I am now 5 months into my PR career and I am fully engulfed in our social media plan. Now that we have everything getting off the ground we are really looking at measuring the success of this social media plan and are using Facebook Insights and Google Analytics. I didn't realize there were so many free (and paid) measurement tools available other than these two options! I guess I just never really looked. I have heard of Radian6 before and had read through some of their articles and such while in my previous job.
One tool I have started using, mostly for convenience-sake, is TweetDeck. This monitoring tool has been very helpful to me because our store operates as a skating store and now a dance store, so we actually have a skating Twitter and a dance Twitter. TweetDeck has been very easy to operate and very helpful when I am the only person managing these two accounts. First of all, I don't have to sign in and out of 2 different Twitter accounts (3 if I include my own personal account); second of all I can monitor and browse through the feeds of all accounts at the same time. With TweetDeck you can also use scheduled tweets which may be useful for certain organizations or for certain information that you need to tweet at a certain time - although I have read many articles about these scheduled tweets that suggest you don't use them as you lose authenticity.
Minilytics by PageLever is something I just came across while doing this assignment. PageLever can provide you with detailed analytics for your Facebook page, but Minilytics is the free version and tells you things like: when the best time to post is; what times of posts generate the most engagement and more!
PageLever can do a lot for you depending on what you are looking for (and what you are willing to pay!). You could get analytics and other reports regarding your Facebook page and Twitter account, or you could get something more in-depth which would use these analyses to create posts and publish tweets.
Brandify is another free tool I have come across which I am going to suggest to my boss and see if we can try it out! This tool, as it states on their website, works as a report card and quickly gives you a feel of your presence online. It provides you a score, like a credit score, and then provides recommendations on how to improve your score - in turn really improve your online presence. With this tool, I kept looking on their website for the paid version... but it really is a FREE tool!
One free tool that I have found quite intriguing and slightly different is SiteTrail (www.sitetrail.com). This one is particularly interesting because you can not only analyze your own website, but you can analyse other websites as well. What does this mean for you? You can see how your top competitors stack up! You can see how many people are visiting the site, the top keywords, the top links to that site, and more!
With these four options, I think a company or organization has the opportunity to understand their own web presence, help promote it, and understand the competitors. Each of these tools could be used differently depending on the company or organization using them, but I think they could each be used no matter what!
I work for a retail business, so part of our business is done online. The SiteTrail tool will prove very helpful for us so that we can understand the other websites that are attracting customers who prefer to shop online. I'm looking forward to using each of these tools!
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Friday, March 22, 2013
CDPR108 - Week 9 - Action, Attitude and Attention
There are many things that aid the success of a social web program but one of the most important is being able to measure your efforts. The 3 A's - Action, Attitude and Attention - are great tools for measuring social web activity.
The concept of "Action" are items that require your audience to take action. Taking action on social media is a different concept than you might think. Liking something on Facebook or re-tweeting on Twitter would be considered taking action. The business has posted something that allows you to take action and include your thoughts or ideas. Most social media tools work best when audiences take action - for example a discussion, or a poll. All of these things can then be measured which will then let you know if your social media strategies are successful. Of course the success of these actions would be determined by the business objectives that were laid out.
The concept of "Attitude" when it comes to a social web program would be the perception that your audience/consumers have of your business/brand/identity. Through a social media program a company/business can easily measure their audience's attitude through the discussions on social media. This would include comments on Facebook posts; mentions on Twitter. While every company wants a positive attitude, the company needs to have a larger goal in mind when it comes to the concept of "Attitude." If the company has had a lot of negativity in the past, perhaps the business objective is to better respond to this negativity through social media platforms. Or perhaps there has been no known attitude toward the business, so having an understanding - whether positive or negative - could be the goal. We have learned that it is not always important to just have positive comments on social media platforms. It is important to have some negative feedback or negative perceptions and then properly respond to these in a public forum. This shows transparency and integrity.
The concept of "Attention" can be easily measured these days and of course a business always wants a LOT of attention. The goal would be to see large numbers of people visiting your website, liking your Facebook page, following you on Twitter, responding to you on blog posts, etc. Perhaps your business/company had a goal of more Facebook followers, or more visits to your website. When it comes to attention, it is important to have a specific goal in mind. In order to measure the attention, you need to know where you started so you can measure where you are headed.
As with any business plan, you need to know where you are starting from and where you plan to end up in order to measure the success of your social media plan through action, attitude and attention.
