+

How Social is Your Web Site? Getting Started with Social Media Optimization and Metrics

+Darlene FichterUniversity of Saskatchewandarlene.fichter@usask.ca

www.twitter.com/fichter

www.facebook.com/people/Darlene-Fichter/122200386

Jeff WisniewskiUniversity of Pittsburghhttp://profile.to/jeffwisniewski/jeffw@pitt.edu

+Game Plan

Why be social?

Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Developing your Social Media Plan

Measuring success

Photo by computerjoe

+Why Be Social?

‘cause everyone else is doing it and talking about it at conferences and stuff…

‘cause kids think it’s cool

‘cause my boss told me to

‘cause my boss told me NOT to

+Why Be Social?

Social media provides innovative ways for libraries to connect with users we may never see face to face

To encourage, promote, innovate, learn, adapt

To discover and deliver what users want

To improve customer service

To “market” without marketing

Photo by Riot Jane

+Why Be Social?

Your Google page rank is influenced by it

People are anxious to interact with you online

85% of Americans using social media think companies should have an active presence in the social media environment. What's even more interesting is that those users actually want the companies to interact with them while there. http://www.coneinc.com/content1182

+

Over a third of respondents also said they used Facebook to discuss academic work with other students on a weekly basis, and more than half responded positively to the idea of using Facebook for more formal teaching and learning – although only 7% had actually done so.

“Facebook is 'social glue' for university freshers”

http://www.physorg.com/news143200776.html

+Primary Obstacles

Staffing constraints

Fear of loss of control

Inadequate metrics

Organizational culture (membership)

Photo by pigpogm

+Social Media Optimization (SMO)

SMO is the process of implementing changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.

-Rohit Bhargava, Influential Marketing Blog

+Increase Your Linkability

Write great content online which will force others, in one way or another, to take notice and link back to you. Blog posts Original content Doing things remarkably

Give to get: link to great outside content Pay it forward

+Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy

http://addthis.com

+Make Your Content Movable and Mixable Create concise, well written, fresh content

Use portable formats:P

DF, video files, audio files

Add social bookmark links

Tag your own pages on delicious and other social bookmark sites

+Examples

Specialized book lists

Subject resources guides

Topical guides (copyright, foreclosure law, genealogy research)

Staff reviews of books, videos

Information literacy tutorials

Story hour videos

+Encourage User-Generated Content

Denver Public Library has a YouTube contest

Gail Borden Public Library's Storypalooza

Next gen OPACs that allow for tagging rating, reviewing, sharing

+Exercise

Does your site have any original, “link worthy” content?

If so, how visible, movable, or re-mixable is it?

+Encourage the Mashup

Open up your web content: catalog, repositories, digital archives

RSSify your content http://profy.com/2007/09/30/7-tools-to-make-an-rss-feed-of-any

-website/

+Participate: Join the Conversation Wherever Your Users Are

Social media should be a two-way conversation:

Blog and enable comments

Create Facebook/Myspace pages and encourage feedback

Upload photos to Flickr and allow comments

Mention active community members

+Be Honest, Be Real and Be Friendly

Social media requires:

Authenticity

Openness

Transparency

Giving up control to a certain extent

Putting out the welcome mat

Be these things online AND offlineBe these things online AND offline

+Developing a Social Media Plan

1. SMART Objective(s)

2. Target Audience

3. Integration

4. Culture Change

5. Capacity

6. Tools and Tactics

7. Measurement

+SMART Objectives

What do you want to accomplish with social media?

Restate this objective so it is “SMART” – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-based

Describe how your social media objective supports or links to one or more of your organization’s goals

+Increase Traffic

Why?

Are you trying to create awareness of your products and services?

Do you want to enhance your library's brand online?

Do you want to foster and develop stronger ties with the community as a whole or a sector of your community, leading to increased participation?

