How are the metrics calculated?

 


Terminology

Metric Twitter Facebook Blog YouTube Linkedin Tumblr Instagram Slideshare Vimeo Pinterest TikTok
Posts # of Tweets # of Posts # of Posts # of Videos # of Updates # of Blogs # of Posts # of Presentations # of Videos # of Pins Videos
Comments Replies, Comments Comments* Comments* Comments Notes* Comments* Comments Comments* Comments Comments
Shares Retweets, RT/CC/via Shares Shares* Shares* Shares Reblogs* Embed* Shares* Shares* Repins Shares
Likes Likes Reactions Likes* (Likes+Unlikes) Likes Hearts* Hearts* Likes* Likes* Saves Likes
Followers Followers Fans (page likes) RSS Subscribers Channel subscribers Followers Followers Followers Followers Followers Followers Followers
ReachThe number of unique people who saw your content. Reach is getting from API for pages you own and as estimated number for pages of your competitors.
Conversation rateIndicates how many Comments/Replies on average each of your posts has received (e.g. Conversation rate = 5 means each of your posts has an average of 5 comments)
Amplification rateIndicates how many times on average each of your posts was Shared/Retweeted (e.g. Amplification rate = 5 means that each of your posts was shared 5 times on average)
Applause rateIndicates how many Likes/Likes each of your posts has received on average (e.g. Applause rate = 5 means each of your posts has an average of 5 Likes)
Economic valueShows how much Economic Value each visit from a social network brings to your site by completing your site goals (e.g. Economic value = $5 means that each visit from this social media site brings your business $5 in value)

* additionally collects data from other places besides the channel (e.g., Disqus, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg)

Formulas

Amplification rate = # of Shares/ # of Posts

Conversation rate = # of Comments/ # of Posts

Applause rate = # of Likes/ # of Posts

Economic value = Per session Goal value*

*Economic value is imported from Google Analytics and is calculated as Per session Goal Value (ex Per visit Goal value) for each social media site. The goals are the macro and micro conversions for your site (e.g. sign up, buy product, contact sales etc.). This metric simply aggregates all Goal Values of the Goals performed per session from each social network. You don't have to set up any specific goals. You only need to assign Goal Value to your existing goals (or at least one goal) otherwise Per Session Goal Value/Economic value will not be calculated. You can learn how to do it here.

Relative Amplification rate = # of Shares / # of Posts / # of Fans * 1000

Relative Conversation rate = # of Comments / # of Posts / # of Fans * 1000

Relative Applause rate = # of Likes / # of Posts / # of Fans * 1000

Relative metrics indicate how many times on average each of your posts was Shared/Commented/Liked per 1000 Followers.

Reach = The number of unique people who saw your content. Reach is getting from API for pages you own and as estimated number for pages of your competitors.

Engagement = # of Comments + # Shres + # Likes

Active Audience = Engagement / Followers

Engagement Per Post = # of Comments + # Shres + # Likes for each post

Posting Density = # of Posts, releated to Posting Density Matrix witch shows relationsship between amount of posts and engements they receive

Content Type

If the social networks like Facebook provide content type in API, we will get it directly. Otherwise we will use the next logic for example for Twitter, Blog etc. For YouTube all content marked as video, for Pinterest as Image. Image = content contains link to image png,jpg (or social networks api pro) and text

Video = There's a link to YouTube or Vimeo.

Link = any external link that is not lead to image or video.

Text = post content cotains only text (pools also marked as text) no images, videos or external links

Data collection sources

Metric Description
Likes From Twitter public API
Shares - From Twitter public API
- RT/CC/via - tweets which include these keywords are also counted as shares
Comments - From Twitter public API
- @username - tweets which include mentions are also counted as replies

Note: To get this data, we're using Twitter search. We do not include in the results accounts which were marked by Twitter for spam/suspicious activity. Characteristics of such accounts include:

  • Following more people than followers
  • Early accounts (created less than a month ago) or accounts with a few tweets
  • Someone marked account as spammer or blocked it

Such accounts won’t be included in a Twitter search results and thus, can’t be used by us in a metrics calculations. Nobody knows the exact algorithm for excluding accounts in Twitter search, so please keep in mind that this situation is possible.

Facebook

Metric Description
Likes From Facebook public API
Shares From Facebook public API
Comments From Facebook public API

Note: There's a thing called duplication. Facebook returns in its API more posts than it shows in a browser, so we're filtering and removing all the duplicates from the data.

