Twitter has grown into the third largest social networking site after Myspace and Facebook. It has become a very successful online marketing tool that is generating lots of website traffic and growing brands worldwide. But how do you measure and improve your success on Twitter? Thanks to Twitter’s open API, several free tools for Twitter analytics are now available that help analyze and improve your performance. These are the first generation of Twitter analytics tools, which will continue to mature and grow as adoption and demand increases.
Here are 5 Analytics Tools You Need to Succeed on Twitter:
The rapid growth of social media has created a strong demand for monitoring and analytics to measure performance, brand awareness, and online relationships in the social web. It connects you with the online community and is becoming one of the most powerful marketing channels. It is growing and evolving so quickly that social monitoring solutions are constantly playing catch up. Lots of solutions to measure your social channel are now available, and should be used to measure and improve your social strategy.
Here are 6 Social Web Monitoring Solutions worth considering:
The fiasco last April with Domino’s Pizza demonstrates the importance of social media to organizations today. Several months ago, a video of two employees performing what I surmise is the equivalent of 2 girls 1 cup in the pizza world was leaked (I refuse to watch the video because I enjoy pizza). This video went viral within minutes on social sites such as Twitter and quickly received millions of views.
People were voicing outrage through social sites such as Twitter, demanding an explanation from Domino’s. Unfortunately, Domino’s did not have a Twitter account set up and lost valuable time in posting a rapid response.
What can other organizations learn about social media from Domino’s experience?
These are the best online marketing blogs I have come across on the web. This list continues to grow with marketing resources I find particularly useful. The list is divided into SEO, Web Analytics, Social Media, and General Internet Marketing.
SEO
Daily SEO Tip - Informative SEO Tipcs by Ann Smarty and Loren Baker
Graywolf SEO - Popular and unique SEO blog by Michael Gray
SEO Book - Good readability, design, and content for SEO
SEOmoz - A dominant and very popular SEO blog
Alltop - Search engine headlines and articles from major SEO blogs
Search Engine Roundtable - The pulse of the search marketing community
Search Engine Land - A popular news site about search engines and search marketing
SEO Scoop - A community based SEO blog
Search Engine Journal - A search marketing journal updated several times each day
Web Analytics Blogs
Google Analytics Blog - The latest news, tips, and resources straight from the Google Analytics team
Occam’s Razor - My favorite web analytics blog by Avinash Kaushik
Immeria - An immersion in web analytics by Web Analytics Advocate Stephane Hamel
Web Analytics Demystified Blog - A leading education, guidance, and thought leadership blog
Omniture - The official blog of the leading web analytics tool in terms of market share
Web Analytics World - Manoj Jasra has some great insights and posts on web analytics
Anil Batra’s Web Analytics - Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising blog
Marketing Productivity Blog -Web analytics blog by a web analytics leader
Social Media
Mashable - By far my favorite social media blog, updated frequently and full of unique content
TechCrunch - Profiles, reviews, and news a wide range of interesting digital media products and companies
Read Write Web - Web technology analysis, reviews, and news
The Foush - The adventures of a new media strategist involved with the Obama campaign
Social Media Today - A social media and web 2.0 blog
PR 2.0 - The latest in social media, PR, and Web 2.0
The Viral Garden - Mack Collier’s influential marketing/social media blog
General
TopRankBlog - My favorite general internet marketing blog on the intersection of digital PR, social and search engine marketing
Seth Godin - One of the most popular blogs on the internet (with good reason), covering many marketing aspects
ProBlogger - Darren Rowse offers blogging strategies and tips for both novice and veteran bloggers
Copy Blogger - Copywriting tips for online marketing success
I recently read a wonderful article on the direction of social media by Jeremiah Owang of Web Strategy called Future of Social Web The Future of the Social Web: In 5 Eras. Jeremiah does a great job of outlining the past, present, and future eras of the social media.
As consumers increasingly adopt social web channels as a part of their everyday routines, it is the businesses and individuals that are able to implement this channel successfully that will gain the upper hand. Forecasting and preparing for the future is a key to success, and which is why I think his article is so useful and relevant.
Here is a summary of the past, present, and future of social media strategy and my thoughts:
