Management: Analytics and URL Shorteners

Do you like my little orchestrator guy? I was looking for someone managing social media and I thought this fit the bill...kind of.

Some individuals and organizations invest a lot of time and strategy into their social media. For those that are using social media to make money, it is vital to manage content well. Management is all about working smarter, not harder with social media. 

I think that analytics can be particularly helpful for social media users, especially bloggers. If bloggers don’t know how many people are visiting their blog, who their visitors are or where their visitors are coming from, it is impossible to evaluate effectiveness. Mack Collier (http://www.mackcollier.com/beginner-blog-analytics/), an expert blogger, wrote about the types of things he tracks with the analytical software. Collier uses Google Analytics and SiteMeter to help manage his blog. The statistics Collier says are most important to him are: 

• Traffic (how many people are visiting his blog)
• Search Traffic (what people are looking for when they come to his blog) 

• Referral Traffic (what sites are sending people to his blog) 

• Page views for top posts (what posts are the most popular) 

• Search Keywords (what keywords people use to find his blog) 

Those who use social media should also maximize their space. I never feel like I have enough room to say what I want to on Twitter. I often spend time re-working my post so that I can convey the message I want to. In order to save space, URL shorteners are very useful. Not to mention, shortened URLs look a lot better than full ones. And I’m not the only fan of URL shorteners. Ben Parr (http://mashable.com/2009/04/05/url-shorteners/) wrote an article on Mashable about why URL shorteners rock. His top five reasons are: 

• They make links more manageable 

• They can track and compile click data (This relates back to analytics. Knowledge is power and the more you know about your audience, the better!) 

• They can be transformed into social media services 

• They can provide users with useful features 

• They promote sharing (If you want your social media to take off, you need your viewers to share your stuff!) 

These all seem like pretty good benefits to any social media user. 

 Analytic and URL shortening sites are just two tools that can help manage social media. I have never used analytics because I am not currently using any social media professionally. But I have used URL shorteners and I love them. They help stretch those 140 Twitter characters just a little bit further.

Organizational Uses of Social Media: Social Media in Politics

This is a topic near and dear to my heart because I was able to get an inside look at political social media through a congressional internship in Washington, D.C. Because of their roles as  pivotal figures, politicians have to be extremely careful about what goes on their platforms.  According to the United States House of Representatives Social Media Wiki, 96% of members of congress use Facebook and 85% use Twitter. The congressman I worked for sometimes Tweeted his thoughts from inside hearings and meetings! This doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for filtering of ideas and messages for anything that could be offensive.

This lack of a filter can be, and has been, a public relations nightmare for some politicians. Remember New York Rep. Anthony Weiner? His political career was ruined after he sent some inappropriate photos to women via Twitter.

Politicians and constituents have more access to each other than they ever have before. And although that can create problems for politicians, it can also be an excellent tool for them.

During the presidential elections this past year people broke Twitter records during the first presidential debate, were encouraged to vote by their peers through many social media platforms, and mentioned the elections 71.7 million on Facebook.

These interactions create an extra level of work for political support staff. While I was in D.C., I helped respond to literally hundreds of emails sent to my congressman each week — we received at least ten times as many emails as we did physical letters. Petitions were conducted via email. Our office’s media manager was literally doing the job of two people because in addition to the traditional work of press releases and media engagements, he was also required to regularly post to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as well as monitor what others were posting to the congressman’s profiles.

I think that social media overall does more good for politics than harm. Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing to be able to see what our elected officials think and do when they aren’t being filtered. And if more people get involved in the happenings of their country because they can do so through their mobile device, that’s great!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.