Social Media Content
An important practical consideration in social media management is that PR professionals do not need to produce all of the content. Many organisations are discovering and taking advantage of the collaborative culture of social media and crowdsourcing. Businesses are starting to outsource content creation, which traditionally was an in-house activity, done by paid employees.
Curation is two times the research
Instead of producing all of the content, Marketing, Communication and PR can adopt the role of curator. This means evaluating social media content, bringing together concepts, user-generated ideas and knowledge. They integrate many contributions from different sources, creating a coherent flow of communication.
Professionals often overlook the fact that social media can provide real-time research. It provides information on people’s interests, concerns and wishes. Although this is not obtained from a probability sample, listening through social media can provide valuable insights to identify issues and trends in a timely way. This helps us create a well-informed strategy.
Paying attention pays dividends
Upon closely examining public communication practices — including public consultation and customer relations as well as social media use — a study found something shocking. On average, organisations devote 80% of their communication resources and time to disseminating their own messages. In some cases, up to 95% of so-called public communication is one-way organisational speaking. On average, only 5% to 15% of public communication resources and time are spent with listening through various methods such as research and monitoring social media.
Use of social media should be measured and evaluated in the same way and to the same standards as other PR activities. Typical metrics of social media communication evaluation are the amount of views of pages or content such as videos, number of subscribers — for instance newsletters — and the number of friends, followers, likes, retweets, shares and pins.
Data is not everything
However, it needs to be borne in mind that these measure outputs by numbers generated by them. Likes, retweets and shares give some indication of support, but they are mostly quantitative metrics, that not necessarily tell the full story..
On the other hand qualitative analysis can paint a picture for us that is much closer to reality. It utilises content and tone examination of posts such as comments and reviews. For these, a company can use a number of content analysis software. Comments provide indications of awareness, understanding and attitudes as well as intention. Other measurable qualitative factors include the main themes, issues and topics of online discussions. The latter three can indicate the interests and concerns of users. The best practice is to combine the two methods, into one, complete strategy.