May 6th, 2008 — Analytics, Online Advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Tools
I know two places: Sphinn and gooruze. Both are created by online marketers for online marketers. Sphinn takes a Digg-like approach whereas gooruze takes a more social route. If you’re in the industry, both are worth a look.
My gooruze page: smcandrew.gooruze.com
My Sphinn profile: smcandrew on Sphinn
April 5th, 2008 — Analytics, Content Strategy, Social Media, User Generated Content
Limited by how many times a video has been viewed, publishers of YouTube videos have been left largely in the dark about how their video is consumed by the public. Last week YouTube made a step in the right direction for content publishers with the announcement of YouTube Insight. From the YouTube blog:
…uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.
The blog posting on YouTube’s site indicated that new features will be added to the reporting capabilities quickly. That’s good news—the initial roll out features are welcomed, but aren’t all that robust or useful—especially after the drought of information previously available. YouTube, here’s a few useful metrics to add to your list:
YouTube: if you need more ideas on what your users really want, contact me, or better, look at your user feedback over the past few years.
Oh, and one more thing. I’ve got enough places to track data. Why can’t we just get this data inside Google Analytics?
Also see:
January 30th, 2008 — Analytics, Reputation Management, Social Media, Tools
Following Monday’s State of the Union Address, both Time Magazine and Slate posted an analysis of its content on their site. Time bunted; Slate swung for the fences.
Time’s visualization went with a view which scaled the size of the words in proportion to their frequency. Think tag cloud. The basic visualization technique was posted under the heading “State of the Union by the Numbers”. Yawn.
With a simple explanation of how the technique works, a teenager could whip this out with a steno pad and a pencil. The hardest part would be making it through the whole speech. Reporting. Not analysis.
Slate Magazine took a very different approach. And they knew their results were in a different neighborhood than what Time and others were up to. Slate’s work-up relied on the slick natural-language processing algorithms baked into Crawdad Technologies’ software. A bit different than a simple counting exercise. An excerpt from the Slate article (A Computer Reads the State of the Union):
By natural-language-processing standards, simply counting the frequency of words is unthinkably primitive. As computers get better at understanding the structure of sentences—think about that corrugated green line under a sentence in Microsoft Word reminding you to avoid the passive voice—they can do a much more thorough job reading political speeches and offering their insights.
Needless to say, Slate’s experiment is just a bit more interesting. Looking at not only last night’s State of the Union, but all of Bush’s Presidential addresses, the software identified “four distinct voices” during his time in the White House:
The table below provides further insight.
For another example of their technology in action, visit the Wonkosphere, currently tracking buzz online surrounding the 2008 Presidential race. Learn more about Crawdad Technologies and their software at their web site, crawdadtech.com.
What does this have to do with online marketing? Good natural-language processing technology is a Swiss Army knife for measuring buzz—and its tone—online. Before stumbling across Crawdad I had planned to post about a few companies I’ve been interested in whose offerings cater to online marketers. As with Crawdad’s Wonkosphere, these solutions focus on monitoring social media outlets. A few of those companies: Nielsen (BuzzMetrics), Radian6 and Relevant Noise.
January 27th, 2008 — Content Distribution & Syndication, Social Media
Do Facebook Apps have greater value if they can exist beyond Facebook? We’re about to find out.
Last Friday on Facebook’s Developer News blog ,Wei Zhu unveiled the JavaScript Client Library for Facebook API which allows calling Facebook API’s from any web site. Currently in beta, the script library allows entire Facebook Apps to reside on web servers (web sites) beyond Facebook’s.
The post includes the simple instructions for acquiring and implementing the relevant code.
January 27th, 2008 — Analytics, Search Engines, Social Media, Uncategorized, User Generated Content
Marketers spend great amounts of time and large sums of money ensuring their brand is perceived in the correct light. Surprisingly, few practice any type of reputation management online.
If you aren’t familiar with it, online reputation management involves being aware of, and participating in, the perception of one’s brand online. Three factors which have propelled online reputation management to the forefront of digital marketers’ minds:
The power of consumer opinion