Class lectures for Comm 399: Fundamentals of Social Media, Fall 2012, Department of Communication, Shepherd University.

1. Strategic Social Media:
Intro to Social Media
Monitoring
Professor Matthew Kushin, PhD
Shepherd University | Department of Mass Communication | 2012

2. Review
 Last Class
 Real Time Web
 Today
 Content sites (blogs, websites)

3. Determining influence for sites
 Traditional perspective
 Some sites get more traffic
 Perceived as more credible and authoritative

4. Case
 Burt’s Bees Scenario
 Burt’s bees has new lip balm
 Wants to get the word out

5. Exercise
 Would Does Burt’s Bees care about this site?
 http://www.missnattysbeautydiary.com
 Go to the site, you have 2 minutes with your team to decide
yes or no – and what your reasoning is.

6. Influence?
 Did you check her about page?
 Claims 250-300k page views (that’s not individual people, but
total views) per month
 She did review their lip balm!
 http://www.missnattysbeautydiary.com/2012/04/review-burts-
bees-lip-shimmer-lip-balm.html

7. Page Rank
 Let’s look up her site ranking on Quantcast & Technorati:
 Technorati search
 Quantcast search

8. Limitations
 Technorati and Qualtrics are very limited
 Sites must be very popular to make ranking
 Have to be registered to Qualtrics to be measured

9.  The size of networks to cause effect is irrelevant. The idea
that only large networks can cause effect is a myth. You
must understand how influence spreads. Now, you can connect
with people based on common interests through the influential
voices who are frequently the hub of important
conversations…”
Source: David Armano, Executive Vice President, Global Innovation & Integration at Edelman Digital, as cited in Solis (2012)

10. A Strategic Debate
 Keep goals in mind
 Are you better to get the word out to a lot of sites like
missnattybeauty with a targeted audience in the interest graph?
 Or to stick with the mass appeal, social graph of wanting as
many people as possible to learn about the new balm?
 It is a decision you must make, try, & evaluate

11. Influence Measurement
Tools: Content Sites

12.  Page Rank Sites
 Quantcast
 Technorati
 SiteTrail
 Other Blogs
 Socialmention.com – blog section
 Google.com/blogsearch <- Most relevant and top end up high in
search results

13. Traffic / Authority/ Popularity
 Sites offer relative measures of traffic, authority, popularity

14. Site Demographics

15. Considerations
 Site Stats
 Is traffic volume important?
 Authority (make sure you’ve read Technorati article!)
 Are people engaging with this site?
 Via comments in posts.
 Is the demographic of the site in line with your target
demographic?

16. “Influencers” Competition, Part 2
 Your employer, Burt’s Bees, has a new lip balm and wants to
get the word out via social media….

17. NEW OBJECTIVE!!
 Burt’s Bees want people to TRY the new lip balm
 Outcome type:
 Behavioral – take action to purchase a new lip balm

18. Goal
 Burt’s Bees has a new lip balm that doesn’t taste bad!!
 Answer the question:
 What 4 sites influencing the conversation about Burt’s Bees
should we contact given the objective of getting people to try the
new lip balm?
 Your team’s goal is not only identify influencers – but to find
the most relevant influencers!

19. Summary: Influence
 Interpersonal influence impacts decision-making; media
content influences knowledge gain
 Similarity in characteristics essential to influence
 Digital influence is difficult to determine and measure
 Prioritize Goals and desired effect
 Determining important influences = trial & error