Social Media Analytics – Makeover Time

Managing Social Media Analytics in Local Government

Part of the Critchsue blog series – Managing Social Media in Local Government

 

Within your organisation what is the value of your social media analytics on a scale of 1 (completely useless /non-existent) to 10 (totally useful/informative)?

To determine where your organisation currently sits on the useless/non-existent, useful/informative spectrum, it is suggested you run a simple survey within your organisation, asking recipients of your social media analytics reporting to rate this using the scale mentioned and also advise (Y/N) whether they think social media analytics would be valuable to the organisation at all.

In my opinion, within many local government organisations, the result of this survey would be:

Current Value Score:      3 or less (not very useful or relevant)

Is Valuable:                         N (No)

The reason for this result would be that, in many cases, social media has been implemented because the organisation thinks that is what the public expect, rather than as a valuable business tool. This perception needs to be changed.

Achieve this by starting your analytics makeover today

Social media analytics is more than just departmental number crunching. It is about gathering and analysing data from a variety of social media sources to enable business decisions. As such, social media analytics needs to start with a strategy that encompasses the whole business, not just an isolated social strategy.

Build a social media measurement strategy.

Implement an analytics process that will show off your strategy

 

Social Media Measurement Strategy

The Altimeter Social Media Measurement Framework (Etlinger & Li, 2011) provides a base on which a good social media analytics strategy can be built. The four critical steps of this framework are:

1. Strategy – Start with your business objectives and the strategies that support these objectives. The reality in the changing social media landscape is that planning is for the present (with the future in mind) and must be sufficiently adaptable to serve the future
2. Metrics – Define how you will measure success from a business perspective before approaching the social perspective
3. Organisation – Evaluate how ready the organisation is in term of resources (staff, systems, tools) and internal collaboration. Reporting on areas the organisation is not ready for will have an adverse effect
4. Technology – Using the other three steps as input, select the tool that is most appropriate for your organisation bearing in mind the how you intend to measure success and the resources you have available to you.

 Now you have completed the pre-requisites, let’s start measuring

Analytic Process

Implementing an enduring, repeatable process for social media analytics is very important. It needs to take into consideration the constantly evolving environment.  Using the capture, understand, present (CUP) process (Fan & Gordon, 2014) social analytics process will ensure flexibility while providing structure and best practice for this area.

Capture analytics from a wide variety of sources. Don’t limit yourself to your immediate environment. However, you do need to strike a balance between the need to find all potential information and the need to focus on the most relevant and authoritative sources (Fan & Gordon, 2014) so that you don’t drown in the quantity of information captured.

Understand the data you have captured. This stage is the core of the analytics process where the meaning of the information must be assessed and metrics for useful decision making generated (Fan & Gordon, 2014).

Present the information in a format that is easily understood by the recipients. Use some of the widely available visualisation techniques and tools (Fan & Gordon, 2014). Sophisticated visual analytics help make sense of large amounts of information (Fan & Gordon, 2014).

Congratulations!!

Your analytics value score should now be increasing rapidly and the benefits of this increase (better perception of social media, wider understanding of social media in business, etc) will be becoming evident.

Keep improving and the benefits will continue to reveal themselves.

 

Other blogs in Critchsue – “Managing Social Media in Local Government” series

Social Media Privacy and the Digital Native

Social Media Fire and Storm Prevention, Preparation and Response

Social Media Risk Management – Is it needed?

References

Etlinger, S., & Li, C. (2011, Aug). A Framework for Social Analytics. Retrieved Jan 2016, from http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/GBUS8630/doc/altimetersocialanalytics081011final-110810105257-phpapp01.pdf

Fan, W., & Gordon, M. (2014). The Power of Social Media Analytics. Communications of the ACM, 57(6), 74-81.

 

 

Social Media Fire and Storm Prevention, Preparation and Response

Social Media Crisis Management advice for Local Government

Part of the Critchsue blog series – Managing Social Media in Local Government

In general, many Local Government organisations, especially those in New Zealand, are novices when it comes to Social Media management and participation. As such, dealing with a social media crisis is often a “seat of your pants” operation. We need to get better at this activity.

Social media crisis management is not very different from crisis management in any other area, except that the time for reacting to an event is much shorter. A huge storm can be created by social media users in a very short period of time (Pfeffer, Zorbach, & Carley, 2014). Organisations need to keep their eyes open, be realistic and anticipate the storms.

There are three components to managing a crisis:

• Prevent
• Prepare
• Respond

 Prevent the Situation

Prevention is better than a cure and often more cost effective. An orderly implementation that is gradually matured over time (Lee & Kwak, 2012) will go some way towards this prevention.

There are many tools available to assist with a successful social media implementation in an organisation. Some examples include:

An Implementation getting started guide (McGee, 2015)

Open Government Maturity Model (Lee & Kwak, 2012)

Book – Social Media Rules of Engagement

Social Media Profiling framework (Culnan, McHugh, & Zubillaga, 2010)

Google and social media searches using words such as social media implementation success will return many hits.

