{"id":3585,"date":"2015-12-03T12:55:41","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T20:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nnlm.gov\/evaluation\/blog\/?p=3585"},"modified":"2019-09-24T10:10:46","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T17:10:46","slug":"evaluating_social_media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/2015\/12\/03\/evaluating_social_media\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring What Matters in Your Social Media Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thumbs<\/a><\/p>\n

We’re all trying to find ways to improve evaluation of our social media efforts. It’s fun to count the number of retweets, and the number of ‘likes’ warms our hearts.\u00a0 But there’s a nagging concern to evaluators – are these numbers meaningful?<\/p>\n

Your intrepid OERC Team, Cindy and Karen, attended a program at the American Evaluation Association<\/a> conference in Chicago called “Do Likes Save Lives? Measuring What Really Matters in Social Media and Digital Advocacy Efforts,” presented by Lisa Hilt and Rebecca Perlmutter of Oxfam<\/a>.\u00a0 The purpose of their presentation was to build knowledge and skills in planning and measuring social media strategies, setting digital objectives, selecting meaningful indicators and choosing the right tools and approaches for analyzing social media data.<\/p>\n

What was interesting about this presentation is that the presenters did not want to rely solely on what they called “vanity metrics,” for example the number of “impressions” or “likes.”\u00a0 Alone these metrics show very little actual engagement with the information.\u00a0 Instead they chose to focus on specific social media objectives based on their overall digital strategy.<\/p>\n

Develop a digital strategy<\/p>\n