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. Read the rest of this entry »

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When it comes to showing how something works online, it’s hard to beat a good video screencast. This is my new favorite content type.

I first realized the power of a good video screencast when I watched real estate investor/social media practitioner Chris Record‘s video on how to best utilize Facebook events. It was a perfect video on how to use a particular capability. I sent Chris an email asking him what technology he used. He graciously responded: Screenflow for the Mac (which I have).

I quickly shelled out $99 to download a copy and went to work creating my first screencast for a blog post at work. I had been planning on doing a post on how to utilize certain features of our universal communications software, VoxOx. Instead of writing the instructions out using well-placed screenshots, I could now easily record a short video. After a few practice tries (I did it in one take), here’s the final product.

Do you have a cool screencast to share?

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Twitter. Facebook. YouTube. Blogs. Digg. StumbleUpon. When it comes to social media, these are the tools and web sites that everyone seems to be talking about.

But there is another underlying set of Web 2.0 utilities that more people (businesses specifically) should be discussing — and using — for their ability to truly engage and mobilize a customer sales force.

Leverage Obama's Best Practices for Your Business

I’m referring to some of the companies, products and tips detailed  in the back section of the “Obama Playbook: How Digital Media and Social Media Won the Election,” a 30-page special report put out by MarketingProfs.com this month. I can’t list them all, but here are a few of my favorites (disclaimer: I helped write the report with the incredibly prolific MP.com staff writer Kimberly Smith)

• UserVoice – One of the best ways to get customers involved and engaged, is to give them direct feedback into your product or service. UserVoice makes it easy for customers to do just, allowing them to leave suggestions, and vote on the suggestions of others (wisdom of the crowds). Administrators can let consumers know the status of their suggestions, including whether any are being planned. People just want to be heard — UserVoice.com lets them do that.
• Pluck — These days, consumers expect some of type of social media interaction with nearly any site they visit. Pluck provides the actual tools to help provide these capabilities. Through its on-demand platform, Austin-based Pluck increases enagement through user comments, ratings, recommendations, reviews, photo and video sharing, forums, social networking profiles and more.
• Simplified Messaging –What, this isn’t a product! No, but for all its high-tech wizardry, the Obama’s success was rooted in something very simple: simple, clear, crisp messaging that resonates (hope and change anyone?). You can have the greatest product in the world, but if the messaging is muddled, getting your customers behind it is that much more difficult. As Obama campaign staffer Scott Goodstein notes, messaging that resonates gets pushed around a lot faster.

There’s much more in the report, including analysis of every part of the campaign, from Facebook to email marketing to mobile. There are also interviews with the Obama staffers who made history happen. Become a premium member of MarketingProfs.com today and get your free copy. Let us know what you think!

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Welcome to Engage Social Media, a results-oriented social media marketing and measurement firm. We specialize in social media monitoring and measurement — laying the groundwork for creating and optimizing successful social media marketing programs. Please have a look around the site and contact me with any questions.

- Erik Bratt

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