Steps to Conducting a Social Media Content Analysis

As we move into Chapter five and six of "Measure What Matters", author Katie Delahaye Paine begins to talk about conducting a social media content analysis. It can sound very confusing, but luckily she gives a brief introduction and an easy to follow eight step process on how to conduct it.
Here's what she says:

1. Find the content.
2. Determine the type of conversation taking place.
3. Determine the visibility of your brand. 
4. Determine who, if anyone, was quoted in the item.
5. Determine sentiment and/or presence or absence of recommendations. 
6. Determine what, if any, messages were communicated. 
7. Determine positioning on key issues or battles.
8. Quantifying the authority of the writer or poster. 

Each of these steps come with a lot of description and information on how it applies to conducting a social media content analysis. According to Paine, ideally you would use a good statistical analysis package such as SPSS or SAS to determine correlations between conversations and web traffic or other outcomes. By keeping up with these steps and looking at trends over time, conducting a content analysis will come easily and you can read more about these tips and other great advice on measurements and social media through the book, "Measure What Matters".