Seven analytics reports to drive social collaboration

A guest article by Marlee Long of Intlock.

Over the course of the last few years, the enthusiasm for enterprise social platforms has continued to surge as organisations recognise the potential for increasing productivity and engagement. However, many organisations are still lagging in terms of mass adoption. How can enterprises inspire engagement with social platforms to make sure their goals come to fruition?

One course of action enterprises can take is to closely monitor usage levels in the platform, using this to guide further steps to inspire and invoke productive change. Organisations need to implement a high quality analytics solution to provide actionable metrics that can assist business stakeholders and IT personnel.

Tracking user traffic levels can be as simple as a few clicks and the generation of a report. Additionally, they can look into who’s creating the content, collaboration, and engagement buzz on the ESN, and who’s in need of more guidance, or training. Here we describe some of the reports that enterprises find useful.

Influential users reports

What they tell you: Reports about influential users give keen insights regarding who’s stepping up to the social plate, and who is still sitting on the bench. These types of reports will highlight who the evangelists are, along with their followers.

How to use them: Organisations can take the data gathered in these reports in order to develop strategy regarding who to empower. Those who already have a vested interest in social will likely be willing to work with others to increase overall engagement and promote social in workflow processes.

User adoption reports

What they tell you: Reports on User Adoption levels are a great way to get a holistic understanding of the adoption levels in the social platform. Discover how many users are registered within the platform, and how many groups are growing in the community.

How to use them:  If an organisation is taking great efforts to reach its highest social success rates, these reports will be useful for assessing whether people are taking full advantage of the platform, and whether there is an increase in adoption over time.

Inactive users reports

What they tell you: Are employees making the effort to actively be a part of the social platform? Get the facts about inactive users with these types of reports. See which users have gone through the registration process, but haven’t really got into social communication.

How to use them: With large amounts of time and resources invested in the social platform, as many employees as possible should be taking advantage of the opportunity for social collaboration. A report on inactive users can help to identify those who aren’t active, to target them and get them on the right track with training.

Top groups reports

What they tell you: A report reflecting the ‘Top Groups’ will give the names of the groups that exceptionally active. These types of reports even allow organisations to drill down to see the stats of which group membership numbers are topping the charts.

How to use them: Organisations can delve deep to observe discussions within the groups, and find which topics are of interest to users. Finding out what topics are bringing traffic and causing groups to form is invaluable for understanding how people are connecting in the social platform.

Content contribution reports

What they tell you: Content Contribution reports are highly useful as a tool for collecting and measuring usage data of user content contributions in the platform. This type of report should track video files, audio files, images, PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, Excel documents, and more.

How to use them: Content contribution reports indicate how many contributions are made hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even annually. The type of report is valuable for measuring what content format is of most relevance, so decision makers can understand user behaviour and preferences.

Most popular content reports

What they tell you: By scoping out the content that users are following, liking, and commenting upon, enterprises can get a clear understanding of what has clout in the platform and drives behaviour. A report on Most Popular content can provide the deepest insights so organisations can identify more than just content that is being used, but rather which content is meaningful to users.

How to use them: Once there is a clear idea of what the most popular content is, organisations can leverage this content to drive users to it.  By placing a link to the content on the homepage, users can easily have access to the content with just a few clicks.

Likes Reports

What they tell you: A report on ‘likes’ offers the facts on how many total likes your ESN carries over time, possibly ranging across hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually.

How to use them: Although generating ‘likes’ may sound silly at first, the effectiveness of the thumbs up is evident. The more that users praise one another, the more likely they are to continue to create content, and interact with one another in the portal. Positive reinforcement is known to generate productivity, so the more aware enterprises are of these levels in the platform, the more equip they are to inspire and engage with users.

Ignite the social buzz

With these seven reports, organisations can begin to take their first steps toward sparking true adoption and productivity in the portal. Analytics are necessary for understanding the current status of the social platform, which is essentially a prerequisite before taking any actionable steps to improve adoption levels. Only once organisations have gathered the appropriate information, can they then then act upon it.

Without having a clear-cut understanding of the platform environment, decision-makers are essentially firing shots in the dark. Analytics reports will assist organisations so they can make intelligent business decisions regarding their social platforms.

As social networks become more integrated, there will no longer be a distinction between the ‘intranet’ and the ‘enterprise social network’. Enterprise collaboration is inherently social in nature, so the sooner organisations become aware of the need for assisting their users in social unity, the better off organisations will be in terms of increasing ROI and improving productivity.

About Marlee Long

Marlee is the Marketing Manager at Intlock, developer of CardioLog Analytics, a leading Web Analytics software designed for SharePoint intranets, internet and extranet sites. Originally from Atlanta, GA, she now resides in the technology start-up hub, Tel Aviv. She has worked in the fields of Marketing and Digital Communications for the past two years, and is currently excited to contribute to blogs worldwide. Connect with Marlee via LinkedIn

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