Focus on what you should be measuring so you can streamline your PR measurement tracking

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises

When it comes to the latest in PR measurement, the mere thought of it may make you feel like it’s impossible to “keep up.” Before you overwhelm yourself, take a deep breath and focus on growing your skills by incorporating these three principles into your regular routine. By focusing on these simple – not to mention, free! – tips to refine your skills, you’ll become a measurement star before you know it!

1. Simplify and Streamline Tracking

As I mentioned in a previous Socialbrite post on creating a measurement program, most of the time we don’t have access to fancy dashboards; because we are often limited by client budgets in the tools we can and cannot use. That’s ok, because I’ve found that the more uncomplicated you keep tracking, the better.

Here’s how you can do this:

• Use an Excel or Google spreadsheet to track outputs and outcomes
• Making sure the time frame within which you’re tracking different things – e.g. traffic, downloads, purchases, whatever – is the same
• Watch your Analytics (at the very least, Google Analytics) at the same time, and regularly look to see if there is a correlation between outputs and outcomes.

2. Two Tools to Know and Love

Let me preface this by first reiterating one of my big “don’ts” – don’t get caught up in shiny new measurement tools. Focus on what you should be measuring, as opposed to getting bogged down, overwhelmed, or limited by a tool. That said, there are some tools and techniques that are just crying out to be used.

I’ve already referred to it once, and I’m doing so again: it’s time to become BFFs with Google Analytics and the Google URL Builder. The tracking of URLs has been around in the marketing world for a while now; and it’s something PR pros should know how (and why) to do. Especially for campaigns where you’re driving calls-to-action online, it’s one of the best ways to understand what is driving actions, clicks, downloads, purchases, sign-ups, etc.

After all, it’s only when you know what is and isn’t working that you can adjust your strategy to make it more efficient, effective, and ultimately more successful.

3. Spread Your Measurement Wings

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” Just as it’s important to continue to track and measure the growth of a campaign or initiative, it’s equally important to facilitate our own growth as industry professionals… and that means seizing every opportunity for learning when we can.

Here are a few free ways to spread your measurement wings:

• Read. It’s that simple. By regularly reading smart bloggers who regularly talk about metrics (Lee Odden and Jim Dougherty spring to mind) you’ll be one step ahead on the PR measurement front.

Want to go the extra mile? Make a point to add a couple of smart books to your library. Social Media Metrics by Jim Sterne is one of my faves.

• Events. Attending or taking advantage of free events seems like a no-brainer, no? Here are just a few:

○      AMEC Measurement Week: presented by Cision (disclosure: client) and Vocus, this free five-day event takes place September 15–19, 2014 in New York City. It will bring together more than 16 speakers who are experts in measurement and analytics across the communication spectrum, and includes keynotes from Mark W. Schaefer and Peter Shankman… and me! Seriously – if you’re going to be in/around NYC next week, you really should attend. Register here, and the hashtag to follow on Twitter will be #AMECatWork.

○      #measurePR Twitter Chat: As the founder of #measurePR, I’m clearly biased, but I’m proud that in its fourth year, #measurePR still connects measurement geeks across the world. From newbies to old hands, they (we) all congregate here… and I hope you will too! #measurePR takes place the first Tuesday of every month, 12-1pm ET (the September chat, however, is on the second Tuesday, Sept. 9, to accommodate returning from the Labor Day holiday).

○      Webinars: Find and participate in free webinars focused on measurement every chance you get. Now, I know it can be tough to find really good webinars (though Cision – and yes, I’m mentioning them again – offers them frequently), so head to PRSA and IABC’s online events calendars to see what they have coming up. That’s a very good place to start.

I hope this helps you get started on spreading your measurement wings. And remember if you’re going to be at AMEC Measurement Week, or drop in at #measurePR, please give me a holler – I’d love to say “hello”!

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Tips to make Facebook work harder for your website

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

How you reach people is not limited to your Facebook Page.

You reach people with your e-mails, your YouTube videos, mentions in the local newspaper.

And you reach people with your website content.

In the same way that people share your Facebook Page updates with their friends (via likes, comments and shares), they can also share your website content. For example, someone sharing a blog post by clicking a Like button. With both a Facebook Page and a blog, your ability to reach people gets amplified!

