University Business - October 2009 - (Page 54)

INTERNET TECHNOLOGY Social Media Measurement 101 A seven-step plan to set up (and beneﬁt from) a simple social measurement program By Karine Joly U SING SOCIAL MEDIA IS just not optional anymore for many marketing, communications, PR, and web professionals working at colleges and universities. While Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn as well as other social networking websites were only used by a small group of institutions just two years ago, they have now become default communication platforms for the majority in trying to reach and engage students, alums, and other constituents on their terms and at a minimum cost. ings go fast with the social web— so fast that only a minority of institutions have taken the time to set proper measurement systems to assess the results of their new communication tool set. Yet tracking results has never been so important. At a time when countless selfproclaimed social media experts want to dictate new rules of engagement to optimize your institution’s social media footprint, skipping the measurement part is a risky proposition. Using social media doesn’t require big budgets. But success on the social web can only be achieved at the price of major time commitments. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that time spent on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn is always well spent. So how do you make sure you don’t waste your time? Start by following these steps to set up a simple social media measurement system for your institution. 1. Deﬁne measurable goals for social media activities. Whether or not they include stats on your page or channel, most social media platforms won’t provide a full picture. Clear goals make the diﬀerence between strategy and mere tactics. Try to spell out what you want to achieve by using social media. Do you want to raise the yield of your admitted students’ pool? Do you want to increase connections among your alums to help them ﬁnd jobs? Do you want to reduce the time your staﬀ spends addressing basic questions from prospective students and their parents? When you deﬁne high-level goals, make sure they can be measured and really matter to the institution. 2. Choose key performance indicators (KPIs) carefully. Determine how you will measure success—and failure. is involves selecting metrics that will tell how your initiatives perform. Key performance indicators should be very speciﬁc. For example, in the case of connections among alums used earlier, it makes sense to track the total number of interactions (wall posts, comments, etc.) related to career issues on your Facebook page or your LinkedIn group. If you use Twitter to address questions from prospective students or their parents by directing them to resources on the institution’s website or Facebook page, you will need to track the clickthrough rate on these links along with the total number of e-mails and phone calls related to these topics that staﬀ members receive. 3. Plan ahead and properly set up the right measurement tools. While Facebook and YouTube provide a wide range of metrics about your page or channel, Twitter and LinkedIn don’t. And whether or not they include statistics, most social media platforms won’t provide the full picture. If you need to track click-through rates to the links you share on your diﬀerent outposts in social media land, consider using a tracking tool such as HootSuite or BudURL, or set up your own with Get Shorty or the WordPress Short URL Plugin. Moreover, if you’re trying to measure any type of conversions on your institution’s website, you should also use URLs that identify at least the medium and the campaign. Such web addresses include parameters that can be read by the analytics applications and will help Karine Joly is the web editor behind www .collegewebeditor.com, a blog about higher ed web marketing, public relations, and technologies. She is also the founder of the professional development online community www.higheredexperts.com. universitybusiness.com 54 | October 2009 http://www.collegewebeditor.com http://www.collegewebeditor.com http://www.higheredexperts.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - October 2009

University Business - October 2009
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Financial Aid
Lessons in Video
Dining Halls of Distinction
Lost in Space
Independent Outlook
Internet Tech
End Note

University Business - October 2009