KPIs For
Social Media Monitoring
A ‘HOW TO’ GUIDE
CUSTOMER TRAINING CENTER
KPIs For Social Media Monitoring
A ‘HOW TO’ GUIDE
(POSITIVE VOLUME - NEGATIVE VOLUME)
(POSITIVE + NEUTRAL + NEGATIVE) 100
100 SYNTHESIORANK (POSITIVE VOLUME - NEGATIVE VOLUME)
(POSITIVE + NEUTRAL + NEGATIVE)
KPIs FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORIING
Social media monitoring can produce many forms of data. The extent and range of this data can be so vast, it may be overwhelming for companies and brands.
This guide will provide a breakdown of the data that can be achieved through social media monitoring, along with best practices on how it can be used to produce actionable insights that will optimize all areas of business and scale across the enterprise.
SOCIAL REPUTATION SCORE (SRS)
Social Reputation Score is an indicator that measures overall sentiment about a brand on social media (including mainstream media, forums and blogs).
Many brands use “Net sentiment” (i.e. positive minus negative volume) as a means of measuring sentiment levels, but this does not tell the whole story. For example, a brand with 5% positivity and 1%
negativity will derive the same figure as a brand showing 80% positivity and 76% negativity. The calculation therefore makes no allowance for high levels of neutral volume reported.
SRS accounts for levels of neutral verbatim within a brand’s data set and therefore provides a more accurate and holistic measurement of overall feeling for the brand.
The calculation is simple:
However, not all verbatim are “created equal” and the “influence” or potential visibility of any post should be factored into the equation. For example, negative may equal or exceed positive volume, but the majority of this could be generated from low-follower accounts on Twitter rather than more authoritative posts on heavily trafficked forums.
All volume is therefore weighted by SynthesioRank (Synthesio’s proprietary influence metric, expressed as a score out of 10) in order to generate a more accurate reflection of the volume’s potential impact on the online communities.
X X
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KPIs For Social Media Monitoring
A ‘HOW TO’ GUIDE
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING SRS?
• Holistic measurement of sentiment that reflects all brand volume and its potential impact
• Provides a single trackable figure
• Can be applied to different media types to reflect impact of PR activity or Earned vs. Owned Media, track sentiment around a campaign, etc.
• Visible at topic level, enabling greater granularity of reporting
• Allows competitor benchmarking
SYNTHESIORANK
SynthesioRank is our automated algorithm which allows you to consistently measure the
influence (visibility and potential impact) of each verbatim harvested regardless of source, on a scale from 0 to 10. Click here for more detailed information about SynthesioRank.
The importance of influencer scoring and identification is clear when tracking and measuring social media content. Consumers tend to believe and trust the opinion of someone they know over traditional advertising or marketing, making word of mouth one of the most powerful techniques in the business.
A glowing or scathing review from a trusted source can make a huge impact on a brand, so the ability to identify your influencers and the communities they inhabit is an essential function of any social media monitoring activity.
Beyond influencer identification, using SynthesioRank enables you to measure the likely visibility of your brand’s social media volume. The chart below shows how weighting by SynthesioRank can provide clearer indication of the online buzz around stories and brand messages. In the example below, Brand B has more influential Twitter commenters and is mentioned on more heavily trafficked forums.
VOLUME BY MEDIA TYPE - ACTUAL VOLUME BY MEDIA TYPE SYNTHESIORANK WEIGHTED
BLOGS FORUM TWITTER BLOGS FORUM TWITTER
KPIs For Social Media Monitoring
A ‘HOW TO’ GUIDE
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING SYNTHESIORANK?
• Identifies individuals and sites that carry the most relevant discussions about your brand
• Can be used to identify a sample of the most influential verbatim to prioritize for human analysis
• Can be analyzed at topic level to understand who is talking about specific aspects of your brand
• Provides a weighted volume figure that can be used to estimate likely reach of brand volume
COMMUNITIES ANALYSIS
In addition to Influencer Analysis, it is important to understand which communities of interest are discussing your brand. Each forum, blog and mainstream media type Synthesio crawls is assigned a
“Community” of interest. For example, Pistonheads Gassing Station is defined as automotive, while MumsNet falls under parenting.
Insights like this can help inform clients about the placement of digital marketing. For example, a health- care client revised its digital display strategy upon learning that their product was being discussed across a range of predominantly “male” communities rather than dedicated healthcare environments.
