by Heather Read, public affairs program manager at DuPont and member of the PRSA Philly News Committee

How many articles have you read recently that tell you “how-to,” or “how-not-to,” manage social media? Too many stories focus on very short and quip tidbits of tactical instruction without giving you the tools to understand social media monitoring or properly measure your results. Like conducting primary or security research before developing a strategic communications campaign, the data available from social media conversations can provide extremely valuable insight about your brand to enable more precise social media strategies, goals and measurements, which is why the PRSA News Committee asked me to write a monthly column discussing social media analytics in-depth.

While you may have heard the words “follower, share, and tweet” before, over the course of the next year we are going to take a comprehensive look at what type of data you can capture through social media monitoring tools and how to interpret it for your benefit.

We will cover the basics regarding what types of data and analysis some of the most popular social networks provide. Then put that into context when managing an outbound social media campaign including: illuminating the success of a specific channel, pin-pointing the content your constituencies likes best, and setting specific measurements within a social network or content hub (a.k.a. blog or Website) to indicate audience actions and results.

We will also explore social media conversations — where they originate, how they transform, and the details of the conversation within certain areas. As part of this discussion we’ll touch on sentiment analysis, investigating its reliability and discussing ways to identify and categorize themes to reveal opinions, attitudes or key messages.

My hope is that by the end of the year you have an outstanding understanding of many social media data points that can be used to measure the results of your 2012 activity, respond to emerging issues or crisis, and plan more strategically while demonstrating better business value.

To get a head start on the skills you’ll build in the months ahead, and since January is goal-setting season anyway, I’d like to ask each of you to participate by using this short goal planning exercise. As you learn a new skill each month, revisit these items and update it to chart your progress.

Exercise Step 1: Goal setting
Jot down your top three goals for your 2012 social media program right now. Think more precisely about data when you produce this list. Rather than something hard to measure like “produce better content,” use something more specific like “increase audience engagement with content shared on Twitter.” For the purpose of this exercise, produce one goal that is related to the size of your audience (e.g.: number of fans/followers or the number of people that might talk about you per day), one that is related to engagement with your content, and one that is related to a specific conversation about you or your company.

Exercise Step 2: Track your types of content
Next, you will need to keep track of the types of content you are producing and sharing. Whether you do this in an excel spreadsheet, or in an advance enterprise-grade social media management system does not matter. It is important to have at least two or three different subjects of content discussed on your channel. These can be thematic (e.g.: health, energy, innovation) or tactical (e.g.: corporate news, philanthropy/CSR, job listings). Just make sure they are subjects that you have value in comparing. Also, have at least two types of content that you share regularly (e.g.: text, pictures, video, infographics, etc.). To get the best value out of this step I would highly recommend that you put this data into an editorial calendar for each month and make sure that you mark the subject and content type associated with each message. It may also help to schedule such content so that you can be sure to stay active.

Exercise Step 3: URL analytics
Finally, if you aren’t using a social media management tool that embeds a URL shortener and provides click data, invest in one now. There are “freemium” tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, or you can simply shorten links manually using services like bit.ly, tinyurl, or goo.gl. If you also want to measure the impact that your social media program has on conversions to your Website or blog, make sure that Google Analytics or another Web tracking software is enabled.

These three steps should help you establish a solid foundation and prepare you to practice some of the data analysis you’ll learn this year. Use the goals you set to drive focus and diligence in managing your social communities. Be consistent by ensuring that the content you create addresses each subject on a regular basis. Be considerate in the links or other types of content that you share, and what specifically you are asking your audience to do with it.

I am looking forward to this journey with you as well as hearing your feedback. If you have questions about this or future columns please message me on one of my social profiles, here.

Next month: Data & Analysis Basics of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube