Unit III

SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES AND MEASUREMENTS

SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES

A social media policy defines the procedures and guidelines for using social media.
Businesses create a social media policy to ensure all employees know what they are allowed
to and prohibited from sharing and/or posting on social media channels. Because most of our
employees will be on social media platforms, it's important to include the guidelines for both
personal and corporate use.

Social Media Policy Template:

Introduction
Social media represents a vast online community where customers, partners, suppliers, and
shareholders come together to share information, promote products and services, and
exchange opinions and experiences. [Company name] recognizes the limits and risks of
social media, and how it can affect our company's brand, public image, and core values.
Therefore, we have created this social media policy to lay out a framework of tested social
media guidelines and protocols.

Purpose
The purpose of this social media policy is to (a) outline the social media guidelines and
protocols of the company, (b) define the rules that apply to both corporate and personal social
media use, and (c) to explain the company's disciplinary action process for policy violations.

Scope
This social media policy applies to all [company name] employees, including paid interns,
volunteers, contractors, and seasonal, part-time, and full-time employees. [Company name]
defines social media as any form of electronic communication or application that enables
users to create online communities and share knowledge, opinions, media, and private and
public messages.

Corporate Use
Employees that are responsible for representing the company on social media are required to
uphold the company's image, core values, and brand. Subsequently, [company name] expects
all employees to remain fair, professional, and polite to any [company name] partners,
shareholders, customers, members, and/or suppliers.

Social Media Guidelines:

 Avoid speaking on and/or posting about subjects outside of the company's expertise.
 Reply to all comments in a timely manner.
 Correct or delete incorrect and/or misleading content.
 Adhere to the company's confidentiality agreement and anti-discriminatory policy.
  Avoid posting and/or sharing offensive, discriminatory, and/or false information.

[Company name's] Social Media Manager and Marketing Manager are responsible for setting
up an official [weekly/monthly] social media calendar. The social media calendar must be
approved by a senior executive or manager at least [number of days] before the start of a new
month. In cases where the company is set to announce major news or launch campaigns on
social media, the Social Media Manager and Marketing Manager must thoroughly review the
content for any misleading or incorrect information.

Personal Use
To ensure optimal productivity, [company name] allows its employees to access personal
social media channels at work for at least [number of hours] per day. We do ask our
employees to be responsible with their time and always ensure deadlines and job
responsibilities are completed on time.

While [company name] recognizes that we may not prohibit our employees from posting
personal opinions and content on private accounts, we do expect our employees to uphold the
highest level of respect and adhere to our company's anti-discriminatory and harassment
policies.

Furthermore, we ask all [company name] employees to:

 Clearly state that personal opinions and content on employees' social media accounts
are not approved or supported by our company.
 Avoid posting intellectual property and confidential company information on personal
social media accounts.
 Avoid discussing company-related information with customers on personal social
media accounts.
 Avoid sharing abusive, offensive, and/or slanderous content.
 Adhere to financial disclosure laws.

Disciplinary Action
If a [company name] employee does not follow the guidelines set out in this social media
policy, [company name] management will have grounds to take disciplinary action, up to and
including termination. Policy violations include:

 Overlooking job obligations and deadlines due to excessive use of social media in the
workplace.
 Releasing corporate information on social media channels, both personal and
corporate.
 Posting inappropriate content and subject matter on corporate social media channels.
 Posting offensive comments and neglecting to reply to clients online.
 Posting false information and personal opinions on corporate social media channels.
Each offense or policy violation will be thoroughly investigated by the Executive Marketing
Manager and a human resource (HR) representative before disciplinary action is finalized.
Disciplinary action may include a reprimand, written warning, and/or termination.

SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE

Social media etiquette refers to the guidelines that companies and individuals use to
preserve their reputation online. As social media channels have evolved to become one of the
primary ways people communicate in the modern world on a daily basis, typical social rules
are finding their way into digital environments. Just as social etiquette dictates how people
behave around others in the real world, social media etiquette revolves around online
guidelines to follow.

The basics of social media etiquette

The demands of social media etiquette differ from one platform to the next. For
example, reposting someone’s content on Instagram requires much more care than retweeting
someone on Twitter. On the flip side, there are some basic dos and don’ts that essentially
apply to all platforms:
 Don’t be overly promotional. Try not to message all our customers asking them to
buy our products and avoid sharing constant advertisements on our page. Make our
social profiles a blend of promotional and valuable content.
 Avoid over-automation. While scheduling our posts in advance and automating
analytics is helpful, don’t automate everything. Some things still need a human touch.
 Handle our hashtags carefully. Avoid using too many hashtags at once. Even on
Instagram, where we can use 30 hashtags in a single caption, it’s important not to
overdo it.
 Don’t bad-mouth our competition. Don’t be petty. Saying negative things about our
competitors online will harm our reputation more than it hurts theirs.
 Be authentic and genuine. Don’t try to be something we’re not. Remember that our
customers can learn whatever they need to know about our brand online today and
things like authenticity can definitely go a long way.

