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 went searching for an old French colleague on Facebook the other day in hopes of holding a seamless chat conversation in French. Later on, I went looking online for my long lost Swedish relatives in hopes of speaking with them in their native tongue.

Impressed? Don’t be. I don’t speak a word of Swedish or French. I was simply emboldened by the VoxOx Universal Translator, a new capability of the VoxOx unified communications service that enables instant, seamless foreign language translations across SMS, email, chat and social networks (specifically Facebook Chat, MySpace Chat and Twitter @replies).

It really is a wonder: I select my language, my contact’s language, and then begin chatting, texting or emailing away. The VoxOx Universal Translator provides instant translation for both parties … to them, it looks like I speak perfect French or Swedish (or Cantonese or Portugese or dozens of other languages I can choose from). The best part is that only one person has to be using VoxOx to make it work. The service is also interoperable with every major IM client.

To Trekkies, the “universal translator” is a (plot) device that Spock and Kirk used to communicate with alien species. While instant voice translations may still be a way off, instant translations through electronic communications (chat, sms, email) is now here.

Watch the VoxOx Universal Translator in action below or download the service here. You can also read a write up in the popular blog, Gizmodo.

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Learn How Businesses Are Using Twitter to Further Their Marketing Objectives

Ever wondered how businesses are actually using Twitter to drive their marketing objectives?

Now you can read 11 detailed case studies on the topic thanks to a special report recently published by the good folks over at MarketingProfs.com, a trusted resource for more than 320,000 online marketing professionals. The report, which I wrote in April, provides specific details and examples of how diverse businesses — from Disney to Souplantation — are leveraging the micro-blogging service. The report contains exclusive survey data, the best tools to use, and seven tips for getting started with Twitter.

After reading the package, you’ll have a great understanding of how you can use Twitter for your business. One of my favorite case studies is how Red Door Interactive uses Twitter to drive in-store traffic on behalf of Souplantation, a salad buffet restaurant chain. Another is 12for12K, a social media charity, which cleverly uses Twitter to help a number of great and worthwhile causes.

Sign up for MarketingProfs today and get your copy of Twitter Success Stories. I’d love to hear what you think as well!

Enjoy.

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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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While many people view Twitter as a place for engaging in conversation with like-minded folks, or perhaps distributing their content, Brian Carter sees something else: a stage.

Brian Carter is Twitter’s resident comedian, delivering a stream of jokes and observations in 140 characters or less. While others are pontificating about social media best practices, including yours truly, Brian is quietly sending in his next pun, such as these proto-typical Tweets:

It’s a tough gig — there’s no immediate feedback, except maybe the occasional LOL, and of course, the space issue. But Brian pushes forward, determined to bring laughter to social media’s brightest stage. So far, Brian’s been a hit, having amassed more than 16K followers in less than a year’s time (compared to 13K followees). Part of the reason is that he’s also a highly respected search engine marketing and social media ninja for Fuel Interactive — he Tweets about that too.

Having enjoyed Brian’s off-the-cuff Tweets (view his favorites here), I decided to send him a few questions. He produced and sent back two videos of answers. Here’s Part I, check back later for Part II:

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How do you find people to follow on Twitter?

For me, I’ve found that one of the best ways is to search Twitter using keywords I’m interested in — words and phrases such as “PR measurement,” “social media measurement,” “digital PR,” “content marketing,” etc. I’m interested in these terms and want to connect with folks who share that interest. I’ll pick through the search results and look at different profiles and related Tweets and add people I think can add to the conversation. I’ve found it to be pretty effective, connecting with some great people.

This tactic works in reverse. If I’m searching for like-minded Tweeps using these terms, wouldn’t it behoove me to pepper in some of these terms in my own Tweets so people can easily find me as well? Yes and no. It makes no sense to throw certain certain terms in your Tweets in the name of optimization – you may show up in search results, but if it’s not meaty, people won’t care (or add you). However, it makes a lot of sense to think about your keywords if you’re delivering a substantive Tweet or engaged in a real conversation.

For example, a Tweet about measuring PR would be best served to use the phrase “PR measurement” than “PR metrics” or “measuring PR effectiveness” because that’s the term people are using by a wide margin. Likewise, the phrase “digital PR” seems to turn up better results on Twitter search than “online PR“.  More than once I’ve seen Twitter users promote a link to a story on “social media,” when the post is actually about social media monitoring or social media measurement. The point is, be specific.

Gaining followers is about engaging in conversation and having something new and interesting to say. It’s also about optimizing your exposure, including getting re-Tweeted, and increasingly, using the right keywords or phrase. Some of this may seem obvious to those with online marketing experience, but to others, maybe not.

By the way, I think I’ve just found a new keyword phrase to search for: “twitter keywords.”

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The buzz words and phrases being tossed around by many social media and PR professionals these days typically revolve around “listening,” “engaging,” “monitoring,” and “starting a conversation.”

Fine words all of them, but seemingly lost in this barrage of Web 2.0 lingo are words like “ROI,” “measurement” and “leads” just to name a few.

Why is that?

Case in point: I attended the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) in San Diego this week – a really nice, intimate conference with lots of great content. During a session about digital PR, the speaker (someone who was very knowledgeable) told the crowd that public relations isn’t about measurement and leads, it’s about influencing people. The speaker told the crowd that if your CEO asks about your bottom line impact, then you should tell him (or her) that’s not what PR is about (paraphrasing here).

When I followed up afterward with a question about how one tracks and reports success in the new direct-to-consumer PR model, the speaker talked about conducting pre- and post attitudinal surveys.

