Challenge
A top research university engaged in social media on a smattering of platforms, but wanted to better understand the impact on its marketing goals before investing more resources. The Communications Department subscribed to Scout Labs to monitor mentions and sentiment about its brands and campaigns, but wasn’t fully leveraging the software. The university also deployed Google Analytics on its sites, but had no way to distinguish social media from other traffic sources, much less to distinguish the impact of staff social media outreach from that of naturally occurring social media activity.
Approach
Empirical Path tied Scout Labs’ measurement of social media at the top of the consideration funnel – mentions and sentiment – to Google Analytics’ measurement further down the funnel – visits, content consumption, and contacts. We customized both tools to align with both time-bound and ongoing messaging efforts, as well as the specific social media outlets where the university’s messages resonated.
Specifically, Empirical Path trained the Communications Department in a campaign process that prepares social media and web analytics measurement systems to work in sync. Each communications push is tracked as both a Scout Labs “Search” as well as a Google Analytics “Campaign,” allowing analysis across both sources. To enable this, Empirical Path created a shared campaign naming tool that simplified adding URL parameters to inbound links so that Google Analytics can report on the source, content and other traits of each.
Next, each system is customized to pay special attention to not just major social networks, but niche message boards and communities with an interest in the campaign topic. To enable this, Empirical Path created a Google Analytics Advanced Segment to distinguish social media in particular from other direct and referring traffic sources. The workflow also takes full advantage of Scout Labs’ “Assign” feature to task staff members with countering negative mentions and encouraging positive ones.
Finally, Empirical Path created plain-English, actionable reports of mentions and sentiment tracked by Scout Labs for each campaign and each social media channel, be it blogs, forums, Twitter, or video sites. The report ties in Google Analytics data on visits and conversions along these same dimensions, with the added nuance of analyzing “purposeful” social media – posts, Tweets, comments, and videos created by staff – apart from “organic” social media, which occurs naturally. Coupled with our implementation of visitor-level Custom Variables in Google Analytics to track audience segments, the reporting also provides a breakdown of social media’s impact among prospective and current students, alumni, and other key groups.
Results
The customizations, process, and reports allow Empirical Path to compare mentions of each campaign in social media to the resulting visits and engagement on the school’s websites, in turn yielding visitation and conversion rates for campaigns and specific social media platforms. Now, the Communications Department can distinguish “purposeful” social media from “organic” social media to understand which channels and topics warrant the investment in staff time needed to join in and nudge the social media conversation.
See capsules of other Web Analytics or Not-for-Profit sector projects.
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