Real time search engine, Sency, who we’ve reviewed previously, just launched 4 international search engines to help users browse real time content in other languages. The real time web is alive – there are over 50 million status updates posted to Twitter every day. With all of these updates, a slew of real time search engines have launched in an effort to help users see what is being said right now.

The great thing about real time search is that you don’t have to be a member of any social network to access the data. So, you can search the 50 million daily updates to see all of the current gossip and chatter in real time.  With this in mind, Sency launched a Spanish real time search engine, a French real time search engine, an Italian real time search engine and a German real time search engine. Offering search results in 4 new languages will make it easy for users to see what is being said in their respective language.

As more and more users flock to the web – and post updates which are released in real time – these types of resources will be of even greater use to internet users, business owners and marketers. Because if you want to see what is being said right now – a real time search is the easiest way to aggregate information across multiple networks.

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Technorati tags: social media, sency, marketing, real-time search, business

Facebook provides some pretty interesting statistics for business pages.  You’ve probably seen a little box on your page (viewable only by page admins) titled Insights with a number (and some stars) for Post Quality, the number of Interactions this week and the most active country.  Cool.  But what does it all mean?

If you click on the See All in the upper corner of the Insights box, or you access your Insights by editing your page and clicking on All Page Insights under the Insights box on the right, you’ll be taken to a page with some graphs and charts.  Let’s break it down:

At the top of the page, you’ll see some numbers that look like this:

This will tell you how many interactions you’ve had this week (this is any time someone posts a comment, likes, shares or posts something to your wall – basically any time they do something other than read your page), which is further broken down into how many likes (when people like a post), how many comments (on your posts), and how many wall posts (you’ve posted, not total). In the upper right corner, you’ll see a number with some stars – post quality.  This is a measurement of how engaging your content is – how many shares, likes and comments you get on how many posts you’ve done in the past 7 days (it doesn’t count any posts by others).

Next you’ll see some charts and graphs for fans who interact with your page:

The chart on the left will show you how many interactions, posts, likes, and comments there have been per day for the past 7 days.  You can also select to view charts for interactions per post, post quality, posts, discussion posts, reviews and mentions for the past 7 days.  This can give you some feedback on which posts have done better than others and what your fans are engaging with.  On the right you’ll see some demographic data about the fans who are interacting and posting on your page, which may help you tailor your message (and possibly your product).

At the bottom is another chart and graph for total fans of your page:

The graph on the left gives you an indication of how many fans you’ve gained and lost over the past 7 days, but also can show you new/removed fans, top countries, demographics, page views, unsubscribes/resubscribes and media consumption.  On the right you’ll see demographics for all your fans (whereas the top chart shows demographics for those that have interacted with your content in the last 7 days).  If there is a large demographic of fans who isn’t interacting, you may have an opportunity to try to tailor a message towards them.

Hope that helps give you some basics for understanding Facebook page statistics.

How do you use your Facebook Page Insights?

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Technorati tags: social media, analytics, statistics, marketing, Facebook, social networking, business

You’ve got a Twitter account and you’re tweeting and retweeting like a maniac.  How can you measure how well you’re doing?  Well first of all, what’s your goal for using Twitter? Increase sales? Collect leads? Knowing your goal is the first step for figuring out what you need to measure.  Once you have that, here are some basic measurements you may want to use to see how well you’re doing:

1. Tweets – How many updates you’ve made.
2. Average Updates/hour – On average, how many updates do you send out? (useful for measuring how close you are to the 80/20 rule)
3. Followers – How many people are following you.
4. Listed – How many times other people have listed you on a Twitter list.  This can be a nice measure of influence since usually people only list people they feel are informative or interesting.
5. Followers/Following Ratio – Very important measure used by a lot of people when they decide whether to follow you.  While they probably don’t actually calculate the ratio, they may not follow you if you have a lot more people you’re following than who are following you.  I tend to avoid people I feel are going for auto-follows and have more people they’re following than are following them.
6. Retweets – Another good measure of influence.  How often people retweet something you’ve tweeted because they want to pass it on (also gives your message a wider audience).
7. Mentions – How many times your Twitter username is mentioned – either in a retweet, tweet or conversation.  Good measure of engagement and influence.
8. Clicks – Requires the use of a url shortener such as bit.ly or ow.ly. This is how many times people have clicked on links that you’ve sent out.  Can be extremely useful for tying in Twitter with goals.  For example, if you’re following the 80/20 rule (80% good information + 20% promotion), and occasionally send out a tweet linking to your blog or to a promotion, how many people click on that link?

