7 Step Social Media Analytics Strategy
After reading a huge amount about social media measurement over recent months I thought I'd add my five pennies worth to the conversation. What follows is a 7 step process for helping brands put in place a robust social media analytics strategy.
1. The first consideration is whether the conversation has been started by content produced by the brand or the community. This is important as it will have an impact on the approach and some of the specific actions as we move through the process.
So to give some context to this, brand initiated could be a video uploaded to YouTube or a blogger out-reach programme. Community initiated conversations could be the beginning of a crisis or the start of a positive groundswell response to your new product launch.
2. For brand initiated activity, clarifying the objectives may reflect a tactical approach (increase the number of Twitter followers) or a more strategic one (build our brand influence). For community initiated conversations the objective could be to identify how social the brands' marketplace is or maybe to protect the brands reputation.
3. With the objectives clarified it is now a lot easier to identify the appropriate metrics which when measured will tell us if the objective has been met. It is important for clients to understand the options and complexities around different metrics by exposing them to all the choices available together with the pros and cons of these. To help our clients we have a metric toolkit which includes 50-odd different metrics across 4 key categories.
4. For brand initiated activity we can now set some targets. Obviously, the more social media activity you have under your belt the more data you have to set realistic targets.
5. Active listening is the term we use to cover social media monitoring, measuring, tracking, alerting and data-mining. So, with the appropriate metrics identified we can then select the right monitoring tool and implement our active listening plan.
Interestingly we estimate that the commercial social media analytic tools (SMATs) can only measure circa 50% of the possible metrics within our toolkit and therefore need to be augmented with other grassroot tools.
6. For brand initiated conversations this is the point at which we can start the activity or programme.
7. Lastly, we actively listen based on the plan and the brand would respond in accordance with the engagement policy.
This process has evolved over the last year as the SMATs have evolved and as I read and digest others blog posts and whitepapers although at the moment it is serving us and our clients well.
Comments [0]