Importance of social media etiquette

Organizations can’t just delete messages that generate poor reactions anymore. A
single mistake can make or break a business.
Social media etiquette is often baked into the rules of a social media policy for
modern brands. This policy usually shares a complete code of conduct for anyone who
interacts with a social channel:
 Protect against legal and security issues. If we exist in an industry with stringent
privacy and compliance laws, our system will keep we on the right side of the
regulations.
 Empower staff. When our employees know how to share content safely online, they
can represent and advocate for our organization, without harming our reputation.
 Defend our brand. Social etiquette ensures that everyone who interacts with our
brand on social media will see a respectable, professional business.

SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE

Companies or websites that handle customer information are required by law and third
parties to publish their Privacy Policies on their business websites. If we own a website, web
app, mobile app or desktop app that collects or processes user data, we most certainly will
have to post a Privacy Policy on our website (or give in-app access to the full Privacy Policy
agreement).
Privacy is not a new concept. Humans have always desired privacy in their social as
well as private lives. But the idea of privacy as a human right is a relatively modern
phenomenon.
Around the world, laws and regulations have been developed for the protection of data
related to government, education, health, children, consumers, financial institutions, etc.
This data is critical to the person it belongs to. From credit card numbers and social security
numbers to email addresses and phone numbers, our sensitive, personally identifiable
information is important. This sort of information in unreliable hands can potentially
have far-reaching consequences.
There are several reasons for a website to post its Privacy Policy agreement on its website.
Here are some of the main reasons:
 Required by the law
 Required by third party services
 Increases Transparency

Required by the Law

For individuals to feel comfortable sharing their personal information on the internet,
there should be some sort of legal responsibility on businesses to protect that data and keep
the users informed about the status and health of their information.
Countries around the world have realized the need to protect their citizens' data and
privacy. Businesses and websites that collect and/or process customer information are
required to publish and abide by a Privacy Policy agreement.
A majority of countries have already enacted laws to protect their users' data security
and privacy. These laws require businesses to obtain explicit consent from users whose data
they will store or process.
A few of these laws include the following:
 CalOPPA in the USA
 GDPR in the EU
 PIPEDA in Canada
For a business or a website that collects and processes user information in a certain
region or country, it is very important to have complete knowledge of the data and privacy
protection laws enforced in that region and the region our customers and end users are in.
Non-compliance with these laws can result in hefty fines or even prosecution against the
violator.
In some cases, businesses have to follow laws specific to states or regulations specific
to industries.

Required by Third Party Services

Apart from governing laws, some websites like Apple, Amazon, and Google require
website and app owners to post a Privacy Policy agreement if they use any of their services.
Many websites and apps use in-page/in-app advertising by third parties to generate
revenue. As these ads also collect user data, third parties require the websites or apps to ask
their users' permission for sharing their personal data.
 For example, if we're using Google Analytics on our website, the Google Analytics
Terms of Service requires that we post a Privacy Policy agreement. In addition to this, we
must also disclose that we're using Google Analytics and some information about how it
collects and processes data. If we are a Google app developer, the Privacy Policy Guidance
requires that we inform our users about what data we collect, why we collect it, and what we
do with it.
Some of the most popular third party services require website and app owners to post
Privacy Policy agreements on their websites. Some of these services include: Amazon
Affiliates, ClickBank, Google Play Store, Google Analytics, Google AdSense, Google
AdWords, Facebook Apps, Twitter Lead Generation, and Apple’s App Store.
Third party vendors like Google, Facebook, and Amazon require their users (website
and app owners) to explicitly inform their users if they're using advertising features, cookies,
or tracking services on their websites/apps in order to deliver better user experiences based on
prior browsing behaviour.

For Increased Transparency

Companies whose business models revolve around handling sensitive customer
information find it incredibly important to establish trust with their users. A clear and
comprehensive Privacy Policy agreement that tells users exactly what information the
company collects and what it does with that information inspires confidence in a business. It
gives users a sense of security knowing how much control they have over their personal data
under the conditions they sign up for.
Our Privacy Policy agreement should inform our users about how our website or app
handles their personal information. Our users must be also be informed about the reason for
the collection of information, as well as how long their data will be stored on our servers.
Even if we don't collect personal information, we should disclose this fact in a Privacy
Policy. It helps with transparency because users expect to see a Privacy Policy. If we don't
have one at all, users may assume we're collecting a lot of personal information and not
disclosing it rather than not collecting any.

Examples of Useful Clauses for a Privacy Policy

Our Privacy Policy must be accurate and easily comprehensible, with all the
necessary information required by laws and for transparency. Generally speaking, every
Privacy Policy agreement should have at least the following clauses:
 What information is collected and how
 How is the information used
 How is the information stored and protected
 Company contact information
 Use of cookies, log files and tracking
 How a user can opt out of data collection/usage
ETHICAL PROBLEMS POSED BY EMERGING SOCIAL MEDIA
TECHNOLOGIES
Nowadays, social networking’s sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have
massive amount of followers and users. They actively publish and share information in social
media almost in instant during or after any event or activities.
Due to lack of awareness upon the danger of social networking, these active users are
more prone to be publicly targeted since they are available and searchable through their
profile pages which contain personal information such as location and phone number.
Moreover, the proliferation of mobile devices such web-enabled cell phones allow for the
instantaneous collection of information for sharing on these sites.
Despite of its functional and useful potential in social and development growth in
human’s communication, there are many ethical issues in social networking that should be
taken into deep caution and consideration. Ethical issues in social networking are given
below:

