This document discusses evaluation and measurement tactics for social media use in public health. It explores various social media metrics and tools that can measure exposure, engagement, influence, and results across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Case studies are presented that demonstrate how organizations have used metrics and tools to evaluate success, inform improvements, and show contributions to goals. Cross-channel evaluation tools are also highlighted that can aggregate data from multiple social media channels.

1. 1
Social Media Measurement &
Evaluation for Public Health Success
#SM4PH
Erin Edgerton Norvell, Senior Director for Communication Strategy and Digital;
Heather Cole-Lewis, PhD, MPH, Evaluation Specialist;
and Jennifer Smith, Web Content Specialist

2. Objectives
• Discuss evaluation and measurement tactics
• Explore social media metrics and tools
• Share social media success stories
• Highlight best practices
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3. Evidenced-Based Learning
• Draw conclusions
based on data
• Assess what works
and what doesn’t
• Make improvements
to reach goals
3

4. Planning for Measurement
Define Communication Goal
Conduct Target Audience Research
Select Communication Channels
Identify Tactics, Implementation Schedule
Map Channel Metrics to Goal
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5. Social Media Evaluation Keys
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EXPOSURE
ENGAGEMENT
INFLUENCE
RESULTS

6. Social Media Evaluation Keys
•Amount of people you reach with your message
EXPOSURE
• Amount of people who take action in response to
message
• Call to action
ENGAGEMENT
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7. Key Aspects
Exposure (also known as reach) will differ across platforms; basic
purpose is to identify how many people had the opportunity to see
your message.
There are any tools to help with this
• number of fans, followers and subscribers
• number of people and accounts reached by those who re-
tweeted, shared or subscribed to your channel.
Think about ways to combine metrics in a way that makes the most
sense based on the goals of your evaluation/campaign.

8. Key Aspects
Engagement is one of the most important measurements.
It shows how many people cared enough about what you
shared to take some kind of action.
According to the SMM Standards Coalition
Three stages of engagement- LOW, MEDIUM & HIGH
Low: One way –audience receiving information, you pushing info
• includes # of followers, second-level followers (followers of followers),
amount of content you post

9. Key Aspects
Medium: Two way - audience responding to information
• includes follows, share messages, retweets, etc.
High: Users become partners in campaign.
• Provides insight on how to improve, or participate in campaign
• activities like posting NEW user content, contributing pictures,
blogging,
• taking some physical action; getting an HIV test and blog about
experiences
There more resources about this at SMMStandards.com or follow
conversation using #smmstandards on twitter

10. Social Media Evaluation Keys
• Organization developing standards for
social media evaluation
• www.smmstandards.com
#SMMSTANDARDS COALITION
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11. Social Media Evaluation Keys
• Positive, neutral or negative in sentiment
INFLUENCE
• Exposure-Influence-Engagement-Action
RESULTS
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12. Key Aspects
Influence assess whether the engagement metrics are
positive, neutral or negative in sentiment.
• Did your campaign influence positive mood toward the
campaign or did it create negative sentiments or any
backlash.
• Because this is a more subjective metric, it is something
you’ll want to manually check and not simply rely on an
automated tool to report.

13. Key Aspects
Finally for RESULTS:
• Interpret all of the previous ASPECTS- exposure, engagement,
influence.
• Determine whether you are reaching your primary goals that you
set in the beginning.
• Use information to inform the rest of the campaign.
ONE THING to note
KEY ASPECTS to social media evaluation are progressive, i.e., you
can’t have Engagement without Exposure; never get to influence
and results unless you’ve had some engagement with your target
audience.

14. Facebook Measurement
• Likes
• Reach of page and
individual posts
• People talking about
your page and content
• Friends of fans
• Geographical breakdown
• Demographics
• Page views and
unique visitors
• External referrers
What can be measured in Facebook:
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15. Facebook Measurement
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GOAL METRIC
Exposure
- Number of likes
- Number of page views
- Number of unique visitors
- Potential page and post reach
- Demographics & locations
Engagement
- Number of shares
- Number of clicks images/video/links
- Number of tags
- Influencers
Influence
- Qualitative assessment of tags
and comments
- Sentiment
- Changes in attitudes and/or
behavior
Results
- Define presence and impact
- Traffic driven to your site
- Contribution to overall goals

16. Facebook’s Evaluation Tool
• Likes
• Reach of page
• Reach of individual posts
• People talking about your
page and content
• Friends of fans
• Geographical breakdown
• Demographics
• Page views
• Unique visitors
• External referrers
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Facebook Insights:

17. Facebook Case Study
• Engaged followers on Facebook with a request for
photos of cats for the “Cat Immersion Project” for their
patient, Maga.
• Followed up with a video and “thank you” message
• Tracked responses using Facebook Insights: Likes,
shares, comments and photos
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18. FB Case Study
This project was a special surprise for Maga, who was
confined to her hospital room because of cancer and a
compromised immune system.
On July 19, they asked Facebook fans to send pictures for
the project
• 1,629 liked the post
• 1,011 commented (most included pictures in the
comments)
• 1,900 people shared
• And it reached 55,337 people
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19. FB Case Study
On July 25, they posted a thank you message & told people to
tune in the next week to see Maga’s reaction. The post got:
• 1,028 likes
• 104 comments (+more photos)
• 124 shares
• And it reached 30,207 people
Here, we see the call to action used on Facebook resulted
in true engagement with thousands of comments and
photos that reached beyond their current followers and
received a lot of engagement, starting a true social media
dialogue. I’ll talk more about this later on as well.
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20. Twitter Measurement
• Number of followers
• Total posts
• Hashtags
• Reach
• Key influencers
• Demographics
• Geographical location
• Who is mentioning you?
• How many times are your
posts re-tweeted?
• Who is re-tweeting your
posts?
What can be measured in Twitter:
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21. Twitter Measurement
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GOAL METRIC
Exposure
- Number of followers
- Number of tweets
- Number of participants for events
- Potential Reach
- Demographics & locations
Engagement
- Number of retweets
- Number of @replies
- Number of clicks images/video
- Hashtag Usage
- Influencers
Influence
- Qualitative assessment of @replies
and mentions
- Sentiment
- Changes in attitudes and/or
behavior
Results - Define presence and impact
- Traffic driven to your site
- Contribution to overall goals

