The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

Does Your University Make the Grade in Social Media?

(Back by popular demand, this is a reprint of an article that appeared in The Measurement Standard in 2008.)

Benchmarks you can use from KDPaine & Partners' study of social media usage at five academic institutions.

by Peter Kowalski and Katie Delahaye Paine

Social media is a new and unfamiliar development for many companies and institutions. It is growing so quickly and taking on so many new forms that many organizations are at a loss to understand its present use and future possibilities.

Georgia Institute of Technology found itself in just that position. It wanted to organize and improve its institutional use of social media, but needed help to understand the myriad options, and to develop effective new programs with realistic goals.

Georgia Tech is home to some 22,000 scholars, faculty, and administration. It is consistently ranked in U.S. News & World Report's top ten public universities in the United States. Georgia Tech is in competition with other top-ranked universities for students, faculty, and research grants, so it was important for it to understand not just its own social media usage, but also how it compared with that of competing academic institutions.

To better understand its social media presence and options, Georgia Tech asked KDPaine & Partners to undertake a major study of social media use at academic institutions. Presented below are the major results of that study, as well as benchmarks that institutions of higher education can use to compare with their own use.

Social Media: Where to start, and what to expect?

It was clear at the start that social media was an important communication tool, especially for reaching for Georgia Tech's student audience. For U.S. Internet users:

• More than 70 million people watch more than 2.5 billion YouTube videos per month.
• 8% of Internet users keep a blog.
• 38% of online teens read blogs.
• 3% of online teens consider blogs their first news source.

Earlier research had shown that social media is an important tool for academic admissions departments, and in many cases is more commonly used in academia than in the corporate world (Barnes & Mattson, "The Game Has Changed: College Admissions Outpace Corporations in Embracing Social Media"). In this case, 88% of responding admissions departments said that social media was Very Important or Somewhat Important to their marketing/recruitment strategy. 61% said that they used social media. In particular, 33% used blogs, 29% used social networking, and 19% used video.

So Georgia Tech had no doubt that social media was important. The question was how important, and which media were more important than others?

Research Goals

With the above concerns in mind, KDPaine & Partners designed a research program for Georgia Tech. The following major goals were decided upon:

1. Determine specifically what presence and activity Georgia Tech and peer institutions had in social media.
2. Advise Georgia Tech on what it should be doing in social media: What changes should it make to its present programs, and/or what new programs should it add?
3. Set benchmarks for Georgia Tech to judge its results by after it implements its new social media program(s).

Research Methodology

To best achieve these goals, it was decided to observe and explore a range of social media channels for Georgia Tech as well as a small group of peer academic institutions. Typical patterns of traffic and usage could then be determined.

Four peer institutions were chosen by Georgia Tech as its closest national competition for students, faculty, and research resources.

The following social media channels were observed:

• 50 external blogs in 7 categories
• 114 institutional blogs produced by peer institutions
• 1668 YouTube videos
• 811 items on Facebook (Broken down, this was 405 network discussion posts, 53 freshman group discussion posts, and a sample of 353 popular topics. Note: KDPaine & Partners did not look at any student profiles or retain names of any individual students. All items examined were available to any user with a Facebook account.)
• Social bookmarking sites, including Digg, Fark, Newsvine, Reddit, Slashdot and del.ic.ious.

Data was gathered for a 30-day period between September and November of 2007, and included all references to Georgia Tech and the four peer institutions. To ensure comparability and a manageable data set, content related to athletics was not included. To allow context comparisons, back content for discussion volume was collected for Facebook groups from January - November 2007.

Research Results

Goal #1:
Determine the social media presence and activity of Georgia Tech and the peer institutions.

Summary chart of net results for all media across all institutions (click on the chart to see it larger):



Findings for specific social media:

Blog Findings
Over all the external blogs (those not hosted by an institution) studied, the median number of comments per blog post was roughly 3 (depending on category), and this amount of activity is a good benchmark of reasonable traffic. But the average number of posts per comment was 13, a level that generally indicates strong engagement. And, if the topic was controversial, a post got as many as 35 comments. After 3 days most comments were made, and after 14 days there would almost definitely be no additional comments.

