Monitoring Africa Investigates: Video and Social Media Metrics

An important part of this process is to monitor the impact that Africa Investigates is already having in the realm of online discussions. Since the launch of Africa Investigates, prominent blogs, news sites, and journalists have picked up on Africa Investigates work already.
We used tools such as Sysomos, Google YouTube statistics, and Radian 6 to monitor the impact of the first several episodes of Africa Investigates that aired on Al- Jazeera.

MONITORING METRICS

Video Statistics

We investigated the reception of Africa Investigates on YouTube. Some important things we noticed:

The number of views from mobile devices was quite high.
Most of the referrals came from other videos, and through a mix of blog referrals, searches, mobile phones, and embedded videos on popular websites and blogs both in Africa and in the West. This shows that Africa Investigates can create quality referrals from other videos that have generated enough interest go incentivize people to look at other videos. The video statistics show that part of the target market is reached but more work needs to be done to create quality referrals from other parts of the globe with organizations that would create a wider buzz.
The videos are accessed from Africa, for instance, the episode "Sierra Leone: Timber!" had a high amount of viewers originating from Sierra Leon

Social Media Statistics

Key Findings from Sysomos:

Between June and December, Sysomos found 73 blog mentions and 33 news mentions.
165,000 total web hits
Sentiment: 10% of the posts have been positive, 77% have been neutral and 13% have been neutral. Overall 87% of responses have been favorable
31% of online activity surrounding Africa Investigates has occured in the United States

Conclusions

A campaign is needed beyond Al-Jazeera to get interested parties to look at the videos. Steps that they can do include:

Create a Facebook profile and join Facebook groups to contribute their content to these groups. They currently have no Facebook presence.
Create a Google+ presence. They had 100 mentions on Google+.
Reach out to "Evangelists" and "Spreaders" to move people along the "Ladder of Engagement," finding people with a strong interest in the issues that they highlight so that the message can my spread to their networks.
Continuously monitoring their social media profile to see what is working or not.