View From the Cheap Seats

As the news cycle pumped out explosion replays and graphic photos, the nation shook its’ head in disgust and attempted to come to grips with the reality of what had taken place.  For 150 higher-ed professionals, that reality was especially potent considering they were scheduled to depart the next day for the one place in America where this horror was unfolding.  But what seemed to be terrible timing for the Case Social Media Conference turned out to be a beautiful example of perseverance and dedication.

It didn’t take long before the #casesmc tweets lit up the TweetDeck.  Would there still be a conference? Was Logan Airport even open? The replies were a calm and defiant “yes and yes.”  The 150 people scheduled to attend the fourth annual social media conference were clearly nervous about spending three days in the city that just experienced the first domestic act of terror in the post-9/11 era and no one could blame them.  Professional development is important, but is it really THAT important?  The answer: a resounding “yes”.

These 150 people had families, children, spouses, and dozens of other valid reasons for why they SHOULDN’T go to Boston, but it was the one reason they SHOULD that reigned supreme.  While nervous and uneasy, these 150 knew that the dream of vanquishing these vile acts rests upon the success of the education sector.  The path to trumping ignorance and hate is paved by knowledge and inclusion.  These 150 knew this to be true and because of that, they marched into Boston fueled by their commitment to become better at their jobs in hopes it will advance the institutions they represent. 

Keep in mind; most of these 150 don’t have social media in their title.   These people came to Boston, during a historical moment of fear, to improve upon an area of their job that is generally unrecognized by their institutions. They came because they believe it IS the future of their industry, regardless of whether it’s ten percent or one hundred percent of their job. 

Led by a devote Conference Chair and a Program Manager who displayed her under-appreciated talents which each arising crisis, the conference not only happened, but stood tall above the chaos around it and enlightened and inspired all in attendance.  Ideas were exchanged, connections made, and implementations planned.  These 150 constructed a blueprint for growth, while much was falling down around them. 

Should you be one of those who think social media champions take their passion lightly, or that it’s an informal technology that stains an esteemed industry defined by tradition, I urge you to take notice of the full-timers, part-timers, and no-timers who traveled to the one city in America no one wanted to be in.  Surely, such devotion commands your respect and re-consideration of the importance of their work.  As the national conversation moves back to defeating terror, consider the fact that failing to evolve will lead only to our own defeat.   These 150 believe their ideas are the backbone of that evolution and it’s time everyone starts believing with them.

            I thought about gun control and background checks.  I considered the notion the bad news seems to dominate the media.  I pondered the idea that bad things continue to happen to good, innocent people, and how that reinforces my belief that there is no divine creator watching over us.  For the most part, I dwelled on what the parents must be feeling and how personal this episode is now that I’m a parent.  The notion of being one of those grieving parents is as incomprehensible as it is heartbreaking.  A good part of me just wanted to cry, something I probably should do more often.  But as day turned into evening, I found myself thinking about history.

             I recall enjoying learning about history as far back as middle school.  Every so often I meet someone who expresses their disinterest in history and chalks it up as boring.  It would seem this mentality has become an epidemic in our country as we’ve divided ourselves into two camps: those who don’t care about history and those who don’t want you to care about history. 

            Millions of people flock to a movie like “Lincoln” and celebrate the idea of ending slavery, then the next day argue against extending marriage equality to homosexuals.  We shake our heads at American factory conditions of the late 1800’s/early 1900’s and then buy a hundred dollars of sweatshop merchandise from Walmart.   Our great grandfathers fought “The Great War” to end all wars, only to watch their sons fight the next war to end war and then THOSE men watched their sons ship off to southeast Asia and now those guys send their kids off to the Middle East and Afghanistan. 

           There was the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin, and 9/11.  The catalysts change, but the rationales remain fairly consistent: stopping the evil abroad.  As domestic violence increased and culminated with the shooting in Columbine, many thought a tipping point had been reached.  But, aside from Michael Moore polarizing half the country with a documentary, Columbine made its way out of the news cycle and soon became a distant memory…until the next one.  There have been 27 mass, public shootings since Columbine.  Malls, college campuses, private businesses, immigration centers, movie theaters, and now elementary schools.   We continue to focus on the evil around the world, while ignoring the demons living next-door.

