We’ve seen in our previous blogs about different metrics to measure your social impact. So far, we have discussed the spreading of content and how to measure conversation. These are highly useful metrics but they do not look into sentiment - do people actually like your content? 

To determine whether or not people have enjoyed your content we can look at the applause rate. 

Twitter:

Applause Rate = # of Favorite Clicks Per Post

Facebook:

Applause Rate = # of Likes Per Post

Google Plus:

Applause Rate = # of +1s Per Post

Blogs & YouTube:

Applause Rate = # of +1s and Likes Per Post

With these metrics you can understand what your audience like and what they don’t like (not to be confused with dislike, which is measured differently).

The ‘like’ we talk about in applause rate is much more valuable than a 'I enjoyed this piece of content’ type of like. The reason is that these people have not only invested social capital into applauding your content but they have also provided increased visibility for your brand. 

If a person likes or +1’s your content then it enters their social graph and will appear in their network. This even occurs in search engines when a user is logged into Google+. Google will tailor your results based on your social graph within Google+ using their Search Plus Your World.

That just about wraps it up for the 3 main social metrics we often use. Do you use similar metrics? Are there any great tools you use to measure social? Share your thoughts in the comments.  

One of the benefits of social media is its ability to create conversations. We want conversations on all of our social channels to increase engagement and visibility. If you don’t encourage conversations then you are just going back to the old model of marketing - shouting your message at people and hoping they will listen. 

Fortunately, this is no longer the case and marketing is much more conversational. 

We measure this using conversation rate: 

     Conversation Rate = # of Audience Comments (or Replies) Per Post

A break down by channel:

• Blogs - # of comments
• Twitter - # of @replies
• Facebook - # of comments
• YouTube - # of comments
• Flickr - # of comments

Use this metric to work out which types of posts and content create the conversations. You can also look into the sentiment. Are they positive, valuable conversations?

This metric can also be segmented into the specific channels that you are posting to. Which channels creates the most conversations? Are there different types of content that works best? 

Share your feedback and any tips you have for schools on measuring social media. 

There are simple ways to make your social media endeavors much more measurable and actionable. One of our favourite metrics to use is amplification rate. We touched upon this recently in our post about how to manage and engage with your social media community. In the next few of weeks we will begin to post some of our other favourite metrics that you can use to help measure your ROI of social media. 

The reason we love amplification rate is because it takes into account much more than just your primary networks (followers, fans etc.). Becoming a follower involves social investment on the followers behalf and not everybody is necessarily willing to invest their social capital in brands. Also, not all of your target audience is aware of you.

Amplification rate takes into account your secondary network too - the network of your networks.

At the time of writing, we have 1340 followers on Twitter but our network reach is 8,143,649. This is essential to understand as whenever people share your content it feeds into their networks and increases your visibility. 

Amplification rate for social channels

Twitter - # of retweets per post

Facebook - # of shares per post

Google+ - # of shares per post

YouTube - # of social sharing clicks 

Blog - # of social sharing clicks 

Have you been using amplification rate? What are your favourite metrics? Let us know in the comments. 

Yesterday, Google released a brilliant interactive guide to how search engines work. School marketers should use the guide to gain a better understand of the basics of SEO and how search is performed. 

Google break the guide up into 3 parts: 

1. Crawling & Indexing
2. Algorithms
3. Fighting Spam

The first section will help you understand how Google finds and extracts data from your website. This can enable you to start making your website more search friendly.

The second section shows you how Google serves up its search results. Marketers need to know this so that your school can deliver fresh, relevant content.

The third, and final section, talks about Google’s long standing fight against spam. Google have upped their game with spam and automatically remove any webpages they believe are spam. This is essential to know because your website may be being punished for unintentional spam infringements.

Schools should use this guide to help better understand how search engines work. This will help form the basis for you to develop your SEO knowledge.

View the interactive guide to search.

Schools seem to very concerned about SEO and how ‘difficult’ it is. There is actually a lot that you can achieve very easily without any SEO knowledge at all. 

