When reflecting on the recent MIMA Summit, I realized that twice as many sessions were devoted to content as measurement (hat tip to Chuck Hemann, who held court over a great discussion of social monitoring and measurement. It was my inspiration for this post). This wasn’t terribly surprising, given the amount of “content is king” proclamations I come across online (a statement I largely agree with), but I found it troubling that there weren’t any sessions that fused the two. In a discipline that is constantly facing questions of its value, this is an important topic for discussion. We manage or counsel countless clients on content creation and community management, but do we have measurement and evaluation processes in place to make sure we’re optimizing the content we produce? I fear that too often the answer to that question is “we look at likes,” “we count re-tweets,” or “no.”
After all, if great content falls in the forest, and nobody’s around to read it, is it really great? (I think that’s how that saying goes…)
So if counting likes and re-tweets doesn’t cut it, what’s the best way to optimize our social content?
The simple answer is planning and math. I know, we all went in to field of communications to avoid math, but this is simple, I promise. And when you can show the client that you’re optimizing the content creation process through the use of empirical data, it will all be worth it.
Let’s use Facebook as a starting point. First, through discussions with the client, determine which metrics are most important. That could look something like this (if you’re looking for a list of metrics, take a peek at your Facebook page insights):
- Likes
- Comments
- Engaged Users
- People Talking About This
- Virality
- Total Impressions
- Organic Impressions
- Shares
- Page Views
- Sentiment
Next, you want to rank these metrics in order of importance, and assign each a weight. The combined weight for these metrics (in this case 5, but it could be any number of metrics) should total 100. Here’s an example:
- People Talking About This: 40
- Engaged Users: 30
- Comments: 20
- Organic Impressions: 10
Now, take a sample of posts from your page and put them in a spreadsheet. Record the post, the type of post, date and time, and each of the metrics. Add two new columns, index and weighted index, for each metric. Here’s where the math comes in.
Determine the maximum number for each metric. Make note of this at the bottom of the metric column. Then, divide each post’s performance in that metric by the maximum number. This will give you the index number. Take this index number and multiply it by the weight that you assigned this metric. Do these for each of the metrics you picked.
In the end, add up all of the weighted metric numbers. Again, determine the maximum number for this metric. Divide each post’s performance against this number. You have now ranked the performance of each post against your priorities. It should look something like this:
These numbers will start to tell you the story of what your fans want to see from your page. Look for opportunities to create more content like the posts that are performing well. Then, keep tracking and do it all over again. This spreadsheet isn’t the key to unlocking Facebook, but it will help guide your content in a meaningful way, with close-to-real-time feedback on what your fans are gravitating towards.
If you’re not doing this kind of work already, it’s never too late to start. The initial build will take you a little bit of time, but it will pay off in the end.