There are more advanced statistics such as influence, sentiment, etc., but most of those require a bit of calculation or a specific tool.  These basic Twitter statistics should provide you with a baseline measurement for how you’re doing and you can tailor your statistics to your specific goal.

What other basic Twitter statistics do you use?

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Technorati tags: social media, analytics, statistics, marketing, Twitter, social networking, business

Twitalyzer goes beyond most websites providing statistics on your Twitter usage, displaying 15 key metrics on an easy-to-use dashboard.  Other sites which provide Twitter statistics usually focus on followers (and follower growth), updates and followees.  While it may be nice to see the growth of your following in a graph, it’s much more useful to know how engaged your audience is and how influential you are.  Twitalyzer gives you a snapshot based on the past 7 days of activity, with trending information available for the last 14, 30, 60, and 90 days (and all time). Best of all, it’s free (at least for now).

Birdseye View

Once you allow Twitalyzer to connect with your Twitter profile, it analyzes your activity and how much your audience is engaging with you and spits out a beautiful dashboard with 15 stats: Impact, Engagement, Influence, Generosity, Clout, Velocity, Retweeted, Retweeting, Referenced, Referencing, Updates, Followers, Following, Lists and Hastags Cited.  Each with trending information (going up or down with some visual information about how much).

Using Twitter as a conversation and engagement tool is important, but it’s been difficult to measure the impact of that time investment.  When working with clients, it’s important for them to be able to get some indications of how well they’re doing and where they can improve.  That information has been available in the past, but Twitalyzer organizes a lot of great information in one easy-to-read dashboard. Once Twitalyzer has been analyzing data on your profile for awhile, you’ll be able to see graphs of trends for all 15 statistics.

Influencers

Knowing who the influencers are in your network is important for being able to leverage them to get your important messages out, as well as knowing who you should turn to for opinions and assistance.  Twitalyzer give you a list of the top 25 influencers for your profile ranked by their impact.  You can also see the impact, engagement and number of followers for every influencer, as well as their retweets for the past 7 days.

You can also see who the top 25 tweeters are that are sending you messages.  These are the people who are trying to have a conversation with you, so it’s a good idea to keep track of them – especially useful for companies. To see who you’re spending time conversing with, there’s also the top 25 tweeters who you’re sending messages to.

Comparison

You may be wondering how you’re doing compared to others.  Twitalyzer gives you a list of the most influential people on twitter (which you can then filter for subjects , keywords and location).  You can also look up any Twitter user to get their Impact, Engagement, Influence, Generosity and Clout statistics.

Recommendation

Twitalyzer is probably the best Twitter statistics site I’ve seen.  The layout and design is well-thought-out and easy to understand.  The stats are meaningful and applicable to business concerns.  And it’s free (at least for now).  I’d recommend checking it out.

Have you used Twitalyzer?  What do you think?

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Technorati tags: social media, analytics, statistics, marketing, Twitalyzer, Twitter, social networking, business

PostRank ranks online content based upon social engagement (how much readers are interacting with the content by commenting, sharing, responding, bookmarking, etc.).  PostRank provides ranking services, blog discover, data services and also analytics.  I’ve had the PostRank plug-in installed for awhile and use it to see how individual posts are doing as well as see what the top posts are.  PostRank Analytics is a paid service ($9/mo or $99/year) which integrates with Google Analytics to provide an overall picture of how well your audience is engaging with your content.  I decided to give it a try to see what type information it was able to provide that I wasn’t getting through the plug-in.

