The document discusses social media monitoring strategies, focusing on how to determine the influence of content sites for marketing purposes, using Burt's Bees as a case study. It emphasizes the importance of understanding influence dynamics beyond just traffic numbers, advocating for targeted outreach on platforms with engaged audiences. Additionally, it highlights the complexities of measuring digital influence and the need to prioritize goals for effective communication.

1. Strategic Social Media:
Intro to Social Media
Monitoring
Professor Matthew Kushin, PhD
Shepherd University | Department of Mass Communication | 2012

2. Review
 Last Class
 Real Time Web
 Today
 Content sites (blogs, websites)

3. Determining influence for sites
 Traditional perspective
 Some sites get more traffic
 Perceived as more credible and authoritative

4. Case
 Burt’s Bees Scenario
 Burt’s bees has new lip balm
 Wants to get the word out

5. Exercise
 Would Does Burt’s Bees care about this site?
 http://www.missnattysbeautydiary.com
 Go to the site, you have 2 minutes with your team to decide
yes or no – and what your reasoning is.

6. Influence?
 Did you check her about page?
 Claims 250-300k page views (that’s not individual people, but
total views) per month
 She did review their lip balm!
 http://www.missnattysbeautydiary.com/2012/04/review-burts-
bees-lip-shimmer-lip-balm.html

7. Page Rank
 Let’s look up her site ranking on Quantcast & Technorati:
 Technorati search
 Quantcast search

8. Limitations
 Technorati and Qualtrics are very limited
 Sites must be very popular to make ranking
 Have to be registered to Qualtrics to be measured

9.  The size of networks to cause effect is irrelevant. The idea
that only large networks can cause effect is a myth. You
must understand how influence spreads. Now, you can connect
with people based on common interests through the influential
voices who are frequently the hub of important
conversations…”
Source: David Armano, Executive Vice President, Global Innovation & Integration at Edelman Digital, as cited in Solis (2012)

10. A Strategic Debate
 Keep goals in mind
 Are you better to get the word out to a lot of sites like
missnattybeauty with a targeted audience in the interest graph?
 Or to stick with the mass appeal, social graph of wanting as
many people as possible to learn about the new balm?
 It is a decision you must make, try, & evaluate

11. Influence Measurement
Tools: Content Sites

12.  Page Rank Sites
 Quantcast
 Technorati
 SiteTrail
 Other Blogs
 Socialmention.com – blog section
 Google.com/blogsearch <- Most relevant and top end up high in
search results

13. Traffic / Authority/ Popularity
 Sites offer relative measures of traffic, authority, popularity

14. Site Demographics

15. Considerations
 Site Stats
 Is traffic volume important?
 Authority (make sure you’ve read Technorati article!)
 Are people engaging with this site?
 Via comments in posts.
 Is the demographic of the site in line with your target
demographic?

16. “Influencers” Competition, Part 2
 Your employer, Burt’s Bees, has a new lip balm and wants to
get the word out via social media….

17. NEW OBJECTIVE!!
 Burt’s Bees want people to TRY the new lip balm
 Outcome type:
 Behavioral – take action to purchase a new lip balm

18. Goal
 Burt’s Bees has a new lip balm that doesn’t taste bad!!
 Answer the question:
 What 4 sites influencing the conversation about Burt’s Bees
should we contact given the objective of getting people to try the
new lip balm?
 Your team’s goal is not only identify influencers – but to find
the most relevant influencers!

19. Summary: Influence
 Interpersonal influence impacts decision-making; media
content influences knowledge gain
 Similarity in characteristics essential to influence
 Digital influence is difficult to determine and measure
 Prioritize Goals and desired effect
 Determining important influences = trial & error