Graph Search
 Microsoft partnership (Bing search)
 Issues – Privacy, Maturity
 Most likely to compete with – Google+

35. Google+
 Outstanding characteristics
 Comprehensive (albeit fractured) services
(Search, YouTube, Blogspot, Gmail, Docs, Picasa, Drive, Maps,
etc.)
 If combined, largest social network
 Unique features
 Other services are (or close to) “best in class”
 Circles, Hangouts
 Built-in Google Analytics, tied to Search
 Android platform
 Issues – Fractured nature, not as popular in the Philippines
 Nearest competitor – Facebook?

36. Twitter
 Outstanding characteristics
 Mobile-centric
 Quick updates, news source
 Unique features
 Hashtags
 Micro-blog, 140-character
 Link shortening services
 One- or two-way relationship possible, verified accounts
 Tweetdeck dashboard
 Issues – Not as detailed (updates, profiles), gaining
popularity but nowhere near Facebook
 Most likely to compete with – None

37. LinkedIn
 Outstanding characteristics
 Professional networking
 Substantial additions to original features
 Unique features
 Professional resume
 Business articles
 Issues – targets a different mindset (not necessarily
fun), limited audience in the Philippines
 Most likely to compete with – no significant
competition yet

38. YouTube
 Outstanding characteristics
 Most comprehensive video channel
 Unique features
 Any topic, any keyword
 Channels (“legitimate”, Paid vs. Free)
 Built-in analytics dashboard
 Embedding to other networks
 When combined with other Google services – largest
network
 Issues – Specific to videos only
 Most likely to compete with – Vimeo and other similar
services, Torrent and streaming services

39. Instagram
 Outstanding characteristics
 Simple yet fun (transform your photos)
 “Cool” character
 Unique features
 Mimimal features – Filters, Follow, Favorites, Like
 Affiliation with Facebook
 Interconnection with Twitter
 Issues – limiting by nature of its features/ services;
increasingly “jologs” factor
 Most likely to compete with – no significant
competition except maybe Picasa

40. Foursquare
 Outstanding characteristics
 Location-based check-in service
 Unique features
 Merchant offers, user tips
 Interconnection with Twitter/ Facebook
 Issues – limiting by nature of its features/
services, limited uptake by users and local merchants
 Most likely to compete with – no significant
competition yet

41. Pinterest
 Outstanding characteristics
 Simple yet fun (collect/ organize photos)
 “Cool” character
 Unique features
 Corkboard and “pin it/ repin it” feature
 Interconnection with Twitter
 Issues – limiting by nature of its features/
services, limited uptake by users
 Most likely to compete with – no significant
competition yet

42. Social content sharing sites
 Outstanding characteristics
 Best in their niche
 Unique features
 Specific to the content/ medium
 Simple but effective analytics dashboard
 Like/ favorite/ print/ download/ edit, etc.
 Issues – Specific to their niche only
 Most likely to compete with – depending on the
content/ medium, some competing services exist
(e.g., Flickr vs. Picasa, Scribd vs. Issuu)

43. Communication/ Messaging Sites
 Outstanding characteristics
 Different methods of communications
 Unique features
 Text/ voice communication
 Usually part of a larger service or entity (e.g., Outlook
and Skype for Microsoft, Mail and Messenger for
Yahoo!, Gmail, Talk and Hangouts for Google, Facebook
Mail Chat/ Voice)
 Issues – treated as a service, not as a social “network”
 Most likely to compete with – each other

44. Blog Sites
 Outstanding characteristics
 Multimedia nature (text, photo, music, video, maps,
comments, other web apps such as stat counters, etc.)
 Unique features
 Any topic imaginable
 Curated by owners/authors and usually free to use
 Comments, trackbacks, and blog rolls
 Ad-friendly
 Issues – comprehensiveness limited by owners’ efforts,
participation of others (non-owners) limited to comments
 Most likely to compete with – each other, Facebook notes?
 Special notes for Tumblr – “microblog”, reply, re-blog, like,
compatible with Google Analytics

45. Up-and-coming
 Outstanding characteristics
 New, innovative
 Unique features
 What’sApp (free messaging/ calling)
 Snapchat (photo messages that “self-destruct” – in
theory)
 Vine (looped mini-videos)
 Issues – low uptake, does not necessarily conform to
hallmarks of social media, limited features, uncertain
future
 Most likely to compete with – each other (especially
for popularity/ ubiquity/ potential for acquisition)

46. What to measure?

47. Facebook

48. Facebook

49. Facebook
Very Useful Useful Neutral Useless
Fans 
Friends of Fans 
Likes 
Shares 
People talking about this 
Weekly Total Reach 
Demographics 
Story Types 
Virality 
Sentiments (eyeballed) 
Source:
http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2011/10/20/the-60-facebook-insights-data-definitions/
http://blog.getpostrocket.com/2012/07/6-numbers-from-facebook-insights-that-actually-matter/

50. Twitter/ Tweetdeck/ Hootsuite

51. Twitter/ Tweetdeck/ Hootsuite

52. Twitter
Very Useful Useful Neutral Useless
Followers 
Retweets 
Favorited 
Trending 
Tweets per minute 
Click-throughs using
shortening services

Keyword/ Hashtag
Tracking

Klout 
Conversations/
sentiments (eyeballed)


53. Google (Google Analytics)

54. Google (Google Analytics)

55. Google (Google Analytics)

56. Google (Google Analytics)

57. YouTube

58. YouTube
Very Useful Useful Neutral Useless
Subscribers 
Channel Views 
Views 
Likes/ Dislikes 
Comments 
Favorites 
Top Locations 
Top Demographics 
Key Discovery Events 

59. Blogs
Very Useful Useful Neutral Useless
RSS Subscribers 
Hits/ Impressions 
Page Views 
Comments 
Sentiments (eyeballed) 
Google Analytics data 

60. Others
Very Useful Useful Neutral Useless
Followers 
Action Buttons (like/
download/ print/ share/
pin/ tweet/ like/ etc.)

Engagement activity rate 
Comments 
Sentiments (eyeballed) 

61. What to use?

62. Various platforms (summary notes)
 Google Analytics
 Most ubiquitous; for almost all sites
 Free and paid
 Google Alerts
 Free tool to track web mentions (as crawled by Google
Search)
 Subscribe using Google accounts; sent to email
 Facebook Insights
 Proprietary to Facebook (free)
 Provided by Facebook to encourage paid advertising

63. Various platforms (summary notes)
 Tweetdeck
 Twitter monitoring
 Scheduled posting
 Hootsuite
 Various social network monitoring (free)
 Scheduled posting (free)
 Collaboration (free/ paid)
 Customizable analytics data (paid)
 YouTube
 Proprietary to YouTube(free)

64. Further readings
 http://www.viralblog.com/social-media/your-guide-
to-88-social-media-monitoring-tools/
 http://ideya.eu.com/images/SMM%20PRESENTATIO
N%20August%202012%20FINAL.pdf
 http://www.slideshare.net/lmilic/smm-tools-excerpt-
final2012-9-13667019

65. Putting it together

66. Remember this?
Investment Expected returns

67. Remember this?
 ROI is not the only measurable/ “provable” metric

68. Thank you!
 Keep it in mind when doing analytics…