A New Paradigm for PRMeasurement:The ROI of Using a SocialMedia Monitoring Tool

7th in the Social Media ROI Series

With Connie Bensen

LLEETT’’SS TTAALLKK::Social Media ROI

Whitepaper

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool

A New Paradigm for PR Measurements

Executive Summary: The Public Relations industry has changed radically. A whole new industry of social media monitoring has evolved from it! The advent of thesocial web has caused a paradigm shift that has forced agencies to reconsider how they approach the practice & delivery of their services.Some have been proactive and adopted the transition in stride, while others are reactive and driven by client requests.

There is a steady shift towards the incorporation of social media channels into public relations efforts. The social media press release is aneffective and efficient method for sharing a message in a variety of formats to multiple social channels. This white paper will explain why asocial media monitoring tool is essential for successful public relations. Let’s Talk! about how social media monitoring will augment yourpublic relations efforts.

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool

A New Paradigm for PR Measurements

Katie Paine, founder of KDPaine & Partners LLC and author of Measuring Public Relationships hasfrequently said, “Public relations measurement is no longer about eyeballs.” Social networks haverevolutionized an industry that used to rely on clippings. Engagement has replaced the clipping days.

Engagement is not measured by the number of eyeballs, hits, impressions, Twitterfollowers, LinkedIn connections or Facebook friends. Engagement is about how amessage is shared and spread online & offline. Social media monitoring tools werecreated for the PR industry. Three to four years ago there was a vision to measure onlineinteraction. A listening tool is the key to efficiently making your public relations effortseffective and measureable in the following ways:

• Engagement• Reputation and Sentiment• Influence• Reach

Effective public relations isn’t about impressions, it’s about relationships. The nature ofthe industry is based on increasing trust and regard; the question is how to measure thaton the social web. It’s impossible to count impressions in social media, but engagementcan be measured. Who cares about the reach of clippings when you can measurerevenue? A social media monitoring tool allows you to discover, map and measurerelationships. You can measure your public relations efforts for each of the four areaslisted above.

Engagement

Engagement translates into creating closer relationships with consumers and, in turn,generating more revenue. There is no standard definition of engagement, but it is agreedthat engagement consists of offering some type of interaction which results in a desiredresponse. There can also be various levels of engagement. For example, one person mayjust browse your content, while another may comment and share it.

A listening tool provides information on consumers by highlighting real conversations. Itallows one to identify a target market and create a customer profile. What motivates

them to interact online? What are they interested in and more importantly, what types of online activitiesdo they actively participate in now? A social media monitoring tool can also identify:

• The types of social networks and communities they participate in• What is important to your target market • Where they are going for their information• The best formats to use for content that engages your target market

It is easy to create a set of metrics based on the level of engagement and your objectives. The following isan example of a hierarchy used to measure engagement:

Introduction

Since the summer of2008, Edelman hasbeen following the keyconversations aroundChevron and the energyindustry online. They

have been using Alterian SM2 to analyzethe focus, volume and sentiment of theonline conversation about these issuesacross blogs, discussion forums and socialnetworks, including sites such as Twitter,Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr.Chevron has been using the informationto stay informed about energy topics thatare important to people participating inthe online community. The public reportand related videos provide excellent examples of how a brand can utilize a social media monitoring tool to measureits digital footprint online and the sentiment around issues that matter to itsconsumers.

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool

A New Paradigm for PR Measurements

• Lowest - % unique visitors - This can be measured by your web analytics tool. Take note of where your visitors are coming from and investigate what is driving them towards your site. It is generally an opportunity to join the conversation.

• Repeat - % repeat visitors - Again, this is measured by web analytics. Ask how you can engage with this group. Identify where they’re coming from. What are they silently engaging in? Ask yourself how you can extend that process.

• Engaged - % comments, friends, followers (did something more than visit) - At this level you can start to see people in action, and it can be measured by a social media monitoring tool. This type of measurement is invaluable because you can see how they are sharing the messages on the web, beyond your site and expressing how and why they’re finding value. Spend time with this group, as their enthusiasm will encourage others to follow suit.

• Highly Engaged - % repeat comments, retweets, thread participation, questions answered, etc. A monitoring tool is necessary to measure this. It can also identify your influencers. They have the power to motivate others.

• Addicted - % advocating, recommending, and expressing positive sentiment - It is important to choose a tool that measures sentiment. This can greatly reduce the amount of hours spent on manually scoring items, thereby increasing your return on investment. Brand advocates are golden; show them that you appreciate their support of your brand, and ask how you can support them. Your online efforts should be focused on increasing the latter percentages. Those consumers will drive more unique visitors to your content, and create an enviable PR and marketing machine.

JetBlue could have had a major PR headache on their hands when the JetBlue flight attendant pulled theemergency chute in August 2010. The following examples include the 39,511 results from the social web.You can see that the incident was discussed heavily for a few days and then dropped off. An article in theSocialTimes.com outlines the incident and JetBlue’s response.

The graph below represents an example of how JetBlue might measure those that are “Engaged” in thediscussion surrounding the event.

PR Measurement: A Case Study

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool

A New Paradigm for PR Measurements

One would assume that there would be heavy criticism of JetBlue when the flight attendant quit. In reality,however, there was almost as much positive opinion as negative sentiment.

The sentiment graph below could be used to measure advocators by looking at the Category “VeryPositive”

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool

A New Paradigm for PR Measurements

The social web has opened a new channel that has an incredible power to sway public opinion. It ispowerful because the people themselves are in charge. The most incredible opportunity lies in the abilityfor brands to interact directly with consumers. At the same time, however, there are some inherentdangers in this type of direct communication. It is imperative to follow the norms of the community in eachsocial network. In this new social media game, consumers have the ability to opt-in, so if brands arespamming or pushing their message, people will opt-out and view it as another channel to ignore.

Measuring sentiment and tone is straightforward with a social media monitoring tool. It provides a baselineas well as trends over time. The trend over time should be monitored closely to identify potential brandcrises. It’s always easier to put out small fires rather than experience a firestorm. It’s also important toestablish a presence in the social networks where your target markets are interacting so you are preparedto interact, should an issue flare up.

The graph below shows how sentiment was trending over time in regard to the JetBlue incident. It ispossible to drill into each point to see why the sentiment is trending negative. The negative trending needsto be watched closely on an ongoing basis because it is an early indicator of public relations nightmares. Inthis case, it shows that JetBlue handled the incident in the correct manner and the negative discussionquieted down.

The most valuable aspect of a brand monitoring tool is the ability to see the most negative conversationsas well as the most positive. Both provide the opportunity to engage directly with the author. Thoseconversations will provide a wealth of feedback relating to customer service, product performance, techsupport, advertising and marketing messaging, and innovative ideas.

Reputation and Sentiment

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool

A New Paradigm for PR Measurements

Measuring sentiment on the social web can be done in a number of ways:• % positive mentions versus negative (remove the neutral ones)• Number of positive mentions• Number of retweets• Assess customer satisfaction: there are many free or low cost survey tools available such as surveymoney.com or zoomerang.com

Every organization, no matter its size and no matter whether it’s for profit or not, needs to find newstakeholders. That’s a given. The challenge is to find the influencers and brand advocates behind a brand.Once you have accomplished this, they will pick up the ball and run with it.

Traditional public relations and marketing have relied on celebrities as influencers. Today on the social web,an influencer is anyone who is passionate about your brand. A social media monitoring tool will quicklyidentify those that are creating the most content about your brand. It will also deftly show what level ofinfluence they have online. Once those details are provided, the rest is straightforward. It’s simply a matterof asking how you can help them if they’re a brand advocate. If they’re an influencer in your industry, thenthe question to ask yourself is, ‘What can I give them that they would find value in and share the messagewith their community?’

It’s tempting to only consider influencers as the ones with the most following or greatestsocial presence. However, consider the people who are passionate about your brand butaren’t necessarily living and breathing the internet 24/7. These people may be your mostvaluable influencers. They have the time to contribute to your efforts because they don’thave a huge following, and they will be thrilled to be offered the opportunity to supportyour brand if they’re already fans. Turn them into ‘raving fans’ as Jeremy Epstein refers tothem.

In addition, keep in mind that influence occurs offline as much as online. It is thusimportant to interweave the online interactions with offline events. Consider how you canconnect your influencers with each other online and offline and support them in carrying

your message. If they are united and equipped with the necessary tools, they will take your staff and runwith it.

Measuring influence generally depends on the type of social network.

• Twitter: number of followers, following• Blogs: number of readers, number of backlinks• Video & photo sites: number of views, comments

Influence

Tip:Keep in mind that those with the largestfollowing aren’t always your best potentialbrand advocates. Once you get to knowyour customer segment, the influencerswill be obvious.

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool

A New Paradigm for PR Measurements

Reach is the final area to consider. How far is your message going? Are you saying something on Twitterbut could just as well be standing in a dark closet with the door shut (talking to yourself)?! Reach is theripple that happens when your message is picked up and carried throughout the social web.

There are a couple of ways to measure reach:• volume over time – The distribution across various social networks over time – This will also show the velocity of your message. How quickly did the message spread?

