One of the topics being discussed during AMEC Measurement Week is the importance of measurement dashboards. A solid digital dashboard can save you from being inundated by volumes of useless data and allow you to focus on the information that you need to determine whether your social media activity is making an impact.
Andrew Bowins, senior vice president, corporate and digital communications group, at MasterCard, has a track record of integrating big data analytics into brand communications. Here, he shares some thoughts on some of the key metrics that your dashboards should be tracking:
- Measure trends that lead to insights. Metrics don’t teach. Insights shape opinion, content and strategy.
- Volume of conversation. Volume is an important measure to understand the overall breadth of a campaign, topic or issue.
- Frequency of conversation. Frequency, particularly in social media, can help you understand the velocity of an issue or campaign. This can be particularly valuable in a crisis, when you must determine the proper timing for a reaction or response in real-time.
- Most active influencers. These can help a company single out users who are passionate about particular topics or issues but may or may not have a high influence or online follower count.
- Most followed influencers. The number of followers a user has directly influences the potential number of people reached by a message or issue.
- Tonality of share of voice tone. Tone is important to place side-by-side with volume metrics to better assess quality. For example, Company A might have a 75% share of voice, but this may be nearly entirely negative due to a lawsuit. Share of voice alone portrays Company B as a loser merely because it has a 25% share of voice. When tone is taken into account, the story may be much different.
Bowins also notes that it's important to remember that even though key metrics are fairly uniform across most dashboards, the way in which they structure and organize data will differ depending on the company and its situation.
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