7 Facebook hacks for your website

Think about how your webpages look on Facebook.

• Is it easy for people to share your website content on Facebook?
• Do you know what links look like in the NewsFeed?

If you said “no” to both of these questions (or don’t know the answers), you’ll find these seven tips useful:

1) Add Facebook Like Buttons to Content

We all know the like button. A single click generates a story in the news feed, which is great for website traffic! To add the Facebook like button to content, follow these steps:

• Visit the like button plugin page.
• Configure as shown
• Note preview
• Click “Get Code”
• Add code to webpage

If you use WordPress, check out the Facebook Plugin.

2) Embed Facebook Sharing in Text and Images

Let’s say that you write a blog post about an upcoming event. In addition to having a like button for the post, you embed a call-to-action for people to share the event on Facebook. When people click on it, a Facebook sharing window appears.

To embed Facebook sharing in text and images, follow these instructions:

• Visit https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=
• Enter your website after the equal sign (?u=)
• Embed URL into text or image (target new window)
• Test sharing

3) Optimize Images for Facebook Link Posts

Link images are now bigger in the News Feed (desktop and mobile), which means that your website images are now more important than ever!

Some guidelines for your images:

• Facebook’s default image is the largest one associated with the URL
• Images that are at least 1200 x 627 pixels look awesome on Facebook – desktop (full screen) AND mobile
• Aspect ratio for all link images is 1.9:1 (1200 X 627 pixels)

Note: If you plan on posting links as photos, huge images will also look beautiful in full screen.

4) Debug Your Website for Facebook Graph

You also want to make sure that your website code plays nicely with Facebook. You can run a quick audit with the Facebook Debugger:

• Enter your URL
• Click Debug
• Show the results to a developer
• Keep in mind that you may need a web developer to help you

5) Track Facebook with Google Analytics

Make sure you’re tracking how people share your website content on Facebook with Google analytics. You can quickly see your most popular content on Facebook by following the instructions below.

• Visit Google Analytics
• Click on Acqusition
• Click on Social
• Click on Facebook

6) Embed Top-Performing Posts

You may already know that you can embed Facebook updates into a webpage or blog post. But are you doing it? If not, try it – you’ll kill two birds with one stone:

• Increase reach for your best Facebook Page updates
• Source blog content that’s already been vetted by your Facebook fans

7) Make a Likebox Web page

Most marketers use the LikeBox to turn website visitors into Facebook fans. But with a few tweaks, you can use to highlight your latest Facebook Page updates on a single webpage. This “Likebox webpage” increases reach for your Facebook Page updates, and gives your website visitors content that’s awesome.

What do you think? Have you used any of these tips for your website? If so, let us know in the comments below.

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Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

Ian Cleary of RazorSocial recently published an infographic highlighting the daily tasks of a social media marketer. But what’s really useful about this infographic isn’t a rundown of daily tasks. It’s the 29 tools.

Some of these tools you may already know about, but here’s a quick rundown of the highlights:

Learning and content curation tools

• Downcast – This is an iOS (Apple) app that let’s you and listen to podcasts directly from your iOS device without the need to sync with iTunes. Perfect for iPhone and iPad users on the go.
• Evernote  – There are thousands of things you can do with Evernote, including curating, creating and organizing content. My friend Joe Waters is a huge Evernote fan.
• Zite – This is a magazine app that helps you discover content based on your interests. Personally, I like Flipboard.
• Feedly – Imagine if Google Reader was reborn looking beautiful and easy to use, and you’ll have an idea of what Feedly is.

Content publishing tools

• AWeber – This is an email marketing tool that’s super popular with bloggers and small businesses. Most nonprofits use Constant Contact or Mailchimp, but AWeber is definitely worth a look.
• WordPress – The best blogging (and website) platform on the planet. Enough said.

Scheduling tools

• dlvr.it – This tool allows you to schedule and share content on almost every major social media platform. It includes many notification and analytics features that you can learn about here.
• PostPlanner –  This tool is a must for any Facebook manager. Particularly if you manage multiple Facebook pages or have multiple administrators. It even has an excellent content curation feature!
• Buffer – With Buffer, throw content in a hopper that spits it out at predetermined times. I use Buffer every morning to schedule retweets from specific Twitter Lists I’ve created.
• Hootsuite – Another tool you probably already know about, HootSuite is a must-have for any social media marketer. It allows you to manage multiple Twitter streams, schedule and post content to multiple platforms, and even publish beautiful analytics reports.

