Listen, Repeat, Learn: How to use Social Media Conversations to Measure and Demonstrate Impact and Improve Engagement

Why "Listen, Repeat, Learn"?

Engaging via Social Media is a bit like learning a new language

It's much more important to listen to what others are

saying and how

they are saying it...

You have to make it work for you, and for what you want to accomplish...

It's all about trying things out and gradually learning how to communicate more and more effectively.

Social media is about people and stories, including impact stories...

Listening looks...

It's not about technology but people, so you have to be able to continue to support or join in the conversations you start...

Continuous monitoring is especially important if you pre-schedule blog posts, tweets etc.

All presences are set up and maintained using the EDINA Social Media Guidelines

Blogs are usually hosted in-house, Google Analytics is installed

Those responsible for presences monitor any obvious mentions (blog or YouTube comments, tweets, questions, comments)

Meanwhile... RSS and alert services are used to find other comments, feedback, mentions

These are checked and key metrics recorded weekly

Comments are monitored, checked for validity, recentness and relevant items forwarded to teams for reference and/or response

Any question, complaint or notable comment - found anywhere - feeds into our existing process for dealing with queries and recording feedback

Key issues are reported back to technical teams, training staff etc. as appropriate

Responses are usually posted in public, subsequent changes are publicised and credited where appropriate

Any useful trends feed into forthcoming content strategy, developments etc. - we learn a lot this way!

Specific demos

Thanks!

Paul Milne

Web & Documentation

Officer

paul.milne@ed.ac.uk

Nicola Osborne

Social Media Officer

nicola.osborne@ed.ac.uk

Image Credits

Journals by Flickr user: the.Firebottle | http://www.flickr.com/photos/thefirebottle/122895549/

• Reading Lamp by Flickr user: Geir Halvorsen | http://www.flickr.com/photos/damiel/86796176/
• Image of lit fuse from Double O Section blog | http://doubleosection.blogspot.com/2010/08/mission.html*
• Mission Impossible logo from Hollywood Bollywood blog | http://hollywoord-bollywood.blogspot.com/2011/05/famous-movie-mission-impossible.html*
• Promotional still of Gene Hackman in The Conversation from the DVD Beaver website | http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/Reviews/conversation.htm*
• Promotional still of Kelsey Grammer in Frasier from The Gazette | http://thegazette.com/2009/10/24/need-to-talk-it-out-tonight-during-the-iowa-michigan-state-game/kelsey-grammer-as-frasier-crane-6422440/*

*Images not cleared for reuse.

Where to start?

Everyday Metrics

What would you like to be able to monitor and/or measure?

• Why are you using social media? What are your goals?
• What do you need to know to track how you are progressing?
• What would it be interesting to know?
• What would you want to record? Would you want to share this information?
• What can you realistically commit to measuring and recording regularly?
• How will monitoring feed into providing timely information, replies, retweets, etc.?
• How will you report, disseminate and respond to your metrics?

• Google analytics
• Facebook Insights
• Twitter following/followed by/listed counts (and reply and retweet stats)
• As appropriate key: Flickr stats; YouTube stats etc.
• Referrals to helpdesk/booking forms/etc. via social media (if you routinely ask users how they find you)

What we do at

Continuous Scanning for Mentions

Quick Poll

Sidebar:

• RSS feeds via Google Reader, Demon Reader, iGoogle, Netvibes, etc. - use with feeds from search engines, facebook, twitter, youtube, and other social searches
• Alert Services - Google Alerts, Tweetbeep, ifttt - automagically moniter and alert yourself
• Paper.li / Scoop.it etc - aggregation and monitoring tools

Social search: Topsy |http://topsy.com/(provides RSS and alerts) , Socialmention | http://socialmention.com/ (provides rss + alerts + csv).

• Yahoo Pipes - filter feeds and mentions into new formats and feeds
• Packrati.us - automatically saves tweeted URLs to Delicious
• And remember: also ask colleagues and friends to alet you to mentions (they're often much more effective than rss!)

Assorted Useful Tools

Listen, Repeat, Learn

How to use Social Media Conversations and Activities to Measure and Demonstrate Impact and Improve Engagement

• Secretive
• Suspicious
• One Way

Nicola Osborne, Social Media Officer

Paul Milne, Web & Documentation Officer

This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license

Notes: http://bit.ly/iwmw11a7 | Prezi: http://bit.ly/iwmwA7prezi | Links: http://bit.ly/iwmw11A7refs

...less like this

Key Metrics Include:

Bit.ly |http://bit.ly-linkshortening + click through stats, (also automatically generates qr codes for links)