            During the endless presidential race, not one debate focused on the issue of handguns and assault weapons in America.  Our elected officials spend time and money debating whether a human being should have the right to marry someone they love or decide what medical procedures they should or should not have.  We have no problem pushing through legislation that makes it law to wear a seatbelt in a car and a helmet on a bike, two things that aim to protect us from ourselves.  Meanwhile, we ignore the fact that the American family is collapsing under the strain of runaway inflation, debt, and unemployment.  We spend billions on “bringing democracy to the world”, but we won’t spend a dime repairing the damage we’ve done to our own social infrastructure.   Even after a congresswoman is shot in the head by a deranged twenty-something, Washington continues to sit on their hands, ignoring our recent history of violence.

           Every Sunday, most Americans gather together to celebrate the history of their faith and religion.  Tradition thousands of years old is worshipped from coast to coast.  We sing about it, we pray over it, and we look to it for guidance.  If we the people have no problem being directed by something thousands of years old, why do we refuse to take direction from history that is only a hundred years old…or TEN?  

            I suppose I didn’t know what to say earlier because I had too much to say.  I’m frequently seen as illogical, insensitive, and unwilling to compromise based on my social media dialogue.  Perhaps studying history has a way of jading the contemporary man.  I have a hard time listening to myths about Pilgrims and Native Americans hugging and eating on “Thanksgiving”.  I grow frustrated by laws that hold back progress because they contradict something written by a guy, who heard something from a guy, who heard something from a guy three thousand years ago in the middle of the desert.   I don’t like hearing about how we needed the CIA to train a guy to kill our enemies in the 80’s, only to have him become the most wanted man in the world after being the mastermind of 9/11. 

            My outspoken nature is most likely a direct result of becoming a parent.   I brought someone into this world and he’ll have to exist in the future we create today.  When I see a newsflash that 20 kids under ten years old are dead because ANOTHER mentally-ill man got his hands on an arsenal, I’m heartbroken, but can I really be shocked? One or two shootings in thirteen years would be shocking, twenty-seven is an epidemic. 

            History shows us that events which can be used to push us into overseas conflict are exploited for everything they have, while tragedies that require us to look at ourselves in the mirror, quickly become yesterday’s news.  “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” is a saying that is so well known to us that it has no power.  Our grandfather’s generation didn’t die so we would be killed by our own bullets.  If we continue to turn our back on history, we not only put ourselves in danger, we dishonor the sacrifice made by everyone before us whether they be a soldier who fought for our way of life, or a factory worker whose death brought labor and working conditions reform. 

           I still like history, even though it’s proving frequently inconvenient and often is the motivating factor behind commentary that results in a shrinking social circle.  As a father, I just don’t feel like I have the luxury of ignoring the past when it consistently impacts the present…even if it is boring.

Just a few years ago, the idea of alumni around the world attending the same on-campus event in real-time was a pipe dream. Actually, it probably wasn’t even a dream because such a notion would have seemed ludicrous at the time. Now, we find ourselves smack in the middle of a technological great awakening that has advancement professionals stirring like prospectors during the gold rush. 

As prospectors of this new frontier, we’re frequently tempted to try anything and everything in hopes of engaging our thousands of alumni who have staked their own claim in social media. However, as we sift through the waters of technology looking for a great discovery, we have to guard against selfish acts that threaten to sour our audience during the early stages of experimentation.

