Now that social media has gone mainstream, many companies are keen to get involved. But even larger brands will want to dip their toe in the water and see proven, quantifiable results before committing to a larger budget, which often means the funds won't stretch to relatively high investment monitoring tools such as Radian or Meltwater. In the battle to integrate social media solidly into a brand's marketing strategy, it pays to focus initial spend on the essentials and seek out free or low cost monitoring and measurement solutions to draw the essential link between social media investment and return. In this presentation given as part of the CIPR's social summer, Emily looks at the full range of online tools that do the job and don't cost the earth.

1. MEASURING SOCIAL MEDIA WITHOUT
BLOWING THE BUDGET
Emily Leary, @emleary
A copy of this PPT plus further thoughts
on this topic will be available online at
www.thinkingcomms.co.uk
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2. WHY IS MEASUREMENT A PROBLEM?
 “PR is an industry fuelled by
hot air with an inherent fear of
metrics and a need to
obfuscate to survive”
 Harsh?
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3. THE SITUATION
 In the digital age,
we cannot afford to
be fuzzy
 We must attempt to
prove that PR / SM /
time/money spent Marketing / Increased
on marketing is Ads profit
generating profit
(directly or
indirectly) for the
business
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4. MORE ACCURATELY
 Link between positive
brand sentiment and Positive
sales will never be a brand
clear one sentiment
 Digital conversions Improved
more straightforward sales /
retention /
 Clear metrics must
profit
be in place at the
outset to credibly Increased
correlate activity and awareness
outcome
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5. THE SIMPLE TRUTH
 We must be clear about:
what we're setting out to do
what we achieve
 Cannot run a SM campaign
without measurement
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6. THE CATCH 22
 How do we fund social measurement tools when social media
activity isn‟t yet proven?
Can't have Can't prove
budget value/need
until value/need without
is proven budget
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7. SCENARIO 1 – THE DABBLER
 Director X has been dabbling in SM for 8 months
 She's active on Twitter and several Facebook
groups
 She's seen referrals come in from people she's sure
she met online
 But she doesn't know if the time she's putting in is
justified by what she's getting out
 What next?
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8. SCENARIO 2 – THE OPPORTUNITY
 Org A has long standing broadcast ad spend that
they believe to be effective
 Already metrics in place to measure brand warmth
e.g. Net Promoter Score measurement
 Web analytics in place to track conversions
 Online marketing team spot small peaks in social
referrals (Twitter, Facebook)
 A quick search shows people talking about the
brand
 What now?
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9. SCENARIO 3 – THE CRISIS
 Brand X is facing a PR crisis – its flagship service
has let a lot of people down
 Their PR team are all over it, the furore dies down
 Marketing Director X knows this all started with
conversations in social media
 He wants to make a case to the board for ongoing
social media listening and management
 He needs to build a post mortem of what happened
 How?
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10. FREE CAN BE VALUABLE
 In these scenarios, the orgs need to:
 tweak their web analytics to better track social
 establish a way to measure ROI
 do some sentiment analysis
 design a strategy, agree deliverables
 put some metrics in place
 and so on.
 I can‟t cover the whole process, but lets look at the
free tools that work hard in those scenarios…
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11. WEB ANALYTICS
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12. WEB ANALYTICS - GOOGLE
 http://www.google.c
o.uk/analytics/
 For correlating
social media activity
and ROI, web
analytics is the
single most
important tool in
your kit
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13. GOOGLE – SOCIAL DRILL DOWN
 http://www.google.c
o.uk/analytics/
 For correlating
social media activity
and ROI, web
analytics is the
single most
important tool in
your kit
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14. WEB ANALYTICS - GOOGLE
 Old conversion
analytics worked on
„last click‟ ie the last
traffic source before
purchase got the credit
 GA now offers multi-
channel funnel /
attribution modelling
 We can see how SM
contributes to sales
 We can estimate ROI
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15. OFFSITE ANALYTICS –
IT STARTS WITH A SEARCH…
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16. GOOGLE: GET TO GRIPS WITH BOOLEAN
 http://www.googl
e.co.uk/advanced
_search
 AND, OR, NOT –
particularly useful
for brand names
that are also
common phrases
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17. GOOGLE: AUTOMATE WITH ALERTS
 http://www.googl
e.com/alerts
 Again, use
intelligent
phrasing to focus
your searches
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18. ANALYTICS TOOLS –
FOR YOUTUBE
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19. ON PLATFORM – YOUTUBE INSIGHT
 http://www.youtu
be.com/t/advertisi
ng_insight
 Drill into your
views to view
traffic sources,
retention,
demographics
etc.
