For our Friday platform post we’ll be talking to one of our “super users”, Chuck Hemann of WCG.  Let’s face it–if Radian6 had a calendar showcasing our brand advocates, Chuck has earned his spot on the cover. If you haven’t had the chance to check out his blog, do so now, then come back to us when you’re done.

In a nutshell, Chuck is easy to talk to, extremely knowledgeable, and uses the Radian6 platform like an extension of his own hand when it comes to grabbing the data he needs. We talked for about twenty minutes, and this post shares the highlights of our chat, including his team’s focus and strategy for their clients. I only had seven questions prepared for Chuck, but once he started down one road we navigated quickly from topic to topic.

Strategy and Process

Chuck’s team, which is the analytics segment of WCG’s social media group, focuses on two major types of projects for their clients: analytics and engagement strategies. Their work is comprised of a few different themes, including online presence evaluations, influencer identification, and content gap analysis.

In auditing a brand’s online presence, Chuck’s team creates conversation blueprints that include not only analysis of a client’s online brand presence, but also provides a review of that brand’s competitive and general industry landscapes.

They also perform influencer identification with their Meme program, an influencer identification process that uses 27 different metrics from multiple channels to aggregate a brand’s top 50 advocates. This influencer ID piece is used to help develop strategies that allow companies to open up the lines of communication with those influencers.

The content gap analysis piece of the puzzle includes searching for top conversation and content themes around a client brand, then reviewing the client’s search terms as well. The results of that analysis are put up against the client’s website content to pinpoint gaps between external conversation and client-created content. This analysis produces a report that allows clients to rework their site and content to align with the conversation and search patterns of their own community.

Using Radian6

We also talked best practices, focusing on the metrics and widgets that matter most for the reports he and his team create. Chuck was quick to point out the very important fact that each client is different, and what works for one could vary greatly from what works for another, based on needs and goals. But once the profiles are built, he has a fairly consistent process established for starting the analysis.

Chuck said each dashboard he builds has no more than four or five widgets. He starts with two analysis widgets–one looking at share of voice and the other segmented by media type–then adds a conversation cloud to see any preliminary themes that stand out. The fourth widget is a trending graph (which he eventually segments by media type after taking a look at overall trends). With these four widgets he’s ready to dig in and start the analysis.

2011

To end our conversation we talked about 2011 and what will be coming down the pipe in terms of new strategies. We both feel the combination of web analytics and social media analysis will start become a greater topic of interest. The power to see what your social footprint is accomplishing for your website traffic gets us closer to solving the ROI conundrum we hear all to often about. Chuck even mentioned that his team is almost finished with their new offering in this area of analytics. We’ll be listening, and hope to bring Chuck back in the new year for follow up. I’m already looking forward to it!

Tags: Chuck Hemann, radian6 super users, WCG