How to use UTM Parameters to Track Social Media Activity [Blog Example]

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This post will provide a quick overview on UTM parameters and how to use them to track blog post activity. In this blog on teaching social media analytics I have been describing a class project whereby students link Google Analytics to their WordPress blog and then track the results as they promote the blog on social media each week. (Zahay-Blatz, 2021). The students are instructed for the weekly assignments to change the blog and emphasize pictures and videos one particular week, long term content the next, for example, and track the results of these changes in Google Analytics.  The students promote the blog on social media and also use email marketing to gain readership. A good next step in teaching this material is to see if the students wish to try UTM tags, or parameters, to track and analyze blog activity.

What Are UTM Parameters?

UTM Parameters are an additional way of tracking traffic to a blog using Google Analytics. Essentially, “UTM parameters are short text codes that you add to URLs (or links) to help you track the performance of webpage or campaign.”  (Newberry, 2021). The parameters can be handy to help aggregate and report on traffic. UTM is short for Urchin Tracking Modules because they were created by Urchin Software, which was acquired by Google when it was building Google Analytics.  The parameters help identify and organize traffic and are useful in attribution analysis for those interested tracking conversions (Kanani, 2020).

What are the Five UTM Parameters?

There are five parameters that can be used to track traffic. These parameters can be pointed to a website, which means they can also be pointed to a blog. Stanis (2019). There are five tags that can be put at the end of the URL for a blog that then show up in Google Analytics. (Munroe, 2021).

The five parameters, or tags, are:

  1. utm_source: facebook, twitter or other source driving traffic
  2. utm_medium: the type of channel, cpc, social, paid social
  3. utm_campaign: the name of the campaign
  4. utm_term: specific keywords or phrases
  5. utm_content: different ad content such as video or text ad

For blog attribution in this project the first three tags are relevant in terms of tracking traffic from a particular social media network and channel and naming the campaign. The links to the blog posts below provide a good tutorial on how the process works.  There is more detail for those who wish to dive into the details of UTM tag creation and reporting.

How Are the Parameters Created?

Fortunately, there are several UTM generators available for marketing campaigns, most notably from Google Analytics, that make the process a bit easier.  I use Bitly as a URL to shorten my blog URLs and recently noticed the option to use UTM parameters in that tool. Figure 1 shows the results of using UTM generator in Bitly to create UTM tags for this blog post. It seems that Bitly is testing using UTM parameters in its URL shortening tool, so I took advantage of that capability.  The tags show up after each parameter.  I am looking to track Facebook traffic from organic social sources and named the campaign UTM_Post.

UTM, Google Analytics, tagging

Figure 1: UTM Parameters help track blog traffic.

 

The tags become part of the URL when entered the URL and filled out the parameters on bitly. It will be interesting to see how the traffic is tracked over the coming weeks. I will be able to report on source medium and campaign name to see these results.(Digital Marketing Extreme, 2021).

Please let me know if you have any other comments or suggestions on this post. I will return to this topic of teaching social media analytics and to this blog when next I teach this class.  Until then, please follow updates and tips on teaching digital marketing on my Zahay Teaches Digital (Marketing) blog.

 

References

Digital Marketing Extreme (2021). Retrieved from: https://digitalmarketingextreme.com/how-to/how-to-see-utm-parameters-in-google-analytics-reports/?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Kanani, A. (September 25, 2020). [CXL Blog Post]. UTM Parameters: A Complete Guide for Traffic Attribution. https://cxl.com/blog/utm-parameters/?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Munroe, M., (2021). [Hubspot Blog Post].  Understanding the Basics of UTM Parameters https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/understanding-basics-utm-parameters?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Newberry, C. (May 3, 2021). [Hootsuite Blog Post]. How to Use UTM Parameters to Track Social Media Success.  https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-utm-parameters/?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Stanis, J. (October 21, 2019). [Weidert Blog Post]. What is UTM Code and How to use it.  https://www.weidert.com/blog/what-is-utm-code

Zahay-Blatz, D. (January 9, 2021). [Blog post]. One Secret to Teaching Social Media Analytics (A Blog Project). https://sites.stedwards.edu/dblatz/2021/01/08/secrets/ 

 

 

Three Tips for Teaching the Eight Layers of Social Media Analytics

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This blog has been focused on teaching social media analytics in a stand-alone class with a dedicated blogging project (Zahay, 2021).  This class uses Dr. Gohar Khan’s book (2018) which focuses on the eight layers of social media analytics and how to create value for customers and the organization through their use.  This post will focus on how to use these eight layers of social media analytics in the classroom. In case you are not familiar with this text, these eight layers of social media analytics are as follows:

1) Social media network analysis:  Finding out who is central and influential in a social network through various analysis tools.

2) Text: Using text mining techniques to identity positive and negative sentiment, emerging themes and topics.

3) Actions: Analyzing the actions performed by social media users, such as likes, dislikes shares, comments and endorsements.

4) Search: Using historical search data for to gain insight into which search terms are trending and which might be useful in paid and organic search for a particular topic.

5) Location: Mining and mapping the locations of social media users.

6) Hyperlinks: Interpreting in-links and out-links to social media postings.

