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The 20:20 Approach to Social Media Analytics

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Introduction: The Problem With Social Media Analytics

The 20:20 Social Media Analytics Blog aims to become your preferred resource on the best practices in social media monitoring and measurement, by cutting through the confusion on what to measure and how to measure it.

Let me assure you that there is much confusion to cut through in the area of social media analytics.

The discussion on social media analytics is dominated by three different narratives.

According to the first business-as-usual narrative, the metrics we measure on social media should be the same business metrics we measure otherwise. The metrics might include lead conversions for the Sales function, brand loyalty for the Marketing function and customer satisfaction for the Customer Support function. The decision on whether to invest in social media programs should be taken based on the relative effectiveness of these programs to achieve business objectives.

According to the second ad-value-equivalence narrative, buzz is the single most important metric to track on social media. The decision on whether to invest in social media programs should be taken based on whether the value of the buzz created by these programs is higher than the visibility generated by spending the same money on advertising.

According to the third markets-are-conversations narrative, social media is about engaging in conversations and building relationships and businesses shouldn’t even be trying to measure it. A version of this narrative argues that social media is a fundamental game changer and businesses that do not adapt to it will risk being left behind. So, not engaging with social media isn’t a viable alternative for businesses anymore.

We think that all three narratives are flawed because they fail to factor in the multi-layered nature of social media. As a result, most of the discussion revolves around the relative merits of focusing on “return on investment (ROI)” or “engagement”, while no one really agrees on what these terms mean.

In this post, I’ll explain the 20:20 Approach to Social Media Analytics, which is rooted in a unique understanding of how social media works.

The 4Cs Social Media Framework

Instead of getting distracted by the tools and the terminologies, we focus on the four underlying themes in social media, the 4Cs of social media: Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence. Taken together, these four themes constitute the value system of social media.

The first C, Content, refers to the idea that social media tools allow everyone to become a creator, by making the publishing and distribution of multimedia content both free and easy, even for amateurs.

The second C, Collaboration, refers to the idea that social media facilitates the aggregation of small individual actions into meaningful collective results.

The third C, Community, refers to the idea that social media facilitates sustained collaboration around a shared idea, over time and often across space.

The fourth C, Collective Intelligence, refers to the idea that the social web enables us to not only aggregate individual actions, but also run sophisticated algorithms on them and extract meaning from them.

The 4Cs form a hierarchy of what is possible with social media. Each layer is often a pre-requisite for the next layer, and, as we move from Content to Collaboration to Community to Collective Intelligence, it becomes increasingly difficult to both observe these layers and activate them.

The 4Cs Approach to Social Media Analytics

The 4Cs social media framework is useful for both designing social media programs and measuring their effectiveness.

At the Content level, the design challenge is to factor in the 1:9:90 rule, which says that 90% of all users are consumers, 9% of all users are curators and only 1% of the users are creators.

Content that is easy to find and easy to spread becomes popular, so the key Content metrics are popularity, virality and findability. Popularity metrics include pageviews, clicks and time spent. Virality metrics include comments, trackbacks, bookmarks, votes and retweets. Findabilty metrics include the entire range of search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) metrics.

At the Collaboration level, the design challenge is to raise the game from conversations to co-creation and collective action.

The key Collaboration metrics are conversations, contributions and transactions. Conversation metrics are similar to the quantitative virality metrics, but are more qualitative in nature, and factor in context, influence and sentiment. Contribution metrics include the quantity and quality of user submitted content, including feedback on current products/ processes and ideas for new products/ processes. Transaction metrics are primarily business metrics and include lead conversions, complaint closures and customer recommendations.

At the Community level, the design challenge is to identify a relevant social object and build a large and vibrant community around it.

The key Community metrics are membership, relationships and interactions. Membership metrics include the number and profile of the community members. Relationship metrics include the number and nature of connections between community members. Interaction metrics include the frequency and nature of interactions between community members.

At the Collective Intelligence level, the design challenge is to aggregate our individual and collective actions in databases, and run sophisticated algorithms on them to build reputation and recommendation systems.

The key Collective Intelligence metrics are sentiment, authority and predictability. Sentiment metrics include the strength and nature of positive and negative reactions, in a given context. Authority metrics include the influence of an individual or a group, within a given context. Predictability metrics include the precision and accuracy of the forecasts about the market or the company based on social media data mining.

As we move from Content to Collaboration to Community to Collective Intelligence, the nature of the metrics changes from simple to complex and the role of human analysis increases, as machine analysis reaches its limits.

The Social Media Analytics Triumvirate

It’s impossible to measure all these metrics by any one tool or approach, so social media analytics needs to incorporate three different elements: onsite/ offsite web analytics, network/ influence analysis, and semantic/ content analysis.

Popularity, findability and transaction metrics are in the domain of web analytics. Membership metrics are in the domain of network analysis. Sentiment metrics are in the domain of content analysis. Virality metrics are at the intersection of web analytics and network analysis. Contribution metrics are at the intersection of web analytics and content analysis. Relationship metrics are at the intersection of content analytics and network analysis. Authority, conversation, interaction and predictability metrics need a combination of all three types of analysis.

In Summary: The 20:20 Approach to Social Media Analytics

Most “social media experts” don’t even think beyond creating content and seeding conversations in designing social media programs. When it comes to measurement, they inevitably limit themselves to popularity and virality metrics.

The 20:20 Approach to Social Media Analytics is based on a much more nuanced understanding of the multi-layered nature of social media.

We recognize that social media programs can operate at any of the four levels of Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence, and each layer has a corresponding set of metrics.

We understand that it’s impossible to calculate “return on investment”, unless we define the sought after “return” first.

We appreciate that it’s not enough to focus on “engagement”, because engagement might mean popularity, virality, conversations, contributions, or interactions, separately or simultaneously.

We believe that social media analytics should use a combination of the tools and approaches from onsite/ offsite web analytics, network/ influence analysis, and semantic/ content analysis.

Finally, we believe that there are limits to machine analysis, and it’s important to add a layer of human analysis on top of the technology.

20:20 Web Tech wants to become the human layer on top of social media analytics technology, by exploiting the social media outsourcing opportunity presented by India’s cost-effective, tech-savvy, English speaking workforce.

Here is a small presentation on the 20:20 Approach to Social Media Analytics (PDF/ PPTX/ SlideShare) –

For more details, write to: gaurav AT 2020webtech DOT com.

Cross-posted at the 20:20 Social Media Analytics Blog.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Analytics & the Five-Step Social Media Program
2. Thoughts on Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Guidelines on Social Media Ad Metrics
3. Introducing the 20:20 Social Media Analytics Blog
4. Using Network and Influence Analysis to Map Social Media Consumer Behavior
5. Comparing the Results of Two Surveys of Social Media Usage Amongst Indian and International Brands