Social Media Monitoring for Dunkin' #part one

Ask any SMM agents and they will tell you that web-presence is crucial for the achievement of the brand's business objectives. However, just being on social media will not help a company with any of its objectives. To maximize their social media marketing strategies companies should analyze how the content that they put on the social media platforms resonates with the audience. This data will tell them how their brand is perceived by public, what and when they should post, whether they miss or get to the point. That is why companies need to monitor the social media on a regular basis trying to get an overall picture of what the groundswell has to say about a brand. You may ask how companies make sense of the enormous amount of information that is streaming from all social media channels. Let’s figure this out together.

In short it is still double D, though.

Dunkin Donuts (recently renamed as Dunkin’), an American quick service restaurant chain, may be a good case for a social monitoring project. But how active is it online? Let's delve into statistics!

The first thing that we may notice is the data, retrieved from Socialbakers, shows the same patterns on interactions across two social networks (Instagram and Twitter respectively) during a reporting period (September 17-October 16).

We see that the number of interactions rocketed at the end of September and then almost came to naught. If we take a closer look at DD's posts published at around this time, we may establish an interesting link between the social campaigns and the reaction of the followers to them.

Twitter post

Instagram post

So, now it makes sense. DD decided to rebrand its logo by excluding the second word from it. While almost 15K and 30K likes tell us that the rebranding was embraced by a lot of followers, it is not social popularity that SMM agents should pursue in the first place as it can't be converted into revenue. Larger reach can, though. That's why DD needs to encourage people to take an action and talk about the brand. Consequently, virality rate may be a better metric to look at. It can be counted by dividing the number of retweets by the number of impressions and multiplying it by 100% (the formula is taken from Hootsuite's blog). As far as the data on impressions is not available, we can use the total number of the videoclip views. So, the virality rate percentage of the Twitter post is 4810/670K*100 = 0.7%. Not impressive, right? Therefore, don't be misled by 'likes' and always look underneath the surface.

Conversational rate is another metric that can tell us more whether what the company is posting strikes the customers so that they want to participate in the dialogue. The higher it is, the more engaging the content is. CR per post can be counted by the same way as VR but the number of retweets should be replaced by the number of replies (this and further formulas are retrieved from Avinash Kaushik's blog). So, CR percentage of the Twitter post above is 1813/670K*100% = 0,2%. And if we track the later videoposts till October 16, CR fluctuated just between 0,1% and 0,3%. Obviously, Dunkin' should energize the groundswell more effectively.

Another social metric to be considered is amplification rate. Basically, it reveals to what extent all your followers are excited about your content that they are willing to share it with their audience. Consequently, it shows the potential of your content to be seen by the 2nd level network. For example, Dunkin' has 1.2 million followers on Twitter. Can you imagine what the reach will be if everyone retweets any of the posts? Well, unfortunately, it is not going to happen because AR percentage is quite low - 4810(retweets)/1.2m(total number of followers)*100% = 0,4%. It also tells us that only a few followers want others to know that they associate themselves with this brand.

This statistics explicitly tell us that the number of mentions gradually declined while the number of followers stayed stable which means that amplification rate even worsened over time.

Last but not least metric to be measured is applause rate. Why is it worth considering? Because it shows how valuable your content is to your followers. It is counted the same way as applification rate but you should replace retweets per post with likes. Consequently, applause rate percentage for the post about rebranding is 14932/1.2m*100% = 1.2% which translates into the tendency of the followers to be either indiffirenet or negative to what DD markets at them. 'Dislike' button would be really helpful in this respect.

Similarly, if we look at the statistics at SocialMention, we see that according to strength, reach and passion percentage for the last month, Dunkin' customers are not engaged to such an extent that they would want to display loyalty and let others know that you care about the brand.

The last tendency is taken from Google Trends for the period from Oct.17 till Oct.23. It is interesting how the search queries of the brand were gradually increasing from a value of about 25 to a top value of 100.

To establsih a link between the data and social media activity of the brand, let's open Dunkin's profile on Instagram.

On the 17th of Ocober the brand set the Halloween contest with quite a valuable prize. Since then people have been excited to win and, probably, searched for inspiration for their costumes on Google, frantically requesting in the search bar "Dunkin Donuts". This had been just an assumption until I looked at related queries which confirmed my guesses.

After all, Halloween is coming, thus, most of the brands should take the full advantage of it as well as other seasonal celebrations, and run creative social media campaings.

Good job, Dunkin'.