Tracking your Social Media campaigns for effectiveness
1. Tracking your Social Media Campaigns
for Effectiveness
Bruce Chapman
iFinity Software
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2. Tracking your
Social Media Campaigns
for Effectiveness
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3. Social Media Statistics
23% of online time is spent on social media sites
40% of social media access is done through mobile
devices
Half of all Facebook users log in once a day
Business brands that post once a day reach 22% of their
fans in a week
98% of 18-24 year olds access social media accounts at
least once per month
Sources: Nielsen 3Q 2011 / Facebook / Comscore
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4. Social Media Campaigns
What is a social media campaign?
“Series of online activities based around using
social sites to engage people with your
business”
• The defining feature of social sites is links between users and user
generated content.
• More than just saying „I have a Facebook page‟.
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5. Example Social Media Campaigns
Blendtec – Will it Blend?
• CEO Blends everyday items
with blender
• Debuted in 2006
• Total of 177,925,505 views on
YouTube
• 80,298 Likes on Facebook
• 7,056 followers on Twitter
• Receives suggestions on
what to blend
• 700% sales growth
• CEO gets paid $5000/hour to
appear in other brands ads
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6. Example Social Media Campaigns
“Best Job in the World”
• Tourism Queensland
Promotion
• $150k / year to
house-sit a house on
Hamilton Island
• Job included writing a
blog and doing PR
• 34,000 applications
from 200 countries
• $200 million worth of
publicity for $1.2
million spent
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7. Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign
Encouraged Facebook users to post a message starting
with “I Like it On”
• Was supposed to be where the person liked to keep their handbag
• Obvious double-entendre meant viral campaign quickly spread
• Unofficial campaign not started by Breast Cancer Foundation
• Questioned by many, but did drive traffic to awareness sites
• Comes down to „is any publicity good publicity?‟
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8. Dell Outlet
Started with @DellOutlet tweeting twitter-only discounts to
followers
Used to sell goods from the Dell Outlet store, which is
refurbished products
Strategy gained 15,000 followers and attributed $2m in
revenue directly from the campaign
Also partly contributed to a further $1m in sales through
the regular Dell online store
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9. Outcomes of Social Media Campaigns
Increased Followers / „Friends‟/ Connections
Increased Company Website Traffic
Reaching influential people
Long Term Brand Building
Long Term SEO Benefit
Increased Customer interaction and Feedback
Increased Sales
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10. Social Media Campaigns - Summary
Growing Fast, but still in infancy compared to other
marketing
Can be extremely effective if done well
Don‟t always have control over the outcome
Can either flop, or have negative results if done badly
Careful choice of desired outcomes and matching to
market is the key
Have a specific goal, and know how to measure
that goal
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11. Tracking your
Social Media Campaigns
for Effectiveness
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12. Tracking Social Media Activity
Tracking is the process of assessing the impact of a social
media campaign
Different and more difficult from traditional web traffic
because activity can happen off-site
Careful tracking is important to determine if a campaign
meets its goals
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13. What to track
Specific Campaign tracking or General Social Traffic
Your specific goal(s):
• Traffic
• Sales
• Friends, Followers, Likes, Connections
• Mentions by specific individual or group of individuals
• Links for SEO
Things that are difficult to track
• “Buzz”
• Opportunity cost – ie, sales that would have happened anyway
Number of hours spent on Social Media by workers
Cost of any Software for Social Media
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14. Tracking Social Media
Social Media Tracking Categories -
By Importance
Activity
Influence
Engagement
Conversion
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15. How to track Social Media Activity
Activity
• Tweets, Likes, Followers, Friends, Connections, Clicks
• In-built statistics, aggregated data
• Url Shortener Analytics (ie bit.ly, ow.ly)
• Twitter Metrics (twittercounter, tweetstats, tweeteffect)
• Facebook Metrics
Influence
• Importance in specific topics and areas, degree of influence
• Influence Metrics (Klout, Twitalyzer, SocialMention)
Engagement
• Retweets, Mentions, Recommendations, Comments, Replies
Conversion
• Web Analytics (ie, Google Analytics or similar)
• Custom metrics / reports (roll your own)
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16. Twitter Counter
Basic Twitter Counts
• Followers
• Tweets
• Graphs over time
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17. bit.ly Statistics
•Url Shortener with
built-in metrics
•Clicks from shared
links across platforms
and devices
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18. TweetStats
•Provides free statistics
•Useful for input into
analysis
•How much you tweet
•When you tweet the
most
•Who re-tweets you the
most
•Who replies the most
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19. Klout
•Influence
Measurement
•Shows key listeners
•Provides a
proprietary score
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20. SocialMention
•Searches across
social networks for
mentions, sentiment,
keywords
•Provides metrics for
measurement
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22. Tracking Time
Provide Estimate or use tool.