And for institutional blogs (hosted on the domains of an institution, like gatech.edu, for instance), we found that roughly 2 out of 5 postings included at least one key message of the institution. Note that this level of message communication is about what one would expect for articles in traditional media. This is a counterintuitive result; the institutions are writing their own blog articles, so we would expect a somewhat higher level of message communication for the blogs than for traditional media. (GT has suggested that this result is likely due to its desire to generate content that is less calculated, less "marketey," and more authentic.) Thus a good benchmark for message inclusion in articles in internal blogs is at least 2 out of 5.

YouTube Findings
This study found 19 types of YouTube videos. See Sidebar #2, below.

Social Bookmarking Findings
As for social bookmarking, we found a rough median of one submitted item every other day, with a lot of variance between schools.

Facebook Findings

This research found 27 types of Facebook conversations. See Sidebar #1, below. Also:

• Less than one percent of users used network-level discussion features.
• By September, discussion hosted by freshman groups decreased 99%.
• Almost 1/3 of content posted to profiles was related to a home institution.
• 22% of Facebook discussion was related to the asking and answering of questions, second only to advertising (30%).
• 56% of questions went unanswered, but most unanswered questions were not related to the institution.
• High school students accounted for 8% of all questions. Almost all of their queries were answered.

Special Research Question #1:
What subject matter consumes the bulk of the discussions across all social media – Campus life? Faculty? Research?

The data shows that the answer to this question will never be simple. Academic discussion is much more fragmented and diffuse than corporate or nonprofit discussion. University society and interests are far more diverse, and so the answer is usually, "These three or four things," or, "These three or four other things." It is rarely just any one subject that audiences discuss.

In general, dominant topics of discussion for each medium are:

• YouTube- Students, Campus Life
• External Blogs- Research, Institution News
• Institution Blogs- Campus Life (when institution related), Science/Education (overall)
• Social Bookmarking Sites- Research, Institution News
• Facebook- Campus Life

Special Research Question #2:
What is the influence of traditional media?

To what extent does content in the traditional media trigger social media content, or is distributed via social media channels?

• Although traditional media has some influence over social, it is not a full predictor of content or visibility in social media.
• On average, bloggers included as many as six links to external content in a post. The third most common link source was traditional news media sites.
• Of all of the links to pages on Peer#1.edu that were found in our population of external blog posts, 26% of them were links to content found in the newsroom.
• On Facebook, traditional news media sites were the source of 25% of popular items posted to profiles.
• One third of content on social news sites was from traditional media sources.
• Twice as many hard news stories were posted to social news sites as features.

Goal #2:
Advise Georgia Tech on what they should be doing.

Recommendations to Georgia Tech Based on Overall Analysis

Analysis of the data lead KDPaine & Partners to make the following recommendations to Georgia Tech:

1. Add tactics targeting social bookmarking sites to traditional media program plans. Learn what gets bookmarked for sites relevant to your institution and the most common sources of seeded items, and put those on your priority media lists in the hopes that you can get listed on social bookmarking sites.
2. Encourage individuals (especially faculty), rather than departments, to maintain institution blogs.
3. Engage directly with popular external bloggers.
4. Limit engagement with Facebook to contact with group officers.
5. Focus on creating YouTube playlists of thematic content already found on the site.

Note that recommendations #1, #2, and #4 are definitely counter to current practice, based on our observations. Also, #5 is original and innovative; to our knowledge no one does it yet.

Goal #3:
Set benchmarks by which Georgia Tech can judge results after they have implemented their social media program.

KDPaine & Partners' data provided summaries of activity for both Georgia Tech and the four peer institutions. As Georgia Tech enacts new programs, it can compare itself to these benchmarks to determine if it is meeting with success compared to its past, and compared to its peers.

