What Am I Supposed To Do With This? - Analytics

This week's topic is Social Media Analytics. My reflection is based on the article titled "10 Ways to Turn Social Media Data into Smart Data." In the article, Matejic (2016) gave a lite version of why and how you should use social media. She put forward, that social media is essentially a "gold mine" for information. You can aggregate and exploit this information in order to increase revenue; at no extra cost (except the cost of your time and effort).

My favourite part of the article, was her advice - advice that she is giving to people who are serious enough about business communication, to be reading the article in the first place.

She stated:

"4. Likes, followers and raving fans mean nothing if they aren’t converting."

She continued on to explain that there is a difference between a high turn over of clicks and actual engagement that translates to sales. The reason why I enjoyed reading her advice, was because I realised that very same thing in diary blog reflection just last week. My realisation was that measuring "likes" are superficial and unreliable measures when it comes to engagement.

Moving on, since I will miss the tutorial this week, I figured that I would try to play around with radian 6. Disappointingly, I couldn't for the life of me log into it. So I turned to trying to make sense of the google analytics data for my Public Relations Planning and Evaluation blogs. What did I learn? Not much! The stats showed me how many page views I'd had and where the views were coming from. The kind of person I am, sadly couldn't appreciate this.

While, it's nice to know that 13 page views originiated in Mauritius, I tend to appreciate the process more than the outcome. I like to know why and how things happen. Why are people in Mauritius reading my blog? What are they searching? Or maybe they aren't needing to do a search. Perhaps they are just clicking 'next blog' and google is randomly selecting the next blog for them to view. Why Mauritius then, and not Germany?

I am sure that all these questions could be answered, but this would only require the collection of even more data that could add context. Things like, what kind of people look up PR blogs in Mauritius? Are they students? From what institutions? What are their interests? What else do they search? All that would then only satisfy one question - why are people in Mauritius reading my blog... but what about the rest of my questions? It's never-ending!

I suddenly realised why search engines are inundating us with cookies and trackers that note down and store everything we do online. It stems from a quest for information. Once you learn a little bit you want to learn a little bit more, but before then you end up learning a bunch of other thingson your way to the original thing that you set out to investigate. Before long - you end up being obsessed with wanting to know as much as possible about anything that is even remotely releveant, because it adds depth. Eventually, instead of answering the question you set out to solve, you end up creating for yourself, several new ones.


I know this because it has just happened to me. If you'll recall, all I wanted to do was understand how to interpret data. I consulted google analytics and that only evoked a greater curiousity in a topic that had well and truly begun to veer away from my original question. Regretably, I come back to this: I still have no idea what I am supposed to do with google analytics. Except now I am potentially worse off, because now I'd like to understand how and why I have a tiny fan base of Mauritian readers (that was exaggerative, I know). Anyway, If you are in Mauritius and you are reading this, please comment because I'd really like to know!

Measuring and Evaluating Public Relations Efforts

This weeks topic was an introduction to evaluating and monitoring Public Relations Efforts.The areas of text (Macnamara 2014) which appealed to me the most, were those that discussed opinion, advocacy and engagement. Why? I think it has something to do with my childhood dream of being an incredibly famous actress. I hate money. I need the thing, but I hate it. So the hunger for fame was not based in the desire for fortune, but in the desire for influence.



Opinion and Advocacy 

In terms of opinion and advocacy, I agree with that posed by Nuendorf (2002), which I have interpreted as a belief that data (an opinion) is rich with symbolism and underlying meanings that have been sourced from other aspects of life. This means that content that could simply be analysed as 'negative' from a PR perspective, is actually a complex mixture of influences; consisting of many ideas/values and beliefs which contribute to the on-screen, face-value opinion that one is left with.

Essentially, what this means to me as a future PR officer, is:

"There's always more to what you see, than what you can see."

For that reason - don't underestimate the depth and complexity of an opinion, because even the most educated or informed perspectives, are riddled with unintentional biases. It's part of being human and it just can't be helped. Our opinions will always be tainted by indirectly-relevant matters, and negative past experiences can be hard to override. However, I believe that a company's greatest critic has a potential to be it's greatest advocate.



Engagement

Now this is where the real reflection happened. The only way to turn people around, is through engagement. I can agree (and appreciate) Macnamara's (2014) attention to the fact that:

I. Engagement should not be a buzzword (right on);

II. True engagement is profound and actually requires psychological depth (yes!)

III. It's about commitment, absorption and participation (PREACH IT)


So I read on... and then didn't actually see a suggestion on how to measure engagement?

Luckily, Patel (2016) supplied the "how to engage" aspect. Patel inadvertently outlined how to engage the audience. In retrospect it was both obvious and subtle. Patel outlined three ways to engage your audience:

• By personally responding to comments - which requires commitment on your part.
• Joining conversations - which requires your passion, enthusiasm or energy towards the topic.
• And by mentioning people - which requires participation on your part, and also invites other to participate.

So, how do you engage your audience? By being engaged, yourself! How do you measure it? Well, I figure that someone who couldn't even care enough to argue - is completely disengaged because they don't exhibit any of the elements of engagement. No commitment, participation or energy towards to the topic. But comments to and fro - whether in argument or discussion, are a definite sign of engagement. Both parties are committed, both are investing energy towards the topic and both are participating. Therefore, the elements of engagement, are: commitment, energy and engagement.



How then, would I measure engagement?

1. I would personally choose to measure true engagement through repeat comments - whether "positive", "neutral" or "negative."

2.  I would also measure and evaluate engagement through the the number of overall comments (evaluates participation and energy)

3. Replies to a topic or comment, on a single thread (evaluates commitment and energy),

4. How many people are mentioned/tagged in comments (evaluates participation).