Below we have listed some very simple and quick things to do to improve your site’s SEO:

Research

1. Review your brand on Google, Bing and Yahoo! Type your school name into search engines. Review the copy - does it fit your brand?
2. Research non-branded searches for your school. E.g. “boarding school in Watford”.
3. Search for your most popular keywords “harrow school term dates”, “bedford girl’s school fees” etc. What comes up?

Build Relationships

1. Connect with your local influencers on social media. 
2. Who are the most influential bloggers for schools? Connect with them. 

Content

1. Brainstorm content ideas for a blog.
2. Create a Google Calendar to map out your content plan.
3. Launch a contest. 
4. Organise a Google+ Hangout.

Local

1. Make sure you’re on local directories such as Thomson Local, Yelp, Yell etc.
2. Make sure you’re on all relevant school based directories, including your local council’s.

On-Page Optimisation

1. Update your homepage’s title tag and description. 
2. Submit an XML Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.
3. Check your 'Health’ on Google Webmaster Tools
4. Change the description for your most popular pages - think about click through rates. 

Competitor Analysis

1. Review your competitors on search engines. Perform a branded search. 
2. Navigate through your competitor’s websites as if you were a prospect.  

Technical SEO

1. Build an a creative 404 error page. Users love these, and will often share them. Great link building technique
2. Sign up to Google Webmaster Tools
3. How does your website display on mobile and tablet? Not great? Look into responsive web design. 
4. Can you access your site using www. and non-www? 
5. Does your website have both www. or non-www? Or does it redirect? If it doesn’t redirect, it needs to. 

Analytics 

1. Identify your most popular posts and keywords. 
2. Take a look at the highest bouncing pages on your website. Make them more attractive and sticky. 

This should act as a good starting point for you and hopefully you will realise how broad SEO actually is. It is not always necessarily about tags, HTML, links or optimising primarily for search engines.

Have you tried these tips? Do you have any more to share? Share your experiences in the comments section. 

Internal search is incredibly underused in school’s web analytics. It gives you a great insight into user intent, which you cannot get from the standard clickstream metrics. Not only do you get a good understanding of visitor intent, but the results are easily actionable.

If a user cannot quickly and easily navigate to the content that they are looking for on your site, then they will either leave or begin a search (either on your site or on a search engine). Your website should provide a search feature on your website - even if you have the most user friendly architecture. With the standard clickstream metrics, you get to understand what pages people views, where they left and how long they stayed. The only thing you do not get is intent - what did they really want from the website? Fortunately, site search can give you this intent. The visitor gives you, in their own words, what they want from your site. 

Your website will not please everybody, that is inevitable. There will be visitors who arrive looking for content that simply does not exist. If the content doesn’t exist then you want to know what they were looking for. Two reasons for this are:

• Your bounce rate will increase and you want to know why
• You have to know what content your audience want to read

The first point is essential to know because we, as marketers, have a hard enough job trying to understand user behaviour. We obviously make a lot of educated guesses but the more data and facts we have the more accurate our decisions can be. There are a huge number of reasons why a user may bounce. When we know that a high percentage of people are looking for a certain page that does not exist, then we can begin to attribute some of that to the bouncing visitors.

Obviously, if a high percentage of your audience are intending to view content that does not exist then something needs to be done! You look into how to create that piece of content to best meet your audience’s needs. Actionable insight.

How many searches should my school website have?

It depends on what strategy your school website is employing. We find that school websites tend to have less than 2% of visits that include a search. But this is just a general rule of thumb.  Usually, fees and vacancies are the two most search for terms that are generic to all schools. Often, there will be search terms specific to your school - film club, spanish exchange 2013, ski trip etc.

Search is becoming more popular on the web as we become trained to use search often. Amazon and Google have pioneered this approach of giving us a huge search bar to use immediately. People are getting used to ignoring navigational elements and site search is becoming a core navigational method.

Optimising your search

Look at search refinements and search depth to determine how effective and well your internal search is performing. Tweak the internal search engine to improve results. You can also view how many pages the visitor views in the search results. We all expect to find the correct, relevant result at the top of the first page.