Can other schools use these social media benchmarks?
Yes, other academic institutions can benchmark their own social media programs against the results of this research. While the actual data collected is proprietary, and the analysis was done in many categories and subcategories (see the sidebars below: "27 Types of Conversations," and "19 Types of Video"), the summary statistics given in the chart above are sufficiently robust to suggest benchmarks for other institutions of higher learning.

There are only five institutions in this sample, so the benchmarks given here should be considered directional. Still, this study is one of the first of its type, and there are as yet no other benchmarks of this sort to refer too, so these are relatively informative.

It is tempting to anticipate that these effects will vary with certain attributes of institutions. For instance, we might expect that smaller schools, with their more cohesive social atmospheres, might have more success with social media programming than big public and private institutions. However, we tested the social bookmarking data for effects based on size of student body, size of incoming class and price of tuition; none of were found to have an effect.

Of course, the more new programs are developed, the more new data will be available for future comparisons. What was very obvious in the data was that different institutions were trying to help to guide their social media content, though for the most part, it was organic, gritty and, well, natural. Using a horticulture analogy, we're talking about watching plants grow to figure out how we can use grafting and other techniques to get plants that we want.

Sidebar #1:
27 Types of Facebook Conversations

In this study, KDPaine & Partners identified 27 specific types of conversations taking place in Facebook, including:

1. Acknowledging receipt of information

2. Advertising something

3. Answering a question

4. Asking a question

5. Augmenting a previous post

6. Calling for action

7. Disclosing personal information

8. Distributing media

9. Expressing agreement

10. Expressing criticism

11. Expressing support

12. Expressing surprise

13. Giving a heads up

14. Responding to criticism

15. Giving a shout-out

16. Making a joke

17. Making a suggestion

18. Making an observation

19. Offering a greeting

20. Offering an opinion

21. Putting out a wanted ad

22. Rallying support

23. Recruiting people

24. Showing dismay

25. Soliciting comments

26. Soliciting help

27. Starting a poll



Sidebar #2:
19 Types of YouTube Video

In this study KDPaine & Partners identified 19 types of videos posted on YouTube:

1. Advertisement
2. Animation
3. Demonstration
4. Event/Performance
5. Fiction
6. Film
7. Home Video
8. Instructional Video
9. Interview
10. Lecture
11. Montage
12. Music Video
13. News Broadcast
14. Promotional Video
15. Sightseeing/Tour
16. Slide show
17. Speech
18. Television Show
19. Video Log

 

IPR Case Study: Starbucks and Edelman Win Big Apple 2011 Best Use of Research Award

Edelman and Starbucks have won the IPR’s 2011 Big Apple Best Use of Research, Measurement and Evaluation Award. You can read about it on the IPR website, including a nifty little case study about Starbucks’ research into the effectiveness of their green initiatives.

Frank Oviatt, IPR's President and CEO, writes:

“Last week I presented the Best Use of Research, Measurement and Evaluation Award at the PRSA New York chapter’s Big Apple Awards.  Starbucks and Edelman took the prize for “Starbucks Coffee Company Earth Month.”

When a customer substitutes a reusable mug for a paper cup, Starbucks says that can save seven trees per year.  With Starbucks serving up more than four billion cups a year, there’s real potential for reducing environmental impact. The team used a multi-faced research brew as deep and rich as any espresso...”

Read the whole piece here. --WTP

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Profile of an Ice Cream Junkie

Jenny Schade's Making It Count

 

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Tapping into Consumers’ Collective Unconscious

The “addict” sitting next to me laughed nervously. “It heals my pain. It releases chemicals in my brain that make me feel a little better.  If you’re not having a good day, ice cream helps.”

Another chimed in. “I’m like an ‘Ice Cream Junkie.’ I get this feeling and I just have to have a little ice cream. It calms me down. Let’s face it, there are worse things than ice cream that we could be addicted to.”

Can people really be addicted to ice cream? Based on our market research for a major consumer packaged goods company, women crave this sweet treat and even describe it as an addiction -- sweet news indeed for the client that hired me to consult on its marketing strategy for a new frozen novelty.

