Going beyond fans and followers: Determining meaning and impact through social media measurement and analysis

How do you measure the impact of social media use in public education campaigns? What is the ROI? What is valuable about measuring these interactions? How do you communicate the value of social media to stakeholders and federal clients?

This session will discuss how the Military Health System generates meaningful qualitative and quantitative social media engagement data through a variety of tools and techniques and how that data are interpreted in light of its strategic goals. In addition, this session will highlight how to integrate traditional media with social media channels to create innovative approaches and spark action.

The session will highlight the Real Warriors Campaign, which is a multimedia public education campaign designed to combat the stigma associated with service members seeking mental health treatment. The Campaign uses Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Troop Tube, as well as traditional media channels to reach service members, veterans, and families and measures the effectiveness of these efforts using a wide variety of tools including Google Analytics, Radian6, TwitterAnalyzer, Facebook's insights, and more.

Participants will take away best practices in developing a measurement framework for organizational social media outreach including what metrics to track, how to track them and interpret them. Most importantly, they will know how to make the data valuable for media outreach, sustainability impact and stakeholder buy-in.