Monitoring and Maximising Organisational Impact using the Social Web

1. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/ili-2010/http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/ili-2010/ Session C102 Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using Twitter, blogs, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Monitoring and Maximising Organisational Impact using the Social Web Email: b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/briankelly/ Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/ Tag for del.icio.us ‘ili-2010-talk' UKOLN is supported by: This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)

2. About Me Introduction Brian Kelly: • UK Web Focus: a national advisory post • Long-standing Web evangelist (since Jan 1993) • Based at UKOLN, University of Bath, with remit to advise HE/FE sector • 790+ blog posts since Nov 2006 • Over 350 presentations given since 1997 • Speaker at all ILI conferences except ILI 2008

3. About This Talk Introduction Summary • The Social Web is becoming accepted as a valuable tool for use by information professionals. • But how do we measure the effectiveness of our use of the Social Web? • How do we provide evidence of value of our services? • What are the limitations of gathering and using metrics? • What should we be doing?

4. Contents Structure of this talk

5. Reshaping The Gartner Curve Need to (a) avoid the chasm; (b) manage expectations and (c) move to productive service Listening to users Supporting early mainstream adopters Gathering evidence Demonstrating ROI Advocacy

6. Some Statistics Statistics about the UK Web Focus blog (from 1 Nov 2007- 23 Aug 2010) : Wikio ranking 41 770 : no. of posts : no. of comments 3,584 270,978 : no. of views : no. of spam comments (since reset) 561,401 Impressive? Not really! Nos. meaningless without context

7. What’s The Point? Arguments against gathering statistics: • We know we’re doing a good job • Our users are happy with our services • The effort with distract from core business Arguments for gathering statistics: • The government is unconvinced! • The Daily Mail is unconvinced! • Evidence may indicate that services are no longer being widely used • Evidence may indicate that services are popular and required extra resources

8. Political Context • David Camefon X

9. Need To Understand Trends How effective are mailing lists? • Very: everyone uses mailing lists • Not much: we now use RSS, blogs, Twitter, … Not much: Correct! Evidence shows significant decrease in Web support team lists over past 5 years Very: Correct! lis-* lists still popular despite small There’s a context to answers. Evidence can help inform decisions.

10. Who Are We Doing This For? Who should we be providing impact data for? • Decision makers: so they have evidence on which service to fund from smaller pot • Our funders: they can mandate this • Our peers: they can learn – and we should support such learning and sharing • Our users: if our services are well-used, they’ll be interested in this • Ourselves: we can learn from our successes - and our failures Moves towards greater transparency (e.g. salaries of senior managers; MP’s expenses; etc.) should be reflected by those working in libraries

11. Case Studies Let’s look at: • Metrics for use of various Social Web services And explore: • Metrics which can be determined for little effort • Significance of the numbers • How the metrics can be gamed Before: • Reviewing limitations • Making suggestions

12. Blog Usage Statistics UK Web Focus blog usage since launch in Nov 2007 2009: 247 visits/day 2010: 224 visits/day • Stories: • Preparation for workshop on SEO • Running tool to create PDF copy of blog posts • What does this tell us: • Ways of measuring & influencing nos. of visits (but not necessarily indicative of purpose of service)

13. Blog Metrics: Technorati Technorati indexes ~1 M English language blogs • Nos. of links from other (indexed) blogs weighted by their own link popularity (cf Google Page Rank) • Comparisons with peers But: • Need to register blog • Sometimes breaks

14. The Evidence • Evidence of the importance of Twitter for driving traffic to blogs UK Web Focus Blog: Total of 250,00+ views. Average 250/day over 3.5 years But how do they arrive at the blog?

15. “The Power Of Passed Links” The Value Of Twitter Is In “The Power Of Passed Links” Wilson predicts that at current growth rates, Twitter “will surpass Google for many websites in the next year.” And that just as nearly every site on the Web has become addicted to Google juice, they will increasingly try to find ways to get more links from Twitter. Because Twitter equals traffic. … Moreover, he asserts that these Twitter links “convert better” than search links because they are often pre-filtered and come in the form of a recommendation from someone you are following. • TechCrunch, June 2009

16. Claiming a blog in Technorati Note need to publish (temporarily) unique code to demonstrate ownership (useful to do at start). Thank you for submitting your blog claim on Technorati. Technorati will need to verify that you are an author of the site http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/good-apis-jisc/ by looking for a unique code. We have just assigned the claim token 2XAVJZX29XXX to this claim.

17. Blog Metrics: Wikio Wikio: similar tool for blog rankings Three UK HE blogs in top ~50 technology blogs

18. Claiming a blog in Wikio

19. There Are Limitations … League tables can be flawed • Non-existent blog • Excellent blog • Blog for completed project (no recent posts) Need for scepticism

20. … And Benefits Monitoring usage statistics can provide indications of successful strategies for user engagement: • Something good happened on 19 Feb 2007! • This was date of post on email subscription service to blog posts

21. Summary on Blog Metrics We have seen: • There are services for providing blog metrics • Signup up at blog launch can be useful • The services can be flawed • Monitoring and keeping records can help to spot success stories But: • What about limitations, ethics, …? • What about other Social Web services?