a) Privacy
The internet contains wealth of data and it is always a serious subject of concern for
privacy issues in social networking sites. The problems of data privacy have been made
worse by the growing number of weth flocking into these online social networks without or
paying little attention to privacy issues for themselves or others.
Privacy can be violated, anywhere including in online social network communities,
through intrusion, misuse of information, interception of information, and information
matching. Although term and conditions were always made to be seen and agreed during
user’s registration process, most of the time, we as users tend to ignore the policy and
expertly assumed that everything would be in a good place without realizing that we might
solely permit a gateway access of breach to our precious personal information.
If we have been following the online social networking trend, we probably know by
now that there has been growing concern over breaches in privacy caused by social
networking services.
Many users feel that their personal details are being circulated far more widely than
they intended it to be. For example, with the advent usage of Global Positioning Systems
(GPS) or location-based social networking applications, we are subject to accept a data policy
that might covertly take advantage of our privacy to legitimately and specifically target we
with advertising ads. Some worry that Facebook could learn where we live, where we sleep,
where we work, all with data from our phone.
However, earlier in 2022, there are news reports on Facebook users are committing
‘Virtual Identity Suicide’ in quitting and deleting their accounts due to privacy concerns and
fear of internet addiction. Analysis of more than 600 people, by researchers from the
University of Vienna, found that data protection issues and social pressure to add friends
were also among the reasons for leaving.
This shows that privacy issues in social networking sites is in a serious and critical
stage where users could not tolerate more and believe it is the best time for them to totally
bring themselves offline.
b) Free speech
Freedom of speech is a valid political pathway recognized as a human right under
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights where everyone has the right to
freedom of opinion and expression.
Although free speech is always seen as unobtrusive to many and supported in
democratic ideology, it is a dangerous weapon for specific group of people to manipulate the
right to release or spark an unethical sentiment such as racial or religious hatred within the
digital space through social media.
On 21st February 2013, United Nation High Commissioner for Human Rights has
initiated a The Rabat Plan of Action to prevent incitement to discrimination, hostility and
violence, as outlined in article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
was presented by internationally recognised experts at an event held in Geneva.

c) Data Leakage
Data security and protection is expensive and difficult. Although many new
technologies which related to data security and protection have been introduced to the market
in these recent years, data leakage still remains as a big issue. In social networking sites, data
leakage problem can be traced back where it is most possibly to be caused by user’s minimal
awareness and understanding on the ethical privacy and protection value on the policies used
by each respective social networking sites.
Frequent updates on social networking’s timeline such as current interest and location
which are shown publicly as user’s activities can be manipulated and compiled as a valuable
data source of information in data leakage. Even though each of these social networking sites
have been clearly mentioned their privacy policies, it is all up to the users to fully take control
on what should be exposed and what should remain confidential.
Around June 2013, Facebook has disclosed that they had inadvertently exposed six
million users’ phone numbers and email addresses to unauthorised viewers over the past year
and blamed the data leaks on a technical glitch in its massive archive of contact information
collected from its 1.1 billion users worldwide. The breach has resulted to a massive data
leakage issue where Facebook users who intended to download data list of their friend’s
contact list would obtained other confidential information which were never shared publicly
on the network.
This is not the first time where Facebook has been accused and revealed for data
leakage, there have a been several report earlier in 2010 where the largest social networking
sites has been disclosed to leak personal data from Facebook Apps to third parties. According
to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, many of the most popular applications on
Facebook have been transmitting identifying information providing access to people’s names
and, in some cases, their friends’ names to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking
companies affecting tens of millions of Facebook users even those on the strongest privacy
settings configuration .

d) Identity Theft
Identity theft is one from many examples of ethical issues in social networking. It is a
form of technique used by criminals to impersonate someone’s identity with intention to
pursue or commit for crime. The victim will be hold to be responsible for the consequences
of fraud or action done the impersonators. Identity theft on the Internet can arise in two
similar yet distinct ways which are either creating a fake account or stealing and hacking the
password of the victim.
According to Facebook in their latest second quarter 2013 operational highlights, it is
reported that there are around 699 million on average daily active users for June 2012 which
recorded to be a 27% year-over-year increase. However, it is also reported that this year,
there are more than 76 million fake users claimed by Facebook during their war campaign to
fight bogus account.
Despite of rapid and aggressive effort made by social networking sites to secure and
protect its users from any form of online impersonation, the solution is still depends on the
ethical value and proactive action from the users themselves to fully developed good
understanding and self-awareness on the risk of online impersonation in social networking
sites.