22. Twitter Evaluation Tools
Basic Reporting Tools with free offerings:
• Tweetreach
• Twitalyzer
• Topsy
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23. Twitter Eval Tools
Tweetreach, Twitanalyzer & Topsy- Can
provide basic reports which have metrics
such as the number of posts, reach,
impressions, could give you a limited
transcript of posts, etc.
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24. Twitter Case Study #1
Chicago Public Health Analyzed:
• Hashtag #UnExpected to learn the
campaign is top most retweeted
post for 2013
– Twice the normal reach
– Know that higher clicks equates to
people sharing/engaging
• Post with most reach for 2013 shared free vision exams
and glasses for students
– Fifteen times the normal reach
– Noticed retweeters had higher influence
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25. Twitter Case Study #1
@ChiPublicHealth
- Uses free tools to monitor activity and find
-Most popular tweets
-Total mentions
-New Followers
-When people un-followed their account
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26. Twitter Case Study #1
Chicago Public Health Uses:
 Native Twitter analytics tool
 SocialBro
 Vizify
 BottleNose
 TweetReach
 Symplur’s Healthcare Hashtag Project -
www.symplur.com/healthcare-hashtags
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27. Twitter Case Study #1
A bit more about some of the measurement tools:
• SocialBro can evaluate influencers and best times to tweet
• Vizify provides the year’s most popular terms
• BottleNose shows the most popular hashtags by month. as
well as sentiment and influencers around the hashtags
• TweetReach monitor more external hashtags
• Symplur’s Healthcare Hashtag Project can help you find out
what healthcare conversations are taking place and discover
new influencers within different disciplines
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28. Twitter Case Study #2
@CDCNPIN Jan. 2013 #NPINchat on Twitter for
Public Health:
• During the one-hour chat, there were 551 tweets, 82
retweets and 46 mentions
• NPIN posed 6 questions and got
110 direct responses
• Conservative probably reach just over
700,000 and a more liberal, potential
reach over of 7 million
• For January, 20 followers
participated in multiple chats
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29. Twitter Case Study #2
This is just one example of metrics from the monthly, one-
hour @CDCNPIN TwitterChats.
The chats engage partners and build a community of
practice so they can draw on each other’s expertise.
The chats also give NPIN a chance to reach new engagers
and follow them to create productive, long-term
partnerships not only on Twitter but throughout the
network of public health care agencies.
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30. LinkedIn Measurement
Pages
• Visitors by industry
• Page performance
• Total traffic
• Visitor demographics
• Followers
• Links clicked
Groups
• Membership growth
• Activity
• Number of comments
• Discussions
• Demographics
• Location
• Seniority
• Function
• Industry
What can be measured in LinkedIn:
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31. LinkedIn Measurement
GOAL METRIC
Exposure
- Number of visitors
- Total traffic
- Number of followers
- Potential Reach
- Demographics & locations
- Number of group members
Engagement
- Number of shares
- Number of comments
- Number of group discussions
- Number of clicks images/video
- Influencers
Influence
- Qualitative assessment of
comments and group discussions
- Sentiment
Results
- Define presence and impact
- Traffic driven to your site
- Contribution to overall goals
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32. LinkedIn Evaluation Tools
• LinkedIn Analytics
 Data for company page and groups to track
insights for pages, followers and posts
• PeopleLinx
 Paid tool specifically for LinkedIn offering more
detailed stats about engagement, referrals,
behavior, etc., tailored to help improve
connectivity with key accounts and influencers
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33. LinkedIn Case Study
American Public Health Association (APHA)
• Within LinkedIn, measures:
– Followers
– Profile contacts
– Group members
– Group discussions
– Group comments
• Closely monitor activity level to react to trends
• Use demographics insights to determine tone and content
• Integrate with Google Analytics to track activity
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34. LinkedIn Case Study
For example with Demographics
- highest audience is older and values discussions more
- second highest audience is entry-level staff who value job
opening and career opportunities.
APHA also adds insight to their metrics by tracking all the links
posted in SM with Google Analytics and Bitly, a URL shortener.
Bitly allows measurement of both external and APHA links.
Google Analytics helps track links back to the APHA site,
providing metrics like Bounce rate, Pages per visit, time on site,
% of New visits, and conversions.
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35. LinkedIn Case Study
American Public Health Association (APHA)
Integrate with free tracking tools:
– Bitly
– Google
Analytics
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36. LinkedIn Case Study
Bitly lesson:
• Tracking number of clicks, discovered members were
very interested in the CDC budget
• BUT, a post about NFL players in flu-prevention ads
sent before the Super Bowl generated hardly any clicks
Lesson: Members want timely content but pop culture
tie-ins just aren’t intriguing to the group. This is a good
time-saving lesson to apply so valuable staff resources
aren’t spent on developing posts that don’t engage the
audience.
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37. LinkedIn Case Study
Two lessons from Google Analytics:
Bitly report showed a lot of click for an Infographic post.
The same traffic reviewed through Google Analytics
revealed the landing page had nearly an 80% bounce rate
and a pages per visit rate of only 1.1, even though the avg.
time on the site was 20% higher.
Lesson: The landing page needed to be optimized to
collect email addresses and promote more site
engagement. Especially because 88% of visitors were
new to the site.
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38. LinkedIn Case Study
Next, APHA analyzed 2 posts with almost identical click
numbers - one about state public health-related ballot
initiatives and the other a recap of the State of the Union.
Deeper review in Google Analytics, showed visitors from
the state ballot post spent 85% more time on the site and
visited twice as many pages beyond the initial landing
page.
Lesson: Although APHA is a national organization,
members are still very interested in what is happening
at the local level.
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39. YouTube Measurement
What you can measured in YouTube:
• Subscribers
• Likes and Dislikes
• Comments
• Total Views
• Minutes Watched
• Avg. Percentage Watches
• Top Content Viewed
• Geographical Location
• Viewer Demographics
– Age Range
– Gender
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40. YouTube Measurement
GOAL METRIC
Exposure
- Number of subscribers
- Total views
- Number of followers
- Traffic sources and referrers
- Potential Reach
- Demographics & locations
- Playback location
Engagement
- Number of likes and dislikes
- Number of comments
- Total minutes watched
- Number of clicks images/video
- Influencers
- Top content viewed
Influence - Qualitative assessment of comments - Sentiment
Results - Define presence and impact
- Traffic driven to your site
- Contribution to overall goals
40

41. YouTube’s Evaluation Tools
YouTube Analytics
• Provided free with your channel
• Provides analytics your channel and videos,
including:
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• Subscribers
• Likes and Dislikes
• Comments
• Total Views
• Minutes Watched
• Avg. Percentage
Watches
• Top Content Viewed
• Geographical Location
• Viewer Demographics