Moving beyond the unintentionally lengthy gold rush analogy, I turn your focus to livestreaming. At Cornell, we have streamed around 40 events in the past year and a half. We continue to learn something new about the process with each broadcast.  Recently, it dawned on us that we’re not always considerate of the virtual audience. As I’m sure many of you know, it’s not uncommon for an event to start late because the speakers and audience members are in the lobby enjoying snacks and spirits, while reconnecting with old classmates. Events slated for 7 .pm., frequently kick off around 7:10 or 7:15 p.m. For those people who are physically present, this is of no consequence, but for the virtual audience, it’s kryptonite. While the in-person guest enjoys the splendors of food and conversation, the virtual viewers sit alone in their house or office, anxiously awaiting the start of your program. These people are busy professionals with families, rich with the responsibilities that didn’t exist during their undergrad years. What they do NOT have is an abundance of time. If you make them wait, there are plenty of other things online vying for their attention. 

Cornell recently livestreamed an event that started 15 minutes late, and during that delay, we saw roughly a quarter of our viewers drop-off before the event started. The lesson here is clear: Treat the virtual audience like it doesn’t matter, and audience members will make sure YOU don’t matter the next time you promote a livestream event. We can’t SAY we want an engaged online audience then treat them as if they need us more than we need them…they don’t. 

If you’re going to embark on the journey of streaming LIVE events, make sure you have a production plan that provides the virtual audience with the same high-quality experience you would expect to give the in-person attendees. If there’s a chance the event might not start on time, have filler material ready that you can roll out to keep them from logging off. 

The evolution of technology is fun and exciting, but regardless of how revolutionary the tools are, a poor user experience will render them irrelevant. Technology is only as good as the content, and the content is only as good as its accessibility. After all, the virtual audience isn’t interested in the event JUST for the open bar…

“I saw a report on the news that people can track you on social media, so I’m staying away.” Headshake.  Have you heard something like this from a member of your alumni community? Perhaps you’ve encountered, “Sign up for Facebook so creepy people from high school can keep tabs on me?  Just writing that out made me cringe. 

Whether it’s talking with alumni or socially with friends, as I explain what I do for a living I inevitably run into a skeptic who thinks by signing up for Facebook/Twitter they’re instantly letting the whole world into their life.  When it comes to those who are anti-social media, I have boiled it down to two types.  Type one is afraid the whole world is going to stalk them if they participate in social media.   The other rejects social media as a legitimate communications model and likes to believe it’s just a fad that will die-out much like slap-on bracelets, NFL Zubas Pants, and movies starring Kevin Costner. 

First, the fear mongers. There are soon to be a BILLION people on Facebook and according to Pew Research, nearly half of all American adults now own a smartphone.  Considering the shear volume of users, naturally there’s going to be a handful of troublemakers in the class, but the heavy majority of people use social media and mobile devices without experiencing any bodily harm of privacy infringement.  In fact, the FTC claims only 9 million Americans are the victims of identity theft every year and that’s the headline that everyone runs with.  However, when you consider how many people live in our country, you’re talking about 3% of the population. 

There’s also a lingering concern that by stepping into the pool of social media, you’re going to be sucked into a world where any person in the universe can track your every move.  First off, I think many of these individuals have a pretty big ego to think there are actually people out there whose sole goal in life is to stalk them via social media.  Second, those scared of social media usually don’t have all of the facts concerning privacy settings and the whole notion that you actually have control over who you interact with.  On several occasions I have given older alumni a demonstration on how to use various social networks and have been surprised how concerned they are that they’ll be put on display for public consumption.   However, when I showed one alum how he can follow Warren Buffett on Twitter, he started to see things in a different light.

Then we have the people who think social media is too casual and informal for a distinguished sector like higher education.  I recently attended a lecture by Jay Walker entitled “Collecting Imagination”. In his lecture he said that in ancient times it was considered an insult to be considered imaginative.  Despite that label, people stepped up and their perseverance gave way to innovation we would be lost without.  So, as we look at the world around us and reflect on our history, how can we NOT push the established communication strategy of higher education? To do otherwise would be an insult to the founders of our universities and our alumni community. 

Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint, visited campus recently and said: “Facebook is for people who don’t have a life and don’t want you to have one either.”  Perhaps this was said in jest, or Hesse eyes Mr. Zuckerberg as a competitor, but either was this is the attitude we have to rebel against if we hope to capture the attention of our alumni. We need to present social media as an opportunity to network and enhance our lives.  Twitter isn’t about what someone had for breakfast; it’s about following people in your industry who can help you be better at your job.  Facebook isn’t about irrelevant status updates, it’s about building relationships with like-minded individuals, groups, or pages that provide engaging and compelling content.  How many dictators have to die before we respect the power of social media?

If we don’t evolve with the world around us, how can we expect our alumni to take us seriously as a cutting-edge institution?  Let’s remember we’re not telling them to join Facebook, they’re already there.  All we’re doing is providing a community where two-way communication builds the world they WANT to see, not the one we demand they see. 

In the 20’s it was alcohol, in the 50’s it was communism, in the 60’s it was rock n’ roll, in the 70’s it was… well who really remembers the 70’s. Throughout time a cultural shift has always triggered alarm in a percentage of people who like “the good old days”. We cannot extinguish the flames of our imagination just because some people find change to be scary.  What we CAN do is articulate our strategies that will repel skepticism at every angle. 

The truth of the matter is communications will continue to evolve at a rapid pace regardless of whether or not it receives an endorsement from higher education.  Institutions seem worried about outside perception should they jump on board with social media.  What should be of greater concern is being perceived as obsolete. We can’t just revel in our own expertise; we need to be proactive in spreading our knowledge both internally AND externally. As social media managers we’re on a never-ending quest to obtain more followers, but you can’t have followers without being a leader.

During the past few months, several peers at other institutions have asked me for my job description. Typically, I just forward the job description my supervisor posted when he was hiring for my position, but lately I have been thinking about how hard it is to determine whether or not someone would make a good social media or community manager. There aren’t too many people out there with a bachelor’s in social media, so determining who is worthy of owning the keys to your institution’s social media castle can be a challenge.

While living and working in Hollywood for seven years, I met many talented people whose jobs couldn’t be further from their career aspirations. I’ll shoot straight with you—I was one of those people. With a degree in video production and ambitions to write and perform comedy, I spent my days working as a production assistant for Nickelodeon. If you’re not familiar with the entertainment industry, production assistant is short for “shut up, do what you’re told, and feel lucky we’re paying you.” The skills I had developed in college grew dustier with each passing year. Just when I thought my life would be devoted to meeting the demands of 10-year-old divas, something interesting happened.

(Keith Hannon circa 2005)

Facebook and Myspace were just beginning to fight it out for online social supremecy, Youtube was starting to heat up and most relevant to me, social gaming was creating online communities at an unprecedented rate. Anxious for a change of scenery, I decided to roll the dice on a new gig with an online game publisher looking for someone with sports journalism experience.  I would be the new community manager of its sports-themed virtual world. In college, I was the voice of the Ithaca college football team for four years, a sports anchor for the school’s TV station and an intern at the “Best Damn Sports Show Period.” I was excited to be back in a sports-centric industry. My only experience with virtual worlds was the five minutes I had spent in Second Life before a guy approached me and asked if I knew where he could get a gun. I was hoping this position would be a little more wholesome.

What I thought would be a sports writing job turned out to be much more. Learning the online community management business opened my mind to a whole new world of entertainment possibilities. All of a sudden, that dusty communications degree was alive and well as I began crafting content to engage more than 300K monthly uniques! Fast forward a couple of years and I’m staring down the barrel of parenthood. Instantly the City of Angels becomes undesirable. Luckily for me, Cornell’s alumni affairs office was looking for a community manager and was willing to take a chance on a Hollywood drop-out.

Most community managers agree that each social network requires its own unique touch. Spreading one piece of content across all of your networks is a sure way to scare off your followers. While the content should be different, the goal is usually the same—to tell a compelling story. Whether recapping an event, highlighting an alumnus in the news, spreading a campus press release, gamifying a piece of nostalgia or producing a video, community managers are storytellers. The specific platform dictates HOW we tell the story and that’s the real challenge.

