SMA QB UT 2 (SWATI MAM)

Categories of Location Analytics

LOCATION ANALYTICS:also known as spatial analysis or geo-analytics is concerned with mapping,

visualizing, and mining the location of people, data, and other resources. All sectors, including business,
government, nonprofit, and academia, can benefit from location analytics.
Using the dataset, the scientist were able to study and map the waking, sleeping, commuting, work, and
leisure dynamics of the people living in the city during the weekday and weekends. Such geo-analytics
can be instrumental in better understanding our cities and human behaviors in space and time.

SOURCES OF LOCATION DATA Location information can come from a

variety of sources, including the following.
• POSTAL ADDRESS Most business analytics applications rely on address information of their
customers, including city names, locality names, and postal or zip codes.

• LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE In geography, latitude (shown as a horizontal line on a globe) and
longitude (shown as a vertical line on a
• globe) are used to find exact location on Earth.

• GPS-BASED GPS is a satellite-based navigation system that can be used find exact location people
and resources. Mobile analytics mostly rely on GPS-based location data. GPS-based location
analytics can provide us the most accurate location for social media users.

• IP-BASED Public IP (Internet protocol) can be used to determine the location of Internet users. A
public IP address is an exclusive numerical address (like a home address) assigned to a device
connected to the Internet. Different regions in the world are assigned a specific block of public IP
addresses; hence, it can be used to mine approximate geo-location of Internet users.

CATEGORIES OF LOCATION ANALYTICS Based on its scope, location

analytics can be broadly classified into two categories:
1) Business data-driven location analytics,
2) Social media datadriven location analytics.

BUSINESS DATA-DRIVEN LOCATION ANALYTICS Business data-driven location analytics deals with
mapping, visualizing, and mining location data to reveal patterns, trends, and relationships hidden in
tabular business data.
Capitalizing on the data stored in a business database, location analytics, for example, can map and
capture vast among of geo-specific data to provide information, products, and services based on where
customers are. Using the location of customers, for instance, it is possible to recommend the nearest
convenience store, coffee shop, taxi, or even probable social relations. Or it can be used for any other
business decision, such as, what is the best potential new site for a business warehouse? Applications of
Business Data-Driven Location Analytics Business data-driven location analytics have several
applications, including the following.

• Powerful Intelligence Simple maps have been widely used, but they are limited in providing
insightful details. Using sophisticated mapping techniques, such as clustering, heat mapping,
 data aggregation (e.g., aggregating data to regions), and color-coded mapping, can generate
powerful business intelligence (Hecht 2013).
• Simple data maps can be enriched with customer data, including demographic, consumer
spending, lifestyle, and locations (Hecht 2013). For example, where do my loyal customers spend
most of their time?
• Collaboration and Sharing Maps are easy to understand and are good communication and
collaboration tools. Location analytics can map business data for collaboration across
organization. It can also be used for information sharing purposes with customers. At end of this
chapter, a step-by-step tutorial is provided to map sample tabular business data using Google
Fusion Tables. With Google Fusion Tables, you can map data and display and share the results as
maps, tables, and charts.

SOCIAL MEDIA DATA-DRIVEN LOCATION ANALYTICS

Social media data-driven analytics relies on social media location data to mine and map location of social
media users, content, and data. Social media location information comes mainly from GPS and IP.

Uses of Social Media-Based Location Analytics Social media location–based services are becoming a
day-to-day reality. Organizations use location-based services for a variety of purposes, including the
following.
Recommendation Purposes Organizations can harvest location data to recommend products, services,
and social events to potential customers in real time as they approach certain localities. For example,
Tender recommends potential social relationships based on the location of users.

Customer Segmentation Social media location data can be used to segment customers based on their
geographic location. Tweepsmap (https://tweepsmap.com/), for example, can be used to geo-locate
your Twitter followers by country, state, or city.

Advertisement Location-based advertisement allows targeted marketing and promotion campaign

mostly delivered through mobile devices to reach specific target audiences.

