Tag Archives: feedburner

Five Social Media Metrics Tools to Use

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When it comes to social media, and any other marketing strategy, there must be a way to calculate ROI in order to see whether or not the steps being taken and the tools being used are working to the benefit of the brand. One cannot tweet without checking to see that what they tweet is getting a response and engaging the target market. It’s important to know what type of blog posts are being read more, and what type of items being shared are working towards the overarching goal, whether it be more referrals to the brand’s homepage or leads for the sales team.

Here are five tools to help you and your marketing team see if your social media tactics are working for you…

1. Google Analytics

Now we know Google has some great tools including the Google Reader, but their Google Analytics is more than essential. It is a great web analytics tool to let you and your marketing team get a better insight into the traffic that comes to your blog and/or website. It is a great way to determine how effective your social media tools have been as referral sites. For example you can see where your Facebook andTwitter ranks among other sites in referring customers to your blog or website. And you can see how often people visit, how many are unique visitors, how long they spend on certain pages, and more. It is a great way to see when traffic was higher so you cancorrelate with a certain campaign you may have had going on at that time. For example perhaps you were tweeting about a great blog post that was about a certain type of topic which people responded more to than previous posts. This is a great thing to learn from so you can see what type of campaigns, posts, and more drive more traffic to your site.

 

2. Facebook Insights

Facebook provides analytics for Facebook Pages in order for brands to monitor traffic, “likes”, demographics, and more. Although the insights are fairly simple and standard, they are still helpful in determining what posts received greater engagement than others and what works better with your target market on that specific platform. Note: you must be an admin of the Page to see the insights/metrics.

 

3. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is not only a great platform for integrating your social media tools in one place in order to Tweet, Post, etc in more efficient manner, but it’s also useful for keeping track of your analytics. In the pro model (5.99 a month) there is a feature of creating reports in order to show your boss how successful your campaigns have been and how Twitter and/or Facebook are leading prospects/customers to your website and creating more traffic. It’s also super great for click data that enables you to see if those clicks translate into transactions or impressions on your other sites. Helpful? Yes. Awesome? Totally.

 

4. HubSpot: Keyword Grader

HubSpot offers some cool tools to their customers including the Keyword Grader. The grader allows you to measure numerous keywords in order to figure out which words are most relevant, have high volume, and optimize your website. The hardest part is determining the terms people are using to search for your products or services. Of course HubSpot has thought of this and provided Keyword Discovery to find the “best” keywords to optimize your site. In their words, “the best keywords are relevant to your business, searched often, and non-competitive.”

These keywords can then be utilized not only on your website but in your blog posts, tags, social media posts, and more. This tool is very helpful in figuring out how best tofocus your content around these keywords whether it be in your latest post or your next Tweet or your homepage. Last but not least you can also track these “search terms over time so that you know which keywords are driving actual traffic and leads, and helping you as you create more relevant content on your website or blog.”

 

5. Feedburner

A great tool that not only provides custom RSS feeds, but also management tools for your blog in order to measure how many people subscribe to your blog via email or via RSS. This is a great tool to stay on top of your blog, since so many people use feeds to subscribe rather than via email. You can see when they subscribe in order to see what post may have initiated this action.

 

These five tools are some of the essentials I use on a regular basis when it comes to monitoring my professional and personal brands.

What else do you use? Feel free to share in the comments section, as ROI is one thing we all need to measure, and the more help we get doing so, the better!

Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot. 

 

Launching a New Site = Pulling One’s Hair Out

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I launched my new site last Monday and had been planning for this launch date for a couple weeks. When launching a new site (like any product) you hope goes as smoothly as possible. Hope is the key word. Does it actually go that smoothly? Ha! That’s a silly thought.

I apparently forgot the wisdom of checking things not once, but twice or three times.What happened?

1. My Email subscription link did not work.

2. My RSS subscription did not work

3. My Facebook link went to a different “Pam”‘s page.

YIKES !!!

Then what?

1. Easy fix. Took me a minute to fix a Feedburner issue. (Thanks Lane for pointing this out).

2. Not an easy fix. Or at least not for me. Thankfully the awesome Mike Troiano alerted me to this issue. I almost had a panic attack thinking people couldn’t subscribe (when this is the way most people like to – easy and simple to do). I immediately contacted my friend who helped me set up the site. He unfortunately couldn’t tackle the issue until later in the day. I tell myself, “breathe Pam breathe!” The issue will be solved. It’s ok if you just tweeted out to the world and Facebooked about it and emailed all your friends that your site has been launched. They may come back later and subscribe….ha! Yes I freaked out. As I sit in my global branding class and freak out some more as my friend is unable to figure out the issue…I brainstorm all the individuals I know who have some web/coding smarts. I thank the many stars that I had formed a friendship with the great David Wells who solved my issue in…wait for it….10 minutes!!!!! I couldn’t have been more relieved. It may have taken all day, but that glass of wine at 11pm was well worth the wait. Thank you Dave – you rock! And you saved me a heart attack or two. Being 27, I think I am too young for that heart attack, just yet.

3. Quick fix thankfully – especially after #2.

So what did I learn? Check your links people. Check them not once, but twice! And preferably have someone go through them for you before you “officially” launch. This is what I would have normally done in a work setting…but woops!

At the end of the day all is well and I am breathing easy again.

“Breathe, Pam, Breathe….” :)