Freberg, Social Media for Strategic Communication, 1e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
Chapter 5: Research in Social Media: Monitoring, Listening, and Analysis
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the importance of research in social media practices.
• Define social listening and social monitoring.
• Explain the connections between listening and monitoring in social media.
• Identify the key categories of metrics (basic, advanced, channel, and behavioral).
Ice Breaker Questions and Exercises
• Overcoming the fear of numbers. Ask the students to write down their biggest fears, challenges,
and opportunities when it comes to research in social media. Crowdsource these as a class.
Once this is done and after discussing these key points, as a class, discuss action plans to
overcome these.
• Break students into groups and ask them to evaluate the listening and responsiveness of a
brand. Propose what they should monitor, and identify the benefits and challenges in research.
• Have students go on social media on all of the platforms to look at the content on social media
for a particular account (brand, personality, influencer, etc.). Evaluate the basic metrics for this
account and report five KPIs you would want to share with the account they need to watch.
Areas to Cover
• Understanding the purpose of monitoring, listening, and analyzing. All three elements are linked
together, but they are different in nature.
• Having categories for metrics will help evaluate at the end of a campaign. In addition, looking at
where the metrics fall under certain categories will help determine where they should be
reported.
Multimedia Resources
• Behind the scenes with Southwest Airlines’ social media “Listening Center”—ABC News
http://ow.ly/B8Dq30htAa0
• Meet the Microsoft Social Command Center—YouTube http://ow.ly/DrHx30htAdc
• Zoomph emoji feature: https://zoomph.com/blog/hot-off-the-press-zoomphs-all-new-emoji–
tracking-feature/
• Zoomph Tutorials
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfhX_6TfHVU&list=PL9_GmlIJ28PSpzirCkpxPQfmFYEWrQ9
A1)
Freberg, Social Media for Strategic Communication, 1e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
Additional Materials
• The five social media KPIs you need to be measuring | Union Metrics http://ow.ly/8JVY30hv8b7
• 10 Social Media KPIs You Should Track and Monitor http://ow.ly/TmN330hv8bS
• Should My Business Bother To Have Social Media KPIs? | Agorapulse
http://ow.ly/WGNy30hv8cI
• Review Tools for Monitoring, Listening, and Analytics from Ian Cleary
(http://www.razorsocial.com/) + http://www.razorsocial.com/resources/marketing-tools/
Free tools to share + showcase in class
• Free Social Media Tools | Zoomph http://ow.ly/MxIh30hvcpY
• Social Media Marketing Tools That Are Free Forever | Agorapulse http://ow.ly/HzSB30hvct2
• Social Media Analytics: 26 Free Analytics Tools for Marketers http://ow.ly/X2oI30hvcrV
Assignments and Exercises from Portfolio-Building Activities in Social Media
• Social Media Internal and External Assignment
• Brand Social Media Template Assignment
• Social Media Platform Assessment Assignment
• Social Media Listening Assessment Assignment