February 2010

Using web analytics in public relations

Dana Chinn

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• Why measuring audiences is different now

• Behavioral vs. attitudinal

• “Famous metrics” vs. useful ones

• Basic site metricsCounting vs. calculating engagement

• Social media metricsUnderstanding followers, analyzing content

Web analytics essentials

Traditional ad-supported business model

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Newspaper

MagazinesRadio

TVDirect mail

Yellow Outdoor

HIGH BARRIERS

TO ENTRY

...few competitors

...subsidized audiences defined by

demographics,geography

...everyone in its place

...can only measure mass e.g., paid circulation

Paid and/or earned media

Online ad-supported business model

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NewspapersMagazinesRadioTV

Direct mailYellow PagesOutdoor

Online

Online-only

...everyone’s online, competing with each other

...little geographic focus

...few barriers to entry

...(highly) subsidized audiences defined

by individual behavior, attitudes

...can measure anything (niches, engagement)

...change in behavior, business

serves participants

A traditional news org website

Earned media is a lot harder now

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-- group themselves

who that it distributes to people

who are in the same geography

A social media service

-- have conversations

has content

-- have the same interests -- contribute

content

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What really matters in online?

What people do (behavioral)

Who they are, what they think (attitudinal)

Data won’t answer unless you ask it the right questions

• What needs to get done, what you want to do, what is impact you want? “What is it that we want to change, improve, accomplish, incite?”

• Who are the target audiences?

• What activities will reach the target audiences, get them to take the desired actions? Over what time periods?

• What are the measurable elements - the Key Performance Indicators - that will tell you whether you’ve succeeded or failed?

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--”The Maturation of Social Media ROI,” by Brian Solis, Mashable, Jan. 26, 2010

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“After the disaster in Haiti, [our site] hit

168.6 million pageviews in the month of January. A new record.”

Some metrics are “famous” but useless

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“We are the go-to source for California

news....[our site had] 12.2 million CALIFORNIANS....For the

month, we received 24,449,693 visits.”--From an internal communication of a

media organization, February 2010

--The ”famous metrics” term comes from web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik

A meaningless metric,and a copy editing error, too

10--From ”A world of connections/A special report on social networking,” Jan. 30, 2010

More issues...

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--From ”A world of connections/A special report on social networking,” Jan. 30, 2010

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• Panel dataActivity from a sample of self-selected people. Only total site data for a limited number of sites.

• External dataUsed to compare sites

• comScoreNielsenCompeteetc.

• Interactive Advertising Bureau

Internal External

Internal vs. external numbers

• Census data100% of all visitors, visits, page views for all sections

• Internal dataConfidential

• OmnitureGoogle AnalyticsWebTrendsetc.

• Web Analytics Association

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Unique visitors

visit websites,

generate page views.

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A “unique visitor” is actually a “unique computer”

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Work

Home

Hotel

= 3 unique visitors

Unique visitors may be over- or undercounted

= 3 unique visitors

Work

= 1 unique visitor

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The no. of unique visitors is based on the time period you specify.S M T W Th F S

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July 6-12

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...on July 1 is six; July 31, two.

...for the week of July 13 is five.

...for the month of July is seven.

July 13-19

July 20-26

The number of unique visitors...“Daily unique visitors”

“Weekly unique visitors”

“Monthly unique visitors”

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The math of visits

A visit is a period of activity separated by at least 30 minutes of inactivity.

A visitor clicks into your site at 1 p.m., surfs for 20 minutes, then clicks into CNN.com.

One visit

A visitor clicks into your site at 1 p.m., surfs for 45 minutes, talks on the phone for 30 minutes without touching the keyboard, then hangs up and goes back to your site for 20 minutes before clicking into CNN.com. Two visits

A visitor clicks into your site at 1 p.m., surfs for an hour, leaves his computer for 29 minutes, and then comes back and surfs for another hour before clicking into CNN.com.

One visit

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Two ratios

One proportion

the bounce rate of the page where people enter your site most often

visits per unique visitor page views per visit

Calculating engagement

Example: 50%

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Visits per weekly unique visitor

Are visitors coming to your site with the frequency you need to build loyal, satisfied audiences ?

If you update your site 24/7, is your content engaging enough to compel someone to visit more than two or three times a week?

2.5 visits per weekExample

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Page views per visit, by week

When visitors do come to your site, are they engaging with its content?

Does a high number suggest visitors can’t find what they want?

3.6 page views per visitExample

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Bounce rate of top entry pages

One visit with one page view

to the home page= 1 bounce

No. of bounces+

No. of visits that started with the home page and had 2+ page views

= 100% of visits

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Source: “Can CNN, the Go-To Site, Get You to Stay?” by Brian Stetler, New York Times, Jan. 17, 2009

Home page bounce rateExample

= over 50%

Over half of the visits to the CNN.com home pageleft CNN.com without clicking into any other pages

Best (?) cases: Came only to get the headlines

Worst cases: Couldn’t find what they wanted Didn’t like what they saw

Home page has dynamic content not captured with page views (check your business model)

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The value of an influencer: Nikki Finke

Content: 24/7 unique info about The Industry

UVs: “a few” 100,000 Industry execs who visit 10x/day

Value: $10 millionSource: “Call Me,” by Tad Friend, The New Yorker, Oct. 12, 2009

Define success/failure with KPIs that indicate participation, engagement. Use ratios, percents - not counts.