Do you really know what motivates consumers to buy your products or services? Not just what they like, but why they like it and what moves them to purchase? Traditional demographic surveys and surface data can only tell you so much. In our experience, the key to establishing a lasting relationship with your customers lies in understanding the emotional connection between your customers and your brand. This case study will show how we identified the underlying emotions and motivations associated with our client’s new ice cream product.

The discussion described above was extremely valuable for identifying what separated ice cream from other snacks in the minds of primary grocery shoppers. Through focus groups, I explored the underlying feelings that motivated target customers to choose ice cream over other snack choices. Gradually and systematically, we explored three areas:

1. What differentiated ice cream from other snack choices, in the minds of consumers

2. The underlying psychological reasons people purchased ice cream

3. The image for my client’s new product that would best resonate with target consumers

We began with a sorting exercise in which consumers sorted 35 possible snack items into groups, based on the feelings generated when selecting a product to eat.  After reviewing packages of pretzels, candy, crackers, cookies, nuts, granola bars, and ice cream-related choices, the respondents created a group of frozen novelties, which they referred to as “The Ice Cream Stash.”

Interestingly, this emotional need state for “something thick, cool and creamy that satisfies my craving” emerged spontaneously in four focus groups.  My clients were glued to the one-way mirror, focusing on the differentiating benefits they heard that could serve as the basis for a marketing campaign for the new ice cream product they planned to launch.

“It’s a craving,” explained a consumer. “It’s the little devil on your shoulder whispering, ‘You need ice cream.’”

The ensuing discussion provided the client with an extensive descriptive vocabulary that would be useful in the development of marketing materials, including “rich,” “luxurious,” “cool,” “smooth,” “creamy,” “thick,” “heavenly,” “indulgent,” and “satisfying.”

After accessing the emotions and descriptions associated with this new product, I gently dug deeper into the group’s collective unconscious. Displaying a deck of archetype cards, I asked the respondents to review the symbols on the cards and select three that they most closely associate with a non-ice cream snack (snack chips), their ideal “Ice Cream Stash” as well as with the new ice cream product they were evaluating.

Based on the 20th-century Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung’s identification of core images and instincts in the human psyche, the cards graphically represent universal archetypes and mythological figures such as “Mother,” “Mystic,” “Rebel,” and “Virgin.”  Asking consumers to relate a product to these symbols helps us to tap into their unconscious associations, providing invaluable insights and imagery for the development of effective marketing campaigns.  By requesting that consumers choose a card for snack chips as well as the “ideal” ice cream product and the new frozen novelty product, we would learn more about “The Ice Cream Stash” and how closely the new product meets this emotional need state. The cards would help us obtain a clear picture of how consumers see the new product and the story that my client’s marketing needed to tell in order to drive sales.

The respondents’ choices of archetype cards for the two ice cream products were similar and very revealing: “Mystic,” Lover,” and “Healer.” Consistently across all four groups, women described “the power of ice cream” to comfort, restore, and heal them, both from everyday challenges as well as from the craving for ice cream.  The new product clearly met the identified consumer need state for “The Ice Cream Stash.”

• “When you’re feeling sad about something -- maybe after a bad blind date -- you eat ice cream…and you feel a little better, because you have something that satisfies you.”
• “You can count on it to be there for you in good times and in bad.”
• 
  “When you’re having a bad day, there’s always ice cream to pick you up.”

On the other hand, respondents’ choices for snack chips imagery were more straight-forward and less emotional. They focused on the archetypes of Transformer and Companion, explaining that they typically paired chips with another product such as a dip and tended to take them for granted; they didn’t consider them to be particularly special. 

One respondent articulated, “After all, you don’t race over to your best friend’s house with a big bag of chips after she’s just been dumped by some guy. You take a quart of ice cream and two spoons. Ice cream comforts and heals.”

With that remark, I knew we were done. The research led to the creation of a marketing campaign for the new product based on “the mystical powers of ice cream.”  Imagery and fanciful copy positioned the new frozen novelty as a soothing, comforting sweet treat that rescues women from everyday struggles.