My favourite tools would be a combination of the Culnan, McHugh, & Zubillaga (2010) profiling framework to assess where the organisation currently sits combined with the Open Government Maturity Model (Lee & Kwak, 2012) to determine what the organisation needs to address next on their journey to a successful implementation, including maturing crisis event prevention.

Prepare for the Event

While we do our best to prevent a social media crisis, we still need to prepare to handle a crisis should our prevention techniques not be sufficient. This is a likely scenario with the proliferation of social media tools and sites and the ever increasing size and sophistication of the group using these tools.

The Social Media Rules of Engagement indicate this is the first line of defence when dealing with a social media crisis.

We also need to be mindful of the four lessons of social media crisis management:

1. It is a risky business that could make or break a business
2. You never know what is going to happen
3. Fire Drills – practice dealing with fires
4. Get ready to create – create content to stem the flow of negative activity

There are specialists around to assist with crisis mitigation and free downloadable crisis management plan templates.

Respond to the Situation

Inevitably there will be a crisis, or two, that needs to be handled. If we are prepared, these events should not be too onerous – the organisation will know what needs to be done. We will have participated in practice sessions so the actual event will be business as usual.

Digitlab  suggests that when addressing a social media crisis the organisation needs to be honest, respond in a relevant manner and switch the location of the crisis to somewhere more manageable (e.g. frequently asked questions on a website. It is important that the organisation listens, sets the right expectations and is transparent.

Other blogs in Critchsue – “Managing Social Media in Local Government” series

Social Media Privacy and the Digital Native

Social Media Risk Management – Is it needed?

Social Media Analytics – Makeover Time

References

Culnan, M. J., McHugh, P. J., & Zubillaga, J. I. (2010, Dec). How Large U.S. Companies Can Use Twitter and Other Social Media to Gain Business Value. MIS Quarterly Executive, 9(4), 243-259.

Lee, G., & Kwak, Y. H. (2012). An Open Government Maturity Model for social media-based public engagement. Government Information Quarterly, 29, 492-503.

McGee, T. (2015, Dec). A local government guide to getting started on social media. Retrieved Jan 2016, from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/local-government-guide-getting-started-social-media-todd-mcgee?platform=hootsuite

Pfeffer, J., Zorbach, T., & Carley, K. (2014). Understanding online firestorms: Negative word-of-mouth dynamics in social media networks. Journal of Marketing Communications, 20(1-2), 117-128. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527266.2013.797778

Social Media Risk Management – Is it needed?

Social Media Risk Management in Local Government

Part of the Critchsue blog series – Managing Social Media in Local Government

 

Are there any social media risks to manage in a local government setting? Everything done within that organisation is discoverable so data leakage and privacy aren’t a concern, or are they? Is brand damage a problem – we don’t have any competitors?

All organisations, even social media, have risk in relation to social media. It is just that some do not realise it. According to Altimeter, many are aware at some level but many just cross their fingers and hope.

Let’s get rid of that ‘head in the sand’ attitude and manage, rather than ignore, the risks associated in our organisations.

Getting Started

To start we need to implement a process whereby social media risks are continually identified, documented and mitigations developed. The ever changing social media environment means we can’t just do this once then put it in a draw – it will be constantly behind the times. The Accenture framework (Culp, Gomes, & Narveson, 2014) designed to generate a risk awareness culture within an organisation is a good resource if you are starting from scratch

Framework for Managing Social Media Risk (Culp, Gomes, & Narveson, 2014)

Best Practices

Some of the best practices to keep in mind when designing and implementing your risk management framework include:

• Risks are not isolated to internal staff – the public are able to produce negative content that could risk the organisation brand, quality of information and destroy trust (Schullich, 2012)
• Ensure all risks, not just those around reputation damage, are considered (Culp, Gomes, & Narveson, 2014)
• Rather than having a separate risk governance structure for social media, include the social media risk activities in the existing structures (Culp, Gomes, & Narveson, 2014). In the council there is already an audit function, recruit the manager of this area to assist with incorporating social media.
• Upon completion of the risk assessment, present it to the executive team for decisions on mitigation strategies (Schullich, 2012)

Resources

There are often resource constraints within organisations, particularly local government, in this area. Budgets are tight and the use of social media as a business tool is just emerging. Tapping into the knowledge of other councils within the region or local government specific resources such as the ALGIM resources on social media will extend the resources available to you. There are many resources available online that searches will reveal. Key words include social, media, risk, management, local, government. Some of these have been compiled for you in this storify.

Other blogs in Critchsue – “Managing Social Media in Local Government” series

Social Media Privacy and the Digital Native

Social Media Fire and Storm Prevention, Preparation and Response

Social Media Analytics – Makeover Time

References

Culp, S., Gomes, R., & Narveson, J. (2014). A Comprehensive Approach to Managing Social Media Risk and Compliance.

