carma on social media measurement

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CARMA International, Inc. Phone: 202.370-1941 North America Europe

1615 M Street, NW 7th Floor Fax: 202.842.3275 Latin America Asia/Pacific

Washington, DC 20036 URL: www.carma.com

Alan Chumley, Senior Vice President,

@alanchumley / @CARMA_Tweets

The 7Cs of Social Media Measurement

If, as many now suggest, content + community + conversation is the new communications, then we should have a way to measure social media beyond simple counting or vanity metrics such as fans or followers. Counting’s important but it’s only a start and it’s only one of the 7Cs. The 7Cs offer a way to starting thinking, generally, about how to approach measuring social media in a way that goes beyond simple counting and is inclusive enough to account for the dynamic and multidimensional nature conversations and communities.

1. Counting 2. Content 3. Conversations 4. Cohesion 5. Community 6. Connectedness 7. Conversion

Cute alliteration but what does it mean and how do we apply it in practical terms? How do we account for varying objectives and campaign types? We’ll come back to that. First, to understand many of these Cs, we need to be looking at social media measurement more broadly and through the lens of social network analysis and social capital.

Borrowing from--and at the risk of somewhat abusing (let’s say bending)-- the concepts, it’s important that social media measurement be looked at from both a systems and a sociological perspective. Doing so encourages us to go beyond counting myopic moment-in-time metrics which do little demonstrate the complexity of a network or the multi-dimensionality of a dynamic community. So, if you’ll forgive some partially-bent, paraphrased definitions from Wikipedia…

Social Network / Social Network Analysis A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called nodes, which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependent relationships such as friendship or common interests. Social network analysis views the nodes as the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. Where once network analysis was more a suggestive metaphor, now is an analytical approach and, we have the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon to thank for mainstreaming the method. These nodes (individuals or organizations) and the relationships between them are most commonly portrayed visually in a network map like this:

Social Capital

Social capital looks at the connections within and between those in a social network as a source of civic engagement (via conversations in this case) among the community (those with shared interests) leading to some form of cohesion and that this cohesion has value.

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Now, back to the 7Cs with network analysis and social capital in mind and as a backdrop against which to offer up some additional considerations.

1. Counting

What some call search, syndication and site; stuff we can count like traffic, popularity, fans, followers, retweets, etc.

2. Content

Analysis that is. Using content analysis, ideally a hybrid of some automation for volume and speed and human analysts for context, nuance and depth to look for how your brand, messaging, topics, issues, stakeholder voices are portrayed; the inclusiveness, accuracy and tone of the conversations.

3. Conversations

And conversationships recognizing that social media is not strictly another communications channel through which to get word out or reach and influence. It is more about genuinely engaged dialogue than a simple corporate monologue; not only a vertical, one-to-many conversation between an organization and stakeholders but a lateral, many-to-many conversation among stakeholders.

4. Cohesion

The extent to which folks are agreeing with you, your position, your brand essences. The extent to which they are agreeing with each other and coalescing around and advocating a core theme, idea, or some call to action either in support or opposition to your organization’s position.

5. Community

The extent to which a core group of people with common interests are gathering and growing. Measuring the change in community size, and volume and nature of chatter over time

6. Connectedness

A look at how inter-connected the highly engaged/key influencers/advocates are and how centrally located they are in both the network and dialogue. (See Appendix for the 5Ps of influence)

7. Conversion

The ‘so what’ factor getting beyond the output into the outcome zone; conversion to a tangible like web traffic, sales, donations, awareness, opinion, usage, brand preference, likelihood to try/buy/recommend. It could also mean conversion toward any measurable marketing communication or public affairs, issues, advocacy-based objective. A conversion event could be macro (transaction) or micro (engagement), financial or not: e-commerce, sales, donations, web traffic, uploads, downloads, e-mails, etc, etc., etc. Here we could also be looking at the extent to which the quantity and quality of social media activity correlates with these outputs.

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We’ve added some more thoughtful considerations to our alliterated 7Cs and we know what some of these Cs now mean. How do we apply it in practical terms? How do we account for varying objectives and campaign types? We look at it from a systems perspective and we combine several approaches (content analysis, search and site metrics, web analytics, CRM 2.0, network analysis, primary research), and doing so in a way that those approaches are flexible enough to account for/prioritize/weight different objectives and campaign types.

Of course, to do that, we need to consider a range of objectives and campaign types. We know that not all social media strategies are (nor should they be) created equal. Non-exhaustively:

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For simplicity, though, if we assume that all social media campaigns and objectives are the same, we might conceptualize social media measurement this way with each layer (an indicator) of the pyramid being increasingly more desired or important from bottom to top:

But the reality is that social media strategies do differ one organization to the next or even within one organization, one campaign to the next so we should have a way of looking at social media measurement that would be flexible enough to adapt with these changes. For example, an organization that is comparatively new to the social media space might initially be satisfied with only getting on-line for sake of visibility or popularity. They may not (yet) be as interested--as would an organization that’s been active in social media much longer—in a genuinely engaged two-way dialogue with stakeholders.

Consider, then, a revised conceptualization where we’d want the option of shuffling the layers of the pyramid (indicators) to suit a variety of industry sectors, organizations or campaigns or even multiple campaigns within a single organization.

Each pyramid layer (below the red line*) is comprised of several items to consider, analyze, count, or aggregate. It’s important to measure each pyramid layer on its own but, more importantly, to look at all layers collectively and ask what they contribute to: a potential to influence, perhaps.

