With the prevalance of so many social media outlets, it can be overwhelming to follow what is going on.  On an individual basis, it may not matter to you if you end up using some sites more than others.  However, for brands and businesses it is now more important than ever to have an online presence and in this domain it is vital to have as many users, subscribers and followers as is relevantly possible.

For us regular online socialisers, Google has recently rolled out it’s Social Search which appears to aggregate search results relevant to us based on our online social profile.  Whether companies will be able to adapt this to their online strategy is yet to be seen so in the meantime what other means do they have of monitoring their online campaigns?

Many would argue that the only ‘metrics’ that need to be monitored is whether your brand is being talked about and whether your sales are up.  I agree with this to an extent however there are plenty of factors that can be examined when your online strategy fails to bring a return on investment:

Web Analytics

• Visitors/Unique Visitors -  don’t get these two mixed up.  The number of visits that your website has had will give an overinflated view of how popular your site is.  Some of these visits will have come from some people visiting more than once.  The number of unique visitors will give a clearer picture of popularity.
• New Visitors – measure the percentage of new visitors to your site to indicate the spread of your campaign’s influence.
• Returning Visitors – we all know that ‘content is king’ so a measure of repeat visitors will indicate how useful, interesting or functional your website’s content is.
• Page Views Per Visit and Bounce Rate - Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who arrive on one page and then never stick around to check out more pages.  A very high bounce rate indicates that there is something fundamentally wrong with the page (poor layout and design, error messages, accessability problems, etc).  If visitors don’t leave immediately then the average number of pages that people are browsing will be indicated with the Views per Visit metric.
• Number and Quality of Backlinks – a high volume of links to your site isn’t necessarily an reflection of the quality of your website.  Links from high quality, reputable websites are a much stronger endorsement of your product.
• New links to your site – the rate at which you acquire new links to your site will be a good indicator of interest in your site.
• Improved search engine rankings – the higher your website appears for certain search terms (particularly competitive terms) the more likely you are to attract a higher volume of relevant traffic.
• Increased Conversions – this is a good way of measuring the quality of your product and also how good the design and functionality of your site is.

Blogs

• Number of Subscribers - if you have something interesting to say, people will want to subscribe – simple as that!
• Number of Comments and Trackbacks – a high level of engagement and interaction with your blog is suggestive of quality content.  Trackbacks from other blogs and Twitter will show how many of your readers like your blog enough to spread the word.
• Frequency of Visits – this is another good indicator of how good your content is.  If you consistently have something interesting on your blog then people will eagerly return to see what else you have to say!
• Conversion rate – it is up to you to decide what consists of a conversion when it comes to blogging.  Perhaps it’s RSS subscribtions, file downloads, video views, product downloads or product sales.  On the other hand it could be pretty much any of the suggestions on this list!

Social Media ROI

• Influence - how is your social media exposure influencing opinions and attitudes?
• Engagement – are people interacting with your site?
• Bookmarks on Delicious - a high number of bookmarks on the popular social media bookmarking site, Delicious is a sure fire indicator of popularity.
• Twitter mentions/retweets – companies have been embracing Twitter in increasing numbers as it is simple to keep track about what people are saying about their brand although it is just as easy for negative views to be propagated as it is for positive views.  Just ask Ryanair.
• Number of Twitter Followers – this is a nice simple metric to measure how popular your Twitter profile is.  The most popular accounts on Twitter tend to be those of celebrities who engage with their followers.  It can be easy to fall into the trap of just ‘tweeting’ out your latest deals and offers.  The most successful brands on Twitter go out of their way to interact with their followers.
• Thumbs up on StumbleUpon – in a similar vein to Delicious, a large number of thumbs up on a StumbleUpon article will not only indicate popularity, but will also be a good way to exert influence on a wide audience.
• Amazon Reviews – the great thing about Amazon is that it allows customers to review products, allowing potential buyers to make a decision as to whether to purchase.  If you feel that your online presence is strong, then perhaps it is the product itself that is flawed or perhaps expensive compared to those of your competitors.
• Google Blog Search Links – if you have something that is worth talking about then a good way to find out what people are saying is via Google Blog Search.  The popularity and simplicity of blogging means that it is extremely easy to gauge the cross section of opinion.
• Facebook (Group) Members - like Twitter followers, if your Facebook following is substantial then you know that you are doing something right.
• Positive/Negative brand mentions – not only should you be keeping track of influence, you should be noting whether it is for the right reasons.  Positive mentions are of course flattering, but negative opinion will give you clear indications of where you should be improving.

Email Marketing

• Number of Emails sent out – very simply, the more emails that are going out the more chance they have of reaching the right audience.
• Delivery rate – you will be able to calculate the number of emails received by deducting the number of bounced email from the number of emails sent.  Do bear in mind that some email spam filtering software will stop even some legitimate emails from getting through.
• Actions - are people opening any links upon receiving your emails?  Keeping track of the click through rate will be an indicator of this.
• Unsubscription rate – the rate at which people are opting out of your mailing list may give you an indication as to the relevance of your product, or perhaps the means in which you are engaging your customers.

