Social Media Marketing

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SOCIAL A
NALYTICS
Source analysis has two facets: the identification and understanding of the
author—covered in detail in the next section, “Know Your Influencers”—and catalog-
ing and tracking the location of posts. The latter—understanding what is being said on
Twitter versus Orkut or Facebook versus a blog—leads to an understanding of where
you should be participating on the Social Web, information that is essential in plan-
ning, for example, a brand outpost program.
Volume measures are used to assess the overall conversational level with regard
to your brand, product, or service: How many people are talking about a particu-
lar topic or picking up and reposting information? Volume analysis is most typically
associated with conversational trends—the relative levels of positive versus negative
over time, the number of conversations over time, or the sudden spiking of an adverse
rumor. A typical trend chart is shown in Figure 6.2.
Figure 6.2 Social Media Analytics: Trend Charts
By building on the basic measurement of sentiment, source, and volume, a more
practical and defined set of metrics can be established. In a post on Social Times, a
blog published by Nick O’Neill that follows social media’s technical tools and skills,
Raj Dash lists the essential metrics, examples of which are shown in Table 6.1. As you
work through this list, notice how they are built on the selected fundamental measure-
ment areas, which are then set in a business context. The complete table can be found
at http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/02/social-media-metrics/.
Even more importantly, rather than just accepting the examples in Table 6.1, use
them as a starting point in developing a specific set of measures and sources that apply