Information Request Based on their current location, customers can request a product, service, or
resource (e.g., the nearest coffee shop, restaurant, or parking lot).

Alerts Location data can be used to send and receive alerts and notifications, such as sales and
promotion alerts traffic congestion alerts, speed limit warnings, and storm warnings.

Search and Rescue Location data is vital in search and rescue operations. For example, Agos a geotagging
and reporting platform that enables communities deal with climate change adaptation and disaster risk
reduction.

Navigation Mobile-and GPS-based navigation services and apps assist us in finding addresses. BE-ON-
ROAD, for instance, is a free offline turn-by-turn GPS navigation app for Android devices.
Search Engine Analytics - Types of Search Engines, Search Engine Analytics

SEARCH ENGINES ANALYTICS

SEARCH ENGINES ANALYTICS EARCH ENGINES are the gateways to social media and help users search for
and find information. To be more precise, a search engine is an Internet service or software designed to
search information on the web that corresponds to a request (e.g., keywords) specified by the user.
Considering that there are billions of websites over the web, search engines play a crucial role in helping
us find the right information in a limited amount of time. Before shifting our focus to search engines
analytics, let’s understand different types of search engines.

TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES Based on the mechanisms they operate, search engine can be divided into
three types:
1) Crawler-based
2) Directories
3) Metasearch engines

A. Crawler-based search engines, also known as web crawlers or spiders, are automated programs
that systematically browse the internet, indexing web pages and collecting information about
them. Here's how they typically work:
1. Crawling: The crawler starts by visiting a list of known web pages, often obtained from previous
crawls or from a list of popular websites. From these initial pages, the crawler follows hyperlinks
to other pages, gradually traversing the web.
2. Indexing: As the crawler visits each web page, it analyzes the content and metadata of the page,
extracting information such as text, images, links, and metadata tags (e.g., title, description). This
information is then stored in a searchable index.
3. Ranking: When a user enters a search query, the search engine retrieves relevant pages from its
index and ranks them based on various factors, such as the relevance of the content to the
query, the authority of the page, and the quality of the user experience.
4. Results Presentation: The search engine presents the ranked results to the user, typically in the
form of a list of links accompanied by titles and snippets of the content. Users can then click on
the links to visit the corresponding web pages.
Crawler-based search engines continuously crawl the web to keep their index up to date and to discover
new pages. They use algorithms to prioritize which pages to crawl and how frequently to revisit them,
based on factors such as the page's relevance, popularity, and freshness.
Examples of crawler-based search engines include Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu. These search engines
have large-scale infrastructure and sophisticated algorithms to efficiently crawl and index the vast
amount of content on the web.

B. Directory-based search engines, also known as web directories, differ from crawler-based search
engines in how they organize and retrieve information from the web. Here's how they typically
work:
1. Manual Curation: Instead of relying solely on automated crawlers to index web pages, web
directories are typically curated manually by human editors. These editors review websites
submitted by users or identified through other means and categorize them into a hierarchical
structure based on topics and themes.
2. Categorization: Websites listed in a web directory are organized into categories and
subcategories, allowing users to browse through the directory to find relevant websites within
 specific topics of interest. Each category may have a description to help users understand its
scope.
3. Submission Process: Website owners can submit their sites to be included in the directory. The
submission process typically involves providing information about the website, such as its title,
URL, description, and relevant keywords. Human editors then review the submission to
determine whether it meets the directory's criteria for inclusion.
4. Search Functionality: While directories primarily rely on manual categorization and browsing,
many also offer search functionality to help users find specific websites or topics more quickly.
Users can enter keywords or phrases into the directory's search bar, and the directory will return
relevant results based on the information provided in the listings.
5. Editorial Oversight: Web directories often maintain editorial oversight to ensure the quality and
relevance of the listings. This may involve periodically reviewing and updating existing listings, as
well as removing outdated or irrelevant websites.
6. Value-added Content: In addition to listings of websites, some web directories may include
value-added content such as reviews, ratings, and editorial commentary to help users make
informed decisions about which websites to visit.
Examples of web directories include the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), Yahoo Directory (now defunct),
and Best of the Web (BOTW). While web directories were more prevalent in the early days of the
internet, they still exist today and can be valuable resources for discovering curated collections of
websites within specific niches or topics.

