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

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

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