 Export to Excel
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20. ANALYTICS TOOLS –
FOR BOARDS, BLOGS & FORUMS
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21. 3RD PARTY FORUMS – BOARDREADER
 http://www.boardr
eader.com
 Forum search
 Basic trend data
 Subscribe to get
searches by
email alert
 Browse topics
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22. ANALYTICS TOOLS –
FOR FACEBOOK
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23. ON PLATFORM – FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
 https://www.f
acebook.com
/[yourpagena
me]?sk=page
_insights
 Get to know
all the Insight
metrics
available to
you
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24. ON PLATFORM – FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
 https://www.face
book.com/[your
pagename]?sk=
page_insights
 Export to Excel
regularly – can
form the basis
of your reporting
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25. ANALYTICS TOOLS –
FOR TWITTER
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26. ON PLATFORM – TWITTER SEARCH
 https://twitter.com
/search-
advanced
 Again, great for
filtering out
irrelevant terms
 Bookmark search
results URL so
you can run
specific searches
again in future
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27. 3RD PARTY TWITTER – TWITTER COUNTER
 http://www.
twittercounter.co
m
 Track follower
growth
 Run competitior
comparisons
 Paid subscription
for advanced
tracking and
export to Excel
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28. 3RD PARTY TWITTER – TWITALYZER
 http://twitalyzer.c
om
 Analyse by
Twitter name
 Top line topic,
hashtag, impact
and influence
data
 Paid subscription
required for
further drill down
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29. 3RD PARTY TWITTER – TWEETSTATS
 http://www.tweets
tats.com
 Graphs showing
perfomance and
interaction data
for any Twitter
handle
 Service currently
offline
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30. 3RD PARTY TWITTER – TWAZZUP
 http://www.twazz
up.com
 Useful for a
snapshot of a
breaking story
 See a live feed +
highlights + who
the influencers
are
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31. 3RD PARTY TWITTER – HASHTRACKING
 http://www.hashtr
acking.com
 Generate a report
for any hashtag
 Snapshot
analytics for
reach, key
influencers
 Currently in
closed beta
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32. 3RD PARTY TWITTER – TOPSY
 http://www.topsy.c
om
 Real-time,
grouped search
results
 Drill down by links,
multimedia,
contributors
 Set up email alerts
 Also works for
Google+
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33. ANALYTICS TOOLS –
MULTI-PLATFORM
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34. 3RD PARTY ALL – SOCIALMENTION
 http://www.socialm
ention.com
 Search by
platform, media
type
 Basic sentiment
analysis
 Top users,
keywords
 Set email alerts
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35. 3RD PARTY ALL – ADDICTOMATIC
 http://www.
addictomatic.com
 Multi-platform,
dashboard style
results
 Filter by platform
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36. 3RD PARTY ALL – ICEROCKET
 http://www.icerocke
t.com
 Search blogs,
Twitter, Facebook,
images, video
 Handy all-in-one
dashboard
 Auto-refresh, Save
and RSS feed for
results
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37. 3RD PARTY ALL – TWENTY FEET
 https://www.twentyfe
et.com/
 Collates data from
Twitter, Facebook
 Analyses reputation,
influence,
conversations
 Requires sign up
 Paid subscription to
access YouTube,
MySpace, bit.ly and
GA dashboard
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38. WEB ANALYTICS – OPEN SITE EXPLORER
 http://www.
opensiteexplorer.o
rg
 Enter any URL
(root domain or
specific campaign
page) and find out
who‟s linking to it
 Guest users
limited to running
3 reports per day
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39. LINK SHORTENERS
 Clicks go through a proxy, allowing
analysis of traffic, demographic,
virality etc
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40. RANKING TOOLS AND CHARTS
 Useful (if flawed) algorithmic
tools for tracking influence
and identifying influencers
 Search by topic for top
influencers / stories
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41. RANKING TOOLS AND CHARTS
 And for blogs…
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42. BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
 The toughest part of a free-tool-only approach to social
media monitoring/measurement is bringing it all together
 Most free tools offer no „save‟ option, so data is transient
 Excel (or any spreadsheet prog) is your new best friend!
 Set up your chosen metrics in a spreadsheet
 Regularly transfer raw data in a consistent manner
 Map data over time, spot trends, and correlate findings in
ways not possible with any one free tool
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43. IF YOU HAVE A LITTLE BUDGET
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44. THE PROBLEM WITH FREE?
Need to
manually
sift data
Rarely
Accuracy
fully
issues
comprehensive
FREE
Hard / Struggle with
impossible to high volume
customise data
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45. LOW(ER) COST PAID TOOLS
 If you have budget, but not
£000s/month, you could consider
From
$49
pcm
From
$300
pcm
From
$499
pcm
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46. REMEMBER…
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47. THE SITUATION
 In the digital age,
we cannot afford to
be fuzzy
 We must attempt to
prove that PR / SM /
time/money spent Marketing / Increased
on marketing is Ads profit
generating profit
(directly or
indirectly) for the
business
CIPRsm

48. Questions
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49. Next Social Summer
 Social Media and Politics 2012
Mark Pack, MHP Communications & Ian
Kirby, Ex Political Editor at News of the World
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50. Thank
you
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