THE ROAD AHEAD IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Businesses, brands, marketers, and everyone else involved in a specific industry with
the intention of making their product or service relevant, want to reach out to their audience
and consumers and build a meaningful relationship with them.
Aside from this, the truth is that every business present on social media platforms is
there to sell a product or service. The problem is, many marketers eager to reach out to their
potential consumers believe that a few easy steps can make their social media strategy work,
and often, when they realize it’s not as easy as it seems, are left confused thinking what went
wrong.
The first and most common mistake that marketers make is their belief in instant
social media success. A long-term social media success take time, effort, and true dedication.
This means a lot of work for a longer period of time, two things that marketers are not so
happy about.
The very next question is crucial - before crafting their social media strategy,
marketers need to ask themselves about the benefits and outcomes from their social media
presence, and weigh their investment in social media (time, resources, efforts, etc.) and the
predicted outcomes.
But more importantly, they should be able to honestly answer if they have the
necessary commitment and perseverance for the social media journey they’re about to
embark.
Some key points on why success with social media doesn’t come overnight
Genuine relationships take some time to develop
Building a genuine and meaningful relationships requires commitment and dedication,
but most importantly, takes time to develop into something genuine and meaningful.Unlike
our real-life relationships, the ones taking place online are much more tricky from several
aspects, but the most important one is that online communication is a limited type of
communication, and since it doesn’t happen face to face, things tend to be trickier.
 In order to establish proper and solid grounds for a meaningful and long lasting
relationship, brands need to realize that lacking personal reach to their consumers prolongs
the time needed to build trust, safety, and awareness - things they usually expect to get from
their potential consumers in no time. Since these qualities aren’t built overnight in real life,
how can one expect it to happen even more quickly in the online world?
Perhaps the most important task of marketers is to find those potential consumers that
seem to be the right fit for their product or service. This doesn’t just end here - after their
location, the next step is to identify their interests based on their activities or to identify any
type of information from which marketers can have an idea about their preferences. This
information will be the first step in establishing a relationship with their consumers.

Creating value doesn’t happen in a blink of an eye

A good social media strategy should reflect the core values of the product or service,
but also of the company - these values ultimately reflect the mission and vision of the
company and add to the overall image of the brand.
One thing should be kept in mind - marketers are dealing with people, not numbers or
robots - which means they should constantly seek new ways to reach out to them.
That’s why social media strategies should be given time to be tested and modified on
a regular basis, since there’s nothing constant about human interaction, especially when it
happens exclusively online.
The only constant marketers should have in mind is to deliver messages that speak
directly to their potential consumers - ones that reflect consumer values, beliefs, and interests.
Most importantly, messages must always have a strict purpose.

Building loyalty and brand awareness are long-term goals.

Creating a loyal customer base is not a piece of cake. It requires a lot of effort, skills
and dedication. Customer loyalty is the foundation of selling. Once a business reaches out to
their consumers and builds a solid and loyal customer base, it’s bound to succeed!
All the effort to convince consumers that a brand is worth their trust can now be used
to build even more long lasting trustful relationships. With time, those same consumers who
related to a product or service will relate even more with the whole concept behind it, which
will mean that they’ve become aware not just of the product, but to the brand as a whole.
Finally, marketers have to be aware that loyalty happens only when they succeed in
forming a meaningful relationship with customers and only when they’re offered value.

Final thoughts
If social media success was as simple as many still think, everyone would have
already succeeded, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. In order to achieve it, marketers
need to realize the necessity of a well-developed strategy on the long run, one which will be
flexible enough to include modifications, if necessary, but above all, success ultimately
requires patience and faith.
THE BASICS OF TRACKING SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media metrics are the data we use to determine the effectiveness of our social
media strategy. Different social media platforms provide us with lots of information about the
way people are discovering and interacting with our brand.
By focusing on the most important metrics, we can see what we’re doing well and
what we need to improve. This will allow us to adjust our social media strategy and have a
positive impact on our brand.

Social media metrics for tracking:

1. Impressions
Impressions are the number of times our content is shown to users. It is important to
remember that one user can count for multiple impressions. For example, if we have 500
followers and each of them sees our content two times, we would have 1,000 impressions.
Impressions are important because they measure our ability to get our content in front
of our audience. A user will likely need to be exposed to our brand multiple times to become
aware of it, so increasing our number of impressions could be a goal we want to focus on to
increase the awareness of our brand.

2. Reach
Reach is the number of users who see our content, even if they see our content
multiple times. For example, if we have 500 followers and each of them sees our content two
times, our reach is still only 500. Reach is an important metric because when we reach a new
user, they are getting their first exposure to our brand. If we track our reach and it’s low, we
may want to consider a strategy to get our content in front of new users.

3. Audience growth rate

Audience growth rate is the speed at which our number of followers grows. This
metric is more useful than a pure follower count because it allows us to set clear goals. For
example, increasing our follower count 30% over the next 3 months is a better goal than
simply increasing our number of followers over an undefined period of time.
This is an important metric to track because it will give us an idea of whether or not
the content we are using to reach new potential followers is working. If we have a high
number of impressions and a large reach, but our follower count isn’t rising, we may want to
reconsider the content we are using to expose them to our brand.

4. Engagement rate
Engagements include the number of likes, comments, and shares on our content.
However, if we want them to engage with our brand, then we need to create content they will
enjoy or find useful. Engagement rates help we determine the quality of our content by
understanding how actively involved our audience is with our publications.
This rate is calculated by dividing our number of engagements by either our
impressions or our reach. The higher our engagement rate, the more actively involved our
audience is. The more actively involved our audience is, the easier it will be to convert them
into customers. It’s also important to remember that different stages in our marketing funnel
don’t operate in a silo.
For example, getting a lot of shares on our content indicates high engagement from
our audience. But this also contributes to our brand awareness. The more people are sharing
our content, the more people will see our content, boosting our impressions and reach.

