
Greetings from the ARC lounge, nothing makes blogging cooler than saying you are doing it from a lounge setting. So we are going to start this session of the lounge with a little Q and A...
Tyler, it is obvious you do quite an array of very valuable projects; what is your favorite?
The first week of every month I hitch up my pants, crack my knuckles, throw on some of R. Kelly's greatest hits ("Step in the Name of Love" is a classic), and begin compiling our department metrics for the month. What has started as a simple two page spreadsheet taking about fifteen minutes has amassed eight pages and three hours of work; with numbers used across a spectrum of presentations and strategies within the school.
Why should I capture metrics?
This blog is all about how to communicate with our audiences, specifically emphasizing how social media campaigns can extend awareness and reach to audiences. But proving a ROI is key to these campaigns so pages and pages of metrics become necessary.
So without discerning all my metric secrets and calculations, I feel it proper to share some of the revelations I have come to while compiling the numbers month after month. And most importantly remember that these are purely quantitative numbers and do not speak for the qualitative interactions with your audience (though several social media platforms try to).
Man you sold me, so what Metrics should we capture?
Ideally having some set of numbers for everywhere on the web you are present is the goal; and most platforms have some sort of way to capture numbers so why not do it?
The big boy.
Our beautifully and intricately designed website leeds.colorado.edu is just bursting with content and information and we love to see what people are looking at using Google analytics.
We capture unique views for:
- the top 10 pages visited
- the top 10 alumni pages visited
- clicks on homepage
- Avg. Time on pages
- Geographic areas for certain pages
- Navigation summaries for homepage spotlights (as well as what percent of views are coming from the homepage versus alternate routes)
E-mail marketing
We love Constant Contact and we always capture open rate, top 5 links, and unique click throughs per our monthly newsletter sent out.
Blogs
We are incredibly proud of our blogs at cuboulderblogs.com, and using google analytics we capture which blog is getting the most traction as well as individual posts that are popular. (Like this post will undoubtedly be).
Press
We use a wonderful combo of Meltwater News and Vocus to analyze press hits per month versus target peer/aspirational schools. As well as making some beautiful visual charts of our progress that are great for presentations.
Social Media
Twitter
Followers and number of tweets, as well as tweets per day via tweetstats.com
and if your exceedingly bored reading this, check out our twitter page.
Facebook
Eventually everyone will realize that facebook fanpages are so much more useful than groups because fanpages allow you to get "facebook insights", which means they give us/you some very valuable numbers unavailable to facebook groups.
We capture fans, views, photos, posts, comments per month.
Becoming a fan of Leeds is the cool thing to do by the way.
LinkedIN
Members, discussions, job posts - don't you want to get in on this action?
YouTube
Videos, unique views, comments, which video is getting the most traction.
Zmags
Putting our publications in a sweet online format gives the ability to see some qualitative aspects of our publications; as well as the general quantitative numbers you would get with google analytics.
We capture views per publication, zoom and click throughs (inferring people actually reading), and avg. time on each publication.
This is a very raw display of what we capture, (we do capture a little more than presented above), but this is the basic set. Then I use these numbers to compare these to previous months and years and find patterns, what is working, what isn't, and find the right numbers to report. And then push out what is popular in every communication channel possible. In the end, these numbers need to compliment your communications strategy; and finding what proves your strategy is working is the goal...so good luck, and feel free to click these links and add to our numbers.
Isn't all this metric madness hard Tyler?
Yes, I probably deserve a huge raise.
Posted by Tyler McAnelly



Recent Comments