The strategy sample document will be a great resource. Right now we are setting up internal systems to tracking career coaching sessions and resumes completed, and job offers recieved. We are also looking at why to track blog traffic.
Jennifer ,
The strategy sample document in the "Resources" section provides an example of how one might measure. There are direct measurements one can do and measurements based on correlation. For example, if your office tracks how many resumes you review, how many students participate in events, how many students you serve monthly/quarterly/annually via face-to-face appointments, etc., you have some baseline measurements established. As an example, if your primary objective were to increase student participation in events and you were going to use a social media strategy to help with this goal, you could see if there is a correlation between multiple variables such as student engagement, click-through rates on promotional content distributed via social channels, Youtube Subscribers (if you chose Youtube as a part of your promotional strategy), or a number of other selected variables that align with your chosen strategy. You can see if increases in these metrics correlated to an increase in event participation. If this is too much, you could also decide upon simpler metrics and measurements such as sentiment (measured by Socialmention), Engagement (measured by Facebook Insights), Job leads sources from Social media (Create a new job source category in your existing tracking system), Increase in PAC members, Increase in Employer participation in job fairs (Relationships perhaps built via LinkedIn).....the list is endless!
Jennifer - measuring will allow you to demonstrate added value not only to higher-ups, but may even be something to include in an institutional effectiveness plan to demonstrate your efforts and the results they are helping you achieve.
What do you think you'd like to begin measuring specifically if you had to prioritize among the many things to measure?
Robert Starks Jr.
Currently we are not measuring the effectiveness of our social media. We have a great opportunity to improve in this area.
Kelly,
You are the first participant to raise the idea of measuring the effectiveness of helping students engineer their PLN with intent and purpose. I think the idea of being the architects of our own learning networks and using social media as a means to do this presents tremendous opportunity for students to enhance their professional development and networking strategies. I am excited to hear that you plan on measuring this. You can even get your students/graduates off to a great start by suggesting who you think they should consider for their PLNs. I am curious, will you be designing your own PLN for yourself and what will you focus on? Additionally, will you be advocating that your colleagues do the same? I just created a handout for Career Services professionals and you are welcome to download it - there is a particular area of the document that provides a small sample of people to follow on Twitter in various topics. It might help you to help students get started building their PLNs. You can view it here: http://lwire.us/?l=KZFM.
Regards,
Robert.
Part of our social media strategy will be to help students strategize the creation of a PLN.
Once we have met with a student, we can survey them a few months out to gain measurables - have they learned something professionally relevant? have they made a great contact? have they learned of job leads, or even secured employment through a PLN connection? etc.
Stacey,
Measuring can be a challenge because it can create another layer of work but as you know, measurement allows you to identify the effectiveness of your strategies. May I recommend that you start with measuring things that are more feasible for you such as event participation. How might you use social media as part of a strategy to increase participation in an event? Track the attendance and start to identify if you see a trend in increased participation. Use social media to bring students into your office and track pre and post walk-in appointments. I recommend starting with simple Key Performance Indicators and progressing to more complicated ones that may depend on your resources and time constraints. Using some of the tools listed in the course is a good way to start as you begin but things like Klout scores shouldn't be relied upon - they do give you good information but they can't tell you the impact on your career center objectives. I'd be happy to help you even beyond the course if you need help with measurement.
Take Care.
Robert Starks Jr.
I hate to say this but we are not using any tools to measure at this point. We just started and kind of dove in head first without any thought behind it which is definitely not the way to go. After taking this course I would like to go back and make a plan of action, develop policies, measurables and appointed associates to monitor our social media.
Hello Dina,
I noticed you focused on comments, likes and shares as well as the acquisition of new fans/friends. Are you using both a Facebook profile and a Facebook fan page? What overall goals are you using Facebook for? The reason I ask is because reviewing comments, likes, and shares is a good way to measure engagement which tells you how to modify the way you keep your audience engaged but I am wondering how you are measuring whether or not your Facebook strategy is resulting in an improvement in your Career Center goals. For instance, if you were to say you use Facebook as a means of increasing student participation with the Career Center and measure the difference in face-to-face appointments, workshop, or event participation, these measurements would indicate the effectiveness of the social media strategy relevant to your goals. Have you considered measuring the correlations between your social media strategy and your Career Center objectives? What might you measure if your goal were to use social media as a way to improve the career-readiness of students? What metrics could you review?
Thanks.
Robert Starks Jr.
We like to look at the comments, 'likes' and shares from our posts. But also we take into consideration of how many new fans/friends we get.
Paul,
This phase one strategy makes perfect sense. You will find the PDF document in the last section of the course very helpful which specifically addresses how to launch a Facebook strategy and market it to your students. Once you create your Facebook fan page, you will also be able to use Facebook Insights for measurement and don't forget bitly.com to create tracked URLs if you wish to measure click-through rates for promotions.
Robert Starks Jr.
Our initial Facebook strategy will be to build relationships/ a community with our students and graduates. We would measure this by tracking the number of followers and likes.
Paul,
When you create your Facebook page, what will be your strategy behind using it? Do you plan on measuring your strategy's impact?
Robert Starks Jr.
As of now, we haven't implemented a social media strategy. We plan to have our staff and students utilize LinkedIn and we are going to create a Facebook page specifically for our career services department.
alexander,
How do you currently track employment rates relative to your social media strategy? Do you track job leads sourced from social media? Can you please share with the forum how you are specifically able to identify the effectiveness of your social media strategy correlated to employment rates? The number of followers on Facebook measures the size of an audience, but it does not measure effectiveness of a strategy. If your overall goal, for instance, was to use Facebook as a means of improving the marketing of your events, I don't recommend using the metric of followers but rather, have you seen an increase in your event attendance correlated to your social media strategy? You would need to have a baseline measurement and compare it to your participation after you have implemented a social media strategy to see if your goal of leveraging social media is working in improving event attendance. This is merely one example. Followers/friends/likes don't measure the effectiveness of a strategy so I encourage you to see how what you are doing on social media is directly impacting your career center objectives.
Robert Starks Jr.
by our placement numbers and by the numbers of followers we have on our facebook/twitter
Glenn,
Measurement can be challenging depending on what the objectives are but it sure would help demonstrate the value in your strategy and the many results it can produce. If you have further questions about measurement, feel free to ask either in the forums or even in the Lounge, which is the social learning network you can continue your learning in after the course. It allows for continued exchange of ideas and information. Thanks Glenn!
Robert Starks Jr.
The measurement that we have been using is the weekly report that Facebook sends to us. We are small and this course is giving me ideas that we can implement but that is part of developing a strategy
