How Far Did That Tweet Go?

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Reputation Monitoring, Return on Investment, Social Media | 2 Comments

As I was perusing the intertubes today on my phone I suddenly received a flurry of notifications from my Twitter app telling me that 21 people had mentioned me (@jbsem.com). I usually don’t receive this many mentions in a week let alone all at once so I clicked to see what happened.

Apparently, @MariSmith, bless her heart, who’s a prolific tweeter (106,000 followers), just re-tweeted a blog post of mine (7 Keys to Choosing the Right Social Media Monitoring Tool). Another 20+ people then re-tweeted her tweet. All of a sudden a good number of people were clicking on the link to my post.

This got me to wondering how many people did this one tweet reach so I brought up my online tools and got to work. There are some robust systems out there that could have provided a complete view of clicks, reach, impressions, blog visits, etc., all in one dashboard but those cost some serious change.

So instead, I used a variety of free online tools that produce reports similar to the more sophisticated platforms; it just took a little more work and some knowhow. Here’s what I used.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is a URL shortener that shrinks long URLs into ones that are more conducive to 140 character limits. It also has tracking capability that measures the number of times people click on the URL and where they’re coming from. Using my URL http://bit.ly/j5xc3j it showed me that 42 people clicked on a bit.ly link to get to my post; 32 of which clicked on the link I created. This means 10 people used a different bit.ly link to get to my content.

TweetReach

This is a simple tool that lets you easily gauge the reach of a tweet, link, #hashtag, phrase or keyword and shows the reach and exposure data for those tweets. I typed in my bit.ly link and it showed that my tweet as of June 6 reached 129,137 people via 18 tweets; producing 142,627 Impressions. It’s a nice quick and easy way to see how far a tweet has gone. See below.

SocialMention

This is a free social media search and analysis platform that provides an easy way to track and measure what people are saying about you or your company across the web’s social media landscape. The tool lacks the customizable reporting capability other monitoring tools provide, however you can’t beat the price (free). This tool showed me that mentions, using my bit.ly link, had a sentiment ratio at an excellent 21 positive to 0 negative. This due to the fact @MariSmith included “LIKE!!” in her tweet. I love her. While I have serious doubts about automated sentiment analysis, it’s a quick and dirty way to see if good or bad things are being said about you. The tool also uses metrics like strength, reach and passion of the posts. You can click here to see how they define these metrics (just hover over the number and the definition will appear).

Google Analytics

I really don’t know what marketers would do without Google Analytics. It’s by far one of the best and easiest tools to use in measuring and monitoring your website and/or blog’s traffic. And its FREE. It provided me with metrics on the number of visits I received to my post, the time people spent reading my post, the number of people leaving the page without further clicks (bounce rate), percent of new visits, source of the traffic, etc. I won’t go into all the detail other than to say that this information is critical for me in determining what content is most useful and how well my content is being picked up by search engines. If you don’t have this program set up, just ask your web master and they’ll do it for you and give you access.

It was a fun day today as it’s always interesting to see the impact of your online social activities and it’s a great way to really understand the power of social platforms and the tools used to measure them.

7 Keys to Choosing the Right Social Media Monitoring Tool

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Minnesota, Reputation Monitoring, Social Media, Social Media Consulting, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Social media monitoring tools are essential for companies trying to gauge online conversations pertaining to their brand(s). There are numerous platforms to choose from; with almost 200 in the market place, it’s getting difficult to select the right one.

Below are some things to consider when choosing your platform along with a list of the most-used platforms out there.

Cost
Understandably, price is usually one of the top concerns, but be sure you’re getting all that you can out of the platform. Missing important conversations because your monitoring tool doesn’t pick up a specific channel can mean lost opportunities. It doesn’t bode well to be penny wise and a pound foolish with these tools.

Range of Coverage
All platforms cover the large social channels (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn) but not all cover bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit or specific forums and chat rooms. Be sure to find out all sites covered in a platform. Here’s a list of the most important social sites out there today.

Workflow Capabilities
If you have a multitude of departments needing to monitor and engage, you better figure out how you’re going to manage all these people and sites. Marketing needs to understand what customer service is doing along with HR, public relations, c-suite, sales, etc.

Integration with Other Applications
This is a big concern for companies with more complex social programs and highly matrixed structures. Be sure you know ahead of time what other applications you’ll be using before you select a monitoring tool.

Global Coverage
If you’re doing business on a global scale make sure you’re picking up conversations on such sites as Orkut, Renren, StudiVZ, Bebo and Kontakte, just to name a few. This capability isn’t cheep so don’t buy it if you don’t need it. Click here for a comprehensive list of global social networking websites.

Support and Training
Many of these tools are becoming quite sophisticated and are ever-changing to meet the newest platforms; thus, it’s important that the account team is keeping you up-to-speed on what is relevant to you.

Metrics and Reporting
You better be able to measure what you’re doing with social media or you’ll be out of a job fast. The big question always revolves around ROI so you better come prepared with numbers and killer graphs to impress the CEO.

Platforms
This certainly isn’t a comprehensive list but this should get you started in the right direction. For a comprehensive list with platform description, pricing and links check out Seamless Social’s list.

For a quick comparison of some of these tools click here.

For those looking for lower cost solutions, check out “10 lower-priced monitoring services for nonprofits & organizations“

Social Intelligence – Utilizing Social Media Data

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Jason Sem in Corporate Social Strategy, Reputation Monitoring, Return on Investment, Social Media, Social Media Consulting | Leave a comment

Its amazing to see how social media has so quickly transformed the marketing world, not to mention the realm of advertising and public relations. We went from talking about how to build a Twitter account a few years ago to now expecting social media to do some heavy lifting.

And much of that heavy lifting is in the form of data collection based on online discussions and engagement. Companies are trying to keep up with these emerging social interactions by monitoring what is being said about them online but can’t seem to grapple with the fire hose of data that is coming at them. Most of them are just trying to make sense of properly engage customers and haven’t quite figured out how to use the information that is coming back at them.

From what I see, most companies, not named Ford or Dell, are still hesitant to really embrace social technologies and aren’t quite convinced of its relevance to their business. Either that, or they haven’t the faintest idea how to craft and implement a strategy that incorporates branding, business lead generation, quality customer service, and consumer insight.

Many companies these days have a social media presence but they aren’t really tying it to their overall business objectives. Its just hanging out there on its own. They throw up a Facebook page or sign up for a Twitter account but don’t really have a strategy on how they engage with people or what type of data they hope to glean out of social interactions.

Without any prompting, customers are openly sharing information that would otherwise have taken months of surveys and focus groups. And they’re doing it for free. This has prompted the growth of a relatively new field called Social Intelligence, which harnesses the insights found within social media data to better understand customers and inform marketing and business strategy.

McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s biggest consulting firms, as just recently partnered with Neilson to provide this service to clients, so you know there must be something do this. (Nielsen Joins Forces With McKinsey For Social Intelligence Consulting)

Social Intelligence is quite an easy concept but one that isn’t being fully utilized by most companies. It involves these three basic steps:

Monitoring social media
Collecting and analyzing the content
Using the insights to inform your strategy

Companies are just beginning to figure out the first two steps but have yet to figure out the third and, what I’d consider to be, the most crucial step. Zach Hofer-Shall, an analyst at Forrester Research recently published an article called Defining Social Intelligence which he encouraged companies to start taking online conversations seriously to better utilize the data coming from their social channels.

I think Zach and Forrester are on to something. Thus, you should be seeing more and more demand for services that link social data to business insights.

Here are some interesting articles I’ve found on the subject:

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