1. Some thoughts about
web analytics and public diplomacy
Dana Chinn
February 2010

2. • Are public diplomacy
web activities more difficult
to measure than those
of e-commerce, media?
• “Famous” and misused
metrics
• Basic site metrics
• Social media measurement
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3. A familiar question
“...communication
activities designed to
engage, inform, and
influence foreign
publics....
...as is often the case,
the desired impact only
begins to manifest itself
decades later.”
--PUBD 599 syllabus, Dr. Robert Banks, Spring 2010
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4. Are these questions harder to answer
for public diplomacy activities?
• 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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5. In public diplomacy, web analytics can...
• Justify investments in web sites
and social media services, over
time
• Be information that’s used to
influence, provide evidence of
impact
• Determine success or failure of a
site (and an activity?)
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6. Some metrics are “famous” but misused
“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 6

7. 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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8. 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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9. Can you identify the issues with this one?
--From ”A world of
connections/A special
report on social
networking,” Jan. 30,
2010
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10. Can you identify the issues with this one?
--From ”A world of
connections/A special
report on social
networking,” Jan. 30,
2010
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11. 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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12. Unique visitors
10

13. Unique visitors
visit websites,
10

14. Unique visitors
visit websites,
generate page views.
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15. A “unique visitor” is actually a “unique computer”
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16. Unique visitors may be over- or undercounted
Work =33 unique visitors
= unique visitors
Hotel
Home
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17. Unique visitors may be over- or undercounted
Work =33 unique visitors
= unique visitors
Hotel
Home
= 1 unique visitor
Work
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18. 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
31
The number of unique visitors...
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19. 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
31
The number of unique visitors...
...on July 1 is six; July 31, two. “Daily unique visitors”
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20. 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
31
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”
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21. 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
31
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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22. Some real Key Performance Indicators
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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23. Each defined activity will have its own Key
Performance Indicators, the data used for action
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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24. Social media channels are as diverse
as public diplomacy activities
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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25. Social media (and public diplomacy?) 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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26. 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
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27. 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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28. It’s better to have an informed guess
than to use audience stat data from social media
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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29. Understand Twitter’s simple complexity,
understand how social media is measured
Content
Followers
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30. 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
• A comment
“Commenting9/21/09 http://mashable.com/2009/09/20/commenting-on-retweets/
Pete Cashmore, Mashable,
is important, even essential.”
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31. Are you 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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32. GM “Reinvention”

33. GM “Reinvention”

34. GM “Reinvention”

35. GM “Reinvention”

36. GM “Reinvention”
R O
eturn n

37. GM “Reinvention”
R OI
eturn n nvestment

38. GM “Reinvention”
Measurable
R OI eturn n nvestment

39. 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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