Facebook contest tools

• Agora Pulse – I recently used this to develop a custom quiz app for a breast cancer foundation. The app worked beautifully, allowing me to acquire emails and analyze engagement rates in the process.
• ShortStack – This tool allows you to run any type of photo contest or giveaway, in addition to creating any type of custom tab you can imagine. No coding required, but yet highly customizable.

Monitoring tools

• Mention – Create alerts for mentions of your name, your brand, your cause and even your competitors on the web and social networks. I haven’t use this myself, but I’ve only heard good things.

Analytics tools

• Google Analytics – In my opinion a must-have for every social media marketer. Over the past year, Google Analytics has undergone a major overhaul to make measuring social media more meaningful.
• Tailwind – If you use Pinterest, you will want to use Tailwind. With Tailwind you can track follower repins, likes and comments, and even drill down into content performance by category, board, keyword and #hashtag.

Infographic on how to make your marketing more productive

Check out all 29 tools mentioned in the infographic below:

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Be clear, optimize and analyze for great impact

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, marketers, Facebook users.
When you think about calls to action on your website, you typically think about landing pages. For example, your donation page or your email sign-up form.

But how often do you think about the calls to action in the blog posts you’re publishing each week?

Before we get into the nitty gritty, let’s get one thing straight:

The chief purpose for your website is to encourage people to act. Whether it’s making a donation, joining your email list, signing a petition, or changing a habit, the purpose of your website is to encourage actions.

Here are six simple ways to improve the calls to actions in your blog posts:

Be clear about your objective

1What do you want your reader to do? Do you want them to subscribe to your email list? Share a petition with their friends? And what’s the most likely action they’ll take? The more clear you are about what you want them to do, the better.

Know the difference between an FYI and a CTA

Photo by Sean MacEntee via Creative Commons

2There are two reasons for linking text in your blog post. You either want to provide more information about the particular idea, or you want them to take action.

When you’re simply providing information, links help keep your blog posts short and concise by linking to additional information instead of including it in the blog post. For example, rather than explaining what anchor text is, I can simply link to a definition. I don’t need to make a big deal about calling your attention to that information; I can just provide a link within the text.

Call-to-action links lead the reader to the place where you want them to take action. This is where you do want to make a big deal. Make a point of explicitly calling out the desired action. For example, “Click here to sign the petition.”

Optimize how you target links

3Links open in one of two ways:

• Within the same browser window (_self or not including any “target”)
• Within a new browser window or tab (_blank)

Generally speaking, you want calls to action to open within the same window. This way, you send the reader down the path you want them to take. If they click on a call-to-action link, you want them to keep going, with no other options.

Include calls to action at the end of blog posts

4People are more likely to take an action if they’ve received some value in advance. If you ask them to sign a petition at the beginning of your blog post, you’re asking them to make a leap of faith. But if you build an argument for the cause first, the petition will makes sense as a natural next step.

Embed forms directly into blog posts

5Another approach is to include a Web form or widget directly in the blog post. This removes the potential hurdles of clicking through a link to a new Web page.

Use Google Analytics

6Finally, make a point of measuring what works for your audience. You can do this by creating goals in Google Analytics. Each time someone completes a goal, a conversion is logged in your Google Analytics account, allowing you to compare different call-to-action methods.

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5 ways to move people back to your home base

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, Web publishers, Facebook administrators.

When you post links on your Facebook page, there are a number of factors that determine whether someone clicks on your link or not.

So it’s time to think about this strategically. Here are five ways to get more traffic from links posted on your Facebook page:

Post long URLs

1BuddyMedia conducted a study that found that full-length URLs get three times as many clicks as URLs that have been shortened by using a URL shortener. Long URLs tell the user what website they’re about to visit, whereas short URLs hide this important piece of information. (Note: That doesn’t mean you should extend your regular URLs, just think twice before using URL shorteners like bit.ly or ht.ly.)

