Analytics Is King

Yesterday, I took a look at the potential metrics you could be using to measure your performance on Twitter. Thus far, the response has been rather interesting. I think I expected someone to come here and challenge my assumptions on what metrics matter most. That hasn't happened. In fact, most of the responses so far are coming from folks who want to focus more on the content. Tracking the number of @ replies, and engagements and the raw mentions of the brand. All of those things are fine, but you should know they present some serious challenges, including:

• Content fluidity - Ever watch your "all friends" column on TweetDeck (or whatever third party app you are using)? See how quickly that column is moving? Analyzing content on Twitter is important, but it's akin to watching cars on a busy highway. Just because you saw it posted, doesn't mean a lot of others did. Take your results with a grain of salt.
• Sentiment scoring is problematic - I mentioned this yesterday, but scoring tweets is incredibly hard. Nuanced language. Limited characters. Much of the content being repurposed news. You see the point. Manual scoring is better, obviously, but the sheer volume of tweets makes that difficult. 
• Looking at raw @ replies doesn't tell you much - Sure, you want people talking to you on Twitter. Sure, you want to be talking to others on Twitter. However, looking at the raw number of @ replies doesn't tell you much. You should be more concerned with the behavior that follows an @ reply. Does the person talk about your brand more/less often? Do they tell their friends something positive about the experience? If you want to look at @ replies, you also need to be looking at the other behaviors as well.

Either way, these metrics and approaches can be debated. As I mentioned in the post yesterday, metrics and approaches will vary from company-to-company. Those were the metrics I thought made the most sense, but you could easily disagree. But, Twitter isn't the only social channel. What about Facebook? Ahhhhh, Facebook...

Have you ever taken a look at the export from Facebook Insights? It's a pretty substantial list of metrics. In fact, you can get lost in that spreadsheet for days (well, at least I can)! So what would I look at if I'm measuring my progress on Facebook? This discussion can actually be split into two parts, I think: Platform and content

First, the platform:

• Comments
• Likes
• Total interactions (I'd say look at either the first two or combine them into total interactions)
• Clicks (or CTR)
• Shares
• Impressions
• Pageviews
• Overall likes
• Per post metrics (impressions, comments, likes, shares)
• Sentiment of comments

Second, the content:

This becomes a little more science than anything else. First of all, you need to be sure you are capturing all of your posts in some kind of spreadsheet. Capture the post verbatim, the day/time it was posted and the message "bucket" it might fall into. Then, figure out which post metrics you care most about. In most instances, we're talking about comments, likes, clicks, shares and impressions. Then, after capturing all of that data you'll want to create an index score from 0-100 for the posts. See my post for PR Breakfast Club on how to do this. You'll create a ranked list of your posts from 0-100. What constitutes a good post on that scale? I don't know, that's up to you and your client/boss. But, taking this approach will allow you to really hone in on what content is performing the best across a serious of metrics.

This sounds incredibly labor intensive and time consuming, but trust me, it isn't. As soon as you've created the structure, it becomes a matter of populating a spreadsheet everyday. Surely, you have someone who can do that, right?

What do you think? How are you measuring Facebook today?

We're always (hopefully) interested in how our social channels are performing versus last week, month, year or even versus competitors. To that end, marketers of all stripes often wonder what the best metrics are when evaluating the performance of a particular platform. Depending on the platform in question, the selection process can be daunting. Take a look at a Facebook Insights export sometime and follow the Excel spreadsheet across and you'll see quite a few possibilities.

Yesterday, I received such a question from a very good friend of mine as it relates to Twitter. Now, my typical (maybe snarky) response to these kinds of questions is asking why that wasn't settled weeks/months ago when the page was launched, but we're talking about a friend here so I obliged. While I'm here, though, remember the process of identifying metrics? Setting goals, conducting benchmark research, developing strategy/tactics, implementing your program and then measuring. Go through that process and you'll save yourself some headaches at the end.

Anyway, her question prompted a thought... If I had to rank which metrics I think are the most important for Twitter, how would I rank them? Again, go with me here... How important these metrics are will vary from company-to-company, but I think the discussion is a worthwhile one to be having. First step in this process is writing down all of the available metrics you can think of for Twitter... I'll give you a second to do that...Ready? What did you come up with? I came up with:

• Clicks
• Clicks/post
• Retweets
• Retweets per post
• Tweet reach
• Retweet reach
• Average reach per tweet
• Percentage of posts that are @ replies
• Number of lists
• Followers
• Sentiment? 

