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.

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