7) Mobile/Apps: Measuring engagement with mobile applications.

8) Multimedia:  Creating and extracting value from social media postings using videos images, audio, animations and interactive content.

There are several ways to increase student understanding of these important social media analytics layers. Free tools can help increase in-depth understanding, as can focusing on one layer in a single class.  Another approach is to incorporate social media analytics throughout the entire marketing curriculum.

One: Use Free tools to illustrate the social media analytics layers.

Several tools in particular can assist with the social network, text and action layers. There are also Social Mention can mine text to identify trends and report on social media sentiment. Several free tools available for network analysis such as NodeXL and Mentionmapp. Figure 1 shows some of people and concepts to which I am connected on the free version of Mentionmapp (2021) for Twitter analytics.  The application takes my Tweets and creates a social media network map.  In the Figure I show a drill down on the topic of St. Edward’s University where I work. It shows, for example, our recent mention in US News & World Report as a top ten regional university in the West and some other key individuals and topics with whom I am connected and with whom I might want to be connected to extend my reach.

Mentionmapp, network analyisis, social media network analysis

Figure 1. A network analysis of Dr. Zahay-Blatz’s Twitter posts relating to St. Edward’s University (via Mentionmapp)

Two: Teach the social media analytics layers throughout the curriculum.

At St. Edward’s, we teach social media analytics as a stand-alone class after graduate students in the MSDGMA have taken the introductory social media class. One approach is to build analytics into the entire curriculum as we did in the undergraduate program (Zahay, Pollitte, Reavey & Alvarado, 2021) and has been suggested by Liu and Levin (2018). In their article, Liu and Levin suggest building a foundation of analytics knowledge in the principles of marketing class and building upon that in subsequent classes. Students might encounter some of the simpler concepts in the eight layers such as the action layers (likes and shares) in the introductory class and then be exposed to some of the network analytics tools and more complex layers in subsequent classes. Liu and Levin emphasize that following an integrated process requires faculty agreement as to what should be taught in each class. We at St. Edward’s University’s department of Marketing, Operations and Analytics would agree with that approach.  We have mapped out how analytics will be taught in each area of the undergraduate classes and social media analytics should be no different.

Three: Focus on just a few of the eight layers of social media analytics.

These layers are comprehensive but each could take an entire semester or class period.  Network analytics, such as we have illustrated here with Mentionmapp, can be its own course.  Multimedia courses can be found in other departments of the University.  Students can learn more about the role of search analytics in social media in the introductory digital marketing course.

In Conclusion

Taken together, the eight layers of social media analytics approach consistently organizes the types of analytics so that students can see what is necessary to effectively manage a social media marketing program.  The insights provided in this approach can be illustrated through the use of hands-on tools mentioned here and detailed in Khan’s text.  The focus can be on teaching the layers in several standalone classes or throughout the entire curriculum.

References

Khan, G. (2018). Creating value with social media analytics: managing, aligning and mining social media text, networks, actions, location, apps, hyperlinks, multimedia, & search engine data. CreateSpace.

Liu, Y. & Levin, M. (2018). A Progressive approach to teaching analytics in the marketing classroom, Marketing Education Review, 28(1), 14-27

Mentionmapp (2021). https://mentionmapp.com

Zahay, D. (2021, January 8). One secret to teaching social media analytics (A Blog Project). https://sites.stedwards.edu/dblatz/2021/01/08/secrets/

Zahay, D., Pollitte, W., Reavey, B. & Alvarado, A. (2021). An integrated model of digital marketing curriculum design, Marketing Education Review, published online September 6, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/10528008.2021.1947856

 

How to Assess Social Media Marketing Capabilities [Including the Social Media Audit]

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It is critical in teaching social media marketing to arm students with the tools that they can apply in their professional setting.  While the blog project we have described in this blog is a good start for understanding how to write for a particular audience and to develop keywords and topics that will rank well in organic search, the process of social media marketing management must take place in a broader context. Social media metrics must be linked to a broader strategic plan, but how is this to be accomplished?  A good way to start linking overall company goals to social media marketing plans is .  through understanding existing social media marketing capabilities and making changes to the organization as appropriate.  Assessments and audits can provide data and insights into the overall company direction for social media marketing and help link social media actions to organizational goals.

The Demand Metric Model:  Assessing Social Media Marketing Capabilities

In a prior blog post I discussed a social media marketing maturity model by Hamel (Zahay, 2021).  The Demand Metric model (Demand Metric, 2021)  for assessing social media capabilities (Figure 1) is similar in its goal but different in its approach.  Rather than resulting in maturity level as in Hamel’s DAMM model, the Demand Metric model uses the eight criteria listed below to create an overall assessment score.  Each criteria is evaluated from 1-5 with five being the highest and then a weighted score is produced out of a total of 100.  In this example a total score of 57 is the result, indicating many areas for improvement. Areas of greatest opportunity are marked in yellow and red, whereas green indicates a strength.

