publishflow social media analytics whitepaper

WHITEPAPER

Understanding YourLive Audience

A Guide to Real-Time Social Media Analytics

By Scott Anderson

Social Media Is Big, Really Big

If social media were a country, it would be,as the influential Mckinsey Quarterly pointsout, huge. Facebook alone would be “the

world’s third largest, behind China and India.”

If it were a country, social media would have arecognizable and regulated economic structureand government, a currency and clearly definedterritorial boundaries.

In reality, it’s pretty hard to put borders aroundsocial media and, to make it even more com-plex, there are few laws that govern it – it’smore like a rough-and-tumble frontier territorythan a traditional state. It’s probably enough tosay that it’s big – really big – and growing fast.Millions of new blogs every year. Not to men-tion new platforms. Or, social sharing platforms– dominated by but by no means limited to –

the most popular ones: Facebook and Twitter.

But social media does have a currency – data.And, the growing abundance of social mediacontributes immensely to what the Tow Centerfor Digital Journalism calls the “embarrassmentof data” that is available in real time to today’sjournalists, content managers and executives.Understanding social media data and how it canbe used to inform real-time content decisions isan even more daunting task. But in today’s con-tent environment, that’s exactly what needs tohappen.

Simply understanding page views on your ownsite – even in real time – is not enough to gainclear insight into what’s really driving audience.Content creators already engaged in audienceanalytics need to also have a real-time view oftheir competitors activities, an understanding ofwhat topics are trending in the digital space

Understanding Your Live AudienceA Guide to Real-Time Social Media Analytics

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AND a view into the ever-expanding and chaot-ic “wild west” of social media.

Content Is Now Social

Social media was practically non-existent adecade ago, but now plays a growing rolein the future

of content organi-zations. Contentitself has been sofundamentallyaltered by platformsthat were practicallyunheard of just afew years ago that,in many ways, thesimple act of read-ing a story orwatching a videohas become a social activity. This has led to anumber of significant changes in the contentmarketplace:

l The audience is no longer satisfiedwith content consumption, it demandscontent participationl “News” is now a socially engagingand socially driven activity that is con-stantly changing in real time.l The inherent interactivity of socialmedia enables the audience to read andview, but also to swap, post, highlightand comment.l Content creation and dissemination isa ubiquitous activity. Everyone with ablog or a Facebook account is in thecontent business.

Socially savvy content organizations are increas-ingly moving away from cultures of traditional

content creation to those where communitycontent management is also important. Theystrive to embrace this evolving news ecology,which means they must embrace social media inreal time to:

l filter social referrals by source inorder to understand what platforms

content is mosteffective onand who arethe key influ-encers in thesocial space;l assess howcontent is per-ceived – is thereaction posi-tive or nega-tive?l react to audi-

ence interaction with related contentdesigned to drive more engagement and,more importantly, traffic and revenue;l facilitate environments where theaudience can participate by providingopportunities for them to share theiropinions, discuss content and/or rate,rank and share.

Organizations that do not move into the newsocial landscape risk losing their place. As digi-tal strategist Christine Crandell put it onForbes.com:

“Social is today’s extinction event for organiza-tions. Companies need to adapt or they will failto survive.”

The vast majority of media companies are inthe social space in some capacity. They haveFacebook pages and they post to Twitter. But

Understanding Your Live Audience

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“The vast majority of executives have no idea howto harness social media’s power. Companies dili-

gently establish Twitter feeds and brandedFacebook pages, but few have a deep understanding

of exactly how social media interacts with con-sumers to expand product and brand recognition,drive sales and profitability, and engender loyalty.”

Demystifying social media, McKinsey Quarterly, April 2012

they often have very little sense of what’s hap-pening to their content in that space, especiallyat the management and executive levels. Theyreceive little feedback and, when they do, it’s inthe form of reports that tell them what hap-pened in the past, which gives them little guid-ance about what’s happening now or, next.

“Social media provides the tools, such asTwitter and Facebook and Google Plus andYouTube,” says digital marketing strategist andleadership advisor David Meerman Scott“What is changing is that we have a new mind-set, and it’s this mindset of real time.”

There are Real Costs to Social Media

This mindset of real time,” requires medi-arooms to monitor social mediathroughout the news cycle rather than in

snapshots, and this is not inexpensive. In fact,the great myth about social media is that it isfree. But, while anyone can set up a blog, signup for Facebook or Twitter or rate content onDigg for nothing, there are real and significantcosts to digital publishers attempting to playleading roles in the social space. Spendingcountless hours of valuable and increasinglyscarce staff time trying to monitor Facebookand Twitter alone is a daunting task.

