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Evaluation
Social media approaches are often used alongside other approaches , rather than used alone , and often get missed when thoughts turn to evaluation . This is still a relatively new form of communication so evaluation methods are still evolving . But it is important to think about the ways that social media may be supporting , or perhaps contradicting , the other activities you are involved in , and how it might be possible to demonstrate that . Keeping an account ‘ alive ’ can be time consuming so we want to know that it is doing what we want to it to do , and if it could do it better .
One of the challenges of evaluating social media activity is knowing what it is we want an account to achieve - what are our objectives in having an account ? Some aims , like publicising campaigns , problems , or examples of incidents ( for example ) can be easily measured in terms of ‘ how many ’ examples were posted . But that is only an output measure of our impact . We don ’ t know that anyone read them , let alone acted differently because of them . We could also look at numbers of ‘ followers ’, ‘ retweets ’, ‘ favourites ’ and ‘ likes ’ as an indicator of our reach . There are some quite advanced metrics attached to most platforms that allow us to establish these figures and , generally speaking , high numbers are probably better than low numbers . If we have a post that is frequently shared , and widely seen then we might conclude it has been more successful than one that made no imprint whatsoever , but these measures still don ’ t tell us if we are changing anything ‘ out there ’.
Don ’ t forget that people choose which accounts to follow or like - and they won ’ t be a representative sample of the general population . So whilst we might want to ask them questions , or get them to complete surveys , we will only learn about what a self-selecting sample think .
Metric measures of an account ’ s reach may be the best we have , but it ’ s unlikely that a social media profile is going to be the only activity associated with a campaign or initiative . So if you are evaluating a new programme of work , it might be best to look to other elements of what you are doing for real outcomes , and to use social media metrics to supplement that evaluation ( with an acknowledgement of their limitations ). But make sure that your social media work is co-ordinated with , and supports , your wider work .
If social media is a big part of your work , consider investing in some offline evaluation with key target groups , such as focus groups or surveys . This can tell you if your message is landing as you intended , who is getting it , and who is missing out .