Having worked at a web analytics company, I love analytics and the trends they reveal. To me, Google Analytics is like cat nip.

I’ve found another analytics toy that I’m nearly as fond of. It’s called ViralHeat, a cost-effective social media monitoring and analytics tool that does a nice job of tracking our social media activity and engagement across Twitter, Google Buzz and Facebook, as well video views and web site mentions. It’s a clean, easy-to-use tool that has become a key part of our internal reporting for VoxOx, a free desktop software that combines voice, video, text, chat, social networking, faxing, file sharing and more into a single interface. I wanted to share five reports we use to help us measure and analyze our social media efforts, specifically on Twitter.

1. Mentions Over Time — Late last year, we made a concerted effort to be more on Twitter where our target audience lives. But how to measure our impact, beyond a simple increase in followers? We began using ViralHeat and now routinely track mentions by day, week and month. This comes in particularly handy following product launches, where we can essentially track our “reach” into the “Twitter-sphere” based on total mentions. This simple report has helped us quantify our social media efforts to executive management.
2. Share of Voice — It’s great that you receive hundreds or thousands of mentions per month on Twitter, but how does that compare to the competition? Using ViralHeat profiles, I can easily calculate the number of mentions we get over time against that of our fiercest competitors to come up with social media share of voice (for Twitter). This is an extremely valuable statistic that let’s us know how we are doing against the competition.
3. Total Reach — This is another key statistic that I routinely track and report on. Total reach, or “total impact” as ViralHeat calls it, represents the number of people who potentially saw a tweet about your company. It adds up all the followers of those who tweeted about your company over a certain time period. For example, 500 mentions over the week may have a total reach of more than 300K+ Twitter users — it all depends.
4. Top Influencers — ViralHeat shows a nifty chart of top Twitter influencers by both volume, and by impact or reach. This can be very handy in understanding who are the best people to build relationships with, including those we should at least be following and engaging with on Twitter.
5. Sentiment Analysis — This is a tricky one, as I know automated sentiment analysis is tough to tackle and something even high-priced monitoring tools haven’t figured out yet. Still, ViralHeat’s Twitter sentiment analysis seems to work relatively well and helps keep track of positive, neutral and negative posts.

A Raw Analyzed Stream of Tweets Mentioning VoxOx

Also: this isn’t a metric per se, but look at the raw analyzed tweet stream for a quick glimpse of indivual mentions. It’s an easy way to pinpoint tweets that you may want to respond to, including potential customer support issues.

That’s it for now. Do you use ViralHeat? What are your top reports?

A Sample ViralHeat Report

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I’m a big Flip video fan from way back in the day – OK, only a couple of years ago, just before the company released its second major product version (which I waited for and purchased at Best Buy). I always admired Pure Digital Technologies, the Flip manufacturer, for its singular focus: making it easy and simple to upload your home videos to YouTube (through the use of a built-in USB plug). That’s all anyone in this social era wanted — at least for non-technical folks like me.

I digress, but not too far, because the other day I got an email advertisement from Flip (now owned by Cisco Systems following a $570M acquisition) promoting its holiday lineup. Something at the bottom of the email caught my eye: an offer to get an immediate $15 discount if I joined Flip’s Facebook page. So that’s how much a Facebook friend is worth, I thought.

It may not be as simple as that, but Flip is clearing investing in its Facebook and social media presence. The company, thanks in part to its promotion, is now up to 102K fans on Facebook – that’s a pretty large opt-in list of folks interested in engaging with the Flip brand.

I particularly love the company’s new “Do You Flip?” campaign, where they invite Flip users to upload their videos to their Facebook page. Then they display selected videos in their news feed. It’s a great strategy and a no-brainer — too few companies realize the value (and relative ease) of using social media to cultivate a community of brand advocates. It works in part because Flip is properly promoting its Facebook page across different marketing channels, such as its e-mail newsletter, and using incentives to get them there.

Flip Video's Facebook Page

From personal experience, the numbers back up social media investment.

For example, using Tealium social media analytics at my current job, we’re able to compare the behavior of all web site visitors versus those who just come from our social media initiatives (blog outreach, social networks, etc). In almost every category, from time spent on site, to page views per visit, to goal conversion rate, social media visitors are a far better source of traffic. It only makes sense – they are engaged.

Social media is the right marketing investment — perhaps even at $15 per fan.

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Many people tend to think of using social media monitoring to either affirm positive conversations, or turn around negative ones.

But there is a middle layer that companies are beginning to focus on: the “white space.”

The “white space,” as Blake Cahill calls it, is neutral comments within social media. These comments neither disparage a brand, nor compliment it. They may just mention the brand or its products.

Blake Cahill

Such innocuous comments account for between 65 percent and 80 percent of all social media conversations, according to Cahill, SVP of Marketing for Visible Technologies, a social media management vendor that is able to parse sentiment within conversations.

Increasingly, brands are starting to mine these neutral conversations to see if they might be able to spark passion and interest, and gain brand advocates.

Once you have gotten through the positive and negative comments, “there is still a huge number of conversations that are just white space,” Cahill said during a phone conversation to promote the company’s newest TruCast product version. “It represents an opportunity – you might be able to move them into your camp.”

“Moving them” begins with listening, followed by bringing them into the conversation in some manner.  Microsoft, for example, uses TruCast to pinpoint conversations among IT folks who may be on the fence about switching to the company’s upcoming Windows 7 OS, due out for the enterprise in August. Microsoft has a small team that engages and provides links to relevant information on Microsoft web sites (this case study will be featured in an upcoming MarketingProfs.com special report).

