Things to consider when monitoring and measuring social media
Published on December 3rd, 2010 by Nick Shin 
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After a week off due to the Thanksgiving holiday last week, I was beginning to go through #smmeasure Twitter chat withdrawal. Luckily for me and the rest of the #smmeasure community, Thursday couldn’t come fast enough. Thanks to Sheldon @sysomos for coming up with engaging questions and taking on co-host duties.
#smmeasure chat #18 recap
As a preface to this week’s chat, we highlighted one of Katie Paine’s (@kdpaine) downloadable worksheets on questions you must answer to start monitoring your social media needs. If you have any questions, tweet @smmeasure. Take a look at the full #smmeasure chat transcript. Here are a few highlights:
Q1: How do you decide what to monitor?
- @mhandy1: “I start with a keyword scrape then pull a tweet cloud from a targeted user”
- @KaryD: “We start by determining the goals and the KPI’s that will prove whether goals are met or not. Then, find the metrics.”
- @AnnaOBrien: “If you go into sM measurement blindly u’ll end up with lots of random data that’s not useful. Establish business needs first” “What do I want to discover about my business, customer, industry needs?”
- @agardina: “depends on the goals of your campaign and content you have available.”
- @grmeyer: “start with brand or trademarks, then competitors, then hashtags you like – for ideas, ask 10 people who don’t know you”
- @blogbrevity: “Like a reverse elevator pitch – what do others say about U.
”
Q2: How often should you be reporting your findings?
- @mhandy1: “Every 2 weeks to cmgrs monthly or Quarterly to higher ups… with Actionable/comparable results”
- @AnnaOBrien: “Certain situations call for adhoc reporting with data produced hourly, but standard SM reporting should be weekly/monthly.” “Community managers aren’t built for data, they’re great conversationalists, not great analysts. Different skill sets.”
Q3: How do you decide where to monitor?
- @jgombita: “check out: @erin_anne: Aggregators: Social Mention. Google Alerts. CoTweet. Co.mments. BoardTracker. IBM.”
Q4: Do you use automated monitoring and coding or do you do it manually?
- @40deuce: “I use our @Sysomos software to bring it all in and auto-code, but I always go over things myself to double check”
- @AnnaOBrien: “Every brand needs a tool. 3 cats basic, database, & text analysis tools. Budget & need determine best fit”
- @agardina: “we use a combination of automatic and manual coding, especially when tracking details like themes and sentiment.”
- @mhandy1: “there are definitely automated tools that can be used… effectively.. spend some time on @oneforty”
Q5: @kdpaine’s checklist has a section for reporting. http://bit.ly/hpAvOo How do I make my #’s matter to mgmt/clients?
- @MyNextCustomer: “Mining your analytics data can also help find mentions by looking at referring sites.”
Some tools mentioned by the #smmeasure community:
- Social Gadgets – visualize Twitter real-time data
- Google Alerts – get email updates of the latest Google results based on your keywords
- Social Mention – real time search
- Sysomos – social media monitoring and analytics
Check back here every Friday for chat recaps and transcripts. Join the Marketwire Facebook page to get #smmeasure weekly topics. If you have any questions for the community, tweet @smmeasure or @marketwire or send me an email nshin[at]marketwire.com. Keep track of all the #smmeasure chat recaps.
Join the #smmeasure LinkedIn Group to connect with others interested in social media and measurement. See you next week at 9:00 am PST, 11:00 am CST, 12:00 pm EST, 5:00 pm if you’re in London, and 3:00 am Friday if you’re in Melbourne.
See you next Thursday!
Nick
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