+Examples

Listen and Learn: You're monitoring what stakeholders are saying about your organization, services or programs

Build Relationships: You’re interacting with key audiences on the social media channel in order to foster and develop stronger ties with the community as a whole or a sector of your community.

Improve Reputation: You want to improve how others think about your organization or issue and are responding directly to feedback through social media channels.

Increase Traffic and Page Rankings: You're using social media tactics to drive traffic to your organization's site or improving search engine results or using social media channels to spread your content.

+Exercise

Answer the following:

What do you want to accomplish with social media?

Make sure your objective is “SMART” – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic,

and Time-based

+Target Audience

Who must you reach with your social media efforts to meet your objective? Why this target group?

What social media tools are they currently using?

Determine type of relationship you want based on what they’re ready for and where they are

+

http://business.rapleaf.com/company_press_2008_07_29.html

+

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/275/report_display.asp

+Social Technographics

http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html

+

+Blogging

73% of people read blogs worldwide

184 million people blog worldwide

34% post opinions about brands

36% think more positively about companies that have blogs

+TIP: Common Blogging Mistakes

Writing for PhDs (ie. Using big words)

Making the post too long (over 800 words)

Hard selling

Repackaging info

Not including facts

Using full paragraph format

Not using or numbering lists

Photo by net_efekt

+Podcasts

2009 audience: 38 million

By 2012 projected audience: 65 million

Age

18-29 = 27%

30-49 = 20%

50-64 = 15%

65+ = 8%

Source: eMarketer

+YouTube

100 million streamed videos viewed each day

65,000 new clips uploaded per day

13 million unique visitors per month

Average user spends 30 minutes

58% of videos are watched on YouTube

Largest demographic is 18- 35 year olds

Source: Startup Review

+Flickr

Over 2 billion images as of Nov. 2008

3 – 5 million photos are uploaded daily

Visitors, no college education: 44%

Households with children aged 6-17: 66%

Average Age:18-24: 18%25-34: 23%35-44: 21%45-54: 19%55-64: 13%65+: 7%

+Exercise

Who are you trying to reach with social media? Which tools do you think would

be most successful in reaching this audience?

+Integration

What is the relationship between your social media efforts and the offline activity of your organization?

Is what’s happening offline supporting or undermining your social media efforts?

+Exercise

Identify one offline activity that is supportive of your social media objectives, and one that is not supportive of them.

1. Decide how to tie the supportive activity to your social media endeavors.

2. Decide how you might address the obstacle.

+Culture Change

Once you have an initial strategy, how do you get your organization to own it?

How will you address any fears or concerns?

How quickly can your organization change and adapt?

Photo by kevindooley

+Culture Change: Common Concerns

Loss of control over your organization's branding and marketing messages

Dealing with negative comments

Addressing personality versus organizational voice

Not being successful, fear of failure

Perception of wasted time and resources

+SM Requirements

Authenticity

Openness

Transparency

Giving up control to a certain extent

Sense of humor (optional but highly desirable)

Photo by Phong Nyugen

+Tips for Selling SM

Show examples of successful SM in other libraries

Be honest about the positives and negatives

Have a plan

Manage expectations

Mention that’s it’s free

Establish policies

+Exercise

Do you think your organization is culturally ready for social media? Why or why not?

Which concerns about social media are most likely to resonate? How might you address them?

+Capacity

Who will implement your organization’s social media strategy?

Will your content updates depend on any other resource or person?

Do you need additional tools, expertise or software to get started?

+Your Social Media Person/People Should Be:

Comfortable using the tools

Informed and passionate about your organization's programs

Should enjoy interacting with other people

+Exercise

1. Do you need any additional tools, expertise, personnel to implement your social media strategy? If so, identify source(s) for these.

2. Identify a person/people who would be ideal candidates for your social media team

+Tools and Tactics

What tactics and tools best support your objectives and match your targeted audience?

What tactics and tools do you have the capacity to implement?