5. Click-through rate
We’ll also want to track our engagement by measuring our click-through rate. Click-
through rate is the percentage of times a user sees a link to our content and clicks on it to get
our website.
This rate is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on our link by the number of
impressions. If we have a high click-through rate, it indicates we are providing content that
people find interesting and want to engage with.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that we want to share quality content and
maintain a low bounce rate.

6. Bounce rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of users who visit our page and leave without clicking
on any other pages. A high bounce rate indicates that people don’t want to engage with more
of our content after they visit our first page. We’ll also want to maintain a high average time
on page.

7. Average time on page

Average time on page is the amount of time each user spends on our page. If we’re
providing engaging content, the users visiting our site should stay for a while and check out
other content on our site.
If our bounce rate is high and our average time on page is low, we’ll likely want to
consider making adjustments to our content to make it more engaging for users. We can track
these metrics using a free tool like Google Analytics.

→ Social Media Metrics to Track for Conversions

As users make their way through our marketing funnel, they come to the conversion
stage. This is where members of our audience take the action we want them to.
For businesses, this will typically be when a user purchases the product we sell.
However, the conversion could also be a different action like downloading an eBook or
signing up for our newsletter. It depends on the goals of our brand. In order to track if our
social media audience is converting, we’ll want to track our social media referrals.

8. Referrals
Referrals are the source from which a user came to our website or landing page.
Google Analytics will provide us with a breakdown of our traffic from each social media
platform. This will give us an idea of which of our social media accounts are driving traffic
so we can adjust our strategy accordingly.
 For example, if we’re getting a lot of referrals from Instagram, but not Twitter, we
may want to change our Twitter strategy. We may also consider investing more resources
into our Instagram marketing efforts since we know our strategy is working well on that
platform.

9. Cost-per-click
Cost-per-click is the amount of money it costs us for each click on one of our ads. If
we have a high cost-per-click but that traffic isn’t converting, we’ll likely want to adjust our
strategy.
Whether or not our strategy is worth pursuing will depend on our ROI, or Return on
Investment. ROI is the amount of money we make after investing money in a strategy.
For example, if we invest $100 in an ad campaign, and that campaign generates $200
in sales, our profit is $100, and our ROI is 100%. Whether or not the campaign is successful
will always depend on our goals and these will be different for every brand.

10. Response rate

Response rate is the percentage of our audience we are responding to. For example, if
our account received 25 comments and 25 messages, and we responded to 25 of those, our
response rate would be 50%.

11. Response time

Response time is how long it takes us to respond to our audience. While these are
simple metrics, they are very important to our relationship with our public, and they allow us
to set clear goals for our social media strategy.
For example, we may set a goal of attaining a 100% response rate and a 5 hour
response time.

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS

Social media analytics is the ability to gather and find meaning in data gathered from
social channels to support business decisions — and measure the performance of actions
based on those decisions through social media.
Social media analytics is broader than metrics such as likes, follows, retweets,
previews, clicks, and impressions gathered from individual channels. It also differs from
reporting offered by services that support marketing campaigns such as LinkedIn or Google
Analytics.
Social media analytics uses specifically designed software platforms that work
similarly to web search tools. Data about keywords or topics is retrieved through search
queries or web ‘crawlers’ that span channels. Fragments of text are returned, loaded into a
database, categorized and analyzed to derive meaningful insights.
Social media analytics includes the concept of social listening. Listening is
monitoring social channels for problems and opportunities. Social media analytics tools
typically incorporate listening into more comprehensive reporting that involves listening and
performance analysis.

Importance of social media analytics

IBM points out that with the prevalence of social media: “News of a great product can
spread like wildfire. And news about a bad product — or a bad experience with a customer
service rep — can spread just as quickly. Consumers are now holding organizations to
account for their brand promises and sharing their experiences with friends, co-workers and
the public at large.”

Social media analytics helps companies address these experiences and use them to:
 Spot trends related to offerings and brands
 Understand conversations — what is being said and how it is being received
 Derive customer sentiment towards products and services
 Gauge response to social media and other communications
 Identify high-value features for a product or service
 Uncover what competitors are saying and its effectiveness
 Map how third-party partners and channels may affect performance

These insights can be used to not only make tactical adjustments, like addressing an angry
tweet, they can help drive strategic decisions. In fact, IBM finds social media analytics is now
“being brought into the core discussions about how businesses develop their strategies.”

These strategies affect a range of business activity:

 Product development - Analyzing an aggregate of Facebook posts, tweets and

Amazon product reviews can deliver a clearer picture of customer pain points,
shifting needs and desired features. Trends can be identified and tracked to shape the
management of existing product lines as well as guide new product development.

 Customer experience - An IBM study discovered “organizations are evolving from

product-led to experience-led businesses.” Behavioural analysis can be applied across
social channels to capitalize on micro-moments to delight customers and increase
loyalty and lifetime value.