At-A-Glance

From the dashboard, you can track up to 5 sites (maybe more with different packages) and see the average pageviews, engagement & twitter followers for the past 7 days (you assign a Twitter username to each site – although you could just use the same Twitter account for all the sites).  Once you click into a site, you’ll also see graphs of the Pageview & Engagement activity over the past 30 days along with links to daily engagement reports.

Engagement

Engagement is how often readers are interacting with your content.  PostRank assigns points for different types of interactions (like a Tweet is only 7 points but a comment seems to be 10).  It also uses these points to assign a PostRank to every post.  The plug-in only shows you the PostRank, but the Analytics shows you were the interactions were and links to them.  That’s nice information to have.

Events

Another nice bit of information are Engagement Events – or when users interacted with your content which is tied to pageviews so you can see if the interacts lead to more traffic.  These are displayed on a graph over time.  This could be useful for figuring out what times of day make sense to post.

Integration with Google Analytics

Once you tie your site in with Google Analytics, you’ll also be able to see pageviews, bounce rate & average viewing time for each post – which are nice to know when you’re evaluating the effectiveness of that post.

Missing Interactions

Both the PostRank plug-in and the Analytics seemed to be missing interactions.  Many times it would count my own tweets as interactions (which is fine), but it wouldn’t consistently count them for every post.  There were posts which only had a comment listed for engagement points, but when you drilled into the post, you’d see 4-5 tweets listed under conversation.  It also would count comments which were really Disqus (my comment plug-in) linking to a Tweet – but not all the time.  It also wouldn’t always count when someone else tweeted my content, which I know happened more often then what I was seeing in the statistics for the past 30 days.

Gaming the PostRank

It is possible that PostRank is working on their algorithms to prevent people from gaming the ranking – this may be why there’s inconsistency in my interactions.  But it also looks like you can post comments on your own posts and get some interaction points.  Why would you do this?  PostRank is used as part of the Advertising Age’s Power 150 blogs – if you can artificially inflate your PostRank by interacting with your own content, you can get a higher ranking.

Interesting But Not Worth The Dough

Maybe PostRank was having issues lately with their data and that’s why I’m not seeing all my interactions.  I’m simply not impressed enough with the available information to be worth $9/mo (and I was really willing to shell that out if the data was useful).  My main issue is the inconsistency in interactions/engagement.  If that’s not accurate, then most of the information is available to me for free through the plugin and Google Analytics.  If they’re able to fix the problem, I may give it a try again – there really isn’t single place to measure engagement otherwise.

What Do You Think?

Have your tried PostRank Analytics?  Are you seeing consistent results?  Do you like the information/value for the price?

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Technorati tags: PostRank, social media, analytics, marketing, social networking, business

Twitter’s 140 character limit brought URL shorteners (like bit.ly, ow,ly, etc.) into the limelight.  Now, URL shorteners are commonplace – many services and applications embed their functionality (TweetDeck, for example), and even Google & Facebook have come out with their own shorteners (goo.gl and fb.me).  A lot of websites and analytics programs rely on variables included in the URL to know more information about where a person came from (what site referred them).  When an URL is shortened and then shared across social media sites, does that mess up the statistics?  Does Google Analytics, for example, know where someone came from when a URL which includes extra information is shared on Twitter?

I do a lot of reading from my RSS reader – Google Reader.  When I click to a story, I noticed that the URL has a lot of extra variables on it to denote where the person came from (the referring website/service).

In this case, it’s saying that the source of the content is feedburner. There are also variables showing that the “campaign” (Google Analytics campaign) is “Feed: Sazbean (Sazbean)” and something about Google Reader. So, I wondered what Google Analytics thought of all this.  What happens if someone shares the page from this special URL?  Does Google get confused as to where the traffic is actually coming from?

I send my RSS feed from my blog to HootSuite for it to automatically tweet when I post. HootSuite has it’s own URL shortener (ow.ly), that it applies to feed URLs so that it can track when they were clicked on, etc. (HootSuite has pretty good analytics in terms of this, by the way). So, here’s how the URL looks in my Twitter feed:

The URL is now shortened to http://ow.ly/169ra7.  HootSuite says that it’s been clicked on 5 times.  When you click on the link and close the ow.ly toolbar, the URL is the same as the one from the feed (with all the extra variables).  So what does Google Analytics think about all this?

