Measuring Engagement

We've all had discussions over the years about what our site statistics really mean and how measuring quality is equally or perhaps more important than measuring quantity.

Social media bring a new nuance to the qualitative vs. quantitative conversation which is: how do you measure engagement?

There are obvious qualitative measures such as length of visit on a site, and bounce rate, number of comments per article, number of emails to a friend, number of Diggs and so on.

Setting a target of increasing length of visit by a certain amount over a period of time seems like a logical place to start. Media organizations can take various routes to achieve that goal. Information might be higher quality, and more original. Stories need to have genuinely original material and links to related information that are useful to the visitor, not just more stuff a media company wants to promote.

Engagement is the way to increase the length of your site visits, whether by making material more engaging, or engaging visitors in some sort of interaction. So focus on engagement and you could improve your length of visit, a measurable parameter, and increase your audience's appreciation of your work. That's harder to measure but will pay dividends in the long run.

Here's an article from DJ Francis, who outlines five reasons for investing in social media in a post on ReadWriteWeb.com.

But we're still missing coherent ways to measure engagement success.

Talk, Talk, Talk... Listen

Chris Brogan makes the point that companies are fast at picking up the microphone, but slow at standing next to the speaker. Or as he puts it: 'we tend to rush right into the "speaking" side of the toolbox without giving much thought to the "listening" part.'

This is surely more true of media companies which have more microphones than anyone else.

He offers five tools he uses for listening, some of which you'll know, but it's good to see them on one page.

I would add a reminder that Google has some great advanced operators which allow you to refine your searches. e.g. Searching "link:www.mypage.com" quickly shows who's linking to your page.

And while you're at it, a quick glance over the Google's tips on how to do a better search is never time wasted.

WBUR Online Community

In the spring of 2003, a group of six Babson University BCAP business school students conducted an online survey of 365 WBUR supporters. This was a small survey group and the results were much as you would expect.

But one piece of information did stand out:

Of on-air respondents 84% said they pledged to support the news and 15% said they pledged to support the shows.

Of online respondents 7% said they pledged to support the news and 88% said they pledged to support the shows.

Axiom 2001 Report

Axiom Research conducted a series of focus groups in 2000 for WBUR, attempting to find out what listeners thought of the station, the Web, and the station's Web site. They wrote a 21 page report (released in 2001) which is not available online, but included the following:

1. Listeners have a strong personal and emotional attachment to WBUR.
2. Listening is passive in nature. Listeners wonder if the positive aspects of their relationship to the station can be transfered to the interactive sphere of the Web.
3. Listeners like: "apolitical," "factual," "detailed," "humorous," "quirky" and "off-beat" in content and style. They want Web content that is not available elsewhere (i.e. not headline news, weather or stock quotes, they go elsewhere for those).
4. Listeners don't like: redundant links and "busy."
5. Listeners want: unique content, "cutting room floor" content, "in-depth," archives, schedules and online pledging.
6. Listeners don't want: "too commercial."
7. Some listeners had trouble discerning between wbur.org and npr.org and were confused about where to find desired content.

Axiom Recommendations:
1. Make program icons the focal point on the homepage.
2. Make the homepage clear and calm.
3. Reduce headline news, focus on expanded information from shows.
4. Enhance the schedule.
5. Create a feedback forum.
6. Carefully integrate revenue generating activity.

The Axiom report, even seven years later, has some interesting information, particularly in the profounder aspects of listeners' perceptions of their relationship with the station. These probably remain unchanged. What has changed is the context of the report, which was written at a time when few people had broadband, streaming audio was far from mainstream, and blogs were unknown.

Oh dude. Not news...

Dan Kennedy, a professor and Northeastern, who writes the MediaNation blog, has an article in the Commonwealth magazine entitled "Plugged in, tuned out".

He quotes research that says though young people are saturated in media, they shy away from news. "16 percent of young adults (ages 18 to 30) read a newspaper every day, compared with 35 percent of those older than 30."

Kennedy says young people's lack of interest in news and resulting shallow knowledge of current affairs represents a threat both to news media and to civic life.

The article explores the reasons for this phenomenon: a) because Americans are marrying, having children and buying homes later in life, and b) because they are used to well designed and easy to use cell phones and other media tools that make newspapers look positively nineteenth century. (Kennedy was on a panel in Boston to discuss this article shortly after it was published. During the discussion one of the panel members raised the additional idea that Americans today see themselves primarily as consumers. A change from a time when Americans saw themselves firstly as citizens.)

Kennedy looks at efforts regional media have made to fight this trend: a) addressing subjects that interest young people, b) looking for local angles on foreign stories, c) making absorbing online interactive content, and d) creating Web 2.0 news products.

Kennedy suggests the Blue Mass. Group, BostonNow, Digg, Reddit and NewsTrust could be hints of what the future of news might look like in a Web 2.0 world, pointing out that young people who've grown up with MySpace and Facebook are accustomed to participating and creating content.

In social media, says Kennedy, the members are accustomed to setting the agenda and its possible they will do this increasingly as they interact with news organizations. "A type of participatory news that could evolve into an example of civic engagement in and of itself."

(Link: Click here to read the article.)