Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: Observations about Reach

Getting Started, Getting Better: Social Media and Web Analytics Slide 15

Maybe your business is new. Maybe everyone who visits your website converts and your agents or sales team closes every lead. If that’s the case, you can improve your business simply by reaching more customers.

What kind of things can we observe in social media that help us improve? One thing we can measure is the size of a social media “channel.”

This might be the size of an entire network: like how many users are on Facebook. But it’s probably better to narrow it down more: How many users on Facebook are located in our town or are in our age demographic or said “condo” this week?

It also might be the size of a conversation. How many people on Twitter use our town hashtag (if you have a town hashtag). Or people who talk about a topic relevant to our business.

You can also measure your own reach: how many followers do you have. This number usually isn’t super helpful. I hope all of you can wake up in the morning and say “I don’t care how many Twitter followers I have” and instead focus on observing and then making things people like.

Oh yeah, and follow Gahlord Dewald on Twitter. 😉

Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: Review of boring old theory

Getting Started, Getting Better: Social Media and Web Analytics Slide 14

Ok so that was a lot of stuff in the theory section. I hope it wasn’t too boring though. We covered building a culture of accountability based on three ways to measure, we talked about my favorite thing: The OODA loop. Then there’s the whole Reach Acquisition Conversion Satisfaction thing. And how that funnel got all non-linear on us–and why that’s good.

Probably good to re-iterate the goal of the presentation at this point as well: Help you develop a clear approach for aligning your social media plan with your business goals.

Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: Start where it makes the most sense

Getting Started, Getting Better: Social Media and Web Analytics Slide 13

The big news in all this is that we can use measurement tools like web analytics to figure out where our business is hurting the most, and work on that directly.

We can work on our business objectives in a non-linear way. I think that’s awesome.

Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: Less linear, start anywhere

Getting Started, Getting Better: Social Media and Web Analytics Slide 12

We can get a conversion without even trying to reach someone. For example, our social media contacts can be working on our behalf when we didn’t ask them to–selling our services because they just like what we do.

You can also generate satisfaction without ever selling anything to someone. They might just like what you’re doing and start telling people about it. This creates positive chatter about you or your brand.

Using social media it starts to become clear that there are two kinds of really important people out there: the people who can be our customers–we need them to generate revenue and keep the doors open. And then there’s the people who say nice things about us. These people help extend our reach as well as encourage acquisition and conversion.

Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: The funnel is a little disrupted by social media

Getting Started, Getting Better: Social Media and Web Analytics Slide 11

Historically, people moved through Reach Acquisition Conversion in a pretty linear way–we had to reach them then we had to acquire them and then we had to convert them. But social media is starting to change that. It’s making the funnel a little bit non-linear, a little more random access.

Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: Reach, Acquisition, Conversion, (Satisfaction)

Getting Started, Getting Better: Social Media and Web Analytics Slide 10

So we’ve talked about measuring things and why we do it. And then we talked about a culture of accountability and a great tool for making that culture. But sooner or later we need to see how do we relate to customers.

Since I like models, I’ve got another one here. I first encountered this in a book by Eric Petersen called Web Analytics Demystified. It’s the Reach, Acquisition Conversion model. I added Satisfaction to the end because I think it’s important.

This model is for understanding how your messages get to people and how they might respond.

  1. Reach is how many people can receive your message, how many customers can hear it. Newspapers might measure this as readership, Online ads might measure this as impressions, social media people might measure this as number of followers or number of followers of followers.
  2. Acquisition is when a customer takes some sort of measurable action on your message. They click on a link, for example.
  3. Conversion, online anyway, is when someone does what you want them to do. For those of you in real estate, it’s usually when they fill out a form saying they want a listing presentation or they want to see a house you’re selling.
  4. Satisfaction is whether they express happiness with what you provided.

You probably notice that this is a lot like the old Attention-Interest-Desire-Action model. And it is. It’s just a little more directly aligned to things we can measure.

Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: The OODA Loop

 

John Boyd's OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. A strategic method.

Here’s a model that outlines a way to be accountable for your decisions. It was made by John Boyd, a colonel in the US Air Force, and it’s called the OODA loop.

So it has four stages: Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.

  • Observe is just gathering data. This is where your web analytics and other measuring systems come in. Something either happened or it didn’t happen. And you observe it. Pretty straightforward.
  • Orient is where you start putting that data in context. How does the stuff you’re measuring today compare with the stuff you measured last month? Or how does it compare with a larger set of data? This is analysis and is usually done by a person.
  • Decide is just what it sounds like. Someone looks at the data and the analysis and makes their best decision. If you didn’t do the first two steps then this part is scary.
  • Action is making your decisions real. It’s also called “execution.” The previous three steps should be designed to help this part be the best possible.

So it’s called the OODA loop even though I’ve just got it as a list here. Once you’re done with “action” you go back to the beginning and start observing and orienting again.

You can use it to build a learning organization and a culture of accountability that works.

Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: A culture of accountability

Getting Started, Getting Better: Social Media and Web Analytics Slide 08

Usually when measurement is talked about, there’s a lot of talk about “Accountability.” I use the scare quotes because this talk is often scary. But it doesn’t have to be.

The scary part of accountability is when the measurement systems aren’t balanced. For example, if your measurement is entirely focused on the past (usually masquerading as conversations about ROI). Just like it would be scary to be in a car going down the highway while everyone inside the car is facing the back of the car, it’s scary when your only measurement focus is on the rear view mirror.

If your organization can make use of all three kinds of measuring: for understanding how things work, for informing specific future actions and for understanding the past … then you can develop a real culture of accountability–a culture where people are accountable for the decisions they make (based on data) as opposed to results which are likely beyond their control.

Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: Research to support action

Getting Started, Getting Better: Social Media and Web Analytics Slide 07

Another reason to measure is to help future actions. Learning about the world and what people are interested in and then using that data to take concrete actions.

This kind of measurement is focused on research, planning and forward action.

So there’s these three kinds of measuring out there: learning how things work, learning what worked and what didn’t work in the past, and gathering data to help accomplish specific tasks in the future.

Improving Social Media via Web Analytics: ROI (Return on Investment) and preventing insanity

Getting Started, Getting Better: Social Media and Web Analytics Slide 06

Another reason to measure is to know if something worked in the past. The phrase that often comes up here is ROI–return on investment.

Maybe you’ve heard the definition of insanity that goes “Insanity is doing the same thing twice but expecting different results.” Using measurement to understand the past is a great way to prevent this kind of insanity.