• Advanced twitter Search | http://search.twitter.com/advanced - super for tracking
• BackTweets | http://backtweets.com/ - in limbo since acquisition by Twitter
• Google Analytics: Traffic Sources; Top Content, etc.
• Google: link:http://website.com - super for finding pages and blogs that link back
• ShareThis tracks sharing actions on sites using the tool
• Do use trackbacks on your blog etc.
• TwapperKeeper - automatically grab event/hashtag/user tweets
• CoverItLive, Storify - aggregate social media around specific events, edit content and use as a lasting record of th event

• Public
• Open Minded
• (Selectively) Responsive

...more like this

Impact & the REF

Translation

"The sub-panels will assess the ‘reach and significance’ of impacts on the economy, society and/or culture that were underpinned by excellent research conducted in the submitted unit, as well as the submitted unit’s approach to enabling impact from its research. This element will carry a weighting of 20 per cent."

We want to hear stories about how your work is important to real people and how it changes and improves their lives.

HEFCE Research Excellence Framework

REF 02.2011 / July 2011

How do you/would you respond to comments, questions or complaints?

• Blogs: post count; comment count; unique readers; their location; referring source; are they using mobile to access the site?
• Facebook: Likes/Unlikes; page views; interactions
• Twitter: Follower count; List Count; Tweet count; Any notable replies, Retweets or posts to specific hashtags
• YouTube: subscriber count; views in total; "last visit" date
• General: Notable comments, complaints, queries, or discussions of usage of tools/services

Reputation Tools

What social media are you already monitoring and measuring?

Public Awareness

Think media outlets (print, radio, tv), podcasts, outreach events, twitter activity (perhaps a trending hashtag), blog conversations, YouTube videos...

Wider Public

Local Community

New project partners

Business & Commerce

New Funding Sources

Media

Some of the most valuable but hardest to find mentions

HE & Research Communities

Unrelated Disciplines & Organisations

Thought Leaders

Think conferences, networks, Lanyrd, Academia.edu and LinkedIn connections, discussion on slides and presentations, discussion on peer blogs etc.

ReaderMeter |http://readermeter.org/-Scholarly reputation based on Mendeley API

• Klout | http://klout.com/ - uses aggregated social media activity to rank influence of individuals
• TwitterGrader | http://tweet.grader.com/ - overview of Twitter ranking, more useful for checking profile completeness, and indicating follower growth
• Standings on discussion board, Q&A services like Aardvark and Quora

Peers & Contacts

Research Outputs

See:

Altmetrics

Think Mendeley, OpenURL data, social bookmarking, tweets & blogs about research, papers, etc.

"Total Impact" tool developed at Workshop in May - includes measures of bookmarks in Mendeley, tweeted links, citations as well as looking towards measures of audience of Slideshare, blogs, datasets etc.

Beyond Impact

Open Society Foundations initiative to find effective and innovative ways to define and report the impact and work of researchers. Their first thoughts have been published following a workshop in June.

Awareness of Research

Evidencing Impact by Audience

How do/would you record what you find in social media sites?

Facebook Insights

Metrics are recorded in spreadsheets, and reported in brief as appropriate. Findings and our own impact stories are reported to funders via project reports

Debrief

Very useful though reflects on a limited audience:

• Basic info about Facebook page: Likes, Unlikes etc.
• Demographic info including: age, gender, location
• Interaction counts - posts to wall in various formats, key content like imported blogs etc.

BUT: Stats change regularly as new measures are added - this can be a challange if you want consistent metrics

Get on your laptop or smartphone and find out what people are saying about your organisation!

Google Analytics

http://www.facebook.com/#!/AddressingHistory/

New Analytics Addition:

Social Engagement

Many useful stats particularly:

• Unique Visitors
• Time on site
• Location of visitors
• Mobile/iPad visit counts
• Referring Sites
• Entry/exit paths

It's also easy to share read/admin access to these stats with colleagues - use annotations to mark major events, publicity, launches of new material, etc.

• Collects +1 data
• Collets sharing data via Social Analytics Plugin

http://www.google.com/analytics/

APIs

RSS Feeds

API queries allow more forensic digging into social stats, e.g:

Twitter API | https://dev.twitter.com/ includes both a simple to use RESTful API and a real time API - see Tony Hirst and Martin Hawkseys visualisations based on Twitter profiles

• Many simple one task apps, such as Doesfollow | http://doesfollow.com/ - use a single API request but can be very helpful for tracking influence
• Flickr enables access to rich usage stats through the API - collect yours in a cron job perhaps (but don't forget to look at them)
• Google+ API is on the way soon... http://bit.ly/GPlusAPI

One of the most powerful ways to track mentions, use with Google Reader, Feed Demon or similar and monitor regularly. Useful feeds include:

• Google Search
• Bing Search
• Yahoo Search
• Google Blog Search
• YouTube Search
• Flickr Search
• Twitter Search

Play along!

http://www.google.com/reader/