Make the title more attractive

2When you post an article on Facebook — especially one from your website — you want people to click on it! The problem is that the default title Facebook creates for that article may not be very click-friendly. For example, the title may be very long and may also include the name of your website, which is not needed on Facebook.

Fortunately, you can edit the title and description within the preview displayed on Facebook by following these three steps:

1. Paste the URL into the publisher where it says “write something.”
2. A preview is automatically generated (you can delete the URL after the preview is created).
3. Double click on the title and or excerpt to edit the text.

Select the best image

3When posting a link to Facebook, you’ll also be able to choose from a variety of images related to the article. Tab through these images to find one that stands out. If Facebook often doesn’t offer you the right choice of images, follow this advice from our sister site, Socialmedia.biz.

Post photos instead

4The research shows that links actually get the least amount of likes, comments and shares. And photos get the most likes, comments and shares.

So the next time you want to post a link on your page, post a photo instead:

• Select an interesting photo within the article you want to post.
• Save the image to your hard-drive and post it on your Facebook page.
• In the description,write a short description about the article along with a link to the article (as shown above).

Measure links posted on Facebook

5When all is said and done, you want to to know which links are actually sending the most traffic to your website!

How do you know who clicked on a link posted on Facebook if it’s the same one shared on Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest? This is where using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics comes in handy. Learn how to create these by watching this video.

How does your organization use Facebook to help generate traffic on your website?

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Listen, implement & measure to keep up with your users’ needs

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, metrics specialists, educators.

Guest post by Ritu Sharma
Social Media for Nonprofits

Like many of the nonprofits Social Media for Nonprofits works with, we were excited by the recent release of Beth’s new book, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World.

In line with the book’s focus on turning data into knowledge through powerful, insightful measurement and analytics of social media efforts, we wanted to share three simple tips and resources that nonprofits can put to work.

All of these platforms have been profiled at our recent Social Media for Nonprofits conferences, which is about to produce its final U..S program of the year in Seattle on Monday, before we head to New Delhi in December, and then back to New York City, Silicon Valley, Vancouver, plus most other major U.S. markets in 2013.

And now, for those tips and tools:

Get to know your audience

1Want to know what makes your online audience tick? Then check out Simply Measured. In particular, their free reports give you your social audience’s pulse on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, and other platforms. There’s a gold mine of intelligence presented in their 8-10 insightful, colorful analysis tools. Learn who your followers are, what issues they care about, which posts are firing up your base, and what types of content are gaining steam and going viral.

Make your website shine

2How can you make your web footprint work for you and complement your social strategy? Nonprofits get free access to Google Analytics, a robust tool that tracks what turns your audience on or off when they land on your site. This tool highlights the behaviors that are most important to understand, including where your audience came from, what content they looked at, how long they stuck around, where you lost them, and to what extent your readers engaged with your content.

Monitor social conversations

3Discover a social treasure of other cause-driven folks like you connecting with like-minded professionals, sharing content, and tracking followers by analyzing your nonprofit’s social media presence. Keep an eye on all your social conversations, wherever they take place, with Sprout Social (think HootSuite on steroids).

Nonprofits can save 50 percent on this low-cost tool, which gives you the ability to engage with your base, strategically search for better followers, identify posts that get superb traction, and of courser, schedule your posts in advance. Note: Pre-scheduling posts should only be used for Twitter and LinkedIn posts, but Facebook de-prioritizes posts scheduled via third party platforms, so that’s a no-no. Thankfully, you can now pre-schedule posts on Facebook directly.

We hope you decide to take advantage of these powerful tools, and that you join us at any of the upcoming Social Media for Nonprofits conferences around the world for more insights, tips, and tools. Come see great speakers like everyone’s favorite, Beth Kanter, plus Guy Kawasaki and senior leaders from leading social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, plus nonprofit executives from National Geographic, American Red Cross, Greenpeace, Kiva.org, Story of Stuff, DonorsChoose, and charity:water. To ensure broad accessibility, we keep conference registration fees down to about $100, including breakfast, lunch, and access to the full-day program. Scholarships are available for smaller nonprofits.

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Set up segments to determine who’s sending visitors your way

You know that your nonprofit or social enterprise can use Google Analytics to measure traffic not just from referring websites but from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus, right?

