Monthly Archives: September 2021

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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]

Posted on by

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!]

Posted on by

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]