Evaluating Social Media
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Evaluating Social Media: Final Word
In the last nine steps, I have walked through Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide by the Communications Network. It started with figuring out what to evaluate and establishing an overarching goal. The central question was: how are your communications efforts creating a change; more specifically, a change in behavior. The central message…
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Evaluating Social Media: Step 9. Estimate your budget
This is not an estimation of you complete communications plan budget. That said, you should budget for evaluation within your communications plan. The authors advise that a good rule of thumb is that “the evaluation budget should be at least five to seven percent of the total budget of your communication program.” You should consider:…
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Evaluating Social Media: Step 8. Select your evaluation techniques
The authors list several evaluation tools, including interviews, focus groups, surveys, observation, quantitative data collection and analysis, and content analysis. Interviews, focus groups are pretty straightforward qualitative techniques. Surveys can be used to track qualitative, and in a lesser degree quantitative, changes over time. Observation can perhaps best be translated into the listening skill that…
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Evaluating Social Media: Step 7. Draft your measurements
You should now be clear on what your communications efforts are expected to achieve. You know your goal, objectives, audience, baseline and evaluation questions; the next step is to develop specific metrics to answer your evaluation questions. The authors introduce milestones at this point of the evaluation. If objectives are intermediate markers toward your goal,…
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Evaluating Social Media: Step 6. Pose your evaluation questions
The first question before posing your evaluation questions is: what stage is your communications effort in? The authors make a distinction between early, mid and advanced stages. Early Stage The early stage means the development or early implementation of a communications plan, where there is a degree of trial and error. The evaluation at this…
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