Schullich, R. (2012). Risk Assessment in Social Media. The SANS institute InfoSec Reading Room, SANS Institute.

Social Media Privacy and the Digital Native.

 

Organisations walking the fine line between too much freedom and too many restrictions.

Part of the Critchsue blog series –Managing Social Media in Local Government

Privacy is defined as the ability to choose the information to disclose and the recipient of that disclosure (Schullich, 2012), yet in a local government setting, it is difficult to see how this definition could be true. These organisations are being hit from both sides – the digital native who does not know the meaning of privacy and the Local Government Information and Meeting Act (LGOIMA) that “gives everyone the ability to request access to official information from local authorities”.

Both the digital native and the central government seem to be on the same page – most of the information within local government is discoverable, yet there is also a social obligation to protect citizen personal information, commercially sensitive information and the like. This is a particularly large grey area, understood by only a few enlightened souls.

With both the digital native and the central governmentOn one hand, there is very little understanding of the repercussions of disclosing certain information (Schullich, 2012) – the digital native who is used to disclosing everything about their life. On the other there are rules and regulations in place indicating that much of the information within local government is discoverable

We suggest education, education and more education is the key. This education programme needs to be continual and address the ever evolving privacy issues as they emerge. This education needs to provide a good understanding of the repercussions of content published and know the implications can come back to haunt them (Schullich, 2012).

 Organisations are Traditional

Many organisations are struggling to get to grips with traditional online functionality (email and web portals), without introducing the instant world of Social Media. How do we protect our privacy in this multi channel world while allowing the technology to be used to the benefit of the organisation?

In the traditional world (email and controlled online functionality) of not so long ago, firewalls, malware, antivirus and regular intrusion testing were all that was required. This ensured that only the correct people could get information in and/or out of the organisation safely. The security role within the organisation was easy then!!

Digital Natives

With the entry of digital natives to the workforce we have to handle a generation wanting instant gratification with information and services at their finger tips – find out anything or communicate with anyone without having to wait. Digital natives expect the work online environment to be at least as responsive as the home online environment where they live out their lives (when do you see one without at least a smart phone near at hand, if not the full gambit of laptop, tablet and smart phone).

Threats

Literature and online sites are littered with examples of breaches of privacy. Some examples of this are:

Twitter breach of 2013 – exposing the usernames, email addressed and passwords of 250,000 users. This was caused by what is believed to have been a professional attack.

Zendesk Breach – Zendesk is used by Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest social media sites to send customer support messages. This was caused by a data breach that exposed thousands of email addresses.

Facebook Breach – Email addresses and phone numbers of six million users were exposed as a result of a security vulnerability.

Education

Restrictions put in place by organisational privacy policies are foreign to the digital native and mainstream to the traditional IT worker. With the gradual change in staffing towards digital natives there is an increasing threat to the organisation from staff simply ignoring these policies (Robinson, 2015) in favour of what is their norm – living online.

While there are still some traditional IT workers in charge of the technology environment, the digital native and traditional IT worker need to learn from each other. Digital natives need to be taught how to watch their backs online (Dickensheets, 2015) and the organisation management needs to relax a little, securing environments appropriately rather than using the blanket lockdown approach.

Digital natives in local government organisations need to be especially aware of the additional obligations to the freedom of speech rights in place for “state servants”. These obligations are in the areas of, reputation, disclosure, representation and political stance. The State Services Commission website has guidelines for both organisational and personal social media use that all state servants should be made aware of.

The GCN.Com website also holds a variety of resources that can assist with the education. These include best practices, risk assessments and guides for optimising the organisation privacy and security practices.

Conclusion

We have to find a way forward that is a happy medium between the digital native and the traditional IT Manager. Education and understanding can go a long way towards achieving this place. The frequency of breaches and number of threats indicates we can’t be too complacent. On the other hand we do not want to be bypassed by potentially advantages technology changes.

When finding this ‘happy place’ we need to remember “as humans, we can forget but the internet never forgets” (Schullich, 2012)

 

Other blogs in Critchsue – “Managing Social Media in Local Government” series

Social Media Fire and Storm Prevention, Preparation and Response

Social Media Risk Management – Is it needed?

Social Media Analytics – Makeover Time

 

References

Dickensheets, S. (2015, Nov 23). How do you teach digital natives to watch their backs online? Not easily. Retrieved Dec 05, 2015, from Nevada Public Radio: http://knpr.org/desert-companion/2015-11/privacy-be-safe-out-there

Robinson, B. (2015, Dec 04). CYBEREYE – Blog Archive. Retrieved Dec 05, 2015, from GCN: https://gcn.com/blogs/cybereye/2015/12/humans-network-edge.aspx

Schullich, R. (2012). Risk Assessment in Social Media. The SANS institute InfoSec Reading Room, SANS Institute.