22. Case Study 2a: Twitter Twitoaster provides summaries of Twitter responses & RTs

23. Exploring The Evidence Twitter can be a significant driver of traffic Where would blog be now without Twitter? Twitter seems to have decimated RSS traffic.

24. Summarizr Summarizr can provide statistics on event hashtag usage e.g. top twitterers, hashtags & URLs tweeted, etc. Summarizr processes data stored in Twapper Keeper Twitter archiving service

25. Summarizr Summarizr also provides information on geo-located tweets • Possible benefits: • Are they local or remote? • Is geo-location used? • What are barriers?

26. Wikipedia There is a lack of awareness of the usage statistics for Wikipedia articles Missing data As in other examples the statistics may be flawed

27. Slideshare How effective is Slideshare?

28. Slideshare Evidence (1) Slides uploaded on behalf of Professor Carole Goble • Carol Gole’s slides

29. Slideshare Evidence (2) • Tweet from Steve Wheeler, 25 August 2010 What is a seminar? A mechanism for creating & delivering content which is consumed by others? When does the digital resource become more impact than the physical equivalent

30. JISC VfM Report (2005) “Whilst a Value for Money exercise measures and compares costs, it must also take account of the mix of quality, resource use, fitness for purpose, timeliness and convenience to judge whether or not together, they constitute good value. As such, Value for Money is one measurement of good practice. Some elements under consideration may be subjective, difficult to measure, unavailable, intangible or misunderstood. Judgement is therefore required when considering whether value for money has been achieved.”

31. TASI Example ‘Value for Money’ exercise performed in 2005 suggested that advice from TASI saved user time and effort and that large savings were being made. The following calculation was proposed: • Suppose each workshop attendance or enquiry leads to a saving of one/person day. Suppose that each report read saves someone half an hour. Value a person/day at £109. • A conservative estimate suggests that in 2004-05, for every pound of funding received, TASI saved the community at least £16 pounds. An illustration of the need for evidence on which to base scenarios

32. Facebook Trends Jun 2008: “The Open University Facebook page is the top of all University pages, with 7,539 fans (2,874 a month ago). The other most popular UK Universities are Aston University (2,976 fans), Royal Holloway (1,765), Aberystwyth University (1,655 fans), University of Central Lancashire (1,475 fans), Keele University (1,420 fans), Cardiff University (1,357 fans) and the University of Surrey (1,166 fans).” 28 Sep 2010 (~start of academic year): OU: 28,949 Aston: 8,445 Royal Holloway: 9,093 Aberystwyth: 7,326 UCLan: 7,982 KeeleUni: 6,716 Cardiff Uni: 18,689 University of Surrey: 8,063

33. Understanding Trends What can be learn from Facebook trends • Evidence which can address ideology • Diversity of approaches (e.g. University Freshers Fb page) • Identification of fragmentation of Facebook presence • Inform discussions on resourcing, policies, etc.

34. Stories + Statistics We need (a) Evidence to support scenarios and (b) Stories to make evidence comprehensible Story Following a Twitter response from @slewth I noticed her interests & a link to her blog. I read her blog posts – and exchanged tweets & emails. A few months later we had collaborated on a paper. At W4A 2010 paper was award a prize as the best communications paper  Assertion Twitter can help to develop professional relationships Response Really? Where’s the evidence? What is the cost?

35. Bigger Picture Metrics are flawed as they don’t take into account: • Diversity of uses of Social Web (e.g. blog for reflective thinking vs dissemination) • Size of organisation and levels of resources • Temptation to ‘game the system’ and aim to maximise metrics rather than underlying purpose We could: • Refuse to engage with current tools & approaches • Wait for the perfect analytic framework But: • We’ll lose out in understanding current approaches • Is there a perfect framework? • What if evidence is needed to justify existence?

36. The Bigger Picture: OU “… it’s a whole new generation of engaging digital content.  6.12m downloads, 64k visitors, 180k downloads a week. Lots of top-20 hits. Over 50% outside the UK.  How much does it cost? Very cost-effective versus putting signs on the side of buses.” Martin Bean, OU VC BBC News, 29 June 2010

37. Amazon Rankings Amazon provides rankings for its books, even though they have different purposes, audiences, …

38. Manipulating Statistics Some suggestions: • Create blogs which have links back to your services • Automatically submit comments to open Social Web services containing links • Use keywords for your competitors • Give your content away with a CC attribution licence • Keep an eye out for queries and link to your services when appropriate • Include your URL in your email signature

39. Ethics Concerns: • There are lies, dammed lies and statistics • Metrics can be gamed Ethical approaches: • Openness: • Being honest about limitations of metrics • Being open about the purposes of the services • Diversity of approaches to evaluation: • Provide a range of statistics • Statistics plus stories • Staff development: • Ensure staff are aware of need for metrics • Ensure that are aware of ethical approaches

40. Policies Can you measure the effectiveness of a service if you don’t have a clear idea of its purpose? There’s a need for (simple) policies on purpose of Social Web Services

41. Maximising Impact How do you go about maximising impact? • Create content! • Empower your staff • Join in the discussions • Go where the discussions take place • Monitor the impact and identify success stories

42. Questions Questions are welcome Name: Brian Kelly Address: UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, UK Email: b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk Web site: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ Blog: http://ukwebfocus./wordpress.com/ Twitter: briankelly and ukwebfocus (automated feed)