social networking – Page 71

On Nov. 10, 2008, the university where I work launched spacebook, a blog by NASA astronaut and Missouri S&T graduate Sandra Magnus. (I also posted about it that same day.) That same day, we launched our PR campaign announcing the site. We notified schools, the dozens of kids who participated in our campus’s aerospace camp last summer, alumni, bloggers, the mainstream media, state legislators, and our internal audience of students, faculty and staff. We sent targeted messages to groups via email, Twitter, our website, Facebook and many other avenues.

The result has been some pretty nice bit of buzz for our campus, both in the mainstream media of newspaper, TV and radio and in the new media world of blogs, microblogs and social networks. (We keep track of the main media mentions on our Delicious site and collect it all under a single category.)

It’s great to tell people about the great media coverage we’ve received. But what kind of conclusions can we draw about that coverage’s effectiveness to drive people to the website? There’s the anecdotal information, such as comments like this received on the blog: “Before you left for this mission, ksdk news channel 5 announced, ‘Belleville native heading into space’…” But as the saying goes, “The plural of anecdote is not data.” It’s a nice anecdote, but it isn’t really measurable.

So, how effective have our promotional efforts been to draw people to the site? For this mini case study, I’m going to share some information based on referrals.

Breaking it down

In the 10 days since the blog was announced, spacebook has seen 5,009 unique visitors. The breakdown looks like this:

Direct (no referral): 1,936, or 39 percent of the total
Google (organic search): 1,288, or 26 percent
Everywhere else: 1,785, or 35 percent

It’s the “everywhere else” category where we find the mainstream and social media at work. Below is a breakdown of traditional vs. social media referral sites (traditional in blue, social media in red):

OK, the graphic is unreadable, even if you tilt your head to the left. So just let the pretty colors tell the story, and I’ll fill you in on a few details.

The top referrer among mainstream and social media was the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, which is Sandra Magnus’ hometown newspaper. But the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 referral sources are all social media sources. Missouri’s two major daily newspapers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Kansas City Star, are the seventh- and tenth-place referral sources.

When lumped into two groups, the impact of social media as a referral source becomes more apparent.

The social media side of the pie, like a Pac-Man with unhingeable jaw, appears poised to eat mainstream media for lunch. But the main news sites still appear to be a mouthful, and won’t be easy to swallow.

Conclusion: Social media is definitely a player in getting visitors to your website. But that’s really stating the obvious, isn’t it.

Now, don’t read too much into this little exercise. The fact that some social media tools, such as Twitter, outperformed main news sites in terms of driving traffic, doesn’t mean traditional media is not effective in building interest and buzz. In terms of “opportunities to view,” no doubt the Post-Dispatch and Star had numbers much higher than many of the websites that touted spacebook.

Plus, this is skewed somewhat by my own blatant promotion of spacebook on this blog and via Twitter. (It’s also been a regular link on the @MissouriSandT Twitter site.)

Still, it is kind of interesting to see where your traffic is coming from. And this data may help someone who’s interested in launching a PR campaign to drive visitors to the web.

In my previous post marking this blog’s third anniversary, I finally responded to Kyle James’ challenge to post something about how blogging has changed my work. But I didn’t get a chanceI also wanted to talk in broader terms about how blogging — and more broadly, social media — has changed work and the workplace.

The communications office in which I work seems to have embraced social media about as extensively as any higher ed office or organization I’m familiar with. Almost all of our staff members are on Facebook, at varying levels of activity. Our assistant director and two of our three managers use Twitter. We share calendars and schedules, using various software, from Outlook (not necessarily “social” media) to Yahoo pipes. We contribute to several of the blogs I mentioned in my earlier post. At least one other staff member blogs on a regular basis at a non-work site.

It should come as no surprise to any reader of this blog that I am an advocate of experimenting with social networking technology. If we in higher education aren’t dipping our toes into the water of the technology being embraced by the students, alumni and others we claim to serve, then we are going to become more and more out of touch with those audiences. I’m not saying we have to plunge into the deep waters of social media. But we could at least wade in.

Unfortunately I don’t see too many people in higher education embracing social media. I don’t see many managers or leaders in higher ed encouraging their staff or co-workers to use sites like Facebook. That’s too bad. Through Facebook I can stay in touch with current students and alumni as well as old pals from high school and connections I’ve made in higher education. The same goes for Twitter.

The other unfortunate thing I see is that too many of the “A list” higher ed social media people are limiting their use of social media to their personal blogs, Twitter streams and Facebook accounts. I wish more of them were involved in making inroads in the use of social media on their campuses. This is not to discount the Brad Wards and Kyle Jameses and others who are doing terrific work at their institutions. We just need more inroads. It’s 2008, after all.