This document discusses using web analytics in public relations. It begins by explaining how measuring audiences has changed online compared to traditional media, as online audiences are defined more by individual behavior and attitudes rather than demographics. It then discusses how the traditional advertising model of separate media companies has broken down online as barriers to entry are lower and all companies compete directly with each other. The document emphasizes that what really matters online is what people do and think rather than just who they are. It provides examples of useful metrics for public relations professionals like visits per unique visitor and page views per visit, compared to meaningless "famous" metrics like total pageviews.

1. Using web analytics in public relations
Dana Chinn
February 2010

2. Web analytics essentials
• Why measuring audiences is different now
• Behavioral vs. attitudinal
• “Famous metrics” vs. useful ones
• Basic site metrics
Counting vs. calculating engagement
• Social media metrics
Understanding followers, analyzing content
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3. Traditional ad-supported business model
Newspaper
Magazines Paid
Radio and/or
TV earned
Direct mail
media
...subsidized audiences Yellow
defined by Outdoor
demographics,
geography
HIGH ...few competitors
BARRIERS ...everyone in its place
TO ...can only measure mass
ENTRY e.g., paid circulation
3

4. Online ad-supported business model
Online
Newspapers Direct mail
Magazines Yellow Pages
Radio Outdoor
TV Online-only
...(highly) subsidized
audiences defined
by individual
behavior, attitudes
...few barriers to entry
...change in behavior, business
...little geographic focus
...everyone’s online, competing with each
other
...can measure anything (niches, engagement)
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5. Earned media is a lot harder now
A traditional news org website A social media service
has content serves participants
that it distributes who
to people -- group
-- have themselves
who are the same
in the same interests -- contribute
geography content
-- have
conversations
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6. What really matters in online?
What people do (behavioral)
Who they are, what they think (attitudinal)
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7. Data won’t answer
unless you ask it the right questions
• What needs to get done, what you want to do, what is
impact you want? “What is it that we want to change,
improve, accomplish, incite?”
--”The Maturation of Social Media ROI,” by Brian Solis, Mashable, Jan. 26, 2010
• Who are the target audiences?
• What activities will reach the target audiences, get them
to take the desired actions? Over what time periods?
• What are the measurable elements - the Key
Performance Indicators - that will tell you whether
you’ve succeeded or failed?
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8. 8

9. Some metrics are “famous” but useless
“After the disaster in Haiti, [our site] hit
168.6 million pageviews
in the month of January. A new record.”
“We are the go-to source for California
12.2 million
news....[our site had]
CALIFORNIANS....For the
month, we received 24,449,693
--From an internal communication of a
media organization, February 2010
visits.”
--The ”famous metrics” term comes from web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik 9

10. A meaningless metric,
and a copy editing error, too
--From ”A world of connections/A special report on social networking,” Jan. 30, 2010
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11. More issues...
--From ”A world of
connections/A special
report on social
networking,” Jan. 30,
2010
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12. Internal vs. external numbers
Internal External
• Census data • Panel data
100% of all visitors, visits, Activity from a sample of self-
page views for all sections selected people. Only total site
data for a limited number of sites.
• Internal data • External data
Confidential Used to compare sites
• Omniture • comScore
Google Analytics Nielsen
WebTrends Compete
etc. etc.
• Web Analytics • Interactive
Association Advertising Bureau
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13. Unique visitors
visit websites,
generate page views.
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14. A “unique visitor” is actually a “unique computer”
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15. Unique visitors may be over- or undercounted
Work =33 unique visitors
= unique visitors
Hotel
Home
= 1 unique visitor
Work
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16. The no. of unique visitors is based on the time period you specify.
S M T W Th F S
1
July 6-12
July 13-19
July 20-26
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The number of unique visitors...
...on July 1 is six; July 31, two. “Daily unique visitors”
...for the week of July 13 is five. “Weekly unique visitors”
...for the month of July is seven. “Monthly unique visitors”
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17. The math of visits
A visit is a period of activity separated by at least 30
minutes of inactivity.
A visitor clicks into your site at 1 p.m., surfs for 20 minutes, then clicks into CNN.com.
One visit
A visitor clicks into your site at 1 p.m., surfs for 45 minutes, talks
on the phone for 30 minutes without touching the keyboard, then
hangs up and goes back to your site for 20 minutes before
clicking into CNN.com.
Two visits
A visitor clicks into your site at 1 p.m., surfs for an hour, leaves his
computer for 29 minutes, and then comes back and surfs for
another hour before clicking into CNN.com.
One visit
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18. Calculating engagement
Two ratios
visits per unique visitor page views per visit
One the bounce rate
proportion of the page where
people enter your
Example: 50%
site most often
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19. Visits
per weekly unique visitor
Example
2.5 visits per week
Are visitors coming to your site
with the frequency you need to
build loyal, satisfied audiences ?
If you update your site 24/7,
is your content engaging enough
to compel someone
to visit more than two or three
times a week?
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20. Page views
per visit, by week
Example
3.6 page views per visit
When visitors do come to your site,
are they engaging with its content?
Does a high number suggest
visitors can’t find what they want?
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21. Bounce rate of top entry pages
One visit with
one page view
to the home page
= 1 bounce
No. of bounces
+
No. of visits that started with the
home page and had 2+ page views
= 100% of visits 21