A few things on this list...

• Clicks, and clicks per post are probably the two most important metrics in my opinion. Why? They can be easily tracked to a specific end result that the brand cares about (landing on their website and buying something, for example).
• Notice how far followers is on the list? Yeah, moving on. That should be obvious. Looking at followers alone doesn't tell me anything.
• I have a question mark next to sentiment. After posing this question on Twitter, both Justin Goldsborough and Jason Keith raised the point of tracking sentiment on Twitter. My only issue with it is that tracking sentiment on Twitter is problematic at best. Limited characters, nuanced conversation tone make it very difficult to nail down. If you're using a sophisticated text analytics platform, I'll jump on board. Otherwise, I'd be nervous...

If you're managing a Twitter presence, what metrics are you using? What have you found has worked with your client or boss?

 

If you'll forgive this departure from our regularly scheduled programming (OK, not so regular as of late... sorry), I'd like a chance to talk about the tweet above from my friend Lindsay Allen. When she pressed enter to send that tweet yesterday I have to say that it totally caught me off guard. Sure, I'd seen a few people over the last few months talking about the amount of sports chatter on Twitter. But, in the wake of Lindsay's tweet I started to notice it a little more. And, sure enough, there were a couple of tweets later in the day yesterday about this very subject. So, without further delay let me just get this out in the open: If you don't like sports, or don't want to see sports-related material on Twitter, then go ahead and unfollow me right now. Don't worry, I won't be offended. The reality is that next to doing great work for my employer, engaging with people across the world via social media, hanging out with friends that sports is my next great love. I've loved it since I was a kid. I live and die with the success and failure of my favorite team. And, quite frankly, that's a love I want to share with the people who follow me on Twitter. I've been on Twitter since late 2007 (was @chemann for a brief time), and more actively on Twitter since late 2008 (@chuckhemann). I'd like someone to point out for me when Twitter was a single issue/topic platform. It was never designed that way. It was originally designed to share with others what you were doing at any given time. Over the last three plus years it has morphed into more of what do you know that's worth sharing with a group of people who are (generally) like-minded. Over the course of my life I think I've accumulated a pretty decent amount of knowledge about sports, and I feel like it's appropriate to share that content with others. Am I an expert? No. Am I an employee of ESPN? No. Does that mean some of my followers, and me, don't share a passion for sports? Absolutely not. So why not use the open forum to talk about it? Now, I will say there's a point where talking about sports (or frankly any topic outside of social media) can be taken too far. There are no circumstances where someone (unless they are a sports reporter, work for ESPN, are a player, etc...) should be tweeting about every single play during a game. First of all, that's just silly. Second of all, I can see where people would be upset about the amount of noise you are generating. Nobody needs to see a play-by-play. If we were that interested we'd tune into the game via television of radio. Similarly, if I followed you because of your background in social (or PR, or advertising or marketing) and 90% of your tweets are off-topic then there's a decent chance I'd unfollow you. If you look at the folks I follow it's intentionally a mix of people talking about a myriad of different topics. However, I follow certain people to give me sports commentary and others to provide me great content on work-related topics. So, I don't want to end this post without giving you a couple of ideas...

1. Show some personality - one of the reasons I share stuff on Twitter that's not related to work is I want to show people that I'm interested in other things. And, of course, trying to prove that I'm funny (I'm really not, but one can dream, right?). I guarantee that if your feed is 100% work-related that you're going to put people to sleep. Show people who you really are.
2. Don't overdo the personality - this is going to seem strange in the wake of the last point, but I think sometimes folks share too much about themselves. Quite honestly, your latest health-related issue isn't of broader interest. Yes, I care about you as a person, but I wouldn't necessarily share information about a health condition. Similarly, you don't want to give us the play-by-play on a sporting event (see above). That's just noise
3. Be cognizant of your signal:noise ratio - there's going to be a healthy amount of noise on Twitter. It's the nature of the platform. Being, when they get comfortable with the technology, tend to be very talkative. That's cool. Makes those of us doing research in the area very happy :-). However, be aware of how much content you are putting out that could conceivably be consumed and repurposed, versus how much will be seen as just spam to the broader audience.

Anyway, mild rant over. Twitter isn't a single issue platform. If you followed me hoping to see all social media-related content then I apologize. With that being said, I'm not planning to alter my Twitter content anytime soon. So, if you see me tweeting about sports feel free to unfollow me. Trust me, I won't be offended.