Communities analysis is also an important method of understanding if your brand or product’s features are being discussed by the “right audience”. The example below shows the community volume
surrounding a revolutionary and greener engine technology developed by a certain automotive marque.
The learning here for the brand was that their technology was not being discussed within environmental communities, whose engagement would be key to generating buzz and endorsement for the
technology.
COMMUNITIES TYPE - VERBATIM
AUTO & MOTO GAMES ECONOMY ENERGY & SPORTS
ENVIRONMENT IT &
TECHNOLOGY FINANCE &
INVESTMENT LEISURE &
ENTERTAINMENT
KPIs For Social Media Monitoring
A ‘HOW TO’ GUIDE
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING COMMUNITIES ANALYSIS?
• Facilitates more efficient digital marketing activity
• Acts as a barometer for cut-through of product attribute messaging
• Provides audience profiling function to help identify social audiences to communicate with and influencers within disparate communities
• Measures the performance of community outreach programs
THE BASICS
VOLUME
Volume of verbatim is the standard social media currency and the metric by which most social activity is measured. However, bigger is not necessarily better and volume should be sliced and diced in a number of ways to ensure the right conclusions are drawn from the available data.
SHARE OF VOICE
Volume requires context. Measuring Share of Voice among your competitors gives an indication of your brand’s talkability within your market’s context and helps to set benchmarks and KPIs against which to measure future activity.
EVOLUTION
Enables you to see trends in your data. Long term volume analysis helps you understand patterns and understand whether your communications are having a sustained effect on volume.
MEDIA TYPE
Where your brand or stories surrounding your brand are being discussed is a strong indication of the type of conversation it provokes. These conversation types can broadly be classified as:
TWITTER:
• Transitory news stories, often sourced from main news or industry news environments.
• Retweets from key influencers
• Acclamations of brand consumption or usage (particularly prevalent in FMCG markets)
• Sharing of service or brand/product experiences and customer service
• Direct brand complaints
• Expressions of brand or product desire
• Automated propagation of online behavior/experiences (e.g. Amazon purchases)
• Responses to TV creative or programming
KPIs For Social Media Monitoring
A ‘HOW TO’ GUIDE
FORUMS & PRODUCT REVIEW SITES:
• In-depth brand or product discussion, often in response to direct questions from users
• Brand or product reviews
• Troubleshooting and gathering peer advice
Forums tend to offer analysts greater scope for higher value qualitative analysis, provided by depth of discussion and comparison on forums.
BLOGS:
Volume on blogs needs to be analyzed in depth to understand the potential influence of the blogger and the nature of the blog itself. Blogs often act as hubs for industry-related stories or can carry strong individual opinion.
SOCIAL NETWORKS:
Due to privacy regulations on sites such as Facebook and VKontakte, we are only able to crawl open areas, which are usually brand pages. High volume on Social Networks is an indication that consumers are engaging directly with the brand. Volume here tends to be more positive as it comes from fans of the brand. The nature of posts is heavily dependent on how the brand manages the page, but typical types of post include:
• Responses to brand posts or communications
• Brand or product acclamations
• Service or brand complaints and inquiries
• Competition entries
Media type analysis is crucial to understanding the scope and virality of brand stories or communication activities. News stories are typically propagated on Twitter at their inception, which, as discussed, is often transitory in nature. However, if these stories are picked up and discussed widely on forums, it is often a strong indicator that consumers view the story as worthy of in depth discussion and perhaps has greater longevity.
Analyzing evolution by media type helps inform which media should be implemented to increase reach or conversation. The conversation below reveals a clear link between PR activity via mainstream and ensuing conversations on forums. However, sustained Twitter activity only rose toward the end of the monitored period following brand communication. This had a significant effect on volume for the brand.
KPIs For Social Media Monitoring
A ‘HOW TO’ GUIDE
FINAL THOUGHTS
There are no rights and wrongs when setting your KPIs for social media monitoring. They should, however reflect your wider communication goals and business objectives.
Social data can be cut, sliced and merged in numerous ways and implemented to answer a large variety of questions and business issues. Of vital importance when choosing which to use is the question of benchmarking. In a world where data availability is in constant flux and each medium allows for
different levels of analysis, you need to ensure consistency of approach and choose metrics accordingly.
EVOLUTION BY MEDIA TYPE
MAINTREAM OTHER SOCIAL BLOGS FORUM TWITTER
