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

Posted on February 22, 2021 by Dr. Debra Zahay-Blatz

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:

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

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Dr. Debra Zahay-Blatz

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.

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

The Final Tabs: Details of Posting

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)

Posted on February 9, 2021 by Dr. Debra Zahay-Blatz

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).

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.

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 on Blog Post Activity

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

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

Teaching Social Media Analytics

Helping instructors navigate the social media analytics world

Monthly Archives: February 2021