One way to use this tool in the classroom is to ask students to evaluate a company with which they are familiar and then make recommendations based on the results. A nice thing about this model that distinguishes it from the Hamel model (See link below) is that it does generate a list of specific recommendations to help improve the organization’s social media marketing capabilities.  For example, if the company does not regularly monitor competitors, the tool recommends setting up Google Alerts for the competition.

demand metric, social media assessment

Figure 1: Demand Metric Social Media Assessment points to opportunities for organizational improvement

Demand Metric Social Media Marketing Maturity Assessment Criteria

The specific criteria used in the model are as follows:

Senior Management Commitment: Does senior management understand social media and is it committed to using these tools?

Social Media Knowledge: Does the firm understand the channels and how its employees and executives are using it currently? Is the firm continuing to increase its knowledge?

Customer Engagement: Does the firm participate in groups and forums that are necessary to understand the industry and the customer.  Are subscriber lists growing?

Competitive Insight: Does the firm track competitors on social media?

Staff & Resources: Are there defined roles and responsibilities and is someone in charge of social media?

Plan & Channel Selection: Is there a plan in place linking social media channels to company strategy?

Process Documentation:  Is there a process for integrating social media marketing into marketing practices and has the firm developed a calendar to select topics.

Governance and Measurement: Is there a social media policy in place including a privacy policy?  Have metrics been selected for success and are these reported to senior management in a dashboard or other format?

This type of assessment allows us to see how the organization is positioned to develop a social media program and report on its associated analytics.  The tool will also help the organization identify organizational weaknesses and then figure out what skills gaps are in the workforce and how to how to plan for an effective social media strategy.  The output of this type of assessment should be a strategic social media plan that fits with the organizations’ business goals.

Assessment versus the Social Media Audit

A social media audit, on the other hand, is a drill down into the specifics of an organization’s social media channels and presence on those channels. The purpose is to understand what is going on with the current situation and how to improve specific social media marketing efforts.. The social media audit can identify specific activities that are necessary for future success. For example, if the target audience  is often on Instagram but the company does not have a presence there, developing an Instagram presence presents an opportunity.

Khan (2018) suggests these following these steps in asking these ten questions in a social media audit. A sample audit is included in Figure 2.

  1. Which social media accounts are currently attached to the company?
  2. How are they currently being used?
  3. Have they gone dormant/are they being used for spam?
  4. Are the current messaging and social networks the best possible networks for the intended audience?
  5. How often is content posted to these accounts? Is the content relevant to the intended audience?
  6. What is the engagement like?
  7. How does engagement compare to the past?
  8. What happens when Googling the company name? What is the reputation of the firm online?
  9. What platforms and messages is the competition using?
  10. What is working well?

    khan, social media marketing audit

    Figure 2: Questions to ask in the social media marketing audit (Khan, 2018)

Another good resource for a social media audit template is HubSpot (2021).  The HubSpot template is more technical and relies heavily upon an the results  from Google Analytics. While valuable, it might not be the best fit for an organization that is less advanced in social media marketing and doesn’t have Analytics available.

Whichever tools the company picks, the social media audit and the assessment should work together. In the Demand Metric Model, the audit then feeds into Plan and Channel Selection section of the assessment tool. Therefore, the two types of tools (assessment and audit) work together to help focus the organization’s social media marketing efforts. As noted above, once the plan is developed, it must be tied to the organization’s goals and strategic plan. Teaching these tools prepares students to function in today’s current business environment by giving them ways to talk to upper management about social media efforts.

References

Demand Metric (2021). Social Media Maturity Assessment 

HubSpot (2021). Social Media Audit for Word & Google Docs

Khan, Gohar F, (2018), Creating Value with Social Media Analytics: Managing Aligning, and Mining Social Media, Text, Networks, Actions, Location, Apps, Hyperlinks. Multimedia & Search Engines Data. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform.

Zahay, D. (2021, February 22). How to Assess Maturity in Social Media Analytics [Using the DAMM Model]

Navigating Free Social Media Analytics Tools for the classroom [YES, FREE!]

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One of the most challenging aspects of teaching social media analytics for educators at any level is finding free social media analytics tools. In our program at St. Edward’s University we don’t typically ask students to pay for technology like certifications and tools in our courses but instead rely on academic programs or tools that can be used for free. The number of free social media analytics tools is small but is sufficient to teach a class in social media analytics.  A link to a list of tolls with free trial periods is included a the end of this blog post.

This post will focus on the free tools that come with the social media platforms, the Hootsuite academic program and a further drill-down into Google Analytics. I will start with Google Analytics and build on the information in last week’s post.

Google Analytics as a Free Social Media Analytics tool

Google Analytics is a free social media analytics tool that comes with the Google suite, which we use at our University.  Last week I showed several Google analytics reports in the Universal Analytics option (Zahay-Blatz, 2021) While using Google Analytics might not spring to mind immediately as a tool for social media analytics, the tool is quite well-suited for a blog.  Last week’s blog showed how social media analytics would be used to illustrate and analyze the traffic from various social media networks

Metrics showing the numbers of sessions, the bounce rate and the session length can also provide insight into which content is most compelling.  Examining these metrics helps a student blogger see how much time users are spending on their content and which ones provide the most engagement.  The student can then adjust posts and set goals for improving (increasing) the time spent on the page and improving (reducing) the bounce rate.  Google Analytics can also show the sources of traffic to the blog by country and device and the times of day that users access the blog.  These analytics can also be used to adjust blog posts and posting times as appropriate.

