Evaluating Social Media Archives

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Evaluating Social Media: Step 5. Establish your baseline

In order to evaluate your results, you have to know your starting point. You will have to compare your baseline data with the new data you are going to gather as you …

Evaluating Social Media: Step 4. Identify your audience

Organizations often take the easy way out and measure what’s easy to count, such as visitor numbers for their Web sites. But those numbers won’t tell you what those visitors did with …

Evaluating Social Media: Step 3. State your objectives

The communications environment is in constant flux, which means that many things might change on the way to your goal. A typical communications plan looks ahead 12-18 months, which is a much …

Evaluating Social Media: Step 2. Define your goal

Even if you are evaluating tactical efforts, you will still need to define your goal. You ultimately are concerned about how well your message is disseminated, or you ultimately have a Facebook …

Evaluating Social Media: Step 1. Determine what you will evaluate

We have already determined that we’re evaluating social media efforts. But the question remains whether you are measuring a strategic initiative or a tactical effort. A strategic initiative might include aiming for …