Social media measuring and monitoring

Indicators
http://bit.ly/bwEVHU  Shifting from Self-driven to Issue-driven Social Media Listening
 * Listening

http://bit.ly/a0xPl3 Finding Influencers using Social Media Monitoring Tools
 * Influencers

read [Tech Companies Looking Into Sarcasm Detection http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/07/05/2034253/tech-companies-looking-into-sarcasm-detection?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed]
 * Sentiment


 * Applause
 * Critics - Applause is a misleading indicators in Twitter.
 * The main reason is that there is a dynamic ratio of the semantics associated with the actual usage. And these have trends, evolution and oscillation. Not to mention the dependence on the apps. And "favourites" is maybe the best example:

most of the people I know, use favourite in Twitter not as something they like, but as "read later", me including. However, that also varies depending on the app. In some apps that have a good integration with Pocket and Readability, favourite is not used like that or - more often - not used like that all the time, with exception with those users that have consistency on both the meaning and the app they use to access Twitter.
 * Re-tweets are a better indicator, though sometimes the distribution within the spectrum from worth-sharing to strongly-recommend could result in a serious deviation.


 * for FB
 * number of followers,
 * number of likes,
 * number of active participants,
 * number of shares/re-posts,
 * where do people share,
 * growth of likes and/or shares per month,
 * number of shared pictures and events,
 * quality of discussions (real comments, suggestions etc),
 * number of "replies" to an individual post.


 * Engagement on Twitter
 * rate - interaction between a Twitter user and the followers through the user replies and the retweets made by the followers.
 * several algorytms available - but still in the early stages of establishing standard scores, but the current ones may help make sense of the data
 * Socialbakers recommends a formula that could be applied to establishing the average Tweet Engagement Rate of a Twitter user for a given period of time. Avergae Tweet Engagement Rate = (Replies + Tweets on a given day/period of time)/#of tweets made by profile on a given day/period of time)/Total followers on a given day/period of time * 100.
 * According to Avinash Kaushik, the engagement rate results from a combination of three information areas that may provide accurate evidence:
 * - Amplification: the rate a post gets shared or ReTweeted;
 * Conversations: all the comments and replies to an update or post;
 * Applause: all favourites.
 * Each engagement area has been given this formula:
 * - Number of Posts / Number of retweets = Amplification Rate
 * - Number of Posts / Number of replies = Conversation Rate
 * - Number of Posts / Number of favourites = Applause Rate


 * Social Connections
 * While many social media experts claim that this metric is your least valuable one; most marketers of small-to-medium sized businesses tend to dwell on this number. The truth be told is that unless your business has an enormous budget for earning thousands or even millions of fans, focusing on growing this category adds little value.


 * Social Page Views
 * Knowing at any point in time how many people have viewed your Facebook page is valuable information, and perhaps more meaningful than knowing the number of views that your business's website is getting.


 * Video/SlideShare Views
 * Making yourself aware of the number of times that people have tuned into your YouTube video or viewed your SlideShare presentation can help you to measure the success of your content and gauge whether it's engaging your target audience or not gaining much traction.


 * Engagement Rate
 * As you can imagine, this key performance indicator is a critical one. The engagement rate basically measures the number of "likes" and comments that your business has received and divides it by a total fan count. Not only can it help you to determine the type of content that your target audience finds most appealing, but it can make you aware of the best times of day to post content. Facebook's EdgeRank takes a good hard look at this metric and factors it in to how it will rank your business on its newsfeed.


 * Talking About This
 * Next to the number of fans that your Facebook page has is the number of people that are talking about your brand. Basically, this metric tracks the number of people that are talking about your brand and/or your posts on their Facebook page.


 * Facebook Reach
 * This Facebook metric measures how far your brand's reach is extending on Facebook by dividing it out by organic, viral, and paid. While this might not be the most accurate metric that your business looks at, it can still help you to determine how your business is performing over prior periods.


 * Re-tweet Rates
 * This metric is just as obvious as it sounds. It tracks the engagement rate of your tweets and if people feel that it is valuable enough to re-tweet.


 * Social Clicks
 * If you use Bitly as a URL shortener, you can take advantage of its API (application programming interface) to see how many clicks your business is getting and which categories are driving the most clicks. This key performance indicator is valuable because even if you share a link in a status update that is not for your website, you can still find out how many clicks you are generating even if they are not to your own website.

Social Media Monitoring Tools
The Review of the tools in 2010 introduces into the problematic
 * 1) Alterian,
 * 2) Brandwatch,
 * 3) Biz360 provides a "sentiment analysis" (positive, negative, neutral)
 * 4) http://www.ecairn.com - focusing on communities and influencers and not "cross the board" monitoring.
 * 5) Neilsen Buzzmetrics,
 * 6) Radian6,
 * 7) Scoutlabs and
 * 8) Social Website Analyzer crawls the top 20 social media website, categorized to type of SM, and shows how your URL is exposed on that website (namely Traffic ranks and graphs, Social Bookmarking, Social Video, Social Search Engine, Answer Services, Social (micro)blogging, Social News Presence over Facebook, Digg, My space, Twitter, Delicious)
 * 9) Sysomos
 * 10) Sentiment metrics, along with a handful of free/ low cost tools. it has a lot of benefits: wide range of languages, solid data. much like moving to others. apparently there are 254 suppliers of similar services in the market!

Extensive list of social media monitoring tools in a regularly updated wiki could be compared with free social media monitoring tools.

Social Media Monitoring Features Scorecard and the Carte du marche de la e-Reputation compares selected tools, which could give better idea which tool to take.