RescueTime provides an easy way of tracking Social
Media Use
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23. Google Analytics
Imperative to setup Goals
(conversions, registrations, downloads)
Apply filters to extract social data and measure goals
Use | to separate sources ie twitter|facebook|linkedin
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24. Google Analytics – Tracking
Conversions
Use Goals to track conversions
Make Goals as specific as possible
• Need to separate out sales/registrations/downloads accurately
Group Goals together in Goal Sets that are related
• Sales => per product
• Registrations/Enquiries => across website
• Downloads => per product
Set up website goals, then introduce social media filtering
to break out tracking of social media campaigns
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25. Google Analytics – Creating Segments
•Segments allow you to apply
a high-level filter to reports
•Create a Social Media
Segment based on the social
media sites you are targeting
•Quickly Filter out Social
Media traffic to monitor
impact on your goals
•Suggested sites:
•twitter.com / facebook.com /
t.co / bit.ly / linkedin.com
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26. Google Analytics – Using Segments
Segments are created and applied to reports in the title bar
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27. Google Analytics – Using Url Data to
track links shared in Social Media
Links shared in Social Media may not show correct referer
This can mean incomplete data, which may mislead
Solve problem by using a Url Shortener to shorten a link
with campaign and source information embedded
Google „Analytics Url Builder‟
Creates a Url such as:
http://www.ifinity.com.au/Product/Url_Master_DNN_SEO_Urls?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=tw
eet&utm_campaign=url%2Bmaster
Shorten Url using Shortener:
http://bit.ly/urlmstr
Traffic from this Url can be filtered using the campaign and
medium filters in Analytics, effectively isolating the tweeted
url
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28. Google Analytics – Using Url Data to
track links shared in Social Media
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29. Google Analytics – Tracking Social
Media
You don‟t always get to choose what Urls, so be sure to
figure out how to capture all referred traffic:
Direct link to
site shared by
Someone else
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30. Google Analytics – Social Analytics
Built-in function of asynchronous Google Analytics script
Use the _trackSocial() method to track a social action from
embedded buttons on your own site
• Facebook Like, Unlike, Share
• Twitter Tweet
Must be coded to work with Google Analytics Javascript
Can be added into a DotNetNuke module as plain
javascript with embedded Like/Tweet button
Appears in Analytics under Visitors->Social
• Engagement, Action and Pages reports
Google „_trackSocial integration‟ for more information
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31. Tracking Analysis
Roll your own into spreadsheet
Collate the data you want on a periodic basis (per
week, per month)
Create your own analysis statistics, measures and graphs
Concentrate on identifying trends, and measuring
improvements from changing inputs
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32. Tracking Analysis cont..
Collect data like:
• Total Visitors / Pageviews / Goals in Social Media Segment (Google
Analytics)
• Total Time spent on Social Media sites (RescueTime)
• Tweets / Status Updates / Posts (TweetStats, Facebook)
Focus on inputs (tweets, time spent) and outputs (Visitors,
Goals)
„Vanity‟ statistics (influence, retweets, likes) can be useful
but don‟t confuse vanity with value.
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33. Tracking Analysis - Trends
Social Media Campaign Trends
Tweets Trend
Visitors Trend
Goal Trend
Time Trend
Jan-11 Feb-11 Mar-11 Apr-11 May-11 Jun-11 Jul-11 Aug-11 Sep-11
•Track Trends by working from a base starting month, then
calculate percentage move since starting month
•This removes numbers and leaves the trend behind
•Graph Trends to see relationships and improvements
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34. Tracking your
Social Media Campaigns
for Effectiveness
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35. Measuring Effectiveness
Effective => Obtaining results that would not otherwise be
achieved, or obtaining results at a lower cost than
otherwise.
For Example:
• Reaching people you wouldn‟t normally reach
• Acquiring traffic at lower cost than SEO or PPC
Building a model of ROI and tracking it over time
Achieving same outputs for a smaller number of inputs
• Less time spent on sites
• Higher quality interactions
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36. Using Analysis to Improve Effectiveness
Employ 80/20 analysis. 80% of success will come from
20% of activity. Find 20% and concentrate on that.
Essentially : Look for good results and repeat
• Successful tweets
• Widely shared Facebook posts
• More contribution to blog post commenting
Look for bad results and discard
• Loss in followers/friends from particular tweet/post
• Topics that aren‟t related to your core image
Try and find better tools and information continually
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37. Ideas for Social Media Campaigns and
Tracking
E-commerce site : Tweet followers special discount and
track with specific analytics campaign code
Community Site : Send out daily updates – thought for the
day, weather, community happenings to increase
awareness and engagement. Measure number of
followers/friends.
Blog site : Post/tweet links for each new post with unique
tracking code, track retweets/shares and correlate with
traffic
Membership Site : Share teaser content on Facebook
posts, track conversions from the linked content.
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38. Conclusions
Social Media can be a very effective business tool
Social Media can be a very distracting waste of time
Learn what makes a difference through careful
measurement and tracking of activity
Use results to refine your activities and increase
effectiveness
Use the medium to connect better with
customers/suppliers/competitors/anyone.
Have fun while you‟re at it, nobody likes a grumpy poster
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39. Questions
Feedback Forms
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Hinweis der Redaktion
Q of the crowd : who has run a social media campaign? Want to have a two-way discusson on this one, so if you have a comment or question, please interrupt and bring in the discussion your examples or thoughts