C. The Metasearch Engine is a search engine that combines the results of various search engines
into one and gives one result. It can also be stated as an online information retrieval tool.
The Metasearch Engine was developed because individual search engines were prone to spams
due to people trying to raise their website ranks online. The Search engine visits several websites
and creates a database of these sites. This is also known as indexing. Any search engine answers
several queries every second.
The metasearch engines run the queries on most other search engines and in turn reflect the
result in the form of the summarization of such sites.
Operations of the Metasearch Engine
A metasearch engine does not create a database of itself rather it creates a federal database that is
actually an integration of the databases of various other Search Engines.
The 2 main ways of operations involved are :
1. The architecture of Ranking: Various search engines have their own ranking algorithms. A
metasearch engine develops its own algorithm where it eliminates duplicate results and
calculates a fresh ranking of the sites. This is because it understands that the websites which are
highly ranked on major sites are more relevant and would thereby provide better results.
2. Fusion: Fusion is used to create better and more efficient results. Fusion is divided into
Collection Fusion and Data Fusion. The collection Fusion deals with search engines that contain
unrelated data. The data sources are then ranked based on their content and the likelihood of
providing relevant data. This is then recorded in a list. The Data Fusion deals with the search
engines that have indexes for common data sets. The initial ranks of the data are compared with
the original ranks. A process of Normalization is applied using techniques such as the CombSum
algorithm.
Examples of Metasearch Engine
 • Dogpile is a metasearch engine developed by InfoSpace LLC. It writes back results from the
individual search engines of Google and Yahoo. It combines the search results of text, images,
new, etc.
• Sputtr is comparably one of the best meta search engines that combines the results from various
popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn,
IMDb, Slashdot, Dictionary.com, About.com, New York Times, etc.
• Another popular site is Trivago, a hotel booking site that mentions this concept in its
advertisements. It gives back results from over 100 other hotel booking sites including
Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, Trip.com, and Agoda. Trivago can be visited at www.trivago.com.

Location Analytics and Privacy Concerns

LOCATION ANALYTICS AND PRIVACY CONCERNS While location-based services bring ease, convenience,
and safety to customers and value to business, they also raise serious privacy issues related to collection,
retention, use, and disclosure of location information (Minch 2004).
Tracking, mining, and storing location information can endanger some fundamental human rights, such
as freedom of movement and freedom from being observed.
Minch (2004) raised several issues arising from location-based services, including the following. Should
users of location-enabled devices be informed when location tracking is in use? Should users of location-
enabled devices be permitted to control the storage of location information? Should location
information as stored be personally identifiable, or should the user have the option to preserve degrees
of anonymity? What legal protection should a person’s historical location information have against
unreasonable search and seizure? To what extent should users of location-based services be allowed to
choose their own level of identifiability/anonymity? What level of disclosure control should be dictated
by government regulation? By the affected individual customers, users, etc.? By other parties? What
governmental legislation and regulation is appropriate to assure citizens’ rights of privacy in an era of
location-aware mobile devices?

