The document discusses a case study by NC State University's Office of Information Technology on measuring the effectiveness of their communication channels, including their OIT News publication and Twitter presence. It outlines the communication channels being measured, the metrics and tools used like Google Analytics and Twitter metrics, and provides initial findings on topics of most interest and how readers engage with different content formats. The study aims to determine how to best inform readers and improve communications over time based on analytics of user behavior.

1. COMMUNICATIONS
METRICS: A CASE STUDY
JOHN MARTIN
INFORMATION & NEWS SERVICES
OFFICE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
NC STATE UNIVERSITY
jmartin3@ncsu.edu
@ncsu_oit
oit.ncsu.edu
(919) 513-1196

2. AGENDA
• Case study: one organization’s quest
• To measure effectiveness of communication channels
• To determine ROI on social media (Twitter)
• Communication channels being measured
• Measurement tools being used
• Methodology
• Summary conclusions
• Your thoughts on this work
• What you’re doing
• Very much work in progress!

3. COMMUNICATIONS MEASURED
• OIT News
• Monthly publication
• Audience is faculty and staff
• Subscription-based email notification / online copy
• 8-12 items in “blurb” format
• September OIT News edition
• Twitter (@ncsu_oit)
• Advertisements (e.g., workshops, seminars, services, events)
• Announcements (e.g., outages, change management, security incidences)
• News (IT, education, social media, IT in education, social media in IT, social media in education)
• Engagement

4. MEASUREMENT TOOLS
• Excel Spreadsheets
• OIT News
• Twitter
• GoLinks (go.ncsu.edu)
• NC State internal URL shortener
• Faculty or staff to create
• Random or customized
• Statistics-enabled
• Share-enabled
• Modifiable

5. OIT NEWS
• What we’re trying to find out
• What topics are of most interest to our readers
• How readers access and consume our content
• How we’re going about it
• 1 base and 3 modified GoLinks for each news item heading
• Item #1 base GoLink: go.ncsu.edu/0811-01-google
• Item #1 modified GoLink for online version: 0811-01o
• Item #1 modified GoLink for email: 0811-01e
• Item #1 modified GoLink Twitter version GoLink: 082611tw
• GoLinks for each link in each news item

6. OIT NEWS: GOLINKS

7. OIT NEWS: EMAIL STATISTICS
• Snapshots on 09/27/11 & 10/19/11

8. OIT NEWS: ONLINE STATISTICS
• Snapshots on 09/27/11 & 10/19/11

9. OIT NEWS: BODY LINKS
• Snapshots on 09/27/11 & 10/19/11

10. OIT NEWS: SUMMARY
• Approaching one year’s worth of data
• Most viewed topics
• Education advertisements: “Lunch & Learns” and workshops
• Process improvement
• Started identifying education advertisements more granularly
(classmate  individual class)
• Starting on July 1, 2011 we integrated GoLinks modifiers
• Found that our email announcement of the edition drives most
traffic (as opposed to starting on the online version)
• Future
• Provide feedback to education team on which of their
offerings garner the most interest
• Try to correlate action (e.g., after clicking on a workshop news
item, an enrollment occurred)

11. SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS
• Adapt-Ability: Identifying Optimal Social Media Success
Metrics webinar on 11/22/10
• Jay Baer, Convince and Convert LLC
• Adam Covati, Argyle Social
• Luke Glasner, Glasner Consulting
• Persia Tatar, Attention
• Four business goals for social media
• Build Awareness
• Build Loyalty
• Customer service
• Generate Sales

12. POSSIBLE AWARENESS METRICS
• Social mentions
• Inbound links
• Web traffic from outposts
• Share of voice
• Search volume trends
• Content exposure
• New visitors

13. POSSIBLE LOYALTY METRICS
• Increase in positive social mentions
• Increase in positive ratings/review
• Content subscription
• Increase in community participation
• Reduction in customer service expense

14. TWITTER
• What we’re trying to find out
• What’s of interest to our readers
• Topics
• Communicative purpose
• Awareness
• Mentions
• Retweets
• Loyalty
• Replies (Engagement)
• Favorited
• How we’re going about it
• GoLinks & Modified GoLinks for tweets
• Twitter notifications and Gmail labels

15. TWITTER: TWEET STATISTICS
• Snapshots on 09/27/11 & 10/20/11

16. TWITTER NOTIFICATIONS

17. TWITTER: AWARENESS
• Mentions
• Retweets

18. TWITTER: LOYALTY
• Favorited
• Replies (Engagement)

19. TWITTER: SUMMARY
• Time-consuming (We have an intern!)
• What to measure
• What to measure with (automation is a must)
• Making time to analyze
• To draw conclusions
• To adjust measurement methodology
• Changes to current
• Perhaps try new
• Ambiguity (Awareness or Loyalty?)
• [Loyalty/Reply] @ncsu_oit I use your dept as an example of how an
IT dept uses social media effectively 
• [Awareness/Mention] @pgmckenzie Paul
McKenzie #FF @ncsu_oit Check out today's great stream on
securing mobile devices.
• Criticism = Loyalty
• Work in progress: Forward movement, process improvement

20. THOUGHTS? QUESTIONS?

21. AND YOU?