The video above will show you how to measure traffic from supporters using social media. It’s based on this recent article on the Social Media Examiner. Some takeaways:

• By clicking on Traffic sources > Referrals in Google Analytics, you can see the number of visits you’re getting via Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc.

• You can set up Advanced Segments to determine in-bound traffic from multiple sources and combine them into buckets that make sense, like Twitter.com, t.co (Twitter’s url shortener), HootSuite and bit.ly, or from Facebook and Facebook mobile. You can then see how traffic from Facebook and traffic from Twitter compare.

• You can use the same trick with any landing page on your site, giving you a better sense of who’s coming to that page via social media sources.

Related

• Getting the most out of Google Analytics (also at bit.ly/GA-for-nonprofits — Socialbrite)

• How to measure the effectiveness of your Facebook custom tabs (Socialbrite)

• How to set up a metrics program (Socialbrite)

• Social media metrics articles on Socialbrite

The post Measure social media traffic with Google Analytics appeared first on Socialbrite.

Add UTM tags (we’ll explain!) as another quiver in your Google Analytics arsenal

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, cause organizations, brands, businesses, Web publishers — anyone with a Facebook page.

We’ve seen a lot of changes to Facebook tabs over the years, from the days they were really tabs (at the top of the page) to “tabs” in the left sidebar to the newfangled small boxes (called tabs) at the bottom of your Timeline cover image.

But even with the recent changes to Facebook pages with Timeline, there are several ways to measure traffic that’s coming from your Facebook Page custom tabs:

• Use a third-party URL analytics tool – You can created bit.ly links for each URL in your custom tab. The downside with this is that you have to manage another service for this analytics.
• Create a unique Web page – You can also create a unique Web page that receives visitors only from your Facebook Page custom tab. Although this is great from a messaging standpoint, it requires additional time and resources to build a new webpage on your site.
• Use UTM tags – UTM tags allow you to amend an existing URL with information so you can measure traffic coming from a specific website or medium, like an email, where you’ve placed that URL. Think of it as a homing device. (The term UTM stands for the way-too-geeky Urchin Tracking Module and is the format/coding that Google uses to track your unique urls. And, yes, you can use this Google tracking tool on your Facebook page.)

In the video above, I explain everything you need to know to get started with UTM tags.

Please add any additional tips you have in the comments.

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How to choose the right analytics tools to measure your nonprofit’s success

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, cause organizations, businesses, brands, administrators, consultants, social media managers, individuals.

By Laura S. Quinn and Kyle Andrei
Techsoup article courtesy of Idealware

Web analytics tools help you track your site’s statistics, which let you see how many people are looking at each page, what sites they came from, and other information to help develop a picture of who your audience is. But which Web analytics tool should you use? Data-tracking needs are similar for all organizations, including nonprofits, libraries, small businesses, and corporations. But given the vast array of analytics tools out there, selecting the right package can be overwhelming.

Idealware talked to six nonprofit experts about the Web analytics tools they’ve seen work well. We also consulted postings on a number of nonprofit listserves and scoured reports on the topic. In this article, we summarize what we’ve learned to help you understand what to consider when choosing an analytics package and identify free tools and applications to help you better monitor your site’s visitors.

Which data should you analyze?

There’s no point in looking for a tool unless you have a sense of what information you want to track. Needs can vary from simple traffic-monitoring to complex analysis on the behavior of specific user groups, support for multivariate testing, and more.

What important metrics and figures should you keep in mind when selecting a Web analytics package? We’ve broken them down into three overarching areas to track. The first thing you want to track is an accurate measure of how many people are using your site, which is neither as easy nor as clear-cut as you might think. Metrics that address this include hits, visits, unique visitors, and page views. Next, you’ll want to track who the visitors to your site are, in broad terms, and what they’re doing when they visit – in other words, what site features and pages engage them? Which ones go ignored? Last, it can be beneficial to track where visitors to your site are coming from. This can help you find similar sites or better understand the types of things that lead people to you.

These areas should be enough to get you started, but powerful Web analytics tools support even more sophisticated analysis. There are people who make a living analyzing Web statistics – if you have a large site and the desire for deep usage analysis, you may want to consult with one of them.