Social Information Filtering - Social Sharing and filtering

Social information filtering is a method used to personalize information retrieval for users based on the
preferences and behaviors of their social network connections. It leverages social relationships and
interactions to filter and recommend content that is likely to be relevant or interesting to a user. Here's
how it typically works:
1. User Profiles: Social information filtering systems start by creating user profiles that capture
information about individuals' preferences, interests, and behaviors. These profiles may include
explicit information provided by users (e.g., interests, likes, dislikes) as well as implicit
information inferred from their interactions (e.g., items they have viewed, shared, or interacted
with).
2. Social Connections: The system identifies the social connections of each user, such as friends,
followers, or contacts within a social network. These connections serve as a source of
information about the user's social context and can be used to personalize recommendations.
3. Social Signals: Social interactions within the network, such as likes, shares, comments, and
recommendations, generate social signals that indicate the relevance or popularity of content.
These signals are used to identify items that are likely to be of interest to a user based on the
preferences and behaviors of their social connections.
 4. Collaborative Filtering: Social information filtering often employs collaborative filtering
techniques to recommend items to users. Collaborative filtering analyzes the preferences of
similar users or groups of users to make personalized recommendations. In the context of social
information filtering, this may involve recommending items that have been liked, shared, or
endorsed by the user's social connections.
5. Content Filtering: In addition to leveraging social signals, social information filtering systems may
also take into account the content of the items being recommended. This can include analyzing
text, images, or other features of the content to determine its relevance to the user's interests.
6. Feedback Mechanisms: Social information filtering systems typically incorporate feedback
mechanisms that allow users to provide explicit feedback on recommended items. This feedback
is used to refine the user's profile and improve the accuracy of future recommendations.
Examples of social information filtering systems include social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram, which use social connections and interactions to personalize users' news feeds and
recommend content. E-commerce websites may also employ social information filtering to recommend
products based on the preferences and behaviors of users' social connections.

Automated Recommendation systems, Traditional Vs social Recommendation Systems

Traditional Vs social Recommendation Systems

 Traditional
Aspect Recommendation Systems Social Recommendation Systems
User interactions with items User interactions and social connections within a
Data Source (e.g., ratings) network (e.g., likes, shares, comments)
User-item interaction matrix augmented with
Input User-item interaction matrix social connections
Recommendation Collaborative filtering, Collaborative filtering, content-based filtering,
Technique content-based filtering social filtering
Individual user preferences Individual user preferences and behavior,
User Profiles and behavior influenced by social connections
Social connections and interactions inform
Social Context Not considered recommendations
Based on individual user Based on individual preferences and social
Personalization preferences context
Primarily relies on user-item
Item Discovery interactions Considers social interactions and endorsements
Diversity of May lack diversity in Can provide diverse recommendations based on
Recommendations recommendations social connections
Can be challenging for new Social connections can help mitigate the cold
Cold Start Problem users or items start problem
Relies on implicit user Recommendations may be influenced by friends'
Trust and Transparency feedback preferences, potentially enhancing trust
Understanding Social Media and Business Alignment, Social Media KPI.