Hoostsuite Academy for Free Social Media Analytics

Hootsuite® provides a free social media management tool through Hootsuite Academy (Hootsuite, 2021) that we use in our classes.  One benefit is that students can schedule posts in advance and see the effect of posting on different days and times of the week on engagement and other metrics.  Multiple posts are most helpful on Twitter where the feed goes by quickly and might not always be seen by the student’s target audience on the first posting.

While payment is required for more sophisticated analytics, I often use the stream dashboard (Figure 1) for a quick look at how things are going with my posts. I can easily see how many people have liked my posts in the three platforms I connect to in the free version, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook (these also happen to be the major platforms on which I post). I can also track when my post or my profile is mentioned in another users feed.

social media analytics, hootsuite platform, mentions, likes engagement

Figure 1: Hootsuite streams show likes and mentions

Note that It is possible to connect pages and groups to the feed and the stream dashboard which is helpful if students have created a company page in Facebook or are posting to a specialist group in their category.  For example, I have had students promoting their fitness and real estate businesses and have promoted pages or groups in those specific areas.  I will show metrics from our Digital Marketing Academics group in the next section.  It is also possible to add a LinkedIn Showcase page which highlights a particular brand.

Social Media Network Analytics on Platforms

If Hootsuite Academy is not an option, or if your students want more insights into their blog activity, most social media networks provide their own free social media analytics tools that students can also use in reporting on their blog posts.  Metrics such as likes, shares and mentions are readily available.  To access more sophisticated analytics often requires additional access.  For example, in Facebook creating a group or a company page allows access to insights analytics. Figure 2 shows the analytics from our Facebook group for Digital Marketing Academics. I can easily see my top posts and which had the most reach and engagement, as well as metrics for the entire group.

Facebook, Facebook insights, posts

Figure 2: Analytics from Facebook Insights for our specialty group help guide post activity

Similarly, LinkedIn requires a company page for access to analytics.  Pinterest and Instagram also require a business account. These are all credible strategies for the social media blogging project.  Creating a group or company page can be a great way to attract followers for the specific content for a blog, build a personal brand and attract the right followers.

However, students might not want to create a specialty page for this project as it is only seven weeks in length. I then suggest that Twitter allows any of its users to see the analytics for its posts at analytics.twitter.com.  Figure 3 is a screenshot of my recent analytics.  I just started using Twitter again after a break over the Summer and it will be interesting to see if posting original content from this blog will improve the number of profile visits and followers to my Twitter account. In this case, I had made one Tweet in August that received 391 impressions and 11 engagements.  My previous top Tweet had 36 engagements. One of the things I am looking for on this blog is engagement so I can go back and see what it was about that particular Tweet, the content, the timing of the post, etc. that made it more engaging for my followers.

Twitter, engagement, reach, social media analytics

Figure 3: Twitter Analytics captures top posts, reach and engagement

Using Free Social Media Analytics Tools vs. Free Trials

Finally, another option is to have students set up a free trial account on tools such as Buffer, Sprout Social, Keyhole etc. (Read, 2021).  Many of these tools offer free trials that last from 14 to 30 days.  My approach is to let students set up these free accounts themselves or use tools that they already have available.  In our class, we use Google Analytics and offer the free Hootsuite® Platform certification through Hootsuite Academy.  The students use whatever free social media analytics tools are available on the platforms they have chosen to post on during the class.  If they wish to set up a paid account or use a free trial, they are welcome to do so and include those metrics in their weekly analysis of their social media analytics.

This article has focused on the free social media analytics tools that are available to facilitate this blogging project for a social media or social media analytics class. Resources mentioned here are listed below.  If you are an academic and are not a member of our Facebook group for Digital Marketing Academics (Parker, 2021) and wish to get quick access to these and other updates, you can join by following the link in the references section immediately after this post.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me with questions.

References

Hootsuite Academy (September 1, 2021).  Retrieved from https://education.hootsuite.com/

Parker, J. & Zahay, D. (2021).Digital Marketing Academics Facebook Group

Read, A. (September 1,2021).  [Buffer Blog post] Know What’s Working on Social Media:  27 Paid and Free Social Media Analytics Tools

Zahay-Blatz, D. (August 25, 2021). [Blog post] Using Google Analytics to Teach Social Media Analytics [Two Useful Reports]

Using Google Analytics to Track Blog Social Media Analytics [Two Useful Reports]

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A new semester is starting and I am back to teaching Social Media Analytics. This blog about teaching social media focuses on a blog project where students create a class blog, promote it on social media and then report on the associated analytics, including Google Analytics.  To read about this process from the beginning, start reading the blog from the link below this posting. (Zahay, 2021)

One of the best things about connecting Google Analytics to a blog in teaching social media analytics is that GA will give a report of where traffic is coming from in terms of which social media network and which posts are creating traffic. Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media Studios, Inc. recently outlined this process in a blog post listed at the end of this post (Crestodina, 2021).

