national geographic - omniture cafe 6/11/09

About Me

• Currently Manager of Web Analytics at National Geographic

• 5 years of Omniture experience

• : Omniture Certified Profes s ional Implementation

• 2008Pres enter at Omniture Summit

• 11 total years of web analytics experience

• 8 years SEMand SEO experience

• , , , , Worked with the Red Cros s ACLU CARE WWF , , ’ , Pew SallieMae Chris tian Children s Fund etc

Follow me at twitter.com/tedmcdonald

• 4Proud father of

What Is Social Media?

Definitions (found on social media sites):

Social media is content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.

- from Wikipedia

“Social Media is a catch-all term to describe all forms of digitally enabled peer-to-peer environments.”

- from Scribd

“A group of media producers that is primarily it's own audience.”- from Flickr

“I’m often asked what is web 2.0 and the explanation I find easiest to give is that web 2.0 refers to web based platforms that have been developed to make sharing information, communicating and working together easier.”

- from Yahoo! Answers

Everybody defines it differently!

• Ben Parr: “… the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings in more efficient ways”• Anthony Mayfield: “… a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics: 1) Participation … 2) Openness … 3) Conversation … 4) Community … 5) Connectedness”• Clay Shirky: “… stuff that gets spammed”• Robert Scoble: “… Internet media that has the ability to interact with it in some way”• Brian Solis: “… put the power of media into the hands of the people, which transformed content consumers into content producers” or “Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers.” (see below)• Conan O’Brien: “… In the year 3000 YouTube, Twitter & Facebook will merge into one super time-wasting website called YouTwitFace.”• Chris Heuer: “… redefining how we relate to each other as humans and how we as humans relate to the organizations that serve us”• Joseph Thornley: “… online communications in which individuals shift fluidly and flexibly between the role of audience and author”• David Meerman Scott: “… online media with a participatory or interactive component”• Ike Pigott: “… strange brew of Technology + People + Organization + Freedom”• Deirdre Breakenridge (PR 2.0, FT Press 2008, xviii): “… anything that uses the Internet to facilitate conversations between people”• Robert Berkman (The Art of Strategic Listening, Paramount, 10): “Blogs, wikis, digital videos or any other kind of textual or multimedia forms of media and typically generated by ordinary consumers”• Beth Kanter: “… a way of using the Internet to instantly collaborate, share information, or have a conversation ideas or causes we care about”• Daniel Nations: “… a social instrument of communication”• Eric Karjaluoto: “… media that users can easily participate in and contribute to”• Louis Gray: “… a loose term that largely relies on user generated content”• Marta Kagan: “… people having conversations online”• Sarah Worsham: “… it’s about the shared meaning you create with your customers as you interact with them and they with each other”• Mark Dykeman: “… the means for any person to: publish digital creative content; provide and obtain real-time feedback via on-line discussions, commentary, and evaluations; and incorporate changes or corrections to the original content”• Ashwini Dhagamwar and Sandeep Arora: “… allows people to participate using Media (text, audio, video, pictures) instantly. Social Media is the story about people participation on a scale never seen before. Social Media is the fusion of technology and social behavior”• Toby Beresford: “… editorless content prioritised by popularity”• Jeff Jarvis: “Play is social. Media is play. Social media is fun”• Susan B. Barnes (Understanding Social Media from the Media Ecology Perspective): “… interpersonal media. It supports the sharing of personal exchanges in new and unique ways”• Bonnye E. Stuart, Marilyn S. Sarow, Laurence Stuart (Integrated Business Communication in a Global Marketplace): “… a term applied to digital media that enable customers to control content”• Wayne Kurtzman: “Social media is the use media, including and not limited to text, video, audio and documents within communities where users can opt to consume or generate content.”• Marc Smith: “Collective Goods produced through Computer-Mediated Collective Action”.

Posted by Benedikt Koehler on Flickr

What is Social Media…to National Geographic?

Initial challenge: Report social media traffic in Omniture SiteCatalyst as a category.

Standard reports like Referring Domains and Search Engines make that tricky:

• Visits and visitors not available by default

• Can’t determine effect on conversion metrics like orders and page view events

• Tracking codes used on sites reported separately

Unified Sources VISTA rule


Use Unified Sources VISTA rule to report all sources of traffic into one campaign code report:


Use SAINT to classify those sources of traffic into meaningful categories:

What Does That Get Us?

Percent of total visits by referrer category:


Traffic trends by referrer category:

M-08 J-08 J-08 A-08 S-08 O-08 N-08 D-08 J-09 F-09 M-09 A-09 M-09

Social Media Pay-per-click Ads Display Advertising

May ’09 change from May ‘08

Social Media + 36%

Pay-per-click Ads - 49%

Display Advertising + 128%


Pages per visit by referrer category:

13.6

10.0

8.1 7.77.1 7.0

4.2

10.0

NG.comAverage

NG Email Pay-per-clickAds

OrganicSearch

DisplayAdvertising

NG VanityURLs

OtherWebsites

Social Media

Unified Sources and SAINT tips

1. Start with Referrer Categories and KeyReferrers

Referrer Categories for NG

• Organic Search• ( )Other webs ites• Social Media• - - Pay per click ads• Dis play Advertis ing• NG Email• NG Vanity URLs