Certainly enthusiasm and familiarity with the tech sector and with social media are important, but I’m of the opinion that it’s crucial to find someone who can tell a story both in 140 characters and in a 1:40 video. In alumni affairs and development, we frequently talk about how we have to compete for donors with other nonprofits. In social media, we’re not comepting directly for an alum’s wallet, but we are competing for their attention—which is a much more daunting proposition. With an endless number of distractions on social media platforms, mobile devices and the web, it’s imperative that we craft an engaging story to draw them in. To be successful, you need someone who knows how to not only communicate but also entertain.

Am I a tad biased? Probably, but I think you have to consider what we’re after. We want Facebook posts that generate comments and likes. We want tweets that are catchy enough to be clicked on and retweeted. We want videos that strike a chord in the hearts of our constituencies and that have the potential to go viral. The frontier of alumni events is clearly livestream and that requires someone who is both video production-savvy and story-minded.

Social media is a serious business but there are skeptics out there who fail to understand how important these channels of communication are to institutions. If social media is going to be taken seriously in higher education, we need people who can produce compelling content on a regular basis.

If you’re looking for a community manager, don’t look for someone with a lot of social media experience, because you could be looking for a long time. Instead, look for someone who has the production training, creativity and personality that enables them to convey the story that is unique to your institution.

In my past life as a Los Angeles stand-up comic, I was always envious of comedians who could do goodimpressions of celebrities and public figures. I was never any good at masking my voice, which became evident at an early age when I would fail attempts to prank call my friends. However, as I spent more time around the comedy scene, I learned that impressionists were not always held in high regard as many saw it as a cheap way to get laughs. Take a look at the casts of Saturday Night Live andyou’ll notice there always seems to be one person who is really good at impressions…and they’re also really good at not appearing in any other movies or television shows. When it comes to comedy, impressions fall under short-term engagement with the audience and don’t have much staying power.

These days, I stand face-to-face with impressions of a different kind. As a community manager working in alumniaffairs, I grapple with Facebook and Twitter impressions on a daily basis, and while the venue is very different, the evolution of how I look at them isn’t much different from the world of comedy. Facebook defines impressions as: 

“[T]he number of times a post from your page is displayed, whether the post is clicked on or not. People may see multiple impressions of the same post.”

Back in January, I started compiling a monthly social media report for our alumni networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Livestream) and quickly wore out my shoulder from patting myself on the back. According to Facebook, we had racked up more than 600,000 impressions! Break out the bubbly; this was SERIOUS engagement with our alums!

Now, it didn’t occur to me at first that the number of living Cornell alumni is only about 250,000 and that this number might be a little misleading. Unfortunately, as I continued to dig into our metrics, I discovered the harsh reality of impressions. 

I came across the amount of post feedback we received and the number of stories created off of the posts. These numbers were far lower than the number of impressions, and I became suspicious of what impressions were really telling me about our engagement. I decided to compare these two numbers directly to the number of impressions our Facebook page compiled in the same month. Below, you’ll see the slide I constructed to demonstrate the percentage of our impressions that actually engaged with a post.

I’m not sure this is an absolute apples-to-apples comparison because none of these numbers represent unique users. However, I think it provides a general idea for how many of those 700,000 impressions really count asengaged users. You could build the same slide for a Twitter account by looking at your number of impressions, then comparing it to your number of replies and re-tweets. 

Okay, that’s enough bad news. Let’s talk about the positive side: Even though I concluded that less than 1percent of all impressions are actually engaging with our content, that’s still almost 10,000 stories and other pieces of feedback created within one month. That’s a solid total considering how many events you would have to put on in one month to interact in-person with 10,000 alums. Now again, this is not a unique number of engaged users, so it would most likely be less than 10,000, but I think you get the idea. 

Like funny impersonators, impressions within social networks are not completely useless. Impressions do provide a general snapshot of how far your content is being spread. It is certainly worth tracking impressions from month to month to see what type of content results in your page/handle having a further reach. But when you really want to be honest with yourself and determine how much you have engaged your followers, look beyond the giant impressions number that Facebook hopes will entice you to spend some dough. We have to fight the temptation to take advantage of internal naïveté and report these falsely impressive stats. 