Understanding the alignment between social media and business involves recognizing how social media
platforms can serve as valuable tools for achieving business objectives. Here's a breakdown of key
aspects to consider:
1. Brand Awareness and Visibility: Social media provides businesses with an extensive platform to
increase brand visibility and awareness. Through regular posting, engaging content, and
interaction with followers, businesses can enhance their presence and reach a wider audience.
2. Customer Engagement and Relationship Building: Social media allows businesses to directly
interact with their audience, fostering relationships and building customer loyalty. Responding to
comments, addressing concerns, and initiating conversations demonstrate a commitment to
customer satisfaction and can lead to stronger brand-consumer relationships.
3. Content Distribution and Promotion: Social media serves as a powerful channel for distributing
content and promoting products or services. By sharing informative, entertaining, or educational
content, businesses can attract and engage their target audience while subtly promoting their
offerings.
4. Market Research and Insights: Social media platforms offer valuable insights into consumer
preferences, behaviors, and trends. By monitoring discussions, analyzing feedback, and studying
engagement metrics, businesses can gather valuable market research data to inform product
development, marketing strategies, and business decisions.
5. Lead Generation and Conversion: Social media can be an effective tool for generating leads and
driving conversions. By strategically leveraging targeted advertising, compelling calls-to-action,
and promotional campaigns, businesses can attract potential customers and guide them through
the sales funnel.
6. Community Building and Advocacy: Social media enables businesses to build communities
around their brand, products, or services. By fostering a sense of belonging and encouraging
user-generated content, businesses can turn customers into brand advocates who actively
promote their offerings to their own networks.
7. Crisis Management and Reputation Monitoring: Social media provides a platform for managing
crises and monitoring brand reputation. Businesses can address negative feedback or issues in
real-time, demonstrate transparency, and proactively manage their online reputation to
minimize damage and maintain trust.
8. Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking: Social media allows businesses to monitor
competitors and benchmark their performance against industry peers. By analyzing competitor
strategies, identifying trends, and learning from best practices, businesses can refine their own
social media tactics and stay ahead of the competition.
Overall, aligning social media with business objectives involves leveraging the unique capabilities of
social platforms to enhance brand awareness, engage with customers, drive sales, and achieve strategic
goals. By understanding the role of social media in the broader business context, organizations can
develop effective strategies that maximize the value of their social media efforts.
Social Media KPI
What are social media KPIs?
KPI stands for key performance indicators.
Businesses use KPIs to determine performance over time, see if they’re meeting their goals, and analyze
whether they need to make strategic changes.
Social media KPIs are the metrics used to determine if a business’s social media marketing strategy is
effective. Basically, they’re tracked data related to a company’s presence on individual platforms like
Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), or Instagram, or across all social platforms collectively.
Chances are, your social team sets SMART social media goals. Your social media KPIs should also be
SMART:
• Specific: Be as clear as possible. For example, do you hope to increase the brand’s Facebook
follower count by 500 in the next month? Do you want to increase your click-through rates by
20% by the end of the year?
• Measurable: Will you be able to track and quantify your progress? For example, during a
monthly check-in, you should be able to determine how close you are to meeting the goal.
• Attainable: Keep it real. Set KPIs that are within an achievable scope.
• Relevant: Make sure each social media KPI connects to the business’s larger goals.
• Timely: What’s the timeframe for achieving this goal and determining whether success has been
met? One month, six months, one year?
Important social media KPIs
Narrowing down your social media KPIs can be tough. There are KPIs for reach, engagement, and
conversions. Not to mention, KPIs for each platform: Facebook, Instagram, X (f.k.a. Twitter), YouTube,
TikTok and so on.
To make sure you’re tracking the right metrics, start with the basics. Here’s a quick overview of some
social media KPI examples you need to know when measuring social media success.
Reach KPIs
Reach KPIs measure how many users come across your social media channels. These users might only
interact with the channel passively—reach and engagement are two different things.
Think of reach as a quantity measurement—reach data demonstrates your existing and potential
audience, growth over time, and brand awareness.
Impressions
This is the number of times your post was visible in someone’s feed or timeline. This doesn’t necessarily
mean the person who viewed the post noticed it or read it.
Follower count
The number of followers your social channel has at a set time.
Audience growth rate
You want to make sure you’re gaining followers, not losing them. Audience growth rate demonstrates
how your follower count is changing over time.