Key Referrers

• Google Organic Search• - - Google pay per c lick ads• Micros oft Organic Search• Digg• Google Images• StumbleUpon• Facebook• : NG email Photo• : NG email Weekly News• Twitter• .linktolearning com• Blogs pot blogs• Wordpres s blogs

2. Us e Key Referrers to lump together s ubdomains and tracking codes• 7000 we have s ubdomains on record for StumbleUpon• 2000 for Tumblr• ( , , , )many ins tances of s everal hundred s ubdomains Wikipedia Ning News vine etc


3. Us e additional c las s ifications to create different ways of looking at the. data

’ :NG s other categories• Channel• Media Type• Campaign Type• Promotion• Social Media s ite

4. ' . .Don t go c las s ification crazy Only c las s ify if you need the data on a regular bas is

5. .Us e a s tandard naming convention for all your tracking codes

6. .Clas s ify what you can in advance

7. , . Us e a s ingle file for all report s uites if pos s ible


8. ' Don t fee l that you have to c las s ify all s ources into every category

9. ' , , , Everything that can t categorize into a top referrer like organic s earch s oc ial media email or, " ."advertis ing place in a category called Other

- " "Differentiates the values from None - **Eas ily export a SAINT file without “Other” values by filtering Referrer Categories for i

10. .Us e FTP to eas ily update all report s uites at once and keep track of proces s ed files

11. Subre late the unified s ources report and the “None” value of the Referrer Category report to . keep track of new referrers that need to be c las s ified Us e a bookmark to the report by.email

12. Cons ider us ing IF s tatements in Exce l to automatically populate ce lls in a SAINT file for new.referrers

Can the social media category be broken down further?

?What s hould the categories be

?Which s ites be long where

Overkill

Underkill( )s orry guys

Can the social media category be broken down further?

Jus t Right

National Geographic’s categories of social media

Social News Sites (25 sites)

• Digg• Reddit• Twitter• Slashdot

Social Networking (33)• Facebook• MySpace• Orkut• Care2

Social Media Sharing (7)• YouTube• Flickr• Tumblr• DeviantArt

Social Bookmarking Sites (5)• StumbleUpon• Delicious• Meneame.net • Propeller.com

Social Knowledge (5)• Wikipedia• Yahoo Answers• Squidoo• Ask Metafilter

National Geographic’s categories of social media

Pages per visit by social media subcategories

6.1

3.7

1.7

8.2

4.4

Social knowledge Social networking Social news Social bookmarking Social mediasharing

What topics interest social media visitors?

Entry section by Referrer Category

55%

11%7%

6%

2% 1% 1% 1%

18%

9%6% 7%

11% 12%

4%

10%

News NG Magazine NG Channel Photography Animals HomePage Travel &Cultures

Kids

Social Media visits Other visits


Page views by Referrer Category

26%

21% 21%

6% 5%

2% 2% 1%

6%

4%

26%

8%7%

22%

5%

3%

News NG Channel NG Magazine Video Photography Kids Animals Science


What types of content interest social media visitors?


Omniture Survey can be used to learn even more

- Digg recently announced Digg Ads ads des cribed as s pons ored content that will look and , . fee l s imilar to regular Digg content but are c learly marked as s pons ored What types of

?content promoted by National Geographic would you like ly vis it or dig up

Artic les 28% NG Films 7%

Photos 39% Channel s hows 7%

Videos 18%

:Age 18Under 5%

18-24 40%25-34 34%35-44 13%45-54 4%55-64 3%65+ 1%

:GenderFemale 12%Male 88%

The long tail…

• 18,000+ pages have attracted traffic directly from social media sites YTD18,000+ pages have attracted traffic directly from social media sites YTD

• 10 pages accounted for 20% of those visits10 pages accounted for 20% of those visits

• 100 pages accounted for 60% of the visits100 pages accounted for 60% of the visits

?Is NG reaching s oc ial media vis itors internationally

The Big Ques tion

Social Media traffic Questions about its revenue potential

Relative value of a Social Media vis it

Visit Value by Referrer Category

100 97126

7847

134115

40

9189109

78

5

501

192

43

578

100

Averagevisitor

OrganicSearch

None Other SocialMedia

Pay-per-click Ads

NG Email DisplayAdvertising

NG VanityURLs

Ad $ Index

Order Index


Visit Value by Social Media subcategory

27

19

41

35

52

2

12

21

10

2

Social news Social bookmarking Social networking Social knowledge Social media sharing

Ad $ Index

Order Index


Visit Value by Social Media Key Referrer

16

27

42

21

36

54

25

86

44

1

14

1

22

9

2118

36

1

StumbleUpon Digg Facebook Reddit.com Wikipedia YouTube Twitter Delicious Flickr

Ad $ Index

Order Index

, ?Wow are Social Media vis its really that worthles s

Takeaways

• Enable conversion metrics and classifications on your referrers data by using the Unified Sources VISTA rule.

• .Us e SAINT to categorize the Unified Sources data

• ’ .Us e NG s Referrer Categories as a s tarting point

• Media s ites s hould cons ider us ing the s ite s ection valuation VISTA rule to upload es timated CPMs for each s ite s ection into Omniture

• .People love linking to cool photos

• , Compared to other s oc ial media s ites s oc ial news and s oc ial bookmarking s ites are great .for traffic but poor for engagement

• .Vis itors from s oc ial media s ites overall are not as engaged as the average vis itor

• , , .Social media vis itors can however trigger a domino effec t on other s oc ial media platforms