COMMUNICATIONSMETRICS: A CASE STUDY

JOHN MARTININFORMATION & NEWS SERVICES

OFFICE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYNC STATE UNIVERSITY

jmartin3@ncsu.edu@ncsu_oit

oit.ncsu.edu(919) 513-1196

AGENDA• Case study: one organization’s quest

• To measure effectiveness of communication channels• To determine ROI on social media (Twitter)

• Communication channels being measured

• Measurement tools being used

• Methodology

• Summary conclusions

• Your thoughts on this work

• What you’re doing

• Very much work in progress!

COMMUNICATIONS MEASURED

• OIT News

• Monthly publication• Audience is faculty and staff• Subscription-based email notification / online copy• 8-12 items in “blurb” format• September OIT News edition

• Twitter (@ncsu_oit)

• Advertisements (e.g., workshops, seminars, services, events)

• Announcements (e.g., outages, change management, security incidences)

• News (IT, education, social media, IT in education, social media in IT, social media in education)

• Engagement

MEASUREMENT TOOLS• Excel Spreadsheets

• OIT News• Twitter

• GoLinks (go.ncsu.edu)

• NC State internal URL shortener• Faculty or staff to create• Random or customized• Statistics-enabled• Share-enabled• Modifiable

OIT NEWS• What we’re trying to find out

• What topics are of most interest to our readers• How readers access and consume our content

• How we’re going about it

• 1 base and 3 modified GoLinks for each news item heading• Item #1 base GoLink: go.ncsu.edu/0811-01-google• Item #1 modified GoLink for online version: 0811-01o• Item #1 modified GoLink for email: 0811-01e• Item #1 modified GoLink Twitter version GoLink: 082611tw

• GoLinks for each link in each news item

OIT NEWS: GOLINKS

OIT NEWS: EMAIL STATISTICS• Snapshots on 09/27/11 & 10/19/11

OIT NEWS: ONLINE STATISTICS• Snapshots on 09/27/11 & 10/19/11

OIT NEWS: BODY LINKS• Snapshots on 09/27/11 & 10/19/11

OIT NEWS: SUMMARY• Approaching one year’s worth of data

• Most viewed topics

• Education advertisements: “Lunch & Learns” and workshops• Process improvement

• Started identifying education advertisements more granularly (classmate individual class)

• Starting on July 1, 2011 we integrated GoLinks modifiers• Found that our email announcement of the edition drives most

traffic (as opposed to starting on the online version)

• Future

• Provide feedback to education team on which of their offerings garner the most interest

• Try to correlate action (e.g., after clicking on a workshop news item, an enrollment occurred)

SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS• Adapt-Ability: Identifying Optimal Social Media Success

Metrics webinar on 11/22/10

• Jay Baer, Convince and Convert LLC• Adam Covati, Argyle Social• Luke Glasner, Glasner Consulting• Persia Tatar, Attention

• Four business goals for social media

• Build Awareness• Build Loyalty• Customer service• Generate Sales

POSSIBLE AWARENESS METRICS

• Social mentions

• Inbound links

• Web traffic from outposts

• Share of voice

• Search volume trends

• Content exposure

• New visitors

POSSIBLE LOYALTY METRICS

• Increase in positive social mentions

• Increase in positive ratings/review

• Content subscription

• Increase in community participation

• Reduction in customer service expense

TWITTER• What we’re trying to find out

• What’s of interest to our readers• Topics• Communicative purpose

• Awareness• Mentions• Retweets

• Loyalty• Replies (Engagement)• Favorited

• How we’re going about it

• GoLinks & Modified GoLinks for tweets• Twitter notifications and Gmail labels

TWITTER: TWEET STATISTICS• Snapshots on 09/27/11 & 10/20/11

TWITTER NOTIFICATIONS

TWITTER: AWARENESS• Mentions

• Retweets

TWITTER: LOYALTY• Favorited

• Replies (Engagement)

TWITTER: SUMMARY• Time-consuming (We have an intern!)

• What to measure• What to measure with (automation is a must)• Making time to analyze

• To draw conclusions• To adjust measurement methodology

• Changes to current• Perhaps try new

• Ambiguity (Awareness or Loyalty?)

• [Loyalty/Reply] @ncsu_oit  I use your dept as an example of how an IT dept uses social media effectively

• [Awareness/Mention] @pgmckenzie Paul McKenzie #FF @ncsu_oit Check out today's great stream on securing mobile devices.

• Criticism = Loyalty

• Work in progress: Forward movement, process improvement

THOUGHTS? QUESTIONS?

AND YOU?