Measurement
How are you measuring the effectiveness of your social media strategy?
Unfortunately I haven't been able to really measure my success. However on a particular FB group I'm involved with I've simply observed the number of members and posts, comments etc...eventually only a few continue to be involved. Now I am learning solid ways to measure success.
We currently do not have a way to measure our effectiveness. We are just getting started, but this is a great idea!
We have been monitoring our student engagement through an alumni website that incorporates job postings and establish a alumni network. However, I do not think we have been necessarily monitoring our LinkedIn and Facebook presence for engagement.
Hi Shawn,
These are good signals to determine the type of content your audience wants and informs your institution's strategies and future content selections. While likes, shares, and comments reflect engagement, I'm wondering how that insight is further used to drive action. Because your institution is using its page likely for different reasons than you may wish to do for your department, you may not be involved in how your institution is driving action but something to think about - once you get a good idea of what is keeping your audience engaged, how are you driving action? What is the desired action? Is it clicks to your website? Is it scheduled appointments? Is it registrations, whitepaper downloads? There are so many actions that are possible to take but each for different reasons. All of these are examples of different strategies but should be cohesive with an ultimate goal.
Robert Starks Jr.
To date, we have used the number of shares of a post, number of new followers or "likes" and the increase or percentage of people who engaged with the post beyond just observing it. This has effectively helped the College observe which type of posts are most frequently engaged with by followers, and which information our followers find the most relevant and meaningful.
We normally ask every potential student to tells us how did they hear about our school. Since we are marketing in different ways aside from social media, this allows us to know that at least in our case facebook has been more successful than twitter> Maybe this is due to the fact that we tend to use more images in facebook while we use mostly text on twitter and more often. We also change periodically the image posts and notice that certain images may create more response so we attempt to use those as strategic templates for future posts
We currently measure the success of our social media strategy by both the # of followers/hits as well as the # of opportunities, job interviews, connections, or hires that we were able to accomplish through the use of Social Media.
Hi Robert,
We don't actually have a social media strategy at this time so there is nothing to measure now.
Glenn,
To be honest with you, I was not aware on how to measure the effectiveness of our social media. I am in the process of developing a strategy and to have objectives to manage the page sucessfully. this training has been a fantastic experience, Thanks
Thank you so very much, Robert! I really ahven't used the tools on LinkedIn, but will start using this suggestion immediately.
Also, thank you for making yourself available & sharing these links. I lok forward to adopting new skills.
Tara,
Recently, there was a report published by NACE and Devry's Career Advisory Board which indicated a training gap among career services professionals regarding social media usage. I think you are correct - more people could use training to improve their skills in this area which may lead to more measurement of results using such tools. Fortunately, with LinkedIn, the platform already has built-in tools that allow you to see your network statistics. For instance, if I have Advisors trying to help graduates get jobs in Allied Health, I can establish formal goals for my Advisors to expand their employer relationships in this targeted industry in their immediate geographical location using LinkedIn. It is a very measurable goal because LinkedIn provides network statistics. If you use a database such as Campus Management, to track the source of job leads or job orders, you may want to add an additional source of "Social Media" so that you can actually measure job leads that develop from this source if you decide you want to use social media for job developing. This would be an example of how you could set up a means to track the progress of your strategy. Are you noticing in increase in job leads? Even if it isn't a large increase, perhaps you will find another way to optimize your ability to discover new opportunities via word-of-mouth happening on social networks and via your connections. Just some things to think about. As you apply some of the concepts you have learned, if you ever have questions or want suggestions, I am always still available. Please make sure to stay connected in the Career College Lounge (our social learning network). www.careercollegelounge.com. Make sure you check out the treasure trove of information in the Career Services Performance Group here: http://www.careercollegelounge.com/pg/groups/7841/career-services-performance-group/.
I wish you continued success!
Robert Starks Jr.
Yes, those tangible tools are definitely what I utilize. While I cannot speak for others, I don't use them for lack of training with social media networking.
When I saw the topic for this training in April, I think I burst out with a "YES!". I hope to know how to use it proficiently before it's obsolete.
I can definitely use this with LinkedIn. I have made so many connections with employers. I can't wait to take these methods out for a spin!
Tara,
Likes and shares provide feedback on how engaging your content is for your audience which correlates to building affinity with your group and engaging them to remain connected. This is definitely important and useful feedback that allows you to adapt and adjust what you share to engage your community. I'm sure you use other tools in your office such as the phone or the internet to do things like "Increase job leads, expand employer partnerships, increase student event participation, increase student career center usage, etc. Moreover, I'm sure you have some forms of measurement such as cold-calls made, job leads acquired, new employer relationships established, etc. What I find interesting is that many do not apply the very same measurements when using social tools. Why do you think this is so? Certainly, one can measure job leads acquired through social sources, employer connections made, or even the correlation between social media usage and an increase in student participation or even employment rates. If we can measure these things, why do many choose not to? If it is important to measure results from other strategies, why not social strategies? Do you have any thoughts to share?
Robert Starks Jr.
This is something I never really thought to monitor, even though it seems obvious. To me, how many "shares" or "likes" a Facebook post of mine gets means it's appreciated.
Susan,
If you have a Facebook Fan Page, you should be using Facebook Insights which provides statistics on engagement. It can't tell you how many total visits you have to your page but you can measure the growth of your community based on Fans gained. Remember, building and engaging community is key if you are to try to use social media as a tool to drive outcomes. You must first have a community and they must be engaged before you can design ways to try to drive outcomes that align with your career center objectives. The ideas are limited only to your imagination on what you will try to experiment with to drive the desired outcomes (such as more student one-on-one appointments, more event participation, job leads sourced by word-of-mouth from the community sharing what they have found, increased student awareness of the services you offer, etc.)
Robert Starks Jr.
I have to admit that I haven't determined the best way to measure the traffic our career services facebook fan page gets, but I do try to see how many people like or view posted articles, information,job opportunities, etc... I will be creating a plan after this course!
Mary,
It's great you'll be getting started. Just remember that you are embarking on a very long-term effort and it can be a while before you see enhanced results so be cautious of "evaluating" effectiveness prematurely. Always remember that while you are initially trying to build audience and engagement, once you have the attention of your targeted audience (employers and alumni), how will you drive the desired actions you want? How will you get employers involved and how will you get alumni involved with your department? How will that involvement align with your stated objective(s)? You will have to design engagement that drives action in alignment with your objective(s) which is an iterative process as you will discover what is working and what is not but your research on your audiences should help you have insight before you begin experimenting. These are important questions to consider as you embark on your strategy. You don't need luck - you have strategy on your side and I'll always be available for continued interaction at www.careercollegelounge.com so please feel free to utilize me as a resource.
That being said....Good luck! :)
Robert Starks Jr.
Have not begun yet, but plan to start a facebook page before the end of the week that will be aimed at graduates of our institution. Will also build a twitter account that will work primarily with employers. Later after I have judged the effectiveness of our social media and responses and activity we are receiving, we will mostly likely branch out to Linked In and others. Please wish us luck!!!
Jennifer ,
Out of curiosity, what systems are you using for tracking? On the question of why measure blog traffic, what do you hope to achieve with the blog? What are your initial thoughts on how measuring blog traffic can be used to help you accomplish your objective(s)?
Robert Starks Jr.
