Reporting Your Good [Tech] Work: Facebook Impact

One of the most commonly asked questions during this time of the year the past several years has been: “How do I report my social media and/or tech use in my work?” While we still do not have official step-by-step guidelines on how to do this in RiV, there is helpful information on where to report most tech-related work in RiV, as well as suggestions on what should be reported. This information is below:

  1. Where in RiV to report your Facebook efforts:
  • If Facebook presence is part of a program, then impact data should be included under that Program.
  • If Facebook presence is separate from any program or project, then it should be reported under “Multi-media, Databases, and Websites” as a website

3.  What data to report:

  • Reach
  • Engagement (post clicks, likes, comments & shares). This can be reported as general “engagement” or you can separate out post clicks, likes, comments, and shares and report those separately.
  • Audience demographics (optional)
  • Detailed information from posts that had the most reach and/or engagement (optional)

4.  Where to find the data to report:

  • Facebook fan page Insights (find the link on the admin panel of your page) ***see yellow arrows in the image below***
  • The handy visual graphs of your Insights only go back about 3 months. To retrieve a year’s worth of data, you will need to download your data by clicking on “Export Data” up on the right-hand corner of the Insight page. Choose the dates you need (1/01/2013 – 12/30/2013 if you are exporting for the entire year). You will want to choose “Page Level Data”. Then click on “Download”.
  • This will download your data in an Excel spreadsheet format. Highlighted below are columns – “Daily Page Engaged Users” and “Daily Total Reach” – you will want to total (“Sum” tool in Excel) and report in RiV. Both of these columns are included in the “Key Metrics” tab (1st Tab in the Spreadsheet). Don’t forget to also report your total number of page “likes”.

  • You may also wish to report demographic information regarding your Facebook audience. This information can be found in an easier-to-use and view format in your Facebook page insights. On your Insights page, click on “People” (under yellow arrow in the image below). This tab will show you who your page fans are – who “likes” your page. You can view gender, age, and location demographics from this tab. I would suggest adding the percentages of each of these to your RiV report.

  • One final piece of data available to you that you may want to include in RiV is the impact of Facebook posts that did particularly well. The image below is of a post from the FCS Facebook page on Thanksgiving that reached a large amount of people (when compared to normal posts on that page).  I would suggest reporting the topic, type of post (text, photo, etc.), reach, post clicks, and engagement level for one or two of the posts over the last year that had the most impact/engagement.

After you’ve gone through the above steps for your Facebook data, your RiV report description may look something like this:

“The OSU Extension Family & Consumer Sciences Facebook page had a total of 591 fans by December, 2013. Eighty-five percent of page fans were female, with 13% being male. Most page fans live in the city of Columbus, Ohio. Seventy five updates were posted to the Facebook page in 2013 and reached over 121,000 people. More than 25,000 people engaged with the page’s posts. One post that was particularly well received, wished followers a Happy Thanksgiving and was posted during National Family Week. It provided tips on how to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal with family and reached nearly 375 people, had 6 click-throughs, and engaged 23 users who liked, commented, or shared the post.” 

Of course, the amount of impact data you can garner from the Facebook Insight Excel sheet is mind-boggling, so the sky is the limit on how much additional data you could report in RiV… but the above “template” will provide the basic impact information needed to show your efforts and impact in an online environment. I really hope this “how-to” is helpful!

If you’ve already been reporting your technology-related work in RiV, how have you reported it? Share your insights so that others can benefit! Comment also if you have questions about how to report your Facebook work in RiV that this post may not have answered. I’m happy to help!

We’ll post two more “how-to’s” for your blogging efforts and Twitter efforts soon.

Happy RiV reporting! 😉

~Jamie

 

 

Announcing Social Media Workshop Opportunities in 2014!

Based upon responses we received from over 300 people who completed the Social Media survey, the Ed Tech team in partnership with CommTech will be offering two different social media workshops in each EERA next year! See the flyer image below for dates and locations. This is the same flyer that was given out during Annual Conference last week. Some details are still being pulled together, but look for the first registration e-mail for the January workshops later this week. We’ll also post registration information here on the EdgeU Tech blog.

Click the link below to view and print a PDF version of the flyer:

2014 Social Media workshops flyer

 

~Jamie

Create Shortened URLs

Why is this cool or necessary?

  • The shortened url can be trusted and is permanent.
  • Create random or customized urls: “go.osu.edu/123” or “go.osu.edu/ILuvGo
  • Site will also create a QR code for the shortened URL
  • To use go.osu, you must have an OSU Name.#

Example of a Shortened URL:

Step 1:  Visit the website: https://go.osu.edu/

Step 2:  Copy your original website URL : http://defiance.osu.edu/topics/4-h-youth-development/forms/

Step 3:  Assign it an alias:      http://go.osu.edu/applications

~ Teresa