• Content: comments/post; bounce rate; percent positive/negative

• Twitter: PVs/URL; tweets/influencer; retweets/tweet

• Facebook: Percent of fans in target audience; discussion topics/influencer; wall posts/fan

• Photos/slideshows: percent of show viewed; percent of target audience who posted; comments/slideshow

• Videos: views/UV; percent of UVs who rated

• Attitudes: transparency; trust; are you adding value to the conversation?

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Each defined activity has its own Key Performance Indicators

1. What was the purpose of your visit today?

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Attitudinal researchDo you know the people behind the clicks?

2. Were you able to complete your task today?

3. If not, why not?

4. If you did complete your task, what did you enjoy most about our site?

Caution: Pop-up survey data is a truth but not the complete truth. Pop-ups are only completed by those who feel like it...it’s not a representative sample.

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Do you know who’s not coming to your site,and why?

• Start with focus groups, usability studies, etc. to identify issues, keywords, hypotheses - the questions that will result in data that will lead to decisions

• Follow with surveys that reach a representative sample of the target audiences.

Measure niches, not everyone. Avoid convenient, easy samples (sorry)

(not thinking about you)

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Not only are the technologies new, but the metrics are as well. --Online Media and Marketing Association Metrics and Measurement program, June 2009

Social media:

Types of social media channels

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-- “Five essentials for social media marketing,” by Lisa Wehr, CEO/Oneupweb, iMedia Connection, July 17, 2009

Sharing

Networking

News

BookmarkingReviews

Social media: a constant stream of calls to action

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Brands earn the trust and loyalty of their customers by listening and responding.

-- Interactive Advertising Bureau Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions, May 2009

...the true value of a networkis measured by the frequency of engagement of the participants.

--”The Maturation of Social Media ROI,” by Brian Solis, Mashable, Jan. 26, 2010

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1. Listen2. Engage3. Measure

• Audience

• Engagement

• Loyalty

• Influence

• Action

Metrics should map to goals. Period.From “What the **** is Social Media - One Year Later,” Marta Kagan, Espresso|Brand Infiltration, July 16, 2009. Some explicit words.

Social media rules

Step 1: Define the R

“What is it that we want to change, improve, accomplish, incite....?”

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--”The Maturation of Social Media ROI,” by Brian Solis, Mashable, Jan. 26, 2010

Return On Objectve

and

Return On Investment

Step 2: Identify the participants, their roles, their numbers

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The Facebook ad application only gives you people on Facebook who filled out the form.

You don’t know how many: didn’t give detailsorupdated their statusortold the truthoraren’t in Facebookor...

Understand the limitations of your data sources

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Your clients want KPIs that showproof of audience, participation

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• Targeted audience reach, frequency• Audience profile

• Unique visitors, active users; page views; visits, return visits; time spent

• Growth; “conversation reach”

• Content relevance• Author (journalists, others) credibility; content freshness; influence

• Calls to action answered• Passive: downloads; games played; videos viewed; alerts subscribed/

unsubscribed; widgets installed• Info submitted: comments posted; topics/forums created; photos, videos

uploaded; poll votes; ratings, reviews, recommendations; contests entered

• Interaction: friends reached; in/out links; reposts

Derived from Interactive Advertising Bureau Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions, May 2009

Understand Twitter’s simple complexity,understand how social media is measured

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Followers

Content

Do your followers identify with your keywords?

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Analyze your follower profilesto assess their likelihood of engagement

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Followers Look for influencers Review reach, churn, following/follower ratio

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Analyze content Review hashtags, keywords, sentiment, problems, conversations that connect people

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The perfect (measurable) Tweet

• A call to action to participate, engage with youLook at this. Go here. What do you think?

• A link To get news, information Tweets are now a primary news source, the new home page

To respond to the call to action

• A #hashtag and/or keywords

• Handle specific to person/topic

• A comment

RT/via @handle + call to action/comment + link + #hashtag

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“Perfect” tweets are less than 120 characters

Lost the link

Watch handle, hashtag sizes

100 characters 111 characters

GM “Reinvention”

ReturnOn

Measurable

Investment

“When a burst of tweets citing a particular subject or URL emerges, it’s a signaling event.”

--Rishab Ghosh, co-founder of Topsy, a search engine for tweets, in “Live in the Moment,” by Clive Thompson, Wired magazine, October 2009

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Is your company part of the conversationin real-time web signaling events?

Define success by who your audiences are and what they’re doing, thinking

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Universal Studios Hollywood ad, 2007

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Dana Chinn Lecturer chinn@usc.edu 213-821-6259

Analytics for news orgs bookmarks http://www.delicious.com/danachinn

Presentations http://www.slideshare.net/danachinn

Blog http://www.newsnumbers.com