Sorry, but I just don’t believe that’s going to sell in the executive suite, especially during these extremely tough economic times. It’s also the wrong approach for marketing-focused PR professionals (not corporate communications) who need to embrace measurement, not continue to deflect or ignore it.

One of the problems to date is that PR traditionally has been a black box of measurement – quite impossible to track effectively. But with the rise of digital media and innovative new measurement and monitoring technologies, that is beginning to change. The effectiveness of PR and social media initiatives can now be tracked like any other online marketing campaign: in terms of traffic, conversions, leads and sales. That’s a new world, and one that most PR professionals aren’t familiar with yet.

One of my ROI-minded clients recently asked me whether all the press activity we’ve been generating recently has driven any traffic. It’s a fair question and one I can’t answer with, “well, PR isn’t really about generating traffic or leads.” In this day and age, that just doesn’t fly anymore. My client knows some of the intangibles of PR, but in these times, he also wants to see some bottom-line results for his money.

So, I’m currently piecing together a comprehensive report showing traffic and conversions from different online sources our agency has leveraged, including PRWeb, online articles, blog posts, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Facebook and more. Through new technology, I’m able to show traffic from both click-throughs (direct from a referring link in the story) and view-throughs (visitors who read an online article that contains no direct referring link, but still came to the site later on).

Because digital PR has such a profound impact on search engine results, I’m also showing rather dramatic monthly increases in organic traffic from Google and other search engines.

Is online PR as effective as search engine marketing – from a pure cost standpoint, probably not (I say probably because this is new territory), but it does generate significant results. Best of all, this data can now be placed in context of other online marketing initiatives, helping PR and social media gain credibility at the executive table, and also leading to actionable decisions that improve overall PR results.

I love the power of social media for its ability to engage people in entirely different ways.  Engage is, after all, the name of the business. However, just don’t let terms like “measurement,” “value” and “ROI” get lost in the ever-growing blitz of new buzzwords. These are words I’ve grown up with my entire professional life, and believe me, they never go out of style.

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As an increasingly avid Twitter-er, I’m always on the lookout for good Twitter tools and applications. Lately, I’ve come across a lot, thanks to a never-ending series of stories listing out nearly every Twitter tool in existence. I set about to find and test the ones that I feel are truly useful, and that you may not have heard of. Most of the ones I came up with and now use on a regular basis help me create better Tweets and find new powerful friends. So, at the risk of providing even more link-bait, I offer the following:

TweetEffect - TweetEffect is one of the few Twitter tools I haven’t seen much about, possibly because it’s billed as an “experiment” on the front page. TweetEffect enables you to see which of your posts results in changes in the number of followers you have, including losses. For example, it appears I lost a few users the other day over a (admittedly) rather innocuous post about the inauguration costing $150M. This is useful data and made me realize that you’re only as good as your last Tweet, and that you can’t take your followers for granted. Each post should be thoughtful and useful. Although billed as self-described experiment, TweetEffect shows promise.

Why it’s useful: Helps refine your Tweets and understand why you may be losing followers.

Catching Twitter Quitters

Qwitter – I have mixed feelings about Qwitter. On one hand, I’m sorry to see the last truly anonymous part of Twitter — being able to unfollow someone without them being notified — gone. On the other, I think Qwitter, like TweetEffect, is actually quite useful. It’s also got a great tagline and a icon to boot. Qwitter notifies you when someone un-follows you, and includes the post that might have caused them to leave. For example, @shoemoney gave me the heave-ho tonight after a post about alternative search engines. One problem with Qwitter is that it took FOREVER for the service to start working.

Why it’s useful: Lets you see which followers you may have lost, and why.

Retweetrank – One of the most useful indicators of whether your a successful Twitter user or not, is if your posts get “retweeted” by other users, i.e., someone takes your entire post and send it out to their followers and includes you as the original source. It’s the ultimate compliment and a true indication of a good post. Retweetrank allows you to see how you rank in the Twitter universe in terms of retweets.

Why it’s useful: Allows you to see your retweet activity and how viral your posts are.

Four Twooshes in the Bank

TweetStats – TweetStats allows you to get a firm grip on your Twitter activity. Simply enter your Twitter handle and you’ll get an array of usage statistics, including posts by month, average daily tweets, tweet density, who you reply to the most, etc. The thing I like best about TweetStats is their TweetCloud, which allows you to see in aggregated fashion, what you’ve been Tweeting about. Oh yeah, I’ve also had 4 ‘twooshes,’ which are 140-word posts. Snap!

Why it’s useful: Take a step back and get a clear view of your Twitter activity, including what you’ve posting about all these months.

Twitoria – I just came across this tonight thanks to a RT by @allanschoenberg, and I love it. Twitoria is a well-designed tool that enables you to which of the people you follow is slacking and perhaps not worth following. You can see exactly who hasn’t posted in the last week, two weeks, month, etc. I won’t name names, but I got some people who, uh, must be busy.

Why it’s useful: Refine your list to focus on the people who deliver valuable Tweets.

Twilert - There are a few tools like Twilert, but few are as well done. It’s reliable, accurate and looks great. Twilert is an alert service that notifies you when people mention your company, your product, or a specific topic, such as social media measurement.

Why it’s useful: Use Twilert to monitor conversations on the web and keep update to date on topics you care about.

Mr. Tweet - OK, so you’ve probably heard of Mr. Tweet, but dang if the Mister isn’t kinda useful. I’ve used Mr. Tweet on several occassions to find new people to follow. What I like best is that it provides all kinds of easy-to-read stats about different Tweeters, including who’s already following them, their following-to-follower ratio, and most importantly, the average number of Tweets per day (sorry, I can’t follow someone who Tweets more than 50 times a day).

Why it’s useful: One of the better ways to find people worth following and connecting with on Twitter.

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