Formulating a Social Media Strategy

Formulating a social media strategy involves defining clear objectives, identifying target audiences,
selecting appropriate platforms, creating engaging content, and measuring results. Here's a step-by-step
guide to help you develop a comprehensive social media strategy:
1. Set Clear Goals and Objectives: Start by defining specific, measurable goals that align with your
overall business objectives. These could include increasing brand awareness, driving website
traffic, generating leads, boosting sales, or improving customer engagement. Ensure that your
goals are realistic and achievable within a defined timeframe.
 2. Identify Your Target Audience: Understand your target audience's demographics, interests,
preferences, and behaviors. Develop detailed buyer personas to represent different segments of
your audience. This will help you tailor your content and messaging to resonate with your
audience and achieve better engagement.
3. Choose the Right Social Media Platforms: Select social media platforms that are most relevant
to your target audience and align with your business goals. Consider factors such as
demographics, platform usage trends, and the type of content that performs well on each
platform. Popular platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok.
4. Develop a Content Strategy: Create a content strategy that outlines the types of content you will
create, the topics you will cover, and the tone and style of your messaging. Your content should
be informative, entertaining, or valuable to your audience. Mix different types of content, such
as blog posts, videos, images, infographics, and user-generated content, to keep your audience
engaged.
5. Create a Content Calendar: Plan and schedule your content in advance using a content calendar.
This helps ensure a consistent posting schedule and allows you to align your content with key
events, holidays, or promotional campaigns. Be flexible and responsive to current events or
trending topics to keep your content timely and relevant.
6. Engage with Your Audience: Actively engage with your audience by responding to comments,
messages, and mentions in a timely and personalized manner. Encourage conversations, ask
questions, and solicit feedback to foster a sense of community and build stronger relationships
with your followers.
7. Implement Paid Advertising: Consider incorporating paid advertising into your social media
strategy to amplify your reach, target specific audience segments, and drive desired actions.
Experiment with different ad formats, targeting options, and bidding strategies to optimize your
campaigns for maximum effectiveness.
8. Measure and Analyze Results: Monitor key performance metrics, such as engagement rate,
reach, impressions, clicks, conversions, and ROI, to evaluate the effectiveness of your social
media efforts. Use analytics tools provided by social media platforms or third-party tools to track
performance over time, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your
strategy.
9. Iterate and Improve: Continuously review and refine your social media strategy based on
insights gathered from analytics, feedback from your audience, and changes in the competitive
landscape. Experiment with new tactics, test different content formats, and adapt to evolving
trends to stay ahead of the curve.
By following these steps and regularly reviewing and refining your social media strategy, you can
effectively leverage social media to achieve your business objectives and drive meaningful results.

Managing Social Media Risks.

What is a social media risk management plan?
A social media risk management plan provides your company with a roadmap for both avoiding and
swiftly addressing social media security risks and PR complications. It helps ensure that an organization is
able to maintain control over its social media communications with consumers.
In particular, a social media risk management plan designates and establishes:
• Which team members are responsible for social media risk management
• Who has access to accounts
• Who publishes posts and/or message consumers
• What posts require review from your brand’s legal team
• What steps should be taken should a social media security risk or PR issues arise
 • How to properly add new users to a social media accounts and deactivate users when they leave
the company
• What the are rules when representing the brand online (both on official accounts and employee
accounts)
• How often and to what extent the plan should be reviewed
The goal of a social media risk management plan is twofold: To prevent unauthorized, inaccurate, and
inappropriate communication from a brand via its social media channels, and to have a social media risk
management workflow in place to address these issues should any of them occur.

Analyzing public sector social media, analyzing individual users

Privacy policies, data ownership and maintaining privacy online
Social Media Metrics and measures

Social media metrics and measures are key indicators used to assess the performance and effectiveness
of social media activities. They help businesses evaluate their social media strategy, track progress
towards goals, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their efforts. Here are some common social
media metrics and measures:
1. Engagement Metrics:
• Likes: The number of users who have liked your posts or content.
• Comments: The number of comments left on your posts.
• Shares: The number of times your content has been shared by users.
• Retweets: The number of times your tweets have been retweeted on Twitter.
• Replies: The number of replies to your tweets or posts.
• Clicks: The number of clicks on links included in your posts.
• Mentions: The number of times your brand or account has been mentioned by other
users.
2. Reach and Impressions:
• Reach: The total number of unique users who have seen your content.
• Impressions: The total number of times your content has been displayed to users,
including multiple views by the same user.
3. Follower Growth:
• Follower Count: The total number of followers or subscribers to your social media
account.
• Follower Growth Rate: The rate at which your follower count is increasing over time.
4. Click-Through Rate (CTR):
• CTR measures the percentage of users who clicked on a link in your post or ad relative to
the total number of users who viewed the post or ad.
5. Conversion Metrics:
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who completed a desired action (e.g., making
a purchase, signing up for a newsletter) after clicking on a link in your social media post
or ad.
• Cost Per Conversion: The average cost incurred to generate one conversion.
6. Sentiment Analysis:
• Sentiment: The overall sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) expressed in user
comments or mentions about your brand or product.
7. Share of Voice:
• Share of Voice (SOV) measures your brand's presence and visibility compared to
competitors within a specific social media conversation or industry.
8. Customer Satisfaction and Feedback:
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): A measure of customer satisfaction and loyalty based on the
likelihood of customers to recommend your brand to others.
• Customer Feedback: Qualitative feedback provided by customers through comments,
reviews, or direct messages.
9. Social Media ROI:
• Return on Investment (ROI): The ratio of the revenue generated from social media
activities to the total cost incurred.
10. Content Performance:
 • Top Performing Content: Identify the types of content (e.g., videos, infographics, blog posts) that
resonate most with your audience based on engagement and other metrics.
• Content Reach: Measure the reach and engagement of individual content pieces to understand
which topics or formats are most effective.
It's important to select metrics that align with your business goals and objectives and regularly analyze
and interpret the data to make informed decisions and optimize your social media strategy.