Saturday Night Live alum Darrell Hammond is a funny guy. He set the record for the most character impressions (107) in the TV show’s history during his tenure from 1995-2009 (another record). Yet how many truly memorable Hammond sketches can you recall? Conversely, it probably takes fans little time to recall a classic Will Ferrell moment. Ferrell’s characters were original and complex while Hammond simply mimicked someone we already know. We can’t be content with a number just because it’s large if we want to boast about our engaged community. We have to dig deep into the actual interactions we’re having with our followers, find out what makes them tick and use that to map our strategy. The complex and original content that triggers sharing and feedback is what we need to concentrate on if we hope to become a household name to our followers.

Then again, maybe I’m just a bitter ex-comic who lacks the ability to change the pitch and tone of his voice…

I love my job.  Working in social media for an esteemed institution such as Cornell is both fun and rewarding.  Like the other growing number of community managers, not only is the depth of my creativity tested on a daily basis, but I have the pleasure of being firmly entrenched in the ever evolving technology sector.  

After spending three days at the CASE Social Media Conference, I’m on a high from collaborating with other social media nerds.  However, in yucking it up with my peers, I was struck with the notion that engaging in frequent, high-level strategizing needs to be accompanied with the understanding that the people we hope to engage don’t have the knowledge we do.

While at the conference, someone spoke about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram.  During the discussion, the session leader made a comment about how they personally didn’t understand the value of Instagram or why it was so popular.  Now, one-billion dollars is a lot of money for anything, especially a photo sharing mobile app, but nevertheless the market has dictated it’s value, at least in the short-term.  During the conference similar comments were made about Pinterest, one of the fastest growing communities of all-time.  However, there are many out there who say Pinterest is a fad and will inevitably fail.  

When we have these discussions with our peers in the tech industry, we love to discuss everything from emotional value to a network’s user interface.  I love to spit-ball with my peers as much as anyone.  When you work in higher-ed you constantly have the ROI albatross hanging around your neck and conferences are a nice retreat where you get to be amongst your own for a few days.  But, to borrow from an underrated Harrison Ford movie title, these dialogues may represent a clear and present danger.

I represent the fortunate minority of people who make money using and learning about social technologies.  With that in mind, we have to remember the people we hope to engage (in my case alumni) don’t have the luxury of tasting every entree on the buffet table.  Where they are and what they use, is where we need to be and need to use.  We can’t allow our personal biases as social media “experts” to lead our strategy.  Certainly it is our job to be out ahead of technology so that we’re there when our constituency catches up, but getting too far down the road could be just as detrimental as being behind.  

The thing I try to remember is that it’s not about me, it’s about them.  It’s not my job to engage with people on the networks I deem worthy, it’s my job to engage with people in the space where the critical mass resides.  If I detect there are thousands of Cornell alums on Pinterest, it’s my job to be on Pinterest, even if I think posting pictures of clothing and jewelry is foolish, as long as Cornellians are there, I’m there.    

I have been a vocal opponent of Google+.  Google+ is the go-to buzzword for the casual social media enthusiast.  I like Google, I think they’re a swell company who has revolutionized the world, but my PERSONAL opinion is that Google+ is PRESENTLY a waste of my time.  It’s not that I don’t like the design or the tools it offers, it’s the fact my target audience isn’t there.  Sure, I created a page on Google+, just in case there’s a mass Facebook exodus, but for now I’m not devoting time to producing content for crickets and echos.  The difference between this decision and turning a cold-shoulder to a network like Pinterest, is that Pinterest has a growing, active community, where as Google+ does not. (well they claim it’s growing, but it sure doesn’t feel active)  This is an example of how our time and research should dictate strategy versus simply avoiding something because we personally are turned-off by it.