Social Media Analytics from the Channels Report

An easy first step is to create a standard report by selecting Acquisition, All Channels, Traffic. An example of this report from my own blog is included here. I recently reposted a post from February’s blog to share with other professors teaching social media.    It is clear to see which channels are driving traffic and that social media is the largest source of web traffic to my blog, over 75 percent.  I can also see that this post attracted a number of new users to my blog.  While the bounce rate is high, as is usual for a blog, viewers did spend almost a minute reading the post, which was relatively short. For more insight, I can drill down in this channels report (Figure 1) to see which social media sites are driving traffic.

google analytics, channels, social media analytics

Figure 1: Google Analytics Channels Report Shows Most Blog Traffic Comes from Social

 

Using a Custom Report for More Details

Andy Crestodina also includes in his blog a link to a custom report your students can import into their own Google Analytics.  I imported the report into the GA for this blog on teaching social media analytics. This report shown here (Figure 1) outlines in more detail exactly which social media sites are driving traffic, in this case Facebook and LinkedIn.

Social media, Analytics, blog analytics.

Figure 2: LinkedIn and Facebook Drive Most Social Traffic to This Blog

The report also allows a drill down to the links generating traffic by clicking on the various social channels.

social media analytics, blog analytics, google analytics.

Figure 3: Most Recent Traffic Comes from A Single Blog Post

In my own blog, (Figure 3) I can see that most of the social media traffic is coming from that repost of an earlier blog post I made around the middle of August.  Students as they analyze their own posts can see that posting on social media helps drive traffic to the blog and how.

These Google Analytics functions that allow for exploring social media analytics are a good way for students to improve their blog by seeing which posts gain the most traffic and how engaged their readers are on the blog. Take a look at the project below in my blog and see more details from Andy’s blog post on getting the most about social media traffic to your blog by using GA reporting functions. Please note for this project we are using the Universal Analytics (UA) version of Google Analytics as not GA4.  We think that the reporting functions are better suited to a blog using the original Google Analytics functions and reports.

References

Crestodina, A. (August 18, 2021).  [Blog post] How to Use Google Analytics to Track Social Media:  Here are 5 Quick Ways

Zahay-Blatz, D. (January 8, 2021). [Blog post] Teaching Social Media Analytics Blog

A Useful Model for Teaching A Social Media Marketing Audit [PIE]

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When Should the Social Media Marketing Audit Occur ?

When teaching social media marketing analytics, consider teaching the social media marketing audit process after conducting higher-level organizational assessments such as the Social Media Marketing Maturity Model Assessment from the last blog post in this series (Zahay, 2021).  The next step for an organization after this higher level assessment should be to look in more detail at the organization’s current social media marketing efforts.  The social media audit (or review) can be defined as an evaluation of an organization’s use of social media and compared to an established set of goals and objectives.  The social media marketing audit should go beyond the organizational readiness stage and investigate what the organization is doing on specific social media platforms.

HubSpot provides an excellent outline for the social media audit (King, 2017). The HubSpot approach suggests that the audit means taking a hard look at the data from all platforms and that the results might help companies do the following:

  1. Develop a social media strategy that aligns to specific, actionable business objectives and goals
  2. Discover trends to create or modify social media campaigns
  3. Provide insight into customer sentiment and brand perceptions.
  4. Provide insight to manage and justify social media spending

The main aspects of the review should be Data, Goals, Profile, Content Performance and Competition.  One useful model for the Goals Section of the audit is known as the PIE model.

PIE (Potential, Importance and Ease of Implementation)

The PIE model is one model that can be used to assist goal creation and prioritization in the social media marketing audit. Originally used to prioritize conversion rate optimization tests, the PIE model can be adapted to the social media audit context quite easily. The PIE model rates opportunities by Potential, Importance and Ease of Implementation (hence the term PIE)  from 1 to 10 where 1 is low and 10 is high.  Potential is the technical result such the specific metrics, Importance is how the activity related to overall goals and Ease is the Ease of implementation from both a technical and political viewpoint. In this example, three different types of social media campaigns, Facebook ads, a Twitter campaign and a video log are analyzed for their overall ability to provide “lift” or improved results. Facebook ads come out the winner because of their relative importance and potential and ease of implementation.  PIE can be linked specifically to organizational goals by redefining the various aspects of Potential and Importance.  In this example, the organization is focused on controlling costs, increasing traffic and maximizing return on investment.

The PIE Model Applied to the Social Media Marketing Audit

The PIE Model Applied to the Social Media Marketing Audit

 

Applying PIE to Teaching Social Media Analytics

There are many applications of this model in the classroom.  For the blogging project we discussed earlier in this blog, where students create a series of five blog posts and report the results, students can analyze their individual blog posts along this model to determine which opportunities might be most attractive for their next posts.  Students can also use this model to conduct a social media marketing audit for a client project.  This model will help them communicate to their client the best road to take in creating their next social media project.  In fact, PIE can be applied in many contexts in teaching not only social media marketing, but many aspects of digital marketing, including the original purpose, conversion rate optimization.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  My social media analytics class has ended for this seven week period.  Look for more posts when I next teach the subject.  Let me know if you have any blog post ideas.

Also, this post and the last one were adapted from the forthcoming third edition of our text Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach, by Cengage Learning (Zahay, Parker, Roberts & Barker, 2018). There is an entirely new chapter on managing the social media function including organizational assessment, the social media audit, organizing and staffing. Watch for the new edition to be available for Fall classes.

