Until taking I began taking a course on Internet Advocacy, I like many people, only knew minimal amounts about how to use social media. Yes, I had a Facebook, but I only vaguely knew how to use it effectively (unless, of course, I used it to find a friend, write on their wall, or make a status, I have been quite effective at these rudimentary tasks). Yes, I had a Twitter, but I had only Tweeted a handful of times. If asked the question, do you know how to measure the impact of these tools for an advocacy campaign, I would have laughed and simply said “no.” I just read Alan Rosenblatt’s articles Measuring the Impact of Your Social Media Program and Rules of Social Engagement which briefly describe some online tools which can help calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) for social advocacy campaigns. Rosenblatt identifies three ways in which you can measure the ROI: reach, engagement, and driving web traffic home.
The reach refers to the size of the audience. Essentially, this means how many followers or fans you have (depending on the platform- Twitter or Facebook). On Twitter, I learned, you can increase your followers by using hashtags (anything connected to a #.) Websites such as Hashtags.org can measure the amount of times your hashtag is used. MyTweeple.com allows you to download your followers in order to analyze them.
Engagement refers to the interactions with the audience and the by the audience when they work to spread the word on your behalf. On Twitter this can include retweeting (which can be tracked on Backtype.com, ReTweetRank.com, and SocialMention.com), recommending people to follow you, and more. On Facebook if they ‘like’ your page or share it on their wall, etc.
Driving web traffic home has to do with page views and visitors to the website. Bit.ly and HootSuite.com are tools which can enable you to shorten links so you can use them in Twitter posts without taking up as many characters. These tools can also allow you to measure how many clicks you from that URL.
In just a short amount of time, through reading these two articles, I was able to learn a great deal about how to measure the effectiveness of an online campaign. This is very important information especially in this time when online campaigns are becoming commonplace. These articles were brief but informative and I recommend them, and the sites mentioned above, to anyone interested in the field.
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