I’m a big fan of the NFL.  Sundays between September and February are sacred.  The only thing I detest about football is the over-analyzing we’re subjected to from former players and conceited journalists.  I find myself wishing the TV coverage was as much about what happened between the lines as it was about predictions, second-guessing, off-field crime, and twitter scandals.  [Side note: I also wouldn’t mind Chris Berman hanging it up.  The puns and catch-phrases are wearing thin, Chris.  Time to move on.] I worry we might see the emergence of social media pundits who spend their days acting as the tech-equivalents of Jim Cramer.  BUY, SELL…..DOWNLOAD!

I fear it could be easy for those of us in the social media business to be tempted to craft a strategy based on our “superior intellect” versus focusing on user behavior and their preferred method of communication.  There will always be networks we don’t respect, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people using said network that deserve our respect.

You never know, that filter “enhanced” photo you posted on Instagram or the university blazer you pinned might be the very thing that connects you with a high-level donor…

So, maybe I’m behind the game here, but over the past month or so I have developed a love affair with bit.ly.  For a long time I saw link shortening as nothing more than a way to maximize characters on my all-important tweets.  Link shortening is certainly NOT a new technology, but I felt the urge to light up a pack of smokes after I surveyed the analytics bit.ly offers.

The metrics alone are very nice: Clicks by the hour, referrals, location of those who click, virality (how much has the link been shared via FB), and total clicks on the aggregate bit.ly link.  For data nerd community managers like myself who obsess over every person that interacts with the things we post, access to this info brings more joy than it should, but the value here lies far beyond the numbers bit.ly spits out.

Like many of you reading this, I manage a Facebook page ( http://on.fb.me/tlczom ) for my organization, and like many of you I pay close attention to how many people “like”, comment and share the content I post.  For a long time I judged the page’s level of engagement by how many people were utilizing these three forms of feedback.  Many times I created and posted what I thought was some pretty compelling stuff, yet it would generate only a modest amont of likes and comments.  That’s when I get transported back to my days as an unknown stand-up act and begin to turn on the audience.  ”How dare you not like what I’m posting, you snobby alumni!”.  

As dissatisfying as it can be, sometimes the audience enjoys your jokes even if they don’t burst out in rib-tickling laughter and now, with the help of bit.ly, I know this holds true in the world of social media, too.  If you’re measuring your engagement JUST by the amount of comments, likes, retweets, replies, etc., you may be short-changing yourself.  Posting your content via bit.ly, whether it be an article, a youtube video, or anything else on the web, allows you to monitor how many of your followers are clicking that link, which proves engagement even if they don’t take the time to like or comment on the post.

As an example, I posted this picture showing the clicks over a 24-hour period on a link I posted on my Facebook page.  Facebook shows me in the first 24-hours the post received around 60 likes and 4 comments.  However, as you can see from the graphic, the amount of followers that accessed the article in the frist 24-hours was over 500! Now that I know that, I can say I engaged 8% of all followers with just one article.  That doesn’t sound like a huge percentage, but in the world of Facebook pages it is a solid number.

As previously mentioned, Bit.ly also shows you all clicks on the aggregate bit.ly link.  Looking at that, I can see how many people I sent to that link versus all of the people on the web who accessed that link via a bit.ly shortener.  In this case, the aggregate number is about 3,600 and the total clicks on the link I posted was 633.  That means I was responsible for roughly 18% of all bit.ly traffic to that site.  This helps you gauge what kind of influence you have overall.

Another nice feature is the ability to see the conversation that has been inspired by your link.  In the image below you can see how bit.ly presents tweets that feature your link and the aggregate link.  This is a great way to discover people who are interested in what you’re sharing.  Going through these names, there’s a good chance I’ll find a few Cornellians who I previously did not know existed in the Twitter-verse.  

This is nothing Earth-shattering and perhaps it’s something most of you are doing already, but for those who have measured their engagement simply by the mechanics offered by host networks, this is one lesson on how you can see more than what they’re providing for you.  Remember just because they don’t laugh, doesn’t mean you aren’t funny…but if they start throwing tomatoes, it might be time to rethink your content.