References

King, C. (2017, November 14). Check the pulse of your digital strategy with a social media audit. [HubSpot User Blog]. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/check-pulse-digital-strategy-social-media-audit

Zahay, D., Parker, J., Roberts, M.L. & Barker, D. (2022).  Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach, 3e (forthcoming). Cengage Learning.

Zahay-Blatz, D. (2020, February 22). How to assess social media analytics maturity [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://sites.stedwards.edu/dblatz/2021/02/22/smmm/

 

How to Assess Maturity in Social Media Analytics [Using the DAMM Model]

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Assessing Social Media Analytics Maturity for a Blog

One of the most important things students can learn is a series of models to assess social media analytics proficiency for their blog.  This bog post will focus on one particular model to assess social media analytics maturity.  A following post will discuss several other models for assessing the success of the blog project so students can make plans for improvement.

This activity of applying the model to their own blog is good practice for the students in understanding how to apply the model to a social media analytics situation.  The Digital Analytics Maturity Model (DAMM) was developed by Stéphane Hamel in 2008 to assess the analytics maturity of organizations.  The model can easily be adapted to analyzing the social media analytics maturity of an activity or business model or firm.  In our case, it works perfectly for determining how advanced students are in developing their blogging strategies. The link to the model can be found in the references below.

The Five Levels of Social Media Analytics Maturity

The model has five levels of maturity, as follows:

Level 1, Initial: Outcomes are unpredictable and poorly controlled. This level might be at the beginning of the blog project

Level 2, Reactive: Outcomes are project based and often reactive.  Students might report this level in he middle of the project.

Level 3, Defined: Outcomes are clearly defined and there is proactive measurement. Hopefully, as students become more familiar with blogging and posting on social media, they will learn more about which metrics are most appropriate. Students might report this level toward the end of the blog project.

Some students might reach levels 4 or 5 during the course of the project if they are using a blog they have established already.  Most students will not reach these levels during the course of a seven week project with one week for setup, five blog posts and one week for analysis.  However, these levels are worth noting here for use in the social media marketing organization.

Level 4, Managed:  Outcomes are managed and controlled

Level 5, Optimizing:  Focus on outcome improvement.

Assessment Questions

The tool assesses these levels by asking questions around these five areas:

  1. Objectives and Scope: What are the KPIs used and how often are they measured.
  2. Analytics Team and Expertise: What expertise is available?
  3. Continuous Improvement Process and Analysis Methodology: How are results analyzed and measured?
  4. Tools, Technology and Data Integration: What tools are used and how effective are they?
  5. Governance: How are analytics managed?

These five dimensions are shown in the figure below.  The idea is to have a balanced chart. A lopsided figure will show the areas that need to be improved. This analysis can be done for the student blog or for another project.

The next figure shows how a beginning student might analyze his or her blog in terms of the Model.  This figure shows that there are few processes in place and the student is just beginning to learn the technologies necessary to write and effectively promote the blog.

The model is a great way to assess what an organization needs to do to effectively manage its social media analytics function.  The model provides a nice visual representation that an organization can use to discuss its course going forward. The blog project for class that we have been talking about in this blog is a great way to get started with this model. Students can assess their maturity as they progress through the project or just at a particular stage.  The model can be an individual assignment or a discussion post.  Another way to use this tool is to have the students analyze the social media metrics maturity level of a particular company.

Resources

You can read more about the DAMM model in Dr. Gohar Khan’s book, referenced below (Khan, 2018).   Thanks also to Anil Batra for introducing me to the model as the OAMM (Online Analytics) maturity model in a recent class with the Digital Analytics Association. This model is quite flexible and can be used in a variety of digital marketing sessions. Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions.

 

References

Khan, Gohar F, (2018), Creating Value with Social Media Analytics: Managing Aligning, and Mining Social Media, Text, Networks, Actions, Location, Apps, Hyperlinks. Multimedia & Search Engines Data. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform.

Model Link:  https://digitalanalyticsmaturity.org/assessment

The Easy Way to Report and Measure Social Media Analytics (Reporting on a Blog)

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Reporting on the Blog Project

I have been providing details of the blog project in my social media analytics course and wanted to show what the students report each week regarding their blog posts that they promote on social media.  There are many ways to set up this spreadsheet and this is one way.  Many thanks to Dr. Leila Samii at Southern New Hampshire University and Dr. Holly Syrdal at Texas State University for their inspiration on this project. In this class, we have the students create five blog posts and post them on Monday. On Sunday night they report the week’s activity on a spreadsheet.

The First Tab: Overall Results and Future Goals

This spreadsheet has been anonymized so the student and the blog cannot be identified. On the first tab students answer a series of questions each week about the date they posted, the time frame they are analyzing and the effect of this week’s activity.  For example, this week students are encouraged to to write a post optimized to be put on social media. While students always promote on social media, in some weeks they might be encouraged to write an email or do something else to analyze the effect of traffic on the blog. Students must analyze where traffic is coming from and goals for the coming week.  Most important, students must include a permanent link to that week’s blog post, known as a permalink.  This helps the instructor go to the correct blog link for evaluation purposes.  Students also submit this permalink in another assignment on Canvas where they are graded on best blogging practices as discussed in the HubSpot Content Marketing certification and other class materials.  The first student tab looks like this Figure below.

Tab showing results and future goals social media metrics

First tab showing the date of the post, the timeframe analyzed, results, future goals and permalink

The Second Tab: Analytics Detailed

The next spreadsheet tab is an overview of the Google Analytics and the two social media networks selected for the project. As we are focusing on a blog to emphasize the students’ personal professional brand, we now require LinkedIn to be one of the networks.  In this example, the student chose Twitter and Facebook.  Students also report on the Google Analytics (GA) for their blog using the UA property as discussed in a prior blog post.  Students must pick at least five metrics for each network and GA.  This student also showed the additional tools such as Hootsuite and TweetDeck and the native analytics available in Facebook that were used for analysis.

Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, Metrics

Second Tab Showing Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter Metrics for Two Weeks of Blogging

The Final Tabs: Details of Posting

Twitter analytics for blog post promotion

Third Tab Showing Weekly Twitter Analytics for Blog Post Promotion

The final tabs of the spreadsheet show the details of each week’s social media postings to promote the blog readership.  In this example, the student has made a number of Twitter posts and can see how the results varied by time of day and type of posts.  Typically, students will report their results in a discussion post and other students can provide ideas as to how to improve engagement and reach on particular social media platforms.  Students also comment on how to improve their blog posts and those of fellow students’ blogs by improving headlines, storytelling and other effective blog practices.

The discussion format means that everyone can share in developing their knowledge of metrics and of effective blogging.  Students put it all together in a final reflection paper for the project. They say what worked well and what they would have done differently.  Five blog posts in seven weeks of class including blog setup is not a lot of time so we can’t evaluate the students on gaining a large audience and lots of engagement in such a short period.  We can get them thinking about social media analytics and what they mean and how to best use them for their professional brand and in the workplace.

The Results

As I said in my first blog post on this project (Zahay, 2021), the idea is to give experience in social media analytics by have students, plan, implement and measure a social media campaign to promote their blog.  It has been a successful project so far in our classes and, after initial concerns, popular with the students. One of the most interesting things about this project is how much can be gained from simply reporting in an excel spreadsheet.  I asked the students if they wanted to keep the spreadsheet in the assignment and they said yes.  They liked the discipline of reporting each week and being able to see things in black and white to make adjustments to their weekly goals and tactics.

If you are just coming upon this blog post and want to learn how to get started with this project, check out the first post in this blog on teaching social media analytics below (Zahay, 2021). Please contact me with any questions or for additional resources.

References

Zahay, D. (2021, January 8). One Secret to Teaching Social Media Analytics (A Blog Project). Retrieved from https://zahayteachesdigital.blogspot.com/2018/09/secrets-to-teaching-google-analytics.html

 

How to Set Up Blog Analytics for a Class Project (The Details)

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The Project

The blogging project that I introduced in my last post allows the students to create a blog of their choice and then promote it and track it over various forms of social media. It is important to link the blog to Google Analytics for tracking purposes.  This post will explain how to structure the project and some technical details for tracking in other forms of social media.

Linking the Blog to GA

As mentioned before, it is important to link the blog to Google Analytics so students can see where there traffic is coming from, the time people spend on the blog and the blog rate.  The new GA4 does not seem to be fully integrated with most blogging platforms and does not include the same metrics as GA4 (a topic for another blog post).  GA will not be updated but is not going away, so can still be used for the blog project. During the last post, it looked like the analytics would be in GA4, but I have done some more digging and am happy to report that prior instructions for this project that I have posted using Blogger as an example will work.

Fortunately, when creating the blog, it is possible select the option to create a both UA (Universal Analytics) and a GA4 property. Be sure to create both or these instructions will not work.  Connect GA to the blog and by navigating to the Tracking  ID (also known informally as a UA Code) information in the GA property and copying that into Blogger or WordPress. The WordPress example showing where to find the Tracking ID is below.   Follow the instructions for copying and pasting the UA code into Blogger by reading Dr. Zahay’s updated blog post from  2018 in the references section below. Follow these instructions if you are using WordPress (Zahay, 2018).

To show how to grab the UA code in GA

UA code in GA 4

In WordPress, the place to copy the UA code is in settings.

How to link GA to WordPress via GA tracking code

Linking GA to WordPress via Tracking Code in Settings.

I demonstrated the Google Analytics on my own blog and also showed how to create a shortened URL on bit.ly and track blog activity that way. There are other ways to create a short URL for tracking purposes and you can discuss that in class.

GA Blog

Google Analytics for This Blog

By analyzing the data from GA I can see that most of my traffic is coming from social media.  The blog has not been around enough to be served up in search.  So I can focus on more keyword rich posts that can be found in direct search easily so I can be found in search. I can post at the time of day my readers are available to read the post. This is the type of analysis the students are doing in a spreadsheet format.

Students select two social media networks and GA to report upon in each week after blogging.  This idea was inspired by a similar social media project that was created by Dr. Leila Samii at the University of Southern New Hampshire.  Students choose at lease five metrics they wish to track on GA and on two social media networks and also create weekly goals for their blog.  They submit the results and a brief analysis for several different types of blog posts, i.e., original content, pictures or videos, long form, sharing content created by an influencer, etc.