• Number of retweets, comments on a blog post, comments on a forum post

This chart below shows the distribution of the conversations about the JetBlue incident over various socialnetworks.

A social media monitoring tool can provide a sense of the reach, but it is an interesting exercise tocalculate the potential reach when considering the retweets and how many followers each person has.

Another interesting application of the tool entails using historical data to review the reach and effectivenessof campaigns or programs run in the past. This will provide invaluable insight into whether they should befurther continued or revised to achieve greater reach. A cancer hospital, MD Anderson, for example, foundthe historical data to be very helpful in deciding not to run another program on Prostrate Cancer. Based onthe response online, they chose to offer a program on men’s health and nutrition, which was betterreceived. You can read more about that case study here.

Start small because if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

Reach

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool

A New Paradigm for PR Measurements

A framework for a social media campaign from a public relations perspective:• Use a social media monitoring tool to do a brand audit• Identify the objectives based on the target market’s needs

•Potential outcomes• increased awareness – % increase in daily volume• % increase in traffic to site• % of increased # of blog posts on web• increased mentions on Google - increased SEO• increased # of projects submitted (or some type of user generated content)• % increase in registrations at site• Increased attendance at event

• Create the strategy based on how you intend to encourage the behaviors that you’re measuring above. Some activities (but make sure they will help achieve what you’re going to measure above):•Do a blogger outreach – share your message along with the requested call to action (be creative here! Or you may be ignored)

•Send the call to action to your mailing list•Share the message with Twitter (make sure that you build a following first)•Create and promote a hashtag•Podcast interviews – post on blog•Reach out to journalists and influencers•Real life meetups – promote on Twitter and Facebook•Request user generated content - Repurpose this content so that your community can benefit from it•Build community by sharing information using shareable sites such as YouTube, slideshare, etc.

Integrating sales, marketing and public relations efforts across social media is invaluable and will greatlyaffect your ability to maximize all opportunities in regard to engagement, sentiment, influence and reach.Defining your objectives carefully will drive the metrics. What are you trying to achieve? A social mediamonitoring tool is then needed to benchmark and measure your efforts over time. It will provide you withthe overview of patterns and trends. More importantly it will provide both quantitative and qualitativeresults. The social web has changed how consumers perceive and interact with brands. Public Relationsprofessionals need to understand this shift and incorporate their ability to measure their efforts.

Conclusion

© 2010 Alterian. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

The ROI of Using a Social Media Monitoring Tool

A New Paradigm for PR Measurements

About the “Let’sTalk” Series withConnie Bensen

Social Media marketing is providing a whole new dimension for brands to connect with consumers. Thesocial web is a vast entity and every marketer needs a tool to harness the information in the most costeffective and efficient manner. A social media monitoring tool offers the ability to maximize the digitalportion of your marketing budget in order to create, execute, measure and report on a social mediastrategy.

The Let's Talk Series, by Connie Bensen, is a series of 10 whitepapers describing the variety of ways thatmarketers can increase the ROI of their marketing efforts. Topics will include how to use a social mediamonitoring tool for SEO, Lead Generation, Social Media campaigns, Customer Service, CompetitiveInsight, Corporate marketing, PR and reputation management, etc.

Connie is the Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian, which provides marketingsoftware to help brands engage with their customers. She is a key voice amongst online CommunityManagers. Her blog, www.conniebensen.com is recognized as a leading resource for cultivating onlinecommunities, providing best practices for this emerging role and it is listed in Forbes.com as one of the 20Best Marketing and Social Media Blogs by Women.

Alterian’s SM2 is a social media monitoring and analysis solution designed for PR andMarketing professionals. SM2 helps you track conversations, review positive/negativesentiment for your brand, clients, competitors and partners across social media channelssuch as blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, social networks, video/photo sharing sites and real-timealerts.

Alterian (LSE: ALN) empowers organizations to create relevant, effective and engaging experiences withtheir audience that help build value and reinforce commitment to their brand, through the use of theAlterian Integrated Marketing Platform. Alterian drives the transformation of marketing andcommunications, making it practical and cost-effective for companies to orchestrate multichannelengagement with the individual.

Alterian’s unprecedented integration of analytics, content and execution through industry leading tools,such as the Dynamic Messenger email platform, SM2 Social Media Monitoring platform and the awardwinning Content Management solutions, enables companies to build integrated communication strategieswhich create a true picture of the individual.

Alterian works with marketing services partners, system integrators and agencies who recognize the needto plan and deliver coordinated customer engagement services in partnership with their clients. For moreinformation about Alterian, products within the Alterian Integrated Marketing Platform or Alterian’s PartnerNetwork, visit www.alterian.com or the Alterian blog at www.engagingtimes.com.

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