So you’ve got a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a YouTube channel, new e-newsletter strategies, and a blog on your website. Great... but what are these emerging communication channels really doing for your organization? Are they enabling you to increase your email list size, recruit volunteers or acquire new donors? How can you measure the value of your social media activity, and are your efforts helping your organization reach its goals? Kirstin will guide participants through the social media realm, measuring the ever-evolving impact of social media and detailing the best practices of online monitoring. Attendees Will Walk Away With: • Simple strategies for connecting online activities to marketing and organizational goals • Guidelines and a framework for measuring social media ROI • Tips and tools to help you measure effectively and efficiently

1. Measuring the Impact
of Social Media
Sponsored
by

2. CanadaHelps.org
What is CanadaHelps?
A public charitable foundation that provides accessible and
affordable online technology to both donors and charities.
For Charities
A cost-effective means of raising funds online.
For Donors
A one-stop-shop for giving.
CanadaHelps is a charity helping charities.

3. Today’s Presenter
Kirstin Beardsley
Communications and Marketing Manager
CanadaHelps

4. Who Are
You?

5. THE VALUE IN MEASURING

6. “Measure what
is measurable,
and make
measurable
what is not so.”
- Galileo Galilei

7. Why do you
want to
measure social
media ROI?

8. Why measure?
• Track progress objectively
*Photo courtesy of wikipedia

9. Is it worth it?

10. Also ask:
What can we learn?

11. BUILDING YOUR METHODOLOGY

12. What is [traditional] ROI?
ROI =
Benefit – Cost
Cost

13. Unfortunately,
measuring the
return on
investment for
social media is
not as clear cut

14. BENEFITS
Exposure Engagement Influence Action Impact
*Adapted from Don Bartholomew

15. Exposure
• To what degree
have we
created
exposure to our
materials and
message?

16. Engagement
To what extent have those
following/reading taken the
next step to engage with
our organization?

17. Influence
How has your social media outreach influenced
perceptions and attitudes?

18. Action
What actions have your target audiences taken as
a result of your public outreach (donation, sign a
petition etc…)?

19. Impact
What social change or movement towards our
mission has been accomplished because of our
social media work?

20. What benefits
are you hoping
to track?

21. Don’t underestimate learnings

22. COSTS
• Time
• Money

23. GETTING STARTED

24. How does your organization define success?

25. GOALS
• What are you
hoping to
achieve with
social media?

26. What are
your goals?

27. S-M-A-R-T Objectives
Specific
Measurable
Actionable
Realistic
Timed
*Term first used by George T. Doran

28. What are you trying to achieve?
GOAL
• ABC charity will become an expert and trusted
resource in our local community about adult literacy.
TOOL
• Blog
AUDIENCE
• Local literacy service providing organizations, local
media outlets

29. Objectives
• Increase blog subscribers
by 50% over the next 12
months
• 40% of blog posts contain
active discussion in the
comments about the
issues raised
• Increase website traffic
from blog by 100% over
next 12 months

30. Determine Hypotheses
• Test your
assumptions
and instincts

31. WHAT TO MEASURE

32. “Any measurement must take into account the
position of the observer. There is no such thing
as measurement absolute, there is only
measurement relative.”
Jeanette Winterson

33. Website Data
• Number of unique visitors
• Page views
• Length of time on site
• New visitors
• Browsers
• Geography
• Mobile & devices

34. Website Data
• Search rank
• Search keywords
• Search engines
• Top content
• Landing pages
• Exit pages
• Downloads
• Referring sites

35. Social Media Data
• Subscribers/ Unsubscribes
• Followers/ Unfollows
• Comments/ Unique commenters
• Favourites
• Video/photo views
• Retweets
• Likes

36. Social Media Data
• Page/post views
• # of posts
• Most popular posts
• Conversations
• Feedback
• Repeat supporters
• Comments
• Recommendations

37. Conversions
• Donations
• Donation rate vs. normal
• Volunteer sign-ups
• Newsletter sign-ups

38. Added Value Measures
• New ideas
• New partnerships
• Reduced training / professional development
costs
• Reduction in communication costs
• Reduction in phone calls, emails about a
particular issue

39. Make some tough decisions
about to measure

40. Actionable Data
• Measurement should inform specific decisions
and/or actions.
• Do not measure everything, but do measure what
is most important to your goals.
• The data you gather should help you learn
- From the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

41. What will
you
measure?

42. TOOLS

43. What Are
Your Tools?
• Google Analytics
• Google Alerts
• TwitterSearch
• Facebook Insights
• Blog statistics
• Hootsuite
*Photo courtesy of geishaboy500

44. Spreadsheets!
• Track your measures in a simple spreadsheet
• Graph changes over time

45. • Surveys
– Staff
– Clients
– Social media users

46. GET MEASURING!

47. What’s Your Strategy?
• Tie your social media goals to your
organization’s operating plan
• Establish your social media workplan

48. • Choose 1-4 objectives to
monitor
• Choose your metrics
• Establish a schedule to
track progress
• Record data based on
monthly or bi-weekly
timeframe

49. Track your time
and financial
investment

50. Baseline measurements
• number of followers/subscribers
• action/donation/sharing/clicks
• resources expended (people, time, money)
*Photo courtesy of conray

51. ANALYSIS

52. What did you learn?

53. Take Action

54. EXAMPLE

55. XYZ Charity & P2P Fundraising
Campaign
GOAL:
• Promote peer-to-peer fundraising as a new
key fundraising strategy for our organization
AUDIENCE:
• Young professionals in Toronto

56. XYZ Charity & P2P Fundraising
Campaign
TOOLS:
• Facebook Page & Twitter
OBJECTIVES:
• Recruit 20 fundraisers to set up GivingPages
by September 30th
• Raise $1500 by November 30th through our
campaign
• Raise awareness – increase likes by 150 &
Twitter followers by 150 by November 30th

57. Measures
Exposure:
• Traffic to page
• # of “Likes”
Engagement:
• Links to campaign landing page
• # of posts to page
• Conversations

58. Influence:
• # of posts on other pages/sites about
campaign
Action:
• # of GivingPages set up
• # of new donors
• $ raised
Impact:
• # of people helped by the money raised

60. TIPS

61. Don’t analyze too much/too soon

62. Make
measurement
part of your
social media plan

63. Don’t just watch, observe and record

64. Have a time-
frame for
your
objectives
*Photo courtesy of alexkerhead

65. Measure a relevant amount of time

66. Experiment!
• Now that you’re measuring, test out different
styles of post, frequency or messaging
*Photo courtesy of we are dc

67. Tie success to long term goals
*Photo courtesy of rtadlock

68. Learn from your
mistakes

69. ABOUT MYCHARITYCONNECTS

70. • Free online resources
• Information about technology
• Video demonstrations
• Webinars
• Past webinar recordings
• Learning opportunities
• Events
www.mycharityconnects.org

71. QUESTIONS
THANK YOU!
kirstin@canadahelps.org
@CanadaHelps
www.mycharityconnects.org

72. Thank you for attending!
Slides will be up on:
www.slideshare.com/mycharityconnects
Check out www.mycharityconnects.org for more resources!
Questions, feedback, comments?
Email us at: amyh@canadahelps.org
Thank you to