Measuring Engagement of Social Media websites in the Web 2.0 World
I spoke yesterday at SocialMediaCamp London about the potential of using engagement metric/s to understand the performance of any website and in understanding which website features or traffic sources are helping to achieve business objectives.
This was related to social media through the examples I used, especially with my suggestions on which visitor interactions STA Travel and Bebo might be focusing on in evaluating the performance of a particular social media element within their websites. While the methodology of how to actually calculate and use engagement is still being argued about in the web analytics world, I suggested a process that can be followed for anyone who wishes to start using engagement in evaluating their own websites.
My presentation at SocialMediaCamp London 2008
After finding BarCamp very interesting last weekend , I managed to score a ticket at the last minute to SocialMediaCamp London which was held yesterday. The crowd was very different to BarCamp with a wide mix of professions and interests and it was great to know people from such a wide variety of areas are really interested in discussing social media on the internet.
After the debacle of my attempted presentation at BarCamp when 2 people turned up (one was a friend), I decided to learn from my mistakes and lure more people to this presentation. Accordingly, the title for my presentation ‘Measuring Engagement of Social Media websites in the Web 2.0 world’ was stacked full of buzzwords. It appeared to work as the room (advertised as holding 20 people) ended up containing around 30, leaving me a little nervous. Thankfully everything went well and everyone seemed to appreciate the points that I was making.
To download a copy of the presentation, please click here. Let me know if there are any questions regarding what I was speaking about. I was very excited to discover that a couple of people were actually writing a post for the SocialMediaCamp blog during my presentation on what I was talking about. To read more about my presentation (and some of the other talks given yesterday), please check out the SocialMediaCamp London website.
Other presentations
While all of the other presentations that I listened to yesterday were interesting, I got some very useful ideas from two of them.
Julius Solaris gave a presentation on how to use LinkedIn to get a better job and to promote yourself. I had thought I was using LinkedIn properly already with around 60 contacts but I was wrong. I will now be accepting any invites to connect as well as joining appropriate groups and trying to promote myself as an authority on web analytics.
Tom Whitwell (assistant editor of online at The Times) talked to us about headlines and how important it is to get them right in order to attract people to reading your content. The trick is not to be clever or funny but to try and summarise the content (article or blog post) within the heading. Again, I will be trying to make use of these tips and will stop trying to be clever with my presentations.
Tags: Engagement, smclondon08, Social Media, Web 2.0, Web Analytics
Peter, this site is developing into an essential read for those of us managing and producing business marketed through web sites. Your work for us has certainly moved us forward to where we want to be but more importantly demonstrated plainly how to get there. This is something we are all guilty of missing when we engage with analytics. Maybe it is because at first glance the data seems ‘comprehensible’ so why have an analyst? The fact of the matter, as you have proven, is that without a dedicated web analyst you simply do not have a full business team. In the current climate especially it is plain negligence to run a business without such an analyst, that would be like manning a ship without a navigator and they always end up on the rocks!