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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 ^[3]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 ^[4]) downloadable worksheets on questions you must answer to start monitoring your social media needs ^[5].  If you have any questions, tweet @smmeasure ^[6]. Take a look at the full #smmeasure chat transcript ^[7]. 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 ^[8] 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 ^[9] – visualize Twitter real-time data
• Google Alerts ^[10] – get email updates of the latest Google results based on your keywords
• Social Mention ^[11] – real time search
• Sysomos ^[12] – social media monitoring and analytics

Check back here every Friday for chat recaps and transcripts.  Join the Marketwire Facebook page ^[13] to get #smmeasure weekly topics.  If you have any questions for the community, tweet @smmeasure ^[6] or @marketwire ^[14] or send me an email nshin[at]marketwire.com.  Keep track of all the #smmeasure chat recaps ^[15].

Join the #smmeasure LinkedIn Group ^[16] 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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