Take a look at your bounce rate? What’s the percentage of searches? If bounce is high and search is low then you should look at making your search more clearer and inviting. Of course, a user may bounce for reasons irrespective of content but you have to encourage people to stick to your site.

Has your website got an internal search engine? Do you run analytical reports on the data? Let us know in the comments.

We have just seen a very interesting pop up on Twitter.

“Your friend @Username is back on Twitter! Mention them in a Tweet to welcome them back.”

Twitter is encouraging us to engage with people who have returned to the site after a period of inactivity. They also include a ‘Compose a Tweet’ button to make the outreach much easier.

The social network has a problem with retaining users - it is one of the reasons we see such conflicting user numbers. So many users have signed up to the user but these accounts lay dormant through lack of activity. Twitter often email inactive users to encourage them to return but are now turning to people you know and trust to give you that little push back to the service. 

Hopefully, Twitter will not be overusing this feature as it may be quite irritating for some users and could actually make people unfollow users. This will occur if Twitter keeps encouraging us to engage with people we do not actually know. 

It could be a risky move by Twitter but it shows their long term commitment to re-engaging inactive users. 

Have you noticed this box? What are your thoughts on it?

There is a plethora of content being produced and shared across the social world. Schools need to increase the visibility of their blog in order to stand out amongst competition. 

Here are 7 ways schools can make their blog more visible:

1. Identify most popular posts and keywords

   Use your Google Analytics account to discover which posts were viewed the most and created the most social activity. Also look at which posts created the most links and comments. This will give you a great insight into which posts garner the most interaction with you audience.

   Again, use Google Analytics to discover which keywords people are searching for to find your posts. Are you number one on the ranking pages? If not, get there! 

2. Track and leverage trend

   Take a look at other blogs from similar school’s are they beginning to share something that you are not? Subscribe to other blogs (not necessarily school blogs) and take a look at trends. If you see them doing something different, then begin to leverage this. It will keep you innovative and up to speed with what your users want and expect. 
    

3. Think ‘why would people share this?’

   You should be able to give an answer to this about most of your blog posts. Take a look at previous blogs that you thought people would share and use data to
   back you up! If the data shows that people did not share, take a look at other posts that you thought would people would share for the same reason. Were these not shared either? If not, then at least you know now. Marketers are not always right but by using data can make better decisions.

   Not all posts are shareable. Just because somebody did not share it does not mean the post is invaluable. However, if you want people to find your blog then you need shares to not only increase referrals, social influence but also SEO. 
    

4. Make the most of the headline

   Headlines are in some ways the most important part of increasing your visibility. You have to sell your blog post in just a few words and if you don’t sell your blog right then it will not attract targeted visitors. It is so difficult to hit this on the nail but luckily you can test headlines to determine which formula and words works best for your audience.
    

5. Test different kinds of promotions

   Where do you usually promote your content? Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Emails, Newsletters, Digg, Reddit? There’s a lot of channels, right? It is unrealistic to fully promote your posts through all the channels available to you (not just the listed channels). However, you can experiment with different kinds of promotions. All these channels have their own communities, they have their own etiquette.

   Try something new. (But remember: track & analyse!)
    

6. Optimise content for social

   There are so many school blogs that have really good content but they are just not optimised for the social world. Many are static webpages that offer no social functionalities such as comments, social shares etc. 

   Comments allow you to engage with your users and thus they may become advocates. Social sharing buttons act as a reminder to users to share content. 
    

7. Have something waiting for new readers

   Nobody wants to read a blog that is never updated. You need to keep your audience excited and engaged by providing great content, regularly. Having a range of new content for first visitors means that they can go through old content and gives them an incentive to subscribe or return. Once they return even a couple of times to find no new content, they will quickly forget about your blog. 

Do you have any tips for school marketers? How to do you optimise your content? Let us know in the comments!

Mark Zuckerburg announced Graph Search at the Facebook HQ earlier this year. It has the potential to revolutionise the industry of search and social discovery.

What is Graph Search?