Even if it were free, social media is such a largeand diverse space, really understanding what’shappening right now is next to impossible with-out sophisticated tools.

Fortunately, software has been developed thatallows content managers and executives to, inreal time, take the pulse of the social audience.

Your organization can use social data to make

your content better by:

l Gaining deeper insight. Producersand content managers can use the infor-mation to inform story choices, addingmore insight about what’s trending tothe information they have alreadyreceived from more traditional audienceanalytics.“…Editors can use data from thoseneworks and others to help decide whether and how to position a story ona home page, even as Web analytics mayindicate a different action based largelyon page views,” says Dorian Benkoil,co-founder of Teeming Media in a postat poynter.org. “News organizations thatare in a fight for their lives are going tohave to use every tool to attract andhold audiences that are enticed — viatheir own RSS readers, friends’ recom-mendations via social networks andguidance from aggregators like GoogleNews — to rely on something otherthan editors’ picks.”

l Understanding sentiment. This is the“pulse” of the social sphere. How doesthe wider audience feel about an issueor topic? This can also be a good indi-cation about how well your audience isreceiving your own content.

l Identifying key influencers. Who areyour biggest fans? Can you build a rela-tionship with them that makes the bondeven stronger? Can you turn them intoevangelists for your brand?

l Understanding the real impact ofyour content:


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Is your content having impact rightnow?Is your content creating a buzz?Most importantly: can you use data tomake content better? NYUprofessor JayRosen makes the point specifically aboutjournalism as quoted in a report byColumbia University’s Tow Centre forDigital Journalism. “The question ishow journalists can use the numbers toimprove journalism by seeing how peo-ple use it,” says Rosen, suggesting thatthe goal of the journalist should be “tobecome data-savvy enough to findwhere short-term user interests andlonger-term (professional/societal)interests overlap.”

How Publishflow Can Help You

The rapid expansion and growing impor-tance of social media platforms andcommunities has dramatically changed

the way content is created and disseminated.Content managers and leaders need real-timetools to help them stay abreast of what’s hap-pening to their content and their brand in thesocial space.

With publishflow, content executives, editors,web producers and analysts can visualize thesocial media space on a customizable personaldashboard in real time, allowing them Livesearch of social media such as Twitter and


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Using social sentiment data, the Boston Globe is tapping into the feelings of itsdigital audience to measure the ever-changing popularity of the Boston Red Sox.

The Pulse scores how the team as well as individual players are perceived based onpositive or negative Twitter comments. The service show graphically how opinionschange, maps sentiment around the country and provides the latest tweets, photosand stories about the team.

How to Add Real Value with Real-Time Social Media Metrics

Facebook, the ability to track posts and socialcommentary It also allows them to search andmonitor news aggregators like Google Newsand Digg.

Publishflow also lets you to see social mediadata in context with what’s happening on yoursite, your competitors sites as well as what top-ics are trending overall on the Web.

It takes you a step beyond pure analytics andgives you the social success data you can use tocreate more relevant content and deeper audi-ence engagement right now.

“It allows you to see the information you needall the time,” says Publishflow CEO Tom St.John, “not just in snapshots.”

Publishflow’s live social media trending providesan industry-leading, customizable, mobile dash-board that also allows you to follow:

1. Twitter Search – Keyword search the liveTwitter stream

2. Facebook search – Keyword searchFacebook Fan pages (coming soon)3. Google News search – Keyword searchGoogle News for recent stories4. Digg search – Keyword search Digg formost recent content items

But, it doesn’t stop there – with publishflowyou can also monitor live page view, categoryand author trends, live competitor publishingactivity, and emerging topic trends across thou-sands of sites) in real time. All of this is avail-able in a single service on desktop, mobile andtablet devices.

The bottom line: media organizations that usepublishflow gain real-time competitive advan-tage, improve effectiveness and reduce costs.

To arrange a free 30 day evaluation of publish-flow, please call:

1.866.390.5446 (ext.710),email [email protected] or, tweet @kontexto.


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About publishflow

publishflow™ is a real time media analyt-ics service for digital media publishers.The service provides digital executives,content specialists and advertising salesteams with real time content performanceand business performance data to helpoptimize their content creation choicesand improve their advertising effective-ness. publishflow™ is available on desk-top, mobile and tablet devices. For moreinformation visit www.publishflow.com.

About Scott Anderson

Scott Anderson is a digital media execu-tive and consultant with more than 15years of relevant experience as SeniorVice-President of Digital Content Strategyfor Postmedia Network Inc, ManagingDirector of canada.com, Senior Vice-President, Content at Canwest Publishingand Editor-in-Chief of the Ottawa Citizen.Reach him [email protected]

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