Social Media Analytics: Effective Tools for Building, Intrepreting, and Using Metrics

Align Strategy With Metrics Using Social Monitoring Best Practices

“Two or three years from now, every public relations firm that wants to be taken seriously in the C-suite and/or a lead marketing role will have someone like Marshall in its senior leadership ranks, a chief analytics officer responsible for ensuring that account leaders think more deeply about analytics and that thfirm works with the best available outside suppliers to integrate analytics appropriately.”
—Paul Holmes, The Holmes Report

“Marshall has provided much-needed discipline to our newest marketing frontier—a territory full of outlaws, medicine men, dot com tumbleweeds, and snake oil.”
—Ryan Rasmussen, VP Research, Zocalo Group

“Marshall Sponder stands apart from the crowd with this work. His case study approach, borne of real-world experience, provides the expert and the amateur alike with bibliography, tools, links, and examples to shortcut the path to bedrock successes. This is a reference work for anyone who wants to explore the potential of social networks.”
—W. Reid Cornwell, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, The Center for Internet Research

“Marshall is a solutions design genius of unparalleled knowledge and acumen, and when he applies himself to the business of social media, the result is a timely and important commentary on the state of research capabilities for social media.”
—Barry Fleming, Director, Analytics & Insights, WCG, and Principal, DharmaBuilt.com

About the Book

Practically overnight, social media has become a critical tool for every marketing objective—from outreach and customer relations to branding and crisis management. For the most part, however, the data collected through social media is just that: data. It usually seems to hold little or no meaning on which to base business decisions. But the meaning is there . . . if you’re applying the right systems and know how to use them.

With Social Media Analytics, you’ll learn how to get supremely valuable information from this revolutionary new marketing tool. One of the most respected leaders in his field and a pioneer in Web analytics, Marshall Sponder shows how to:

• Choose the best social media platforms for your needs
• Set up the right processes to achieve your goals
• Extract the hidden meaning from all the data you collect
• Quantify your results and determine ROI

Filled with in-depth case studies from a range of industries, along with detailed reviews of several social-monitoring platforms, Social Media Analytics takes you beyond “up-to-date” and leads you well into the future—and far ahead of your competition. You will learn how to use the most sophisticated methods yet known to find customers, create relevant content (and track it), mash up data from disparate sources, and much more. Sponder concludes with an insightful look at where the field will likely be going during the next few years.

Whether your social media marketing efforts are directed at B2B, B2C, C2C, nonprofit, corporate, or public sector aims, take them to the next step with the techniques, strategies, and methods in Social Media Analytics—the most in-depth, forward-looking book on the subject.

Marshall Sponder is a Web analytics and SEO/SEM specialist with expertise in market research, social media, networking, and public relations. As both an in-house team leader and consultant, he has used sophisticated analysis to optimize the social media marketing efforts of companies and brands including IBM, Monster, Porter Novelli, WCG, Gillette, Pfizer, Warner Brothers, Laughing Cow, The New York Times, and Havana Central. Sponder is a board member emeritus at the Web Analytics Association, a member of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO), and a member of the Certified Institute of Public Relations Social Media Measurement Study Group (CIPR).

Part 1: An Overview of Social Media Monitoring
1. Social Media ROI history (thoughts and trend leaders)
2. Tracking Word of Mouth (WOM) using Outreach, Engagement, Triage
3. Tracking International Social Media (language and cultural barriers)
4. Technology issues – Detailing how is does Social Media Monitoring work
5. Social Intelligence – sifting data from web documents and constructing meaning
6. Social Media Monitoring for Branding
7. Social Media Monitoring for Public Relations
8. Social Media Monitoring for Sales
9. Social Media Monitoring for Advertising
10. Determining the worth of Virtual Friends, Fans, Tweets, Tweeters, etc.

Part 2: Data Inputs
11. Constructing a Social Media Audit / Social Monitoring Audit
12. Determine Social Media Assets/Inventory/Applications
13. Building Social Media Scorecards
14. Building Social Monitoring Scorecards (specializing by vertical or business type)

Part 3: Deploying Social Media Monitoring and Action/Touch Points
15. Planning your monitoring / content creation
16. Develop and Deploy Social Media Outreach
17. Social Media Funnel Conversion Visualizations
18. Mashing up data from disparate sources (Web Analytics, Social Media Monitoring, Search/SEO, House Data, Geo-local data such as Foursquare & Twitter, Google Maps
19. Case Studies
20. Putting the results of Social Monitoring into plain language Management Understands21. Monitoring Tools and Technologies
22. Monitoring Platform Briefs (my connections with vendors in the monitoring industry make this low hanging fruit but useful for the book).
23. Evaluating and classifying a Social Monitoring Solution for your organization

Part 4: BRIEFS and Short Case Studies of SMM Platforms
24. The Future of Social Media Monitoring – where is the field heading
Part 5: Deploying Social Media Monitoring and Action/Touch Points
25. Planning your monitoring / content creation
26. Develop and Deploy Social Media Outreach
27. Social Media Funnel Conversion Visualizations
28. Mashing up data from disparate sources (Web Analytics, Social Media Monitoring, Search/SEO, House Data, Geo-local data such as Foursquare & Twitter, Google Maps
29. Putting the results of Social Monitoring into plain language