Our psychological approach went beyond the typical surface reactions to a new product’s taste, texture and appearance to exploring the underlying emotions of the target consumer -- getting at feelings they probably didn’t even know they had about ice cream. By tapping into the consumer’s unconscious, my client was now in a very good position for moving forward with a compelling marketing strategy for the new ice cream product.

Because consumers may forget what a brand says or does, but they will always remember how a brand makes them feel.

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizationsbuild leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers. 

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizations build leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers. Subscribe to the free JRS newsletter. Contact Jenny Schade at 847/920-1701 or jenny.schade@JRSconsulting.net.

© JRS Consulting, Inc. 2010

Golden Ruler 2007 Public Relations Measurement Case Study Posted at the IPR Site

Padilla Speer Beardsley and GfK for Rockwell Automation won the 2007 Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award with this case study. It is a great example of excellence in public relations measurement and evaluation. Download "Research Based Business Transformation: Benchmark and Tracking the Customer Experience" at the Institute for Public Relations' website.

Public relations measurement can now -- hey! -- measure relationships.

Relationship Measurement Case Study

Relationships Audit Reveals Precise Public Relations Weaknesses
"The client even applauded at the end of our presentation!"

by Forrest W. Anderson

(Editor's Note: After reading this article, you can learn more about measuring relationships in Katie Delahaye Paine's new almost-hot-off-the-press book "Measuring Public Relationships" here.)

Until I tried it, I dismissed the idea of measuring relationships. However, I've changed my thinking since using these measures in a communications audit led by Paul Raab at Denver-based Linhart Public Relations. The relationship measures gave us unexpected insights that led to solid business and communications recommendations. The client, the National Governing Board (NGB) for a U.S. Olympic sport, even applauded at the end of our presentation! They tell us they refer to it and use it every day -- the COO actually cuts and pastes our recommendations when assigning communications tasks to staff!

Relationship measurement is a fairly recent development. As you may know, in 1999 Jim Grunig and Linda Childers Hon published a paper on how to evaluate relationships. One of their premises is that the real business of public relations is managing relationships. Using professional and academic information, they derived six factors that collectively measure the strength of a relationship from the stakeholder's point of view:

1. Mutual Control
2. Trust
3. Satisfaction
4. Commitment
5. Exchange
6. Community

Grunig and Hon also developed specific questions to measure these factors. For our NGB audit, we used these questions to survey current and potential team athletes, their parents and coaches, donors and trustees. The data showed relationships were strong across all but two of the six relationship factors: Exchange and Mutual Control.

We disallowed the Exchange factor results, which showed that stakeholders did not believe the organization did anything without expecting something in return. Considering the particular situation, this seemed appropriate.

However, the Mutual Control issue was different. Our client wants commitment from athletes and coaches to training and integrity, and to their organization. And it needs money from donors. The athletes and coaches want financial and logistic support from the organization. Donors want to see performance, integrity and support for the organization from the athletes who reach the podium. The survey results, however, showed that most stakeholder groups believed the client didn't listen or respond to their wants and needs. The data enabled us to demonstrate to the client that to achieve its goals, it needed to listen better and actually respond to stakeholder concerns, rather than ignore them.

I was surprised by how sensitive this technique is. Not only did it tell me the relationship was weak, but it told me how. As a communications professional, the recommendations for addressing that kind of issue were second nature.

Until now, I had not given the approach much attention, mostly because it doesn't get at sales or share price, the issues I've always believed CEOs really care about. Now I think evaluating the strength of relationships would be useful for any organization. It obviously makes sense for public and community affairs. Other applications could include assessing relationships with customers, employees, shareholders, financial analysts, technical analysts and so on. It also offers a benchmark against which to evaluate the success of communications programs.

Forrest W. Anderson is an insight consultant helping organizations communicate better through better understanding their target audiences. He is a founding member of the IPR Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation.

Paul Raab, APR, is senior vice president and partner at Linhart Public Relations.