The world of analytics is complicated by the fact that not every software tool handles metrics in the same way. Determining what sequence of Web actions to interpret as a “visit” or a “unique visitor” is complex, and somewhat subjective. Different tools calculate these figures differently. Some types of software – called “log analytics” software – look at traffic based on a log of what pages your web server provides, while others rely on what’s reported back by “cookies” – pieces of information sent back by each user’s browser. Don’t be surprised if your metrics vary somewhat among tools.

Software offered by your Web hosting service

So now that you know what to track, what Web analytics software should you use to track it? You may already have some of the tools you need. Many shared hosting companies, like DreamHost or LunarPages, offer Web statistics through the same control panel you use to administer e-mail addresses and check available file space.

AWStats and Webalizer are the two most common, and both are relatively basic “log analytics” packages that offer information about visits over time, most-visited pages, referrers, search strings, and some data about your visitors’ browsers and locations. Webalizer is a bit more popular, but AWStats’s reports are generally considered somewhat easier to understand.

Because these built-in tools are purchased and maintained by your Web host, there are no fees or installation required. While basic, they are perfectly adequate options if you simply want to keep an eye on your own site.

Site counters

You may have seen site counters on the bottom of Web pages – basically, they’re a numerical display that counts and displays the number of visitors to your site. A quick word about site counters: Don’t use them. All the free tools listed here will give you the same information without interfering with the look of your site.

Google Analytics

In a class by itself, Google Analytics offers substantially more functionality than the basic tools, and is free – unlike most of the more advanced tools listed below.

Unlike Webalyzer or AWStats and other tools provided by hosting companies, you need to install Google Analytics on your site. This involves pasting a chunk of HTML code provided by Google into every page. This piece of code sends back “cookie” information to the Google server. Adding the code requires basic HTML know-how, but Google’s directions are pretty detailed and clear, and the process shouldn’t require a huge amount of time. Once added, Google displays your statistics in a custom reporting interface you can view online.

In addition to the reports offered by tools like Webalizer or AWStats, Google shows how often visitors come to your site, tracks visitor conversion across a series of pages, compares the behavior of different types of visitors (such as new vs. returning, or those from different referring sites), and much more. A selectable date range allows you to analyze any given time period instead of being limited to a monthly view (as you are with AWStats and Webalizer). Almost every set of metrics can be sliced and diced to drill down to exactly what’s of interest to you.

New features continue to be added every few months, creating an increasingly powerful tool. The powerful reporting and filtering tools let you set up custom reports and segments to view specialized subsets of your data. It won’t easily let you track advanced Flash sites, and does not automatically track downloads of files like PDFs, but otherwise is a great free option for analytics.

More powerful analytics packages

Large organizations may want to look beyond Google Analytics for more powerful features. There’s no shortage of available options. More advanced tools like Lyris HQ Agency Edition (formerly Click Tracks), WebTrends and SiteCatalyst provide substantially more: more control, more powerful metrics, much more freedom to perform detailed user segmentation, the ability track detailed patterns, and in many cases, sophisticated data charts such as trees or interactive layouts that make it easier to track complex sites.

They’ll also support complex or Flash-based sites that Google Analytics will not, and offer professional technical support as well. More advanced features come at a cost. The lowest-end packages start at about $100 per month, and you’ll likely need to pay $500 per month or more to get features that rival Google Analytics.

Choosing a package

The first question to ask yourself when deciding on an analytic package is, will Google Analytics meet my needs? If it will, there’s no point in spending money on a more advanced tool. In fact, Google Analytics is a good default option for a lot of organizations.

If your needs are even simpler, check to see if you have a control panel and analytic tools available through your Web host. Or, if you’re familiar with web statistics tools and want more than the analytics and limited control that Google offers, picking a more powerful analytics package might be the way to go.

The right package can make a big difference in your ability to understand visitors’ needs and your site’s traffic. Choosing the right option means you’ll be able to track exactly what people are doing on your site, get all your questions answered, and maybe even sleep a little better.

For more information

• Marketing Sherpa’s Buyer’s Guide to Web Analytics Software
  It costs $249, but provides detailed overviews of 39 different products and extensive advice on how to choose.
• Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity
  Avinash Kaushik’s update to his previous book, “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.”

This post originally appeared at the TechSoup learning center. It is condensed and republished under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial No Derivatives license.