The concept of "Action" are items that require your audience to take action. Taking action on social media is a different concept than you might think. Liking something on Facebook or re-tweeting on Twitter would be considered taking action. The business has posted something that allows you to take action and include your thoughts or ideas. Most social media tools work best when audiences take action - for example a discussion, or a poll. All of these things can then be measured which will then let you know if your social media strategies are successful. Of course the success of these actions would be determined by the business objectives that were laid out.
The concept of "Attitude" when it comes to a social web program would be the perception that your audience/consumers have of your business/brand/identity. Through a social media program a company/business can easily measure their audience's attitude through the discussions on social media. This would include comments on Facebook posts; mentions on Twitter. While every company wants a positive attitude, the company needs to have a larger goal in mind when it comes to the concept of "Attitude." If the company has had a lot of negativity in the past, perhaps the business objective is to better respond to this negativity through social media platforms. Or perhaps there has been no known attitude toward the business, so having an understanding - whether positive or negative - could be the goal. We have learned that it is not always important to just have positive comments on social media platforms. It is important to have some negative feedback or negative perceptions and then properly respond to these in a public forum. This shows transparency and integrity.
The concept of "Attention" can be easily measured these days and of course a business always wants a LOT of attention. The goal would be to see large numbers of people visiting your website, liking your Facebook page, following you on Twitter, responding to you on blog posts, etc. Perhaps your business/company had a goal of more Facebook followers, or more visits to your website. When it comes to attention, it is important to have a specific goal in mind. In order to measure the attention, you need to know where you started so you can measure where you are headed.
As with any business plan, you need to know where you are starting from and where you plan to end up in order to measure the success of your social media plan through action, attitude and attention.
Friday, March 1, 2013
CDPR108 - Week 6
I have decided to use my blog as a forum for me to brainstorm my thoughts for the essay in this week's assignment. We have been writing a lot in this course, but not in an essay format. I have also been tweeting a lot for work - so my train of thought is more in blogger/twitter language and not in "essay mode" - aka not in proper writing!
This week's essay topic: How best can a PR practitioner charged with the community manager role serve both the needs of the online community and the requirements of his or her organization to meet business objectives?
I want to not only write this essay, but really understand this topic because this is what I am charged with in my job! (Gotta love when your work and school come together).
I think it is important to first lay out and understand the business objectives - without this base, the community manager has nothing to go by - no goals. With these objectives, the community manager needs to take a hands-on approach and really get involved with the community. The business objectives should be like the voice in the back of their head.
With business objectives in mind, the community manager needs to take a different approach than the rest of the company. Not completely different in the goals and the purpose of their approach, but in the way that they communicate. Of course this changes depending on the company's audience -but blogging, tweeting and communicating on Facebook should look a lot different than communicating within a business meeting or with the journalists of the world.
It is very important to keep in mind the time that relationship-building can take. The focus cannot be on making a sale or meeting the business objectives in a short time frame. The focus needs to be building a long lasting friendship with the community. This takes many conversations and much time!
If community managers take the time to build the relationships with the community - this will in turn serve the business objectives of the company. Making yourself a friend of each and every member of your audience.
Ok - I think I have brainstormed where I am going to go with this essay! Time to get to writing. (formally).
This week's essay topic: How best can a PR practitioner charged with the community manager role serve both the needs of the online community and the requirements of his or her organization to meet business objectives?
I want to not only write this essay, but really understand this topic because this is what I am charged with in my job! (Gotta love when your work and school come together).
I think it is important to first lay out and understand the business objectives - without this base, the community manager has nothing to go by - no goals. With these objectives, the community manager needs to take a hands-on approach and really get involved with the community. The business objectives should be like the voice in the back of their head.
With business objectives in mind, the community manager needs to take a different approach than the rest of the company. Not completely different in the goals and the purpose of their approach, but in the way that they communicate. Of course this changes depending on the company's audience -but blogging, tweeting and communicating on Facebook should look a lot different than communicating within a business meeting or with the journalists of the world.
It is very important to keep in mind the time that relationship-building can take. The focus cannot be on making a sale or meeting the business objectives in a short time frame. The focus needs to be building a long lasting friendship with the community. This takes many conversations and much time!
If community managers take the time to build the relationships with the community - this will in turn serve the business objectives of the company. Making yourself a friend of each and every member of your audience.
Ok - I think I have brainstormed where I am going to go with this essay! Time to get to writing. (formally).
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