Managing media with metrics

Community Journalism Executive TrainingInvestigative News Network

October 2012Dana Chinn

Everything you collect should be useful for decision-making

!!!

So how are people making decisions?

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HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion

Decision-making without data

-- Avinash Kaushik, Google

Decision-making with too much useless data

…someone “who will do anything to get their hands on data before making their next decision”

Objective:

Convert you to a “Raving Data Lunatic”

Voices in Urban Reform

-- Avinash Kaushik, Google

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“Analytics will be the backbone….

“….not only to track progress, but to develop …performance-enhancing recommendations

that will guide and continually optimize our strategies along the way.

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How can we grow site traffic?

How can we serve the audiences that will support us?

Defining success starts with asking the right question

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Ratings

Circulation

Impressions

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Ratings

Circulation

Impressions

More =

Success!

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More is just…

…more.

Spray…

Traditional mass media business model

….and pray!

ContentAdvertising

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Everyoneis

equallyimportant,

right?

Traditional mass media business model

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Example

Traditionalmass mediaaudience “segmentation”

“Let’s target women!”

“Should we develop an iPhone app targeted toward college students?”

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Useful demographics…

…or stereotypes?

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Type Click Touch

16©Wellington Grey

AssignmentsQuizzesOnline modules: Excel, PowerPointFinal:

Zettabytes!

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©TechCrunch

Big Data

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Big Data is audience behavior data

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Our site has 5,000 monthly unique visitors.

Last Tuesday that story got 20,000 page views.

The average time spent on our site last week was 24 minutes.

We have 5,000 Twitter followers.

Our iPhone app was downloaded 10,000 times.

We have 2,000 likes on our Facebook page.

Get an A in Analytics 101 response #1:

So what?

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What actions indicate engagement?

Visit

Read/view content, a lot

Interact, often -- rate, print, vote, take a poll, click on an ad -- share, e-mail, comment, contribute

, regularly

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What people say they did

what they thinkand

why

as captured by surveys, focus groups, social media, usability studies

Two types of analytics data

Behavioral research

What people did when they came to your site,as captured by an action taken on a keyboard or mouse

Attitudinal research

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Unique visitors

visit a site

and generate page views

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Strong vs. weak metrics

Strong metrics are useful tools that give clear indications

of what’s successful or not

Weak metrics…

-- are conceptually flawed“so what?” counts

-- are technically flawed due to the way Google Analytics collects the data …give mixed signals and can lead to bad decisions

c. Kyle Taylor

c. Kyle Taylor

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web serverRebekah

Rebekah’s PC

A person visiting a web site is

just one computer asking another to send them a page

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web server

Rebekah’s work PC

Rebekah’s home computer

Rebekah’s tablet

Rebekah’s personal phone

Rebekah’s work phone

1 actual person with 5 devices…

…is counted

as 5 unique visitors

“More than half of all media interactions involving one screen coincided with the use of another.” 

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14 actual people using 1 computer…

…is counted as

1 unique visitor

SchoolsLibrariesStoresPublic Internet access spots

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Under-counted?

Over-counted?

You will never know!

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Ratings

Circulation

More =

Success!

Unique visitors

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Visit duration, or time on site:

Flawed conceptually…

…flawed technically….

…the weakest metric EVER!

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Visit duration = first timestamp – last timestamp

First timestamp: 1:00 p.m.

1:10 p.m. (no last timestamp on the KPCC server)

Actual time spent on KPCC site: 10 minutes

Google Analytics time spent: 0 minutes

KPCC web server

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KPCC web server

Visit duration = first timestamp – last timestamp

First timestamp: 1:00 p.m.

1:20 p.m.

Actual time spent on KPCC site: 20 minutes

Google Analytics time spent: 10 minutes

Last timestamp: 1:10 p.m.

The time spent on the last page isn’t captured

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Is more time on site good?

Is less time on site bad?

People spend lots of time on our site so they must like our content.

People spend lots of time on our site but they don’t find what they want.

People can find what they want really quickly.

A lot of people don’t stay on our site very long because they come through search engines looking for something we don’t have.

People come to our site for only a few minutes in each visit but they come three times a day for the latest news.

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Newspaper market study, 1987

“Over the past week, how much time did you spend reading the [name of newspaper]?”

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Are more page views good?

Are fewer page views bad?

People go to lots of pages so they must like our content.

People go to lots of pages but they don’t find what they want.

After our site was redesigned people found what they wanted much more quickly.

People come to our site but only go to one page.

After we added dynamic content we saw a drop in page views.

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Counts give few actionable insights

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Big Data is audience behavior data

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Start with an overall view

of visits by week

View pages

Interact -- rate, print, vote, take a poll, click on an ad -- share, e-mail, comment, contribute

“You can think of a visit as a container for all of the actions a visitor takes on your site….”

Google Analytics: How Visits are Calculated in Analytics 40

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15visits

Google “Analytics measures both visits and visitors in your account.

“Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site.”

Google Analytics: The Difference Between Clicks, Visits, Visitors, Pageviews, and Unique Pageviews

or sessions

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Are more visits good? Always.

More people are visiting our site.

The same number of people are visiting our site, but some of them are visiting more often.

More people are visiting our site, but some of them are visiting more often.

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Are fewer visits bad? Always.

Fewer people are visiting our site.

The same number of people are visiting our site, but some of them are visiting less often.

Fewer people are visiting, and some of them are visiting less often.

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A strong metric like visitsgives actionable insights when segmented

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Is this good?

Get an A in Analytics 101 response #2:

It depends.

80%Los Angeles

20%Alhambra

Visits by location

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80%Los Angeles

20%Alhambra

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Visits: mobile vs. PC

80% of visitsdid NOT use a mobile device

20% of visits DID use a mobile device

Should we use a mobile-optimized,responsive design for our site?