+Tools and Tactics: Four Broad Tactical Approaches

1. Listen Beginners start here! Use what you hear to inform decision-

making

2. Participate Engage in conversation via blogging, twittering

3. Share Your Story Blogging, podcasting, YouTube, Flickr

4. Build Community Online communities for knowledge or skill sharing: Ning,

Facebook, My Space

+Exercise

Which broad tactical approach do you think is best suited for your

organization, and why?

+Measurement

+Gosh, This is Hard!

Prospero's Social Media Survey asked large corporations about their social media return on investment (ROI), and while 35% reported positive ROI 41% said that ROI was “unknown”.

+What You’re Not Measuring…

Friendship

Happiness

Karma

Enlightenment

Girl power

+Measurement

Quantitative

Qualitative

+Exercise

Briefly note the assessment efforts at your organization currently under way. What tools are used?

Is social media measurement any part of these efforts?

+What You Are Measuring…

The “Trinity Approach”*

Behavior

Outcome

Experience

*developed by Vinash Kaushik

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2006/08/trinity-a-mindset-strategic-approach.html

+Behavior

The “what”

Quantitative Number of blog posts Number of Facebook friends/fans Views/visits

+Outcome

The “tangible benefit” of your social media activity

Higher satisfaction

Fewer help desk calls

More searches

Increase in funding

+

+Experience

Put on your listening ears!

ListenEngage

ConverseTake action

+The Experience Metric

Experience can be measured and evaluated:

Stars, scars, or neutral?

You LIKE You LIKE me, you me, you

REALLY like REALLY like me!me!

+Five Things to Get Started

Monitor general search engine results

Monitor social media search engine results

Create alerts

Analytics: Google and Clicky

Assess the nature and sentiment of activity

1111

2222

3333

4444

5555

+

+Monitor Search Engine Results

Use Google: best job of the big three search engines in indexing and integrating social media sources like blog posts, videos, and Flickr photo sets

1111

TIP: In addition to including social media, other ways to boost your page rank include using good descriptive page titles and

properly using HTML heading tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3>

+Google Results – Hennepin County Public Library

+

+

+Monitor Social Media Search

Engine Results

Why?

Used by high value, highly connected, highly influential userso Pays great dividends if they are fans of the library

Choose the specific social media search engines that match your media efforts

2222

+Technorati

For blogs and feeds

Authority score: the number of distinct blogs linking to you in the past six months, favorites (i.e. your fans) and your blog's rank (Quantitative)

Qualitative: Which blogs are linking to you? Are they blogs that your target audience reads and respects? Are readers able to see the blogger as someone "who is like me"?

technorati.com

+delicious

Is your content bookmark-worthy?

Use delicious built-in statistics to monitor links to your content, tags and notes.

Go to delicious, search for your library, project, or service, and see how many people have bookmarked it (quantitative), when, and see what if any comments have been posted (qualitative).

delicious.com

+

Do you show up? How often?

A search for Seattle library, for example, returns 31 tweets, many among them are "stars".

Advanced search features a local search option: find book sale near "place name" or DVD near "place name".

twitter.com

+ Create alerts

Check standard web logs for refers from search engines. What terms do people use?

Set up a Google Alert

Use quotes “

University of Pittsburgh” library

Pitt library

Choose “comprehensive” to get results from news, blogs, web, video and groups

Be notified “as it happens” or daily digest

3333

+ Google Analytics and Clicky for Social Media

Google Analytics - Create conversion funnel to measure a social media action chain

Look at referrers.

Are users coming to your site from social media sites where you have some sort of presence? Does this change over time?

Clicky’s dashboard reports social media traffic by aggregating referrers from 20+ social media sites

4444

www.google.com/analytics/ getclicky.com

+Clicky Chart

+ Assess the Nature and Sentiment

What is the strength and tone of the social media activity? “deep” commenting vs. superficial users staying vs. bouncing quickly Repeat commenters vs. drive bys

5555

Photo by Funkyah

+Questions? Discussion?

+

THANK YOUTHANK YOU