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Layers in Depth • Popularity

• Voice of the consumer stuff we can count • In-bound links, subscribers, bookmarks, followers, friends, views, listens, saves, downloads, etc. • Trackbacks • Technorati rankings, Alexa and Compete data • RSS subscriptions • Similar to loyalty / advocacy (see below) but more passive at this payer

• Sentiment • Historical tone of all the author’s past contributions • Overall tone of discussion spurred by the original post • Gaps in tone in originating content and resulting discussion • Track sentiment (and the nature of conversations, opinions) and how these are changing over time as a proxy for

/ predictor of online behavior. • Think here about social media monitoring and analysis as a social barometer and real-time digital form of or proxy

for market research and CRM: mining conversations to tease out how people ‘feel’ about products/services/issues/causes and 1) their intended/reported behavior and what motivates them to buy, (as cited in the conversations), and 2) their actual behavior tracked via CRMA 2.0 and Web 2.0 analytics

• Relevance • On topic? • Raw author contribution: how often / prolific?

• Authority • Of the poster • Idea starters (source) or spreaders (spider)? • Prominently located in the network? (degree of inter-connectedness / inter-relatedness) • Connected? • Respected? • Ratio of following to followers • RTs/1000 followers • Consider using scoring tools like Klout, Twittalyzer, Twinfluence (though none are without critique) only as a

supplement to a broader means of tracking authority • Entity (Organization / Brand) Presence

• Present? Prominent? Frequent? • # of positive mentions • Competitive share of original post • Competitive share of resulting discussion • Attribution recognition. Are your brand essences, attributes, messages coming through?

• Engagement • Dialogue? 2-way? How much? How long? How good? How many unique commentators? Repeats? • Conversation index: ratio of comments to posts. • Nature of the language: inter-connective? Expanded? Clarified? • Network analysis: inter-connected/related? • Is the conversation one-to-one/one-to-many (vertical), many-to-many (lateral)?

• Loyalty / Advocacy • Similar to Popularity (see above) but more active at this layer • Are social media users advancing your cause? • What proportion of the engaged are advocates? • % containing links • % active contributors • Tags added, RTs, digs, fans, votes, shares, likes, invites, favorites, embeds, etc. • Nature and intent of language: Inter-connective? Expanded ? Clarified? Reinterpreted?

• Cascade • Citation analysis / ripple index (how frequently are we appearing/where/where is it spreading?) • Measuring the change in community size, and volume and nature of chatter over time • Network analysis

• Volume & velocity of message spread across the network • Inter-connectedness / inter-relationships among:

• All in the network vs. only the most authoritative influentials

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The 7Cs offer a way to starting thinking, generally, about how to approach measuring social media in a way that goes beyond simple counting and is inclusive enough to account for dynamic and multidimensional conversations and communities. More specifically we need to combine several approaches as there is no singularly adequate approach and we need to do so in a way that those approaches are flexible enough to account for, prioritize, and weight different objectives and campaign types.

Alan Chumley, a Senior Vice President at CARMA International, Global Media Analysts, has fourteen years’ experience in corporate communication/measurement, including corporate, agency (former Director of Measurement at Hill & Knowlton Canada) and measurement supply-side roles. Alan holds a master’s degree in communication and culture with research focused on media effects and uses, audience studies, and reception analysis. Alan is an adjunct university-level instructor of PR measurement.

*The index referred to in this paper intends to cover the measurement of outputs and outtakes only. True outcomes can and should measured using web analytics, market mix models, and primary research to look at opinions, attitudes, reported behaviors and the quality of relationships (using Grunig’s Relationship Index, 1999, for example) but that is the focus on an entirely separate article.

Appendices

The 5 Ps of Influence Popular: visible, vocal, has a substantial following, reach. In-bound links, trackbacks, subscribers, bookmarks, followers,

friends, views, listens, saves, downloads, etc. Polarized in tone: neutrality does little to drive influence way or the other. A clearly positive or negative view will polarize

readers/followers and is more likely to drive cohesion and mobilize advocates and have those advocates coalesce around a core theme, idea, or call to action.

Prolific / Relevant / Frequent: raw author contribution and # of on-topic, related posts Prominent / Authoritative: are they an idea starter or spreader; source or spider? They may be prolific but are they

prominent? Are they highly inter-related, inter-connected, and centrally located in the network? How engaged is this person’s following in a dialogue? How much dialogue is there and what is its nature? Here we need to recognize, though, that authority is contextual and topical. One might be an authority on PR measurement but not on 18th century Russian literature.

Promoter / Advocate: how many of the followers/commentators active contributors advocating, endorsing, advancing (or the opposite) your position? Are they adding links, tags. Is the nature of the language they are using inter-connective, expanded, clarifying, reinterpreting? RTs, digs, fans, votes, buzz-ups, up/downloads, shares, likes, invites, favorites, embeds. (More active than the metrics in popularity)

Measuring influence (or potential to, really) is only part of a more broad systems, network analysis, social capital-informed approach to social media measurement. For that, we need to consider the more fulsome 7Cs of social media measurement.

Caution Regarding: ROI vs. roi & other Return-On’s

UPPERCASE ROI Lowercase roi

Financial Non-financial

Macro Micro (not all conversion events are ROI)

MBA PR

A mathematical equation Conceptual only; an equation in words only; can’t actually be calculated (if it’s not math and can’t be calculated, it’s not ROI)

A business metric All too often a media metric

Direct, clear A loose proxy or an intermediate metric or math-that-doesn’t really-work concept:

Return on Expectation, Return on Investment, Return on Engagement

carma on social media measurement

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