Regarding TruCast’s new version (2.8), the main capability involves geo-mapping, or targeting English-language conversations in different countries or regions. Cahill said this is valuable for big brands that want to monitor the differences in conversations and perceptions in different markets.

For more information, read the press release.

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SDNN.com Investor and Interim Executive Editor Barbara Bry

Following my post last week detailing some of the juicy story lines at SDNN.com, as well as providing some web measurement data of different news sites, I received an invitation via blog comment from Barbara Bry, interim executive editor at the online start-up, to tour the newsroom.

Sure, why not? I admire entrepreneurs, especially ones who try to tackle the turbulent news media industry. In addition, I needed to complete my SDNN.com trilogy, this being my third post on the subject. It was also a chance to be on the other end of blogger relations.

Bry, who together with her husband Neil Senturia raised more than $1M for the venture, met me at the gates of the fortress-like compound of XETV-Channel 6 on Ronson Road, where SDNN.com is housed, just before lunch. She gave me a quick tour of SDNN.com’s 2o-person editorial and sales operations (all nice folks), and we headed to break room where we sat down for a 30-minute chat/interview.

She defused my first question — What the heck happened to Ron James?! — before it ever came out of my mouth, with the not surprising “can’t discuss because of legal reasons.” Not even a little? Nope. Are you moving on? No comment on that either. (An email to Ron James got the same reply). But clearly, SDNN.com is moving on without James, the organization’s executive editor who was suddenly removed from his position just days after the launch.

Bry was eager to detail some of the upcoming things SDNN.com has planned, as well as dispel some anonymous blog chatter that SDNN.com would go under on April 10. Users of the site can look forward to:

• The launch of a radio station in early May (AM 1700) that will feature a morning drive-time broadcast called “A Conversation with San Diego.” The show will be hosted by Joe Bauer (he of Hudson & Bauer fame) and will also be streamed live from the web site.
• The launch of new section fronts for sports, business, lifestyle, politics, etc. The first two sections, sports and lifestyle, will launch next week, followed by 2-3 new sections every week until there is about 30 sections overall.
• New advertising vehicles, including a business directory listing service that will feature hundreds if not thousands of local businesses for free. For a fee, businesses can choose to upgrade their listings. Newsletter sponsorships are also planned.

SDNN.com Home page

Bry says the response from advertisers so far has been good, with inventory sold out for the first five weeks. In spite of the economy, she believes online advertising will continue to grow — it’s why she and her husband decided to help bankroll the venture. “We believe in the future of online advertising,” she said. “The numbers read show online advertising continues to increase. More companies are spending a larger share of their ad budgets online.”

She declined to say what SDNN.com’s initial traffic goals were, but by the end of the year hopes to average at least 3M page views per month, which would put the operation at break even, based on corresponding ad sales. Asked what SDNN.com will need to do to be successful in the long run, Bry took a moment to think before responding simply:

“We have to produce quality content on a day in and day out basis, we have to update the site frequently … and we have to generate enough advertising revenue to pay everyone.”

She touted SDNN.com’s commitment to “hyper-local” coverage, including multimedia content, as a differentiator against SignOnSanDiego.com, the web site of the Union-Tribune, VoiceofSanDiego.org, NCTimes, and SDDT.com, otherwise known as San Diego Source (the county’s first online news operation).

“We think about our viewer as being interested in three different places: where they live, where they work, and where they play. So how can we make help them make decisions about each of those areas?” she said.“Where you live you might be interested in the quality of the schools. Where you play, you might want to know where to eat and who is giving out a coupon.”

Asked why she decided to tackle a news media venture as her sixth start-up venture, Bry brought up the analogy of the horse and buggy around the turn over the century. People still need to get around, she said, they just wanted to do it in a Ford. She believes it’s same with news – consumers are transitioning from print to online. “I really believe what we are doing here is the future of journalism,” she said, noting the multimedia, multitasking capabilities of her nine-person editorial staff.

Other interesting tidbits from the interview:

• In a moment of reflection, Bry talked about how hard it was to raise the $1M needed to fund the start up, which she termed the toughest of any venture she’s been involved with. The reason: during the first week of fundraising back in October, the stock market tanked.
• She said James approached her and her husband about the venture last fall — both Bry and Senturia had met James while hosting a show about entrepreneurs on SignOnSanDiego.com’s Internet radio show.
• The launch of SDNN.com was delayed in part because of an inadequate content management system that couldn’t scale and handle the multimedia demands of the new web site.
• She said new CTO and COO Kevin Hall, whom she knew from her days at ProFlowers.com, is now building proprietary technology on top of WordPress blog software. “Because of him, we now think of ourselves as a media and technology company,” she said.
• SDNN.com editorial contributors, which include many of the well-known former UT staffers, are getting paid a share of the ad revenues based on the number of page views they generate.
• On SDNN.com’s approach: “We are going to have a bit of an attitude. We need to be trustworthy and credible. At the same time there is a little bit of irreverence.”

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Late last month, we featured Part I of an interview with Twitter comedian and social media/search expert Brian Carter. He’s the second part of that interview where he focuses on more serious-minded subjects such as how to best recruit like-minded followers on Twitter, how he uses Twitter for market research and how on he manages nearly 70 updates a day while still being productive. Check it out:

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