Page 334 - Social Media Marketing

P Table€11.1╇ Suggested Measures of Participation╅ (Continued)

Metric What It Means

Profiles by Completeness Tiered profile completion: Looking at the trends and overall
Active Groups, Number of Open Topics completion curve can provide insight as to how to encourage higher
Average Members per Group levels of completeness. High levels of profile completeness drive
friending and similar relationship development.

Activity levels around specific topics, interest areas. Along with
profile completeness, the relative tendency for participants to form
or participate in groups is a direct indication of usefulness and inter-
est in the social application.

The degree to which groups are broadly attractive versus tuned to
niche interests provides insights in ways in which the social applica-
tion can be extended.

c h a p t e r 11 : ╇ T he S ocial G raph╇ ■Beyond the metrics in Table€11.1, participation can be measured externally by
312 tracking publishing events outside the network (through the Facebook Open Graph

events, for example), as well as through social analytics and similar tools that are able
to report on the end-products of activities within the community—things like content,
ratings, reviews, and other social actions.

Influence

Like participation, influence can also be measured. Influence can be measured inside
the social network using the visible indicators described in Table€11.2 and using net-
work-specific tools such as netvizz (a Facebook application). The analytical tools they
provide within Facebook can be used to measure the quality of interactions and activ-
ity data overall that is associated with business pages. Influence can also be measured
through the use of external tools.

Additional measures of behavior—for example, behaviors that connect what is
happening on one particular network with the larger discussions happening elsewhere
on the Social Web—include influencer analysis through the use of tools like BuzzStream.
Tools designed to spot influencers as they act inside the community are also valuable.
Lithium Technologies offers a particularly robust set of “expert identification” tools that
are very helpful in spotting and supporting the “experts” that emerge (naturally) in a
support or similar type of community. Klout (see sidebar) offers an interesting, for-pay
service in addition to its free service. Interested individuals can visit Klout and calculate
the influence score for their own social presence. On top of that, Klout offers—via its
own API—a for-pay service that allows anyone to calculate the relative influence scores
for participants in their own social networks.