The only entrance sources (referrers) listed for the page are Feedburner.  Now, HootSuite says that the link was clicked on 5 times, but Google Analytics only shows 4 pageviews with an entrance source (referrer) for yesterday and today (only a fraction of the pageviews for the page).  This may be due to a delay in Google’s processing (which is usually delayed at least a few hours) and/or a difference in how the 2 services determine “legitimate” clicks (meaning perhaps 1 of the clicks on HootSuite was a bot from Google’s point of view).  It looks like Google may be attributing the traffic from Feedburner when at least some of it may have come from Twitter.  Google may be smart enough to figure this out (a lot of sites send the referrer information along in the background), in which case the Twitter visits may be showing up as something else – although Twitter isn’t listed as a referring source during that time period.

I searched around the web to see what I could find about this – most of the information about URL shorteners is just reviews.  Google apparently changed how it was sending some of it’s variables back in February 2009, but that seems unrelated (and they said it wouldn’t affect Google Analytics).  So, it may be that Google’s statistics in terms of referring sources is a bit skewed (not that you should take analytics at face value – they all have to do some type of estimating).

Does anyone know how Google Analytics handles variables in shortened and then shared URLs?  Do your statistics seem to be correct? I’m going to do some more testing of my own….

(photo by AliceJamieson @ FlickrCC)

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Technorati tags: social media, Google Analytics, analytics, marketing, statistics,social networking, business

As more and more consumers start using social media to talk about companies, it becomes even more important for those companies to try to keep track of what is being said.  Social media has increased the use of the web in terms of having real-time conversations (which used to happen mostly via instant messaging).  Now customers can start talking about something immediately and companies often need to respond quickly to preserve their brand.  Sency provides a window into the real time web and what is being said.

In keeping with the same minimalist design used by Google, Sency’s homepage has a search box, a list of “what’s going on right now” and a list of “what’s going on lately”.  The two lists of what’s going on seem to be pulled right from Twitter’s trending topics list.  Using Sency to search for “sazbean” returns two types of results – What’s being said about sazbean and Today’s popular sazbean links.  The first lists any mentions of sazbean – very similar to any Twitter search.  It only seems to include results from Twitter – I didn’t see anything included directly from my blog or other types of social media.  The second result – Today’s popular sazbean links is nice because it shows which links I’ve tweeted have been retweeted – although I believe you can get this information in the original “what’s being said about sazbean” search, it’s still nice that it’s broken out.  Overall, Sency’s real time search seems very comparable to Twitter’s search (or Bing’s Twitter search).  Although the breakout of the links is nice and I could see that as being useful in some circumstances.

Where Sency differentiates itself (at least for now), is in providing widgets with real-time search results based on a keyword.  So, for example, I could create a widget with a search for the keyword “social media” and place it on my blog.  Now, anything that’s said with that keyword will show up on the widget on my blog.  This could also be useful to provide real-time comments on a product or service (if you’re brave enough) – but you’d have to be wary of placing anything real-time on your blog since people could easily abuse it (by tweeting with the keyword to show up on your blog).  I think the service may be more useful as a tool for monitoring many different products and keywords – say on an Intranet or other internal-corporate site.

Another widget that Sency provides is popular links based on a keyword.  This is probably much more useful (and safe) as content to add to a blog or website.  I can create a links widget for the keyword “social media” and the widget will show today’s popular links which include that keyword.

In terms of a real-time monitoring and search tool, Sency only seems to provide Twitter results.  I’d like to see them incorporate results from other sources in order to stay competitive.  There’s also an opportunity to improve on the widgets by incorporating knowledge about language – meaning that the links widget provides links related to a subject of the “social media” keyword, so it knows that it probably should include links which include things like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Have you tried Sency?  If not, give it a try.  What do you think?

Related posts:

• The Real Time Web Continues to be Hot

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Technorati tags: social media, sency, marketing, real-time search, business

This is a guest post by Vincent Roman, friendly web developer & programmer at VincentRoman.com.

