The Analysts are to find out how the impact of social media campaigns can be measured. They are to make our campaign impact measurable and to transfer the results into nice graphics. Their main questions are:
What analytical strategies are researchers using to assess social media effects?
This is not just about “Likes”. It is more important to analyse the traffic on you Facebook page, which can be achieved using Facebook’s statistical functions. Thereby it is possible to examine who visited when and shared content or revisited etc. etc. Quantifiable success metrics are an important factor in analysing a campaign. It is questionable how many resources we are going to have for that during our campaign.
How is analysis of social networking effects different from classical media effect research?
Analysis is way more complex due to the variety of sources and huge amount of information available. It needs to be questioned what “quantifiable” means in terms of the internet. One quote said:
“If your theme is awareness, you’ll want to measure growth, engagement, brand awareness, sharability, likes and subscribes.” (https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-steps-to-an-effective-social-media-strategy/)
It illustrates the difference between social media analysis and classical research pretty well.
Which diagnostic tools do you propose to assess the mobilization effects of your campaign?
Facebook offers statistics once a page has more than 30 likes including demographic information. YouTube also offers statistical information on their videos. A further opportunity for doing is would be Google Analytics.
This was the Analysts’ first idea of what they would be doing:
These were the Analysts’ hypotheses for our campaign:
During the campaign, the Analysts’ main task was observing the activities on our Facebook pages, especially to see whether the offline action led to more trafffic / likes.
These are some of the Analysts’ conclusions as to the campaign:
- Using an experimental Facebook page in the beginning of the campaign to test how Facebook Insights, the statistics offered by Facebook for their pages, works turned out to be a good idea.
- Using other tools besides Facebook Insights could have resulted in broader data as to the campaign reach and success. For example, the effects of direct communication could not be measured that way.
- The short poll used during the taste test event provided some data for publishing on the Facebook page. The class survey made in the beginning was also thought a good idea because it helped to form some initial hypotheses.
- A defined target audience and exact goal would have helped to structure the analyses.
- The interactive elements (surveys, questions) and the videos on the Facebook pages created the highest traffic.
Finally these are the Analysts’ recommendations for people who want to create their own social media campaign:
- Defined target audiences and exact goals help you to think of what needs to be analysed!
- Facebook Insights provides useful information, but think of other tools as well!
- Interactive elements on your Facebook page are likely to cause the highest traffic!