22. Example
Home page bounce rate
= over 50%
Over half of the visits to the CNN.com home page
left CNN.com without clicking into any other pages
Best (?) cases: Came only to get the headlines
Home page has dynamic content
not captured with page views
(check your business model)
Worst cases: Couldn’t find what they wanted
Didn’t like what they saw
Source: “Can CNN, the Go-To Site, Get You to Stay?” by Brian Stetler, New York Times, Jan. 17, 2009
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23. The value of an influencer: Nikki Finke
Content: 24/7
unique info about
The Industry
UVs: “a few”
100,000 Industry
execs who visit
10x/day
Value: $10 million
Source: “Call Me,” by Tad Friend, The New Yorker, Oct. 12, 2009
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24. Each defined activity has its own
Key Performance Indicators
Define success/failure with KPIs that indicate participation, engagement.
Use ratios, percents - not counts.
• Content: comments/post; bounce rate; percent positive/negative
• Twitter: PVs/URL; tweets/influencer; retweets/tweet
• Facebook: Percent of fans in target audience; discussion topics/influencer; wall
posts/fan
• Photos/slideshows: percent of show viewed; percent of target audience who
posted; comments/slideshow
• Videos: views/UV; percent of UVs who rated
• Attitudes: transparency; trust; are you adding value to the conversation?
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25. Attitudinal research
Do you know the people behind the clicks?
1. What was the purpose of your visit today?
2. Were you able to
complete your task today?
3. If not, why not?
4. If you did complete your task,
what did you enjoy most about our site?
Caution: Pop-up survey data is a truth but not the
complete truth. Pop-ups are only completed by those
who feel like it...it’s not a representative sample.
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26. Do you know who’s not coming to your site,
and why?
• Start with focus groups, usability
studies, etc. to identify issues, (not thinking about you)
keywords, hypotheses - the
questions that will result in data
that will lead to decisions
• Follow with surveys that reach a
representative sample of the
target audiences.
Measure niches, not everyone.
Avoid convenient, easy samples
(sorry)
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27. Social media:
Not only are the technologies new,
but the metrics are as well.
--Online Media and Marketing Association Metrics and Measurement program, June 2009
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28. Types of social media channels
Sharing
Networking
News
Bookmarking
Reviews
-- “Five essentials for social media marketing,” by Lisa Wehr, CEO/Oneupweb, iMedia Connection, July 17, 2009
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29. Social media:
a constant stream of calls to action
Brands earn the trust and loyalty of
their customers by listening and
responding.
--”The Maturation of Social Media ROI,” by Brian Solis, Mashable, Jan. 26, 2010
...the true value of a network
is measured
by the frequency of engagement
of the participants.
-- Interactive Advertising Bureau Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions, May 2009
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30. Social media rules
1. Listen
2. Engage
3. Measure
• Audience
• Engagement
• Loyalty
• Influence
• Action
Metrics should map to goals. Period.
From “What the **** is Social Media - One Year Later,” Marta Kagan, Espresso|Brand Infiltration, July 16, 2009. Some explicit words.
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31. Step 1: Define the R
R OI eturn n nvestment
and
R OO eturn n bjectve
“What is it that we want
to change, improve, accomplish, incite....?”
--”The Maturation of Social Media ROI,” by Brian Solis, Mashable, Jan. 26, 2010
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32. Step 2: Identify the participants,
their roles, their numbers
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33. Understand the limitations of your data sources
The Facebook ad
application only
gives you people on
Facebook who filled
out the form.
You don’t know
how many:
didn’t give details
or
updated their status
or
told the truth
or
aren’t in Facebook
or...
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34. Your clients want KPIs that show
proof of audience, participation
• Targeted audience reach, frequency
• Audience profile
• Unique visitors, active users; page views; visits, return visits; time spent
• Growth; “conversation reach”
• Content relevance
• Author (journalists, others) credibility; content freshness; influence
• Calls to action answered
• Passive: downloads; games played; videos viewed; alerts subscribed/
unsubscribed; widgets installed
• Info submitted: comments posted; topics/forums created; photos, videos
uploaded; poll votes; ratings, reviews, recommendations; contests entered
• Interaction: friends reached; in/out links; reposts
Derived from Interactive Advertising Bureau Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions, May 2009
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35. Understand Twitter’s simple complexity,
understand how social media is measured
Content
Followers
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36. Analyze your follower profiles
to assess their likelihood of engagement
Do your followers identify with your keywords?
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37. Followers
Look for influencers
Review reach, churn,
following/follower ratio
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38. Analyze content
Review hashtags,
keywords, sentiment,
problems, conversations
that connect people
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39. The perfect (measurable) Tweet
• A call to action to participate, engage with you
Look at this. Go here. What do you think?
• A link
To get news, information
Tweets are now a primary news source,
the new home page
To respond to the call to action
• A #hashtag and/or keywords
• Handle specific to person/topic
• A comment
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40. “Perfect” tweets are less than 120 characters
RT/via @handle + call to action/comment + link + #hashtag
100 characters 111 characters Watch handle,
hashtag sizes
Lost the link
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41. GM “Reinvention”
Measurable
R OI eturn n nvestment

42. Is your company part of the conversation
in real-time web signaling events?
“When a burst of tweets citing a particular subject
or URL emerges, it’s a signaling event.”
--Rishab Ghosh, co-founder of Topsy, a search engine for tweets, in “Live in the Moment,”
by Clive Thompson, Wired magazine, October 2009
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43. Define success by who your audiences are
and what they’re doing, thinking
Universal Studios Hollywood ad, 2007
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44. Dana Chinn Blog
Lecturer http://www.newsnumbers.com
chinn@usc.edu
213-821-6259
Analytics for news orgs
bookmarks
http://www.delicious.com/
danachinn
Presentations
http://www.slideshare.net/
danachinn
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