Why metrics in my reports are different from the numbers I see on my Facebook page?

Here's a list of reasons that may cause data discrepancies for Facebook stats in your reports:

  • We refresh data once in 24 hours. This may cause temporary discrepancies.

  • When you have some specific geo-targeting settings applied to your posts which makes them invisible from Oregon, US (where our servers are located) or makes them private (invisible to non-authorized users or people who don't follow you). In that case TrueSocialMetrics will not be able to see these posts and include them in the reports.

  • When someone makes a private Share or Like. You won't see these private social interactions in your reports, because Facebook API doesn't provide information about such activities due to privacy reasons. But the % of such private interactions are usually really low, so it won't skew the analytics so badly.

Blog

Metric Description
Likes - Likes from Delicious
- Likes from Facebook
- Likes from Google plus
Shares Collecting from the web and top social sharing sites: Google search results, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin
Comments - Native Wordpress public API
- Comments in Disqus
- Comments from Facebook
- Comments from Facebook comment box

YouTube

Metric Description
Likes - From YouTube public API
- Likes from Delicious
- Likes from Facebook
- Likes from Google plus
Shares Collecting from the web and top social sharing sites: Google search results, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin
Comments - From YouTube public API
- Comments from the videos posted on Facebook
- Comments from Facebook comment box

Linkedin

Metric Description
Likes From Linkedin public API
Shares We calculate as Linkedin shares all appearances of your links on Linkedin, no matter were they shared by users from your company page update or posted by users themselves (e.g. directly from your site).
Comments From Linkedin public API

Why metrics in my reports are different from the numbers I see on my Linkedin company page?

LinkedIn has no full api for Сompany pages activity. So we use two apis: the first one provides only the links you post on company page updates and the second - the amount of each link’s reshares on LinkedIn.

For example: you’ve shared a link http://domain.com/mypost on your company page, then 2 people reshared this link and 3 other people posted the same link on their pages (not shared your link, but posted the same link by themselves). As a result:

  • Internal Linkedin statistics shows: 2 shares.
  • TrueSocialMetrics dashboard shows: 2+3 = 5 shares.

In other words, Linkedin shares are all appearances of your link on Linkedin, no matter how it was shared: by users from your company page update or posted by users themselves (e.g. directly from your site).

How to get more accurate results:

So if you want to see the stats including only your Company page updates’ shares, consider using unique parameters in the urls you share with followers:

Method Advantages Disadvantages
Use Google Url Builder to tag your links. That's an easy and automated method If you're using Google analytics, this method can overwrite the original visitors’ source with this custom campaign name used in tagged link. Data about sources will be not accurate in Google Analytics
Use url shortening services like http://goo.gl. As a benefit, url shortening sites show you analytics on how many people clicked on this link, their geography etc.
Add any parameter to the url, e.g. ?LinkedIn. It can be used as an alternative to Google URL builder because it doesn’t overwrite the initial source for users and still allows to see how many users visited site by this unique link. Because it’s done manually, it’s more time-consuming and can be done with mistakes (you may put the parameter in the wrong part of the url etc.). In Google analytics Content reports you’ll see duplicate pages with different parameters (e.g. http://my.com/some/page, http://my.com/some/page?LinkedIn, http://my.com/some/page?Newsletter etc.)

Tumblr

Metric Description
Likes From Tumblr public API + Facebook likes + Delicious
Shares From Tumblr public API + Collecting from the top social sharing sites: Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.
Comments - Comments in Disqus
- Comments from Facebook
- Comments from Facebook comment box

Instagram

Metric Description
Likes From Instagram public API + Facebook likes + Google(+1) + Delicious
Shares Collecting from the top social sharing sites: Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.
Comments - From Instagram public API
- Comments from Facebook
- Comments from Facebook comment box

SlideShare

Metric Description
Likes From SlideShare public API + Facebook likes + Google(+1) + Delicious
Shares From SlideShare public API + Collecting from the top social sharing sites: Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.
Comments From SlideShare public API

Vimeo

Metric Description
Likes From Vimeo public API + Facebook likes + Google(+1) + Delicious
Shares Collecting from the top social sharing sites: Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.
Comments - From Vimeo public API
- Comments from Facebook
- Comments from Facebook comment box

Pinterest

Metric Description
Likes From public API
Repins From public API
Comments From public API

Historical data: We can go back as far as the last 2000 pins.

TikTok

Metric Description
Likes From API
Shares From API
Comments From API

For more information please Contact us.