analytics

No Snow Days for the Digital Branch

by David Lee King on March 4, 2011

So – who uses your website? Are they your “regulars” – those customers you see in the building every day? Or are they people you don’t normally see?

Ask that with no data behind it, and I’m sure you’ll get a variety of responses. But add in a bit of data, and it gets interesting.

For example, the above graphic is from my library’s Google analytics info – it’s showing the number of website visits we received in February. And it shows a normal arc of use – those dips you see are Friday – Sunday. Nothing looks out-of-the ordinary.

But guess what? We were closed one of those days because of snow. Can you guess which one from the graph? Probably not – it was the far left dot – Tuesday, February 1.

We had 1714 website visits that day. It was actually the website’s busiest Tuesday in February. On a snow day.

So what’s that mean? Hard to say, really – but here are some thoughts [update - just added/edited some points]:

  • your website users and your in the building users are two different user groups.
  • Customers inside our building aren’t our primary catalog users. Which makes sense – inside the building, customers can browse the shelves (on Feb 1, we had 793 visits to the catalog – 587 were referrals from our main website).
  • Perhaps we need to actually promote our catalog and our website … inside our building???
  • Said another way – Your primary website users are your online customers.
  • How are you supporting those online customers?

One thing it does show – there are no snow days for the digital branch. Your customers are visiting you, and using your primary services … whether you are open or closed.

How are you reaching out to, and supporting, those customers?

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Podcamp Topeka – Social Media ROI

by David Lee King on November 8, 2010

Social Media ROI – presented by Eric Melin at Spiral16

Who owns social media?

public relations – crisis management
marketing – brand reputation management
sales/bizDev – lead generation
customer service – engagement/retention
product development – competitive intelligence
IT – deployment/integrating new solutions

IE – everyone owns social media

Social Media isn’t free – it takes valuable time
You need human resources for planning, creative insight, content creation, product management, measurement, etc

What does ROI mean?
It’s challenging to define gains and costs with social media efforts

There is no way to calculate social media ROI with a one size fits all equation. People who claim that really just made a tool for their business and goals – not everyone.

Needs to be specific to your business.

ROI is difficult because it’s a financial metric. Hard to define that with social media, because it’s not based on financial gains inherently

Make sure you have clearly defined business objectives first. Then make sure your social media initiatives support your business goals.

Common metrics (like twitter follower number) – ask yourselves which ones matter to your business

2 ways to implement:
- figure out how SM can support existing company initiatives
- create new sum initiatives that help

Online data that matters:
- semantic results
- sentiment
- volume/frequency
- where does it live

Developing strategy – set up timelines and expectations – help measure if you reached your goals or not

He likes correlating traditional metrics with online metrics
Ex – actual sales = positive/negative sentiment
Retail traffic = message reach
etc

Can you see spikes in sales in correlation to your social media efforts

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Facebook vs Google?

by David Lee King on September 14, 2010

Just saw this post and a couple others that commented on it – Facebook Passes Google in “Time Spent” – What Does it Mean?

What does it mean? Honestly, it could mean any number of things. But let’s take a peek at the accompanying graphic first:

Here’s what I think it might mean:

  1. Well, duh. Facebook is a social place where you connect with people you like. Google’s a search engine. Apples and oranges. ‘Nuf said.
  2. Related to #1 – Google’s main thing – their search engine – has been #1 for a long time. But the web has been morphing from primarily a place you surf and search for content to a place where you connect with people. You can see that in the graphic above – look at the mix of search engines, social places, email, etc.
  3. #2 leads to my last point – not certain the percentages are an accurate reflection of reality. Why? Well – they’re comparing Facebook – where you can do lots of stuff, like chat, watch videos, see pics of people, leave status updates, do Facebook PM emails, etc – to only Google’s search engine. But if you add up all the Google properties in this top 20 list – Google, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps – Google still clearly comes out on top.

Just picky this morning!

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Facebook & YouTube Demographics

by David Lee King on May 13, 2010

facebook Page stats
Facebook Insights

YouTube Stats
Youtube Insights

Yesterday, I was playing with Youtube and Facebook Page insights for my library, and found something interesting. Look at the demographics of who’s visiting us in those social networks – not 25-34 year olds. Not teens. Nope.

For Youtube, it’s 45-54 year old females. Followed closely by 55-64 year old women! Facebook looks a bit more “normal” to me – 35-44 year old and 25-34 year old females.

But wow. To me, those demographics really don’t much match up with what one’s first impression of a social network’s demographics would be. Ask anyone who the average viewer of  a YouTube video is, and you’ll hear “18 year old male.” NOT “Oh, I’m sure it’s a 50 year old female!”

What’s that mean to my library? Well, depending on our goals, a couple of things:

  • Goals. Did you read that? First, you need some goals. Take 10 minutes and figure out what your library’s goals for Youtube and your Facebook Page are.
  • Are we good with that demographic? If so, then great – we got em! Now, we need to make sure we’re creating targeted content in those social networks for that demographic.
  • If we aren’t hitting our targeted demographic, maybe our content needs to change … or who we friend needs to change.

What else? Anyone finding similar results in your organization’s Facebook Page or Youtube Insights? Do tell.

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IL2008: Defining & Measuring Social Media Success

by David Lee King on October 22, 2008

Speaker: Jeff Wisniewski

Why be social
bad reasons – it’s cool, my boss told me to, etc
better reasons – provides innovative ways for libraries to connect with ysers we may never see face to face, to encourage, promote, innovate, learn, adapt, to improve customer service, to discover and deliver what users want, to market without marketing

Listen first
is it a conversation? What’s being said?
Listen first to see what the tone is

Developing a social media plan
define a strategy
define goals – ie., increase awareness of library services, increase the number of new cards issues, etc
pick a platform or two
the right platform depends on your goals

Then – start!
start blogging/leaving comments, etc

Assessing social media success
quantitatively and qualitatively – both are needed
what you are measuring – the “trinity approach” – behavior, outcome, experience

the what (behavior)
quantitative
number of blog posts
- Boyd’s Conversation Index: posts/comments + trackbacks, should be greater than 1
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

Example – are your flickr imsages viewed? Monitor the number of users. Also monitor referrals from flickr to your website, then you can say collection use has increased by 2.1%… coolness.

Experience
put on your listening ears!
listen/engage/converse – take action
be authentic – admit problems and engage that way

Experience metric – experience CAN be measured and evaluated
stars, scars, or neutral? (positive, negative, neutral comments)

5 things to get started:
1. monitor general search engine results
- focus on google (they do the best in including social media stuff in search results)

2. monitor social media search engine results
- why?
- used by high-value, highly connected, highly influencial users
- pays great divedends if they are fans of the library
choose the specific social media search engines that match your media efforts
- delicious – see how many people bookmarked it (quant) and something else…
- twitter – do you show up? How often?
- advanced search has a local search option

3. create alerts
- check standard web logs for refers from search engines. What terms do people use?
- use quotes
- choose “comprehensive” to get results from news, globs, web, video, and groups

4. analytics
- create a conversion funnel to measure a social media action chain. It measures follow-through. IE if they go to a signup page, did they finish the process? If they did, that’s a conversion.

5. assess the nature and sentiment of activity
- what’s the stregth and tone of the social media activity?
- is it deep, is it a drive by, one-off comment?

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