Other Analytics

For this blog, I was able to post the information in our own Facebook Digital Marketing Academics Group and therefore had access to Facebook Insights.  There was good engagement on the post and a lot of enthusiasm for a blog on teaching Social Media Analytics, so I knew I was on the right track for the blog.  Over two-thirds of active group members saw the blog post and ten percent of those clicked on the link. Encourage the students to start their own group or a related company page on their blog topic to gain access to Facebook Insights.

Facebook insights

Facebook Insights on Blog Post Activity

These  are the metrics in Twitter for the first blog post.

Twitter Analytics for blog

Twitter Analytics Promoting Blog

As you can see, I get more engagement on Facebook since I am active on that platform and involved in sharing tips on teaching digital marketing in various groups there.  There was a fair amount of engagement but a smaller percentage of clicks. My LinkedIn posting also got good results as I am active there and have a lot of contacts.

So this is the type of analyses that students can do each week as they post their new blog topics.  This project is an excellent way to learn social media analytics in a short time frame and does not require students to use an account from another company. Next time I will talk more about the analytics spreadsheet. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.  Happy Blogging!

References

Zahay, D. (2018, September 8). Secrets to Teaching Google Analytics the Easy Way. Retrieved from https://zahayteachesdigital.blogspot.com/2018/09/secrets-to-teaching-google-analytics.html

 

 

 

One Secret to Teaching Social Media Analytics (A Blog Project)

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Who am I?

My name is Dr. Debra Zahay-Blatz and I am a Professor of Marketing at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas and Director of the Master of Science in Digital Marketing and Analytics program.  I have been teaching digital marketing and analytics for over twenty years and I am currently the author or co-author of several textbooks, one on social media.  In this blog, I will share tips and techniques for teaching social media analytics.

“Experiencing, Learning, Reflecting” by mrsdkrebs is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

How should we teach Social Media Analytics?

To start, I would argue that the students must learn how to do social media analytics not from a textbook, but from doing the work of analytics.  Our approach here at St. Edward’s University is that of experiential or action learning.   There is a quote attributed to a Chinese philosopher that says  “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”  As this image illustrates, Julius Caesar and Albert Einstein, among others, have also supported the notion of experience as a great teacher.

It is this doing that we are currently exploring in MKTG 6432, our social media analytics class in the Master of Science program.  As part of the class, we use a blog project. Students set up a blog in WordPress and then promote it over social media over a period of weeks, also tracking their results in Google Analytics.  The blog is a great way for them to explore organic search as well as social media analytics.  Students post on their blog in five separate weeks and then analyze the results of various techniques.  Students test the effects of posting videos and pictures, sharing their own content, sharing original content via email and other techniques.

What kind of project?

The first secret then to a class in this area is to have a good application-based project.  In this project the key is to have the students create a blog of interest to them in a narrow area (think “long-tail”) which they might be known.  For graduate students, I recommend a topic tied to their personal professional brand.  For undergraduates with less work experience it might be better to have them blog on a hobby or other area of interest.  I have had undergraduate students blog about television shows, cooking, traveling, etc. Graduate students can blog on specific aspects of marketing or social media or digital marketing.  Privacy concerns or the latest graphic tools are some ideas in that area.  Students should carefully research the topic of their blog and come up with a relevant title before proceeding (Culbertson, 2021)

Students should choose the social media platforms most likely to be accessed by the target for their blog to promote their posts.  For example, I use LinkedIn and Twitter to promote my professional blogs because that is where I have the most followers and connections in my target audiences. I primarily blog on how to teach digital marketing and I have a lot of connections on those two platforms.

Which blog platform?

We have used both Blogger and WordPress for this project.  This semester we are using WordPress. If you have seen my prior blog post on linking Google Analytics to Blogger, the new GA4 means that students have to create both a GA4 ‘property’ and a UA ‘property’ in GA during initial setup.  UA stands for Universal Analytics and was long the way that we linked blogs and other web pages to Google Analytics. To link Google Analytics to the blog in either platform students can then copy and paste the UA code from the UA property.  The two will be linked immediately and students can test the link themselves.  Students will be using the older platform and still linking their blog to analytics through the UA code.  Neither Blogger nor WordPress at this writing seem seems to have fully integrated with GA4 for purposes of this project.  However, the students will have a GA4 property set up for when that integration has progressed further.

Other than the ability to be able to report Google Analytics there is really no preferred blog platform for the project.  After setup, students can then concentrate on finding and posting good content, promoting their blog and analyzing response.  To summarize, this blog project allows students to plan, implement and measure the results of a digital marketing campaign, in this case a content-focused blog. This little ‘secret’ means that students can learn social media analytics first hand.

References

Culbertson, M. (January 11, 2021.) The Guide to Choosing a Blog Name You won’t Regret. Blog Clarity. https://blogclarity.com/the-guide-to-choosing-a-blog-name-you-wont-regret/#:~:text=To%20get%20to%20a%20blog%20name%20that%20you,a%20black%20ballpoint%20will%20do%29%2C%20and%20let%27s%20go.