42. YouTube Case Study
Seattle Children’s Hospital:
Cat Immersion Project
‘Thank you’ Video Results:
• More than 250,000 views
• 864 likes
• 81 comments
• Story received 40 national,
tier-one media hits
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43. YouTube Case Study
Now we can see the SCH project was a cross-channel success.
To monitor results, they used YouTube analytics and Simply
Measured. This really is a fantastic showcase of the power of
social media, the value of creating deeper stories, and what
can be accomplished when multiple channels are linked and
leveraged.
There was a high demonstrated level of engagement that went
beyond just views and included viewer interaction with story
through comments – it also led to action represented by gifts
and cards sent to Maga.
To see the video, go to the SCH You Tube channel and/or search
for “Cat Immersion Project” on YouTube.
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44. Cross-Channel Evaluation Tools
TOOL SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS COST
Coremetrics Facebook, Twitter Paid Service
HootSuite
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+,
Foursquare, MySpace, Wordpress
Free and Paid
Services
Lithium Facebook, Twitter Paid Service
Radian6 Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Paid Service
Simply Measured
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Instagram,
Vine, Klout
Coming soon: Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn
Paid Service
Sysomos Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
Google Analytics All channels Free
Omniture All channels Paid Service
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45. Cross-Channel Eval Tools
• Core Metrics measures total mentions, who is mentioning you,
and the sentiment
• Hootsuite - The free version gives basic exposure metrics. The
paid version offers more custom reporting, Klout scores,
influencers mentioning your account and more than 40
exportable modules and report templates.
• Simply Measured – Has a cool Twitter follower report which
shows a complete following list and analyzes it by location,
influence, behavior, interests, etc.
- For Facebook, it is similar to Facebook Insights, but with
additional reports including a competitive analysis, content
analysis and a Fan page analysis.
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46. Cross-Channel Eval Tools
Lithium, Radian6 and Sysomos – Give more detailed
Twitter stats in addition to the basic exposure metrics. It
tracks more of the advanced metrics like sentiment, key
influencers, Twitter handles most often mentioning you
and retweeting your posts, as well as provide a full
transcript of posts or specific chats.
- Radian6 and Sysomos note: These tools can monitor
YouTube, but don’t offer much in terms of evaluating
activity. They work based on mentions and not the
activity of your channel or videos.
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47. Cross-Channel Evaluation Tools
TOOL SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS COST
Coremetrics Facebook, Twitter Paid Service
HootSuite
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+,
Foursquare, MySpace, Wordpress
Free and Paid
Services
Lithium Facebook, Twitter Paid Service
Radian6 Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Paid Service
Simply Measured
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Instagram,
Vine, Klout
Coming soon: Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn
Paid Service
Sysomos Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
Google Analytics All channels Free
Omniture All channels Paid Service
47

48. Cross-Channel Eval Tools
Google Analytics and Omniture integrate with these social
media analytics tools to track activity leading traffic and
action on your site, including insight into if others post
links the increase traffic to your site .
• One tip for these tools: Create campaign tags for links
to your pages from digital channels. You can see:
- times those links have been clicked
- visitors actions once they arrive on your site
• This can be done without any integration with social
media monitoring tools – it’s simply link tagging to
track traffic coming through social media channels.
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49. Measuring what Matters
• Engagement
• Not just vanity metrics
• Influencers
• ‘Virality’
• Repeat engagement
• Stories
• Content distribution
• Unique relationships
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50. Measuring what Matters
Not just counting vanity metrics
• in order to gain a better understanding of your campaign
• build more complex metrics
• combine a few simple metrics of exposure and tell you more
information.
EXAMPLES
• number of active users divided by the total number of fans or
followers
• ratio of comments to the number of content posts from you
• Instead of just likes:
- frequency of likes
- or the growth of likes over a period of time.

51. Measuring what Matters
Unique relationships
• NOT interested in only Metrics.
• Remember: key to social media is building relationships.
• Instead of having a hard focus on metrics, think about what it
means to build a unique relationship with each and every one
of your followers.
• Not just the LARGE influencers. Scale content to that it’s
interesting to the range of your followers. If you work to
impress the influencers both LARGE and SMALL, the metrics
will speak for themselves.

52. Measuring what Matters
Stories
• Excellent way to understand the effectiveness of a campaign
• pay attention to the stories that you are able to tell based on
the way people have interacted with your campaign.
- STOP AND LISTEN
• Did you learn something about your brand or perception of
your brand that you didn’t know before?
• What new insights are you gaining about your target audience
as a result of social media?

53. Evaluation: Best Practices
1. Define your social media success
2. Develop measurable goals and objectives
3. Measure engagement
4. Start small
5. Learn to measure results
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54. Evaluation: Best Practices
6. Learn to measure influence
7. Use measurement to connect
8. Don’t use term “return on investment”
9. Use metrics to learn and improve
10. Use measurement to save time
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55. 55
Planning
Implementation
Metrics
Collection
Analysis
Information
Sharing
Evaluation Cycle

56. Acknowledgements
Presenters
Erin Edgerton Norvell & Jennifer Smith
Special Guest
Heather Cole-Lewis, PhD, MPH, Columbia University
Executive Producers
Harry Young and Melissa Beaupierre
Technical Producer/Director
James Bethea
Social Media Coordinator
Carlos Chapman II
Health Communications Support Team
Katie Mooney, Trayce Poole; Michael Fitzpatrick; Cynthia Newcomer; Valerie Watkins
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57. 57
Thank you for watching
Social Media Measurement & Evaluation for Public Health Success
@CDCNPIN
www.cdcnpin.org
#SM4PH