Online Survey

• Customer satisfaction – offering an online form for customers to fill in will be a good way to gauge feedback on your campaign and affinity for your product.  Such forms can often been seen as a chore to complete so it could be worth offering some sort of incentive for doing so.
• Referrals – an increase in the number of referrals you are receiving is a good indicator of influence.  Word of mouth is a powerful thing.

Virals

• Number of views on YouTube/Vimeo – people enjoy being entertained and informed.  A good viral video will spread like wildfire, often generating hundreds of thousands of views withing the space of a few days.
• Brand/company mentions in media - if your video is one of the few that gets a massive following then it will likely get picked up by the many media outlets that regularly report on popular online videos.  As they become less relevant and immediate, newspapers in particular are always looking for ways to fill column inches and regularly have features on what videos are popular.

Integrating your tweets into your blog

It’s a great way to show your twitter presence on your blog; new readers will instantly see what you’re tweeting about and can decide there and then if they’d like to follow you. This method can be used to integrate anyones twitter updates into your site, not just your own, so get creative and use it however you like.

Widgetbox twitter widget

This is a nice simple widget for your blog. It displays your last tweet, has a customizable colour background and has a nice feature to scroll through tweets at the bottom. People won’t be able to follow you directly from the widget though…

Official twitter widget

Slightly more features but still a little cumbersome. You can choose to show a HTML widget or a flash based one. We found that the flash based widget sometimes has a little bit of difficulty rendering and you can’t easily change its size. Your blog readers should be able to follow you directly though the widget and there’s a decent scroll feature to read through your latest entries.

Twitt-Twoo

You can update your status right from the plugin itself – a very nice feature, something that the big burly offical plugin can’t do. It loads in AJAX which means it doesn’t need to refresh your browser to work. This one gets the thumbs up.

Some more resources on this topic:

http://www.twitip.com/181-twitter-buttons-badges-widget-and-counters-to-help-you-find-followers/

Integrating a twitter search feed into your site

We’ve not seen many examples of this technique being used just yet but it’s certainly one to watch out for, it opens the door for many new opportunities. Sky news used a similar method to this in their news article about the G20 protests. Strangely, their use of the twitter application seemed like an admission they were no longer relevant as a news gatherer since twitter is more efficient. Using TweetGrid you can integrate a live twitter search directly into your website which updates as often as you like in the same way that Sky did with the G20 protests.

What could you use this for?

If you’ve written a blog post about peoples reactions to the G20 protests you could make that post all the more relevant and current by including a widget showing all recent tweets with the terms “G20 Protests” in them. As I write this there is a revolution taking place in Moldova, you could include a widget that updates with what people are saying about it using this code:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
/* widget config */
var jtw_search                 = ‘moldova’;  /* keywords or phrase to send to search.twitter.com and display */
var jtw_width = ‘auto’;
</script>

For business

If you were trying to sell a service to someone that they could then sell onwards you could include in your page a twitter search term showing how much people are interested in your service. Let’s say you were wholesale selling iPhone accessories, you might include a widget with the following to show that people are really tuned into the product:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
/* widget config */
var jtw_search                 = ‘iPhone accessories’;  /* keywords or phrase to send to search.twitter.com and display */
var jtw_width = ‘auto’;
</script>

So how does it work?

TweetGrid is a javascript which you call into your page and change the appearance of using variables but it’s not as complicated as it sounds. Depending on the permissions you have for posting  javascript directly into your blog this is a brilliantly simple solution; no installation and very little configuration is needed. Alter the keywords to what you’d like to search for then post the code snippet directly into your blog.

<script language="javascript">
	/* widget config */
	var jtw_search = 'keyword';  /* keywords or phrase to send to search.twitter.com and display */
        var jtw_width = 'auto';
</script>
<script src="http://tweetgrid.com/widget/widget.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

There are plenty of variables in the javascript to edit the appearance of the widget, you can get a good breakdown on what they do with examples here.

Monitter - Another Solution

Unlike TweetGrid you’ll have to upload some javascript onto your server to get it to work but the benefits are that you can style it with CSS and  it’s a little prettier. If you’re going to be using this method alot, Monitter is a better solution.

How else could you use this?

If you knew the bit.ly link being used to direct traffic to your blog, you could use that link as a search keyword and watch exactly what people are saying about the specific post.  Let us know how you got along with this method in a tweet including out bit.ly link, give your ideas for how you might use it. We should be able to show our readers your thoughts in this widget:

Two more interesting wordpress solutions

Twittar

If your readers are avid twitterers then this plugin should help. It will show your users twitter avatars in your comments instead of an empty picture. If your commenters aren’t on twitter then it will display a standard avatar.

Tweetbacks

Trackbacks show when someone links to your page with their blog, but tweetbacks can show when someone tweets about your article then display that information in a comment

That’s all

Let us know how you got on with these techniques and give our bit.ly link a tweet and test out our method for tracking conversations around a blog!

http://bit.ly/ig2cc