A blog for social media communicators at MIT

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Analytics

What You Need to Know About Social Media Analytics Tools

By Jenny Li Fowler September 21, 2016

I spent the better part of the summer researching social media tools that could help meet our needs for more comparative and targeted analytics, and after looking into dozens of platforms and viewing numerous demos here’s what I’ve learned: The majority of social media analytics tools fall into one of three categories...

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#MIT02139

By Jenny Li Fowler May 20, 2016

The Century in Cambridge celebration marked the 100th anniversary of MIT’s move from Boston to Cambridge in 1916, and events were planned for most of the spring. We wanted to share our festivities with the rest of the world, so we created the hashtag #MIT02139 (MIT + the campus’s zip code) to support the celebration...

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What Is “Dark Social”?

By Stephanie Hatch Leishman December 20, 2013

You might have noticed an increase in direct referral traffic to pages on your website. This traffic can come from visits that result in bookmarked URLs or typing a URL directly in the browser, but much of this traffic also comes from “dark social." In the past, the term “dark social” sometimes referred to the “dark...

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Where to Start with Facebook Insights

By Stephanie Hatch Leishman October 28, 2013

Last week I gave a presentation called Introduction to Facebook Insights. Insights can sometimes be overwhelming when you're first learning to use it, so I explained how to start in a few steps: Understand metrics terms. Learn what "Reach" and "Engaged" mean. Learn to tell the difference between Page metrics and Post...

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A Tour of the New Facebook Insights

By Stephanie Hatch Leishman July 26, 2013

Facebook is rolling out new Insights. The improvements are apparent in the new design and layout. Insights now includes a dashboard with the following tabs: Overview, Page, Posts, People. Overview In the overview, you can view how your page is doing in likes, general reach, and engagement. Under this, Insights shows...

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Reporting On Your Social Media Analytics

By Stephanie Hatch Leishman February 6, 2013

If you manage social media accounts for your department or school, you should be regularly and consistently looking at your analytics. Pull and file reports so you can evaluate changes over time. How often should I pull reports? How often you pull reports should depend upon how often you meet with your supervisor/team...

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Track Successes and Failures

By Stephanie Hatch Leishman September 6, 2012

A big part of ongoing social media success is to acknowledge and keep track of your successes and failures. When you publish a piece of content that gets a positive - or negative - reaction, many more comments than usual, or more shares than you've gotten before, make sure to take a screenshot, favorite positive...

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Use IFTTT for Automatic Content Archival

By Stephanie Hatch Leishman August 27, 2012

IFTTT ("if this then that") is an automation tool that allows you to make "recipes" consisting of triggers. Here's how it works. You register all your social (and other internet-based) accounts with IFTTT. Then you can make a recipe, such as "whenever I get tagged on Facebook, send me an email." You can use this tool...

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Older Adults and Social Media

By Stephanie Hatch Leishman July 17, 2012

The Pew Internet & American Life Project published the report "Older Adults and Social Media" after interviewing 2,254 adults. According to the research, as of April 2012, 53% of American adults ages 65 and older use the internet or email as of February 2012, one third (34%) of internet users 65 and older use...

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Storify

By Stephanie Hatch Leishman May 2, 2012

Storify is a cool way to archive posts from different platforms into one 'digital newspaper', especially if you want to gather everything people have been posting about a particular subject and use it to tell a story. Here's how to make your own: 1. Sign up for an account on Storify.com. 2. Click on 'Create Story'. 3...

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