Business use of Social Media - Measuring success, Interaction and monitoring

How to measure your social media success

Your business is actively tweeting, updating Facebook and posting how-to videos. Now, you want to keep
track of how well you’re doing. Without this information, it’s hard to know which efforts are paying off
and how to optimize your resources.
The simplest way to measure your efforts is by watching the number of fans you get on your social media
pages. But that’s not always a good indicator. What’s more important is the volume and quality of
interactions on your sites—comments, likes, retweets, etc. This is a good sign you are attracting the right
kind of fans—people whom you can convert into customers.
You can use a paid service to get detailed data to gauge and improve your social media efforts. Free
tools also exist that can analyze your sites and rate your social marketing influence based on how well
you engage with fans.
Here are some of the best do-it-yourself practices for measuring the effectiveness of your social media
efforts.
1. Online traffic
This is the simplest metric for measuring your results. Get traffic data on your social media efforts using
free tools available on most social sites and blogging platforms. You can also use the free
Google Analytics tool to get detailed data on traffic to your website from your various social media sites.
Monitor such information as:
• traffic volume metrics, such as the number of visits, page views and fans
• engagement metrics, such as the number of comments, liked posts or favourited/shared tweets
versus your page’s total number of fans
• competitive position (compare your engagement metrics to your competition’s)
• length of time visitors stay on your page
• sales conversion rates for social media followers versus those from other sources
• number of content downloads; sign-ups to an email list, blog or newsletter; contact form
submissions; contest entries; and survey responses.

2. Return on investment
Determining your return on social media efforts can be difficult because it may be hard to establish what
role they played in a customer’s decision to purchase. However, you can still try to get an indication of
your return in a couple of ways.
• You can create a dedicated Internet landing page or promotional code available only to the
followers of your social media pages, then track just those sales and see if the income from
those sales exceeds your social media spending. The drawback to this approach is it doesn’t
include other purchases that your social media fans may have made.
• An alternative metric is correlation. Create a timeline where you plot your social media activity
(new or relaunched social pages, special promotions, ad campaigns, etc.) and sales results. Look
for possible correlations, keeping in mind that correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causality
(i.e., other factors may have influenced sales fluctuations).

3. Sales lead generation

The key for this metric is to track the source of your leads. If the source isn’t clear, ask how the person
found you. You can:
• include a field in your contact form asking how customers found you
• track your website traffic from social media sites
• determine what percentage of total leads come from social media, and break this data down for
each social media page
• track and compare how many leads you get per follower on your various pages to determine
where you’re being the most effective.

4. Customer service
Calculate how much you’re spending on customer service, then determine your daily cost per issue
resolved. Track this figure for your social media sites versus other channels, such as phone, email and
web support. Also factor in peer-resolved issues in social media discussion forums that didn’t need in-
house attention.
Successfully using social media takes time and patience. Consistently listen, measure and learn. Then
adjust your strategy on the basis of what’s working best. It’s a continuous cycle.