June 16, 2010

Measuring the Impact of Social Media

CanadaHelps.orgWhat is CanadaHelps?

A public charitable foundation that provides accessible and affordable online technology to both donors and charities.

For Charities

A cost-effective means of raising funds online.

For Donors

A one-stop-shop for giving.

CanadaHelps is a charity helping charities.

Today’s Presenter

Kirstin Beardsley

Communications and Marketing Coordinator

CanadaHelps

For the best webinar experience, close all other applications.

Type questions in the Questions Log

Turn up your volume

You can hear us, but we can’t hear you

Webinar recording and slideswill be available on

www.mycharityconnects.org

THE VALUE IN MEASURING

“Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.”

Galileo Galilei

Why measure?

• Track progress objectively

• Creates objectives

*Photo courtesy of wikipedia

BEFORE YOU MEASURE

How does your organization define success?

What are you trying to achieve?

GOAL

• ABC charity will become an expert and trusted resource in our local community about adult literacy.

TOOL

• Blog

AUDIENCE

• Local literacy service providing organizations, local media outlets

Objectives

• Increase blog subscribers by 50% over the next 12 months

• 40% of blog posts contain active discussion in the comments about the issues raised

S-M-A-R-T Method

Specific

Measurable

Actionable

Realistic

Timed

*Term first used by George T. Doran

What is [traditional] ROI?

ROI =Benefit – Cost

Cost

What is [social media] ROI?

Exposure Engagement Influence Action

*Adapted from Don Bartholomew

Exposure

• Number of visits

• Number of unique visitors

• Search engine rank

• Message inclusion

• # of followers/likes

• Article/post readership

Engagement• Click-thrus and view-thrus

• Repeat visitors

• Duration of stay

• Subscribe to feeds (RSS)

• Comments/posts ratio

Influence

• Change in awareness

• Change in attitudes

• Association with your brand

Action

• Donation

• Tell a friend

• Sign a petition

• Visit the organization

• Attend a fundraising event

• Volunteer

What’s Your Strategy?

• Tied to social media plan

• Establish a timeline

• Tactics to accomplish objective

• If-Then plans

• Create an simple way to track progress

What Are Your Tools?

• Google Analytics

• Google Alerts

• TwitterSearch

• Facebook Insights

• Hootsuite

*Photo courtesy of geishaboy500

Spreadsheets!

• Track your measures in a simple spreadsheet

• Graph changes over time

GETTING STARTED

“Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative.”

Jeanette Winterson

• Chose a few things to measure

• Track progress

• Record data based on monthly or bi-weekly timeframe

Baseline measurements

• number of followers/subscribers

• action/donation/sharing/clicks

• resources expended (people, time, money)

*Photo courtesy of conray

WHAT TO MEASURE

Actionable Data

• Focus on actionable data:

– Measurement should inform specific decisions and/or actions.

– Do not measure everything, but do measure what is most important to your goals.

– The data you gather should help you learn

- From the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Website Data

• Number of unique visitors

• Page views

• Length of time on site

• $$$ raised

Website Data

• Search rank

• Registrations

• Referrals

• Donation average

Social Media

• Subscribers/ Unsubscribes

• Followers

• Comments

• Favourites

• Video/photo views

• Retweets

• Likes

Social Media

• Page/post views

• # of posts

• Most popular posts

• Conversations

• Feedback

• Repeat supporters

Added Value Measures

• New ideas

• New partnerships

• Reduced training / professional development costs

• Reduction in communication costs

• Reduction in phone calls, emails about a particular issue

EXAMPLE

XYZ Charity & P2P Fundraising Campaign

GOAL:

• Promote a new peer-to-peer fundraising campaign to raise awareness of our organization and raise funds through social media

AUDIENCE:

• Young professionals in Windsor

XYZ Charity & P2P Fundraising Campaign

TOOLS:

• Facebook Page & Twitter

OBJECTIVES:

• Recruit 20 fundraisers to set up GivingPages

• Raise $1500 by September 31st through our campaign

• Raise awareness – increase likes by 150 & Twitter followers by 150 by September 31st

Measures

Exposure:

• Traffic to page

• # of “Likes”

Engagement:

• Links to campaign landing page

• # of posts to page

• Conversations

Measures

Influence:

• # of posts on other pages/sites about campaign

Action:

• # of GivingPages set up

• # of new donors

• $ raised

TIPS

Don’t analyze too much/too soon

• Analyze a manageable amount of data after a reasonable amount of time

Make measurement part of your social media plan

• Makes it easier to track progress

Don’t just watch, observe and record

• Accurate and thorough records creates a more complete picture of your efforts

Have a time-frame for your objective

• Easier to assess the success of your objective

• Don’t make it too short

*Photo courtesy of alexkerhead

Measure a relevant amount of time

• Ensures that you’ve gotten a representative sample that can be used to spot trends

Experiment!

• Now that you’re measuring, test out different styles of post, frequency or messaging

*Photo courtesy of we are dc

Tie it to long term goals

• Increases the likelihood of success of your shorter-term social media objectives

*Photo courtesy of rtadlock

ABOUT MYCHARITYCONNECTS

• Free online resources

• Information about technology

• Video demonstrations

• More webinars

• Past webinar recordings

• Learning opportunities

• Events

Next Webinar

“Peer to Peer Fundraising with

CanadaHelps GivingPages”

June 23, 20102PM – 3PM

(Eastern Time)

www.mycharityconnects.org

Question and Answer

You can hear us, but we can’t hear you

Ask questions here

Ask away!

Thank you for attending!

Webinar slides and recording will be up on:

www.mycharityconnects.org/pastwebinars

Check out www.mycharityconnects.org for more resources!

Questions, feedback, comments?

Email us at: info@canadahelps.org

• socialmediatoday.com – Brian Solis

• altitudebranding.com – Amber Naslund

• asimplerway.com – Evo Terra

• metricsman.wordpress.com - Don Bartholomew

• bethkanter.org – Beth Kanter