Related

• All about metrics and Web analytics (Socialmedia.biz)

• Guide to social media metrics: Articles & tutorials (Socialbrite)

• Getting started with social media metrics (Socialbrite)

• How to measure your social media success (Socialbrite)

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Why embracing data should be an important part of your leadership strategy

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, businesses, social media managers, marketing professionals, individuals.

I recently presented a workshop titled “Data Driven Leadership” at the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network/AGM annual conference along with colleagues Marc Baizman and Steve Backman. The question we addressed in the workshop was: What online data can help a leader make informed decisions around programming, advocacy and fundraising? Marc, Steve and I have expertise in Google Analytics, in understanding customer segmentation and databases, and in identifying social media metrics, respectively. Each of us thought about how the data from our respective areas of expertise could shed light on an answer. The hardest part was choosing what to eliminate from our presentation, as we only had one hour to cover this enormous topic!

Getting started with gathering data

We created a DIY worksheet for the session titled, “Make Your Data Work for You.” It offers sample questions to get you started thinking in the areas of marketing, programs and services, development, and volunteers and advocacy. For every sample question, it asks you to set the priority level, consider what data you’ll need to answer that question, and where you can find the answer. There are a lot of spaces for you to customize the worksheet to your needs. You can read and download the worksheet.

For every leader, thinking about the real organizational questions that the data could offer is the place to begin.

Below are summaries of our segments of the presentation, written individually by each of us. You can also view the SlideShare presentation above for the complete takeaways.

Using data from Facebook Insights

I focused on four questions that have implications for advocacy, programming and fundraising:

• How many people care about the organization, and how deeply?
• What do fans care about the most, and how deeply?
• What is the organization doing to reach the most people?
• What do you know about who cares about the organization?

Facebook has made answering the question of how many people care about the organization, and how deeply, very simple: Look at the “People Are Talking About” metric on the organization’s Facebook fan page. Facebook Insights is all about fan engagement now, and helping page administrators understand what content fans want to engage with the most. For a deeper dive into the newest version of Facebook Insights, take a look at my post about the upgrades to Facebook and Delicious.

To understand the power of page post metrics, I highlighted a news story republished by Hebrew University that questioned Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Looking at the per-post measurements, the wall post had higher engagement than the general PATA metric and was shared by so many fans that it had tremendous viral lift. By looking for patterns in per-post engagement, we can also see that similar news and science stories are popular with fans of The Hebrew University’s page. Knowing what fans are most interested in hearing about from the organization should guide future alumni communications and fundraising.

Last, thinking about demographics also offers programming, advocacy and fundraising guidance. Facebook Insights break down the demographics of your fans as well as the demographics of who is talking about you (that PATA metric). In some cases, who is talking about your page, “the super-engaged,” may have different demographic characteristics than page fans.

The value of Web analytics

Marc Baizman focused on Web analytics. Web analytics can be a great tool for you to use, but you need to clearly define what indicators are important to your organization, and then you need to take action based on what the data tells you! Marc focused on asking several simple questions that Web analytics can help answer, such as:

• How many people look at our site?
• How do people find our website?
• What are people looking at?
• What do we want people to do, and are they actually doing those things?

While he offered these sample questions, you should formulate your own questions based on what’s important to you. Remember that although Google Analytics is free, your staff’s time isn’t, so get help if you need to. A good place to get free help is the Analysis Exchange.

Use smart segmentation to sort data to your advantage

Steve Backman focused on “smart segmentation.” Segmentation often comes across at first as an alien, corporate marketing concept. Steve discussed how any organization, large or small, with the best of contact management software or a collection of spreadsheets can begin to benefit from a smart segmentation framework. To reach the largest possible audience in the most effective way, you need to understand and operate from your organization’s constituent groups.

Organizations may take satisfaction in how their monthly e-mail stats rise and fall, or overall response rates to a fund appeal, advocacy campaign or event. To go deeper, you need to look proactively at how you characterize your contacts. You need to work through how to connect critical data from these separate connections and activities to generate a full picture. Steve encouraged data managers to have more passion in understanding their organization’s constituency and putting the available data at the service of organizational goals. He used quick examples from Constant Contact stats and Salesforce reporting to stress an overall framework: Find indicators that support you goal and measures you can collect.

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