There is always a tendency on the part of business owners and stakeholders in the design and development process of a website to simply go ahead and implement what they like or think makes sense to themselves. Of course when you implicitely understand your own business everything to do with it just makes sense, but what about to the outsider?

Analytics are more than simply traffic stats so that you can see how busy your web site it and what kind of search terms and sites are driving visitors to your site, they are also useful for understanding the user journeys individuals take around your site. They are a great way to optimise your site so that the design, layout and functionality collectively optimise the impact and success, as defined by conversion rates. Setting end goals and monitoring their success versus variations on your web site is a great way to make sure your site is always on top of its game.

Off the cuff and ill-conceived changes are your worst enemies, they simply cost you money in terms of development time and in terms of potential success. Understanding how users interact with your web site through analytics stats, click maps and analysis of journey paths is the best way to dictate what you do and don’t do with your site’s form factor.

Making your site as logical and as easy to use for your clients and site visitors is the best way to start in building a strong and productive relatiionship. A well built and considered site is a great way to inspire people with confidence and to build a base from which to start.

Vincent Roman (www.vincentroman.com) is a full-time web professional with a track record building everything from experience sites to full blown business web applications. He draws on 5 years freelance experience and another 4 years working for successful startup Last.fm and award winning web production company Stink Digital.

A lot of businesses know that using social media is important, but they’re not sure how to measure how well they’re doing or how it’s giving them business.  Some effects of using social media are difficult to measure directly, since they involve building relationships and improving long term sales, but there still are some general measurements you can use to help you get a feel for how you’re doing overall:  Attention, Influence & Conversion.

Measuring Attention – Attention is a measure of how many people view your content and how long they interact with it.  How you measure this depends on the social media in question. On a website or blog, numbers such as visitors, unique visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, and time on site would be helpful.

Measuring Influence – Influence is a measure of how strong your voice is.  Think of it in terms of how often your content gets shared or passed on.  On a site like Twitter, this would be measured in terms of retweets (or original tweets of your content), tweets with your name (conversations people have with you), and clicks on links you send out.

Measuring Conversion – A conversion happens when someone takes an action you’ve asked of them.  So if you’re advertising a product and send people to a landing page where they can buy the product, a conversion would be when they actually buy the product.  What a conversions means can vary depending on your business, goals and particular marketing campaign (for example, it could be a signup for a newsletter or requesting a free report).  Conversions give you a measure of how effective that particular marketing campaign is as well as the landing page.  For example, you may be sending people to a webinar signup for Twitter, and you want to measure how many people who clicked the link actually signed up.  Conversions are very common on eCommerce sites where merchants want to measure how many people actually buy things from particular promotions, but they are a useful measure for any business.

Measuring helps you figure out what’s working, what to improve and where to spend your time, among other things.  Use measurement as a guide to help you.  Don’t get too caught up in the actual numbers (like checking them every day). Instead, use your measurements as an overall guide to how you’re doing.

How do you measure social media?

(photo by aussiegall @ Flickr CC)

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Technorati tags: social media, public relations, brand, marketing, branding, social networking, business, reputation, customer service

Updated-

1. Have a starting point to know how well your plans are working
2. Find where people are coming from to get to your site (blog, etc.)
3. Learn what’s being said about you
4. Find out where things are being said about you
5. Find your potential customers
6. Find your influencers
7. Find competitors
8. Figure out how you’re doing compared to competitors
9. Learn what’s working in your strategy (and what’s not)
10. Learn what to write about
11. Learn how to improve your product (or service)
12. Learn what time of day has better response
13. Learn what types of posts are more likely to be shared
14. Learn how you can help your customers
15. Learn where to devote resources (time, money, etc)
16. Learn what to change (marketing strategy, etc.) – from Tom Nixon

I’m sure there are other reasons, but that’s what I came up with off the top of my head. I intend this to be an ongoing list, so your help is appreciated: What other reasons are there why you should measure?

(photo by Memotions @ Flickr CC)

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Technorati tags: social media, public relations, brand, marketing, branding, social networking, business, reputation, customer service