Graph Search replaces Facebook’s currently limited search feature to allow people to search using rich connections between people, places, photos and interests - all tied to real identities. This will create searches such as “restaurants in London that my friends have been to” and “films that teachers in my city watch”.

Is it available now?

No. Zuckerburg has said that Graph Search is in “very early beta” and will begin to roll out to U.S. users first. Long term, it will be available globally and eventually on mobile. You can join the waiting list to get a chance at using it as soon as possible.

What makes Graph Search so different?

All major search engines currently index the whole internet to enable you to find websites, articles, videos and other types of content that is related to specific keywords.

Graph Search is different in that it indexes over 1 billion people across the world and connects them to places, photos and interests. Facebook is essentially bringing social into search.

Google understand the importance that social will play in search which is why they launched Google+ and Search Plus Your World. Unfortunately for Google, they do not have anywhere near the level of social data that Facebook has.

I want to explore two reasons why Graph Search will disrupt schools marketing:

1. Discovery
2. Research

1. Discovery

If your school is not already on Facebook then you need to develop a long-term strategy, and quick. Facebook is investing billions into search and it is likely that it will succeed with their goals. It is already a powerful tool for schools using the network effect and social sharing. However, this relies on advocacy and visibility. What Graph Search will change is the ability to find your school when the user wants to - just like typical search engines.

Facebook will almost certainly take a chunk of Google’s share of search. People will be able to use their social network of friends to make informed decisions about which school to send their child. If your school has a passionate community of pupils, parents and even the general public then you will increase your chances of discovery on Graph Search. The more likes you acquire, the more social votes you gain.

2. Research

It is not just products or services that will benefit from Graph Search, it is also us as marketers. It allows us to search for people like never before. The capabilities that it will enable can potentially reinvent market research.

You can use Graph Search to find correlations of what people like. For example, you could find out that people who like sports generally like BMW - great information for buyer personas. This gives your market research much more power and allows you to target demographics much more effectively.

There are endless possibilities to how your school can use the research capabilities on offer. 

Three examples of how you could use Graph Search for your school’s research:

• A look into correlations between subjects - “How many people like History and Geography”
• Researching next year’s trips to London - “Which museums in London do my friends like”
• Who likes girls’ education and certain subjects - “People that like girls education and art”

Fan Research

How often do you send out questionnaires to parents? How successful are they? If you have a strong parent community on Facebook then you can find out a huge amount of information about them - for free. And, they have already provided this information. You do not need to send them any forms to fill out. Segmentation will be huge for marketers and it is something I’m sure Facebook will be further developing. 

Competitive Analysis 

Not only do you have access to your own fans but also your competitors. Are there similarities? Do their fans have different behaviour? What can you learn? Analysing your competitors is vital to succeed online. 

Reconnect with Alumnae 

One of the main refining features on Graph Search is the ability to filter people by their school. Most people on Facebook share their previous schools as it helps them reconnect with old friends. This will also now allow you to reconnect with your Alumnae. Not only that but you can actually perform research on them. 

It is very early days for Graph Search but the signs are promising. This is the future for Facebook and they will continue to innovate their search capabilities. It will be exciting to see it unfold and witness what Google have up their sleeves (they won’t want to lose anybody to Facebook). 

How do you feel about Graph Search? Will you sign up to the waiting list? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

BlackBerry release BlackBerry 10. 

In the last quarter of 2012, Samsung doubled its market share for tablet devices. Samsung, who make the popular Galaxy range, sold 7.9 million units, up from 2.2 million a year before, increasing their market share to 15.1%. 

Although Apple witnessed an increase in sales, their share of the tablet market fell from 51.5% to 43.6%. 

The tablet market is continuing to grow as a whole. Even Microsoft did not quite hitting the top 5 makers, after shipping almost 900,000 units in the last quarter of 2012.

EE rolls out 4G to 9 new towns, covers 45% of population

In attempt to get school children to learn to code, Google have donated 15,000 Raspberry Pis to schools across the UK. OCR will be supplying 15,000 free teaching and learning packs Raspberry Pi announced news on their blog. 

 

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