Branding - Social media may be the world’s largest focus group. Natural language
processing and sentiment analysis can continually monitor positive or negative
expectations to maintain brand health, refine positioning and develop new brand
attributes.
 Competitive Analysis - Understanding what competitors are doing and how
customers are responding is always critical. For example, a competitor may indicate
that they are foregoing a niche market, creating an opportunity. Or a spike in positive
mentions for a new product can alert organizations to market disruptors.

 Operational efficiency – Deep analysis of social media can help organizations

improve how they gauge demand. Retailers and others can use that information to
manage inventory and suppliers, reduce costs and optimize resources.
Key capabilities of effective social media analytics
The first step for effective social media analytics is developing a goal. Goals can
range from increasing revenue to pinpointing service issues. From there, topics or keywords
can be selected and parameters such as date range can be set. Sources also need to be
specified — responses to WeTube videos, Facebook conversations, Twitter arguments,
Amazon product reviews, comments from news sites. It is important to select sources
pertinent to a given product, service or brand.
Typically, a data set will be established to support the goals, topics, parameters and
sources. Data is retrieved, analyzed and reported through visualizations that make it easier to
understand and manipulate.
These steps are typical of a general social media analytics approach that can be made
more effective by capabilities found in social media analytics platforms.

 Natural language processing and machine learning technologies identify entities

and relationships in unstructured data — information not pre-formatted to work with
data analytics. Virtually all social media content is unstructured. These technologies
are critical to deriving meaningful insights.

 Segmentation is a fundamental need in social media analytics. It categorizes social

media participants by geography, age, gender, marital status, parental status and other
demographics. It can help identify influencers in those categories. Messages,
initiatives and responses can be better tuned and targeted by understanding who is
interacting on key topics.

 Behavior analysis is used to understand the concerns of social media participants by

assigning behavioral types such as user, recommender, prospective user and detractor.
Understanding these roles helps develop targeted messages and responses to meet,
change or deflect their perceptions.

 Sentiment analysis measures the tone and intent of social media comments. It
typically involves natural language processing technologies to help understand
entities and relationships to reveal positive, negative, neutral or ambivalent attributes.

 Share of voice analyzes prevalence and intensity in conversations regarding brand,

products, services, reputation and more. It helps determine key issues and important
topics. It also helps classify discussions as positive, negative, neutral or ambivalent.

 Clustering analysis can uncover hidden conversations and unexpected insights. It

makes associations between keywords or phrases that appear together frequently and
derives new topics, issues and opportunities. The people that make baking soda, for
example, discovered new uses and opportunities using clustering analysis.

 Dashboards and visualization charts, graphs, tables and other presentation tools
summarize and share social media analytics findings — a critical capability for
communicating and acting on what has been learned. They also enable users to grasp
meaning and insights more quickly and look deeper into specific findings without
advanced technical skills.
INSIGHTS GAINED FROM SOCIAL MEDIA
Social networks are savvier than ever before; providing marketers with platform data
to support brand content and customer outreach strategies. Social media managers can
analyze information about their content and followers, and combine it with engagement
anecdotes to paint a complete picture of customer interactions with the brand. To put it
simply, social media insights enable the marketer to intimately understand the people they’re
communicating with at any given time.
With Rival IQ we can get social media insights for our brand’s activity on all the
major channels—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Analyze how our
brand is performing over time and compare it with the competition.
The key areas where social insights can best help marketers reach the right people,
say the right thing, and build brand advocates along the way are given below.

Social Posting Optimization

Social media marketers are putting tons of effort into crafting the ultimate tweet or
designing the perfect infographic to share on Facebook, but those efforts won’t pay off if no
one sees our post or tweet. Figuring out the best times to post on social media (and how often
we should post on social media!) is a key component of our social media insights data. This
critical piece of posting information will help we increase our reach and engage more of our
followers.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but with a little experimentation and a lot of
measurement, we’ll be able to optimize social posting for our brand or organization. It’s also
important to remember that posting frequency and timing best practices vary widely from
channel to channel, so don’t expect to find that what works for our brand on Twitter is the
golden rule on Instagram too.
As data geeks, we can’t say enough about how important it is to set up some
experiments and then use native analytics or any one of our favourite social media analytics
tools to measure, measure, measure until we find the right balance between optimizing
engagement and not overwhelming our audience.

Social Advertising
Targeted ads are effective unless we’re “that brand” (don’t be). Without targeting,
marketers are simply throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Why would we guess,
when we can know for sure?
By promoting tailored messages to specific user groups, brands increase the
likelihood that existing and new audiences will see and engage with content on social media
and web properties. Specifically, Facebook and Twitter encourage businesses to micro-target
audiences, only advertising to users that fit the user profile defined by the brand. Social
media insights will help we best define our target audience. What content has received the
highest levels of engagement? How does our audience demographics break down? We may
be targeting men over the age of 50 when our core audience members are women between the
ages of 21-34. By leveraging social media insights, we can be sure of who we should be
reaching and target accordingly.
Targeted Calls-to-Action (CTA)
When messages serve the right audiences, engagement increases, including a higher
likelihood that the audience will respond to the CTA. When content is relevant to our
audience, they’re more likely to respond to the ad’s call-to-action (like, click, sign up, etc.).
Hubspot preaches, “It’s critical to guide our visitors through the buying journey using
strategic CTAs.” The best way to effectively guide users is to use insights to determine what
messages they like most, inventing messages that are more likely to grab their attention.
There are many studies on the psychology of social sharing, and many of these principles
apply to creating targeted CTAs, motivating our target customers to respond.
Additionally, here’s a brief checklist that marketers should follow when developing
CTAs and the custom-targeting plan:

 Outline the CTA and desired outcome: what are we asking people to do, and what will
happen when they do it?
 Define the ideal user profile: who is interested in this topic, and who will be
motivated to act and respond?
 Identify motivations: what drives this target user? What is it going to take to get them
to pay attention, and act?
For all of these to-dos, marketers should take a look at previous social media posts about
the topic and see who responded and why. Use these insights to repurpose or refine
previously used strategies, and apply them to the advertising campaign. For example, if
we’ve asked customers to sign up for our beauty insider newsletter on a regular Facebook or
blog post, evaluate the original, organic response we received. Analyze the content and
dissect what people liked most based on public feedback and user actions. Find what worked
and repeat those steps for our ad campaign.

Email Marketing
Gone are the days of sending mass emails with the same message to our entire email
list. When people opt-in for brand emails, they expect content that will be relevant to them.
Today, we can closely track consumers’ behaviours and actions online to determine who they
are, what they want, and craft a message tailored just for them.
For example, marketers can track products that different groups of customers have
viewed, and send a particular email to that customer type. This practice is known as
“retargeting” or “remarketing,” and helps brands stay top of mind for consumers who have
visited a website but bounced off before making a purchase. Using cookies and JavaScript
code, brands can anonymously ‘follow’ audiences to other sites they visit (also known as,
running ads featuring that great pair of shoes the consumer put in their cart and almost
bought). According to ReTargeter, for most websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the
first visit. Retargeting is a tool designed to help companies reach the 98% of users who don’t
convert right away.
A word of caution: many users are uncomfortable with the practice, believing it to be
a little too “big brother” for their taste. It’s important that marketers keep privacy concerns in
mind and err on the side of personalization rather than unwanted surveillance. To stay on the
safe side, always keep context in mind. Use the insights gleaned from social to have a firm
grasp of who our audience is and what they want to know from we. By doing so, we will
create emails worth reading, leading to higher open rates and an increase in brand loyalty.
With any campaign, remember to review and implement email best practices.

Competitive Social Media Insights

Marketers are all too familiar with downloading social media insights from the
platform that they use. The biggest downside (aside from downloading excel sheets with a
gazillion tabs) to solely studying one’s native data is that we have no benchmarks to compare
our performance to. Harried that we’ve been missing a big piece of the insights puzzle? Fear
not— our Social Media Industry Benchmark Report will help we truly answer the question,
“How am I really doing on social?”
Armed with automated insights and competitive benchmarking, marketers are better
equipped to fine-tune content strategies and targeting for several components of their brand
campaigns.

CUSTOMIZED CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE REPORTS

Campaign reports are like a detailed marketing report for a single campaign. They
allow us to place a microscope over one of our marketing campaigns to see if it's working or
if it needs to be revamped.
Campaign reports display all the key activities we did to promote our product or
service during a specific timeframe, and how well they worked (like their cost/effectiveness
in terms of time invested vs money gained from sales).
In other words, these reports are designed to give we an in-depth understanding of
how our marketing campaigns are performing.

Need for Campaign Reports:

Campaign reports help we discover and fix the weak points that harm our business's
efforts to gain new customers through their website or social media platforms.
For example, if one campaign is doing really well (meaning it has a high conversion
rate), but another one isn't, we know what to do: revamp our poorly performing campaign
based on strategies from the successful one.
Campaign reports also help we understand how well a specific marketing channel
(like organic search) is working for we, so that we can allocate more of our budget to it and
less on other channels that aren't delivering results.

How to Build a Campaign Report:

1) Determine our KPIs FIRST
Campaign reports are meant to help we gain insights about our marketing, so the first
step is to determine what KPIs (or key performance indicators) we want them to show.
 For example, if our goal was "we wanted our campaign report's KPI to be Facebook
likes," then the number of likes on each post would probably be the key KPI we'll want to
look at when evaluating our campaign.
But if our goal was "we wanted our campaign report's KPI to be Facebook custom
audience reach," then the number of people who saw each post would probably be a more
accurate representation of how well it performed.
The point here is that, in order for our campaign reports to be effective, we need to
determine what our goal was for each marketing strategy before we build them. This is
important because one of the main purposes of these reports is to help we figure out how well
a specific activity has performed in comparison with others (like Facebook posts vs organic
searches). If they're not built accurately then we risk being misled by the results.
One last thing to mention here is that we'll need to get clear on the difference between
a "metric" and a "KPI." A metric is a neutral piece of data that is neither good or bad (it just
IS). A KPI, on the other hand, is a metric that either exceeds or falls below a specific goal.
The point is that we need to have clear and concrete goals for our campaigns if we
want to build effective reports.

2) Limit the Number of KPIs to Track

Campaign reports are meant to be an in-depth look at how our marketing strategies
performed. But if we track too many KPIs then it'll take forever for anyone to go through
them. Even worse, they might not even care to look at the results if we repeatedly send
updated reports (which defeats the purpose of building a report in the first place!).
To avoid this problem, limit ourself to just a few KPIs per campaign. That's why it's
important to choose wisely when choosing the right KPIs for our report. Focus on the ones
that will be the biggest needle pushers for our business. A good rule of thumb is to select 3 -
5 high-impact (meaning the data can be used for practical change) KPIs for each of our
campaigns.

3) Decide Who Needs This Information

Campaign reports are meant to give we a bird's-eye view of how our marketing
strategies performed. But the information in them is only valuable if it reaches the right
people at the right time.
For example, let's say that one month all of our campaigns fail and none of our KPIs
are met (which would be devastating). But the person who needs to know this is our boss, not
all of our employees.
On the other hand, if we're a marketing agency and it was one client's campaign that
failed (and another client's that succeeded), then sharing these results with just our team won't
cut it. We need everyone - including our clients - to see this information.
So before we build a campaign report, decide who needs the information and when
they need it by. This will help make sure that everyone gets what they need at the right time
(which ensures their success).
4) Transform Numeric Data into Visual Data
This is the secret to making campaign reports that are easy to understand and
therefore more actionable. What means by "visual data" is that we're taking the numeric
information and transforming it into visually appealing charts, graphs, or benchmarks.
For example: instead of just giving someone a list of numbers (like visits to our blog),
turn those numbers into something visual like this chart:

See how much better that is? Not only is it clearly showing we the results (which is helpful)
but it's also easy to understand. If possible, we should try to take every piece of numeric data
and either turn it into a chart or graph or add something visual onto the report itself. That way
everyone can quickly see what's working and what isn't - which means they'll be better
equipped to make the necessary changes.

5) Set up Automated Reports

The point of making campaign reports is so that we can quickly see how our
marketing strategies performed. That way, if something's working well, it'll be easy to keep
or even increase the budget for that strategy. And if a tactic isn't performing as expected (or
at all), then we won't waste time trying to improve what's not working.
But we can't get this information if it takes a ton of time and effort to compile the data
in the first place. Which is why automated reports are so valuable; they'll save everyone
involved tons of time (which means more money saved).
To set up an automated report, all we need to do is get started with a report building
tool like Metrics Watch. Metrics Watch is hands down one of the best campaign report
builders on the market.
 That's because it has a codeless drag and drop report builder, so there are ZERO
coding or "tech skills" required.

Plus, we'll be able to track campaigns from our favourite marketing channels, such as:

 Google Analytics
 Google Search Console
 Google Ads
 Facebook (paid and organic)
 Instagram (paid and organic)
 LinkedIn (paid and organic)
 Mailchimp
Once we've built our campaign reports, we can determine who needs to receive them
and when. Then the data will automatically be compiled and sent to our recipients. And since
we can remove all Metrics Watch branding, our team or clients will think these are strictly
internal reports produced by our company.
But the best part is how this data is shared. Not only are there visual graphs, charts,
and lists, but the information is sent directly to our recipients' inbox.
That means no more messy PDFs to organize or 3rd-party dashboards to share login
information. Instead, we can send this information to the people who need it in a format they
already know and use.

OBSERVATIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE

– Social media closes the gap. We can develop relationships and opportunities within the
social media sphere that we can’t replicate offline.

– Don’t worry about promoting our blog until we’ve written it for a while. Our community
will help guide the development of our voice.

– Give more than we take. If we shine the light on other people in social media, eventually
that light will shine on we.

– Blog “success” is maddeningly difficult to bottle. Sometimes, posts that we just knock out
become big pass-along hits, and the posts that we slave over go nowhere. Kismet is a cruel
mistress.

– Build some hooks. With regard to the fire hose of free content I referenced above, we have
to stand out somehow. For me, it’s living in the forest, bottle opener business cards, and the
Twitter 20 interview series.
– Blog like a magazine. I used to get up every morning, read a ton of blogs, figure out what
was interesting to me that day, and write. My schedule makes that game plan untenable now,
so I try to post every T, W, Th regardless of circumstance. I tend to write posts in batches,
and release them on that schedule. I sacrifice time sensitivity, but I gain consistency and
discipline and rigor. And with so many blogs being abandoned, that’s a trade-off with which I
can live.

– Listen. Much of what has made this blog successful was imparted to me by others. The
ideas and the writing is mine, but Chris Brogan taught me about images in posts and how to
get more comments using questions. Amber Naslund taught me a lot about ease of use. Mack
Collier provided invaluable advice about “humanizing” our blog and having a signature series
of posts. Valeria Maltoni continues to set the standard for making our blog a community.
Darren Rowse and problogger.com have provided more specific, tactical advice than I can
even remember. And Chuck Reynolds keeps this blog from blowing up on the technical side.

– Remember that all bloggers start with zero. One of the very cool elements of blogs is that
that with rare exceptions, all bloggers are self-made. Conversely, journalists have an audience
largely due to the reputation of the media outlet that employs them. That’s why it’s so
important to support new bloggers. If we like somebody’s work, retweet it, comment, build a
relationship.