Completing a competitive landscape analysis is valuable when exploring the social media environment – personally or professionally. I completed a similar exercise for clients in multiple environments. Social media’s dynamic, infancy provides a unique challenge and opportunity, though. So, besides applying my learning to date, I also leveraged insights from the blogosphere. Here are my insights on assessing social media sites through a high-level framework, some details included. Paying clients and close friends get to see under the hood ;-)
To begin, identify objectives for the analysis and what stakeholders are involved. Be sure to always keep these in mind; they will ground thinking and scope the work. Once identified, we can build an initial list of relevant sites and a site element inventory to assess each with. These two parameters, the scope of the project, may change as we execute the assessment work. 80/20 suggests we’ll have a good ballpark.
The initial site list should be quick to build: known platforms, search engine results, generic category competition, and comparables in investment or industry reports.
The site element inventory is the primary focus of this post. Just how do we assess a social media site? Optimally, I want to provide a quantitative assessment, size and relativity, to ensure the information ‘means’ something and is ultimately actionable.
I must also recognize the [obvious] qualitative elements of social media, though. A high quantity of blog posts and readership engagement mean nothing if the blog tone is negative and the readers are (1) not the target segment or (2) not any more enticed to act in a way that fulfills the blogger’s/site’s objectives. This is the key conundrum of this exercise, and the primary reason why a “Social Media Site Assessment Framework” Google search doesn’t give you the same type of results as “Porter’s five forces.” The unknown causes 39% of respondents to PR Week’s 2009 social media survey to cite “Not convinced about the value/ROI” as a primary barrier to using social media.
One relevant framework is Avinash Kaushik’s Trinity model from his Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, a must read. The framework builds on Actionable Insights and Metrics, broken down into three components; I postulate social media-esque twists to each:
- Behavior analysis: Click stream analysis for him
o Think engagement for this (i.e., who’s interacting where at what frequency)
- Outcomes analysis: Orders/Leads for him
o Orders/leads tied to social media elements is important, but also think. . .
o Expansion of the social media environment – creation of new/additional UGC
- Experience: Customer research for him
o Similarly, think community opinion or voice of the crowd
I have not completely distilled the Trinity model as it pertains to assessing a social media site; that’s this weekend’s assignment and a future post. I did use it as a reality check for the more granular Social Media Site Assessment Framework I lay out below.
The framework starts with 5 element categories that contain 4 to 46 elements for a total of 77 site elements. This is a long list and could be considered boiling the ocean. That’s where the identified objective and stakeholders come in - to help filter the list and appropriately scope the work required. I’ve provided a few example elements in each category to communicate my perspective. Here’s the framework:
- Strategic: Qualitative elements communicating the site’s market positioning, economics, and business operations related to site management and integration with other business activities, including:
o Target market / Stakeholder: Whom the site's benefits are most specifically directed, examples include: general public, customers, vendors, industry regulators
o Ad Placement: Presence by volume, placement relative to site layout, and personalization based on user profile or behavior
- Usability: Qualitative elements on ease of use when accessing the site, including:
o Responsiveness: Judgment on user ability to navigate across site features (define a range)
o Browser Compatibility: Support of multiple browsers (e.g., IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari)
- Web Metric: Quantitative elements to measure the sites prevalence on popularity, often requiring comparisons for relevancy, including:
o Critical Cass: Site traffic measured in amount of and frequency of interactions (leverage Kaushik’s principles)
o Mentions: Site chatter measured through platforms/technology like TrackUR with and assessment of their polarity (positive v negative)
- Feature and Function: User capabilities for personalizing experiences, engaging with the community, and expanding the experience beyond the URL
o Community Contests: Presence of engaging promotional contests that build community stickiness
o Personalized Dashboard: Robustness of personal dashboard development (i.e., flexibility in aggregating general and personalized social site content)
- Extensions: Qualitative and quantitative elements related to a sites extension beyond the URL through stakeholders' social media and complimentary activities on and off the web
o Facebook Connect: Integration of Facebook Connect
o Twitter Presence: Twitter handle and tweet interaction
With the framework in place, the process becomes standard: (1) identify initial site list and (2) applicable elements in prioritized tiers, (3) research. . . (4) refine list and iterate on element research. In the end you should have a solid layout of an environment with data you can use to inform competitive strategy, internal development, or even purchase/partner decisions. This type of assessment is key for informing any social relationship management work I do. It is also the type of work that just might define someone as an expert in the space ;-).
I’d be interested in knowing if someone else has put together a similar framework. If so, how do they compare? Or, have I simply not mastered my use of The Google, and there are a plethora of standard social media site assessment frameworks out there already? You’ll have to let me know ;-)
Cheers - easiegmann
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