20%

20%

80%

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Do you really need data to decide that your site should be optimized for the mobile web?

49A bounce: a visit with only one page view

Bounce rate The percent of visits

with only one page view

“I came. I saw. I puked.”-- Avinash Kaushik on bounce rate

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Site bounce rate “Forty-six percent of the 11.1 million visits that came to our site in the last 12 monthsbounced.

In other words, there were five million times someone came to the site, looked at one page, and left.”

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Site bounce rate: Interesting…

…but ultimately not actionable

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Traffic source data:

Do you know what your audience is looking for when they come to your site?

Start here…

…not here!

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Search Visits from search engines

Referring sites Visits from blogs and other sites, including Facebook, Twitter

Direct Visits from people typing in a URL

Campaigns Visits from e-mail newsletters and other custom coded internal actions

Visits by traffic source

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Landing page bounce rates by traffic sourcegive actionable insights

How many people came to the site directly….

…and landed on the home page…

…and bounced?

These are people who know you or who are responding to YOUR campaign or event.

What’s interesting:-- landing pages other than home page-- bounce rates-- new vs. returning

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Branded keywords – used by people who know youHASCHASC branded programsHASC staff

Misspellings

Generic words for “hospital association” + “California”

Unbranded keywords – used by people who think you have what they’re looking for

Hospital codes

List of hospitals in California

Healthcare

Search: keywords give insight on what people are looking for

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So what do I measure?

Hint: Get an A in Analytics 101 answer #2

Analytics Measurement Model – E-commerce

Market Motive/Avinash Kaushik

1. What is your organizational goal? What do you do that no one else does?

2. What do you need to do to achieve the organizational goal?

3. What channels are essential to do what you need to do?

4. Channel goals: What do you expect each channel to do?

5. Key Performance Indicators: Metrics that tell you when to:• Celebrate, and expand• Try harder, or try something else • Stop doing something that’s not working

6. KPI targets: The numbers to shoot for

7. KPI owner: The decision-maker; the person who takes action depending on whether the target was met

8. Segments: Slices of the metric that help you understand what’s making the number go up or down – and take action

9. KPI data sources: Where you get the data

A measurement model specifies how you define success – and failure

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Analytics Measurement Model – Nonprofit news site

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Analytics Measurement Model – Weekly e-mail newsletter

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Analytics Measurement Model – Event

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1. Organizational objective: Why do we exist? Honestly, why?

“We know what we do.

“We know what we don’t do.”

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1. Organizational goal

Inform people who

• Attitudes: like to stay informed about Texas public policy, politics and government

• Behavior: are stakeholders in Texas public policy, politics and government

so that they

• Behavior: engage in civic activities • Attitudes: feel they have a voice

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1. Organizational goal

Inform people who _____________________

• Geography• Behavior • Attitudes

so that they___________________________

• Behavior • Attitudes

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Organizational goals don’t change regardless of channels used

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2. What do we need to do to achieve the organizational goal?

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3. What channels are essential to do what you need to do?

E-mail

Events

Facebook

Twitter

Print flyersSite

Anything worth doing is worth measuring – every channel needs its own measurement model

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4. Channel goals: What do you expect each channel to do for each action the org needs to take?

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4. Channel goals: What do you expect each channel to do for each action the org needs to take?

Site

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4. Channel goals: What do you expect each channel to do for each action the org needs to take?

Site

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4. Channel goals: What do you expect each channel to do for each action the org needs to take?

Site

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Each channel will contribute in different ways to the organizational goal.

Site E-mail

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5. Key Performance Indicators: What metrics will indicate whether your actions are succeeding – or failing?

Site

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Four attributes of a great KPI

1. Simple, a clear indicator

2. Relevant to your business

3. Timely enough to take action

4. Instantly useful!

Market Motive/Avinash Kaushik

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5. Key Performance Indicators: What metrics will indicate whether your actions are succeeding – or failing?

Site

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8. Segments: Slices of the KPI metric that help you understand what’s making the number go up or down – and take action

Visitors who…

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8. Segments: Slices of the KPI metric that help you understand what’s making the number go up or down – and take action

Visitors who…

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8. Segments: Slices of the KPI metric that help you understand what’s making the number go up or down – and take action

Visitors who…

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Some KPI data sources

1. Master contact database

3.

4. Online site-level and page-level surveys

2. Event registrations and surveys

“There are a lot of stupid ways to get lots of likes and more followers.

But in the end, you will have an audience that is not relevant or will not engage with you.”

-Avinash Kaushik

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2202307/Social-Media-ROI-How-To-Define-a-Strategic-Plan by Angie Schottmuller

Analyze trends in

• Posts

• People are Talking About This

• Weekly Total Reach

Facebook Insights

“Beyond Facebook Insights,” by Thomas Baekdal

“Facebook Advertising/Marketing: Best Metrics, ROI, Business Value,” by Avinash Kaushik

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Followers

Content

Understand how to measure Twitter,and you’ll understand how to measure social media

not demographics or other typical mass media audience metrics

“….garnered nearly double the tweets-per-minutethan Mitt Romney….”

A so-what Twitter metric

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Measurable tweets have…

1. A call to action Go here…look…tell me

2. A link that you track with link (e.g., bit.y) and web analytics tools

3. #Hashtags and/or keywords

4. Topic or person-specific handles

…120 or fewer characters, not 140!

RT - retweetMT – modified tweetVia or HT – heard throughFavoriteLists

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Metrics drive actions.

When you use the wrong ones, you take the wrong actions.

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©GreenBook

“The challenge is not data.

“It's how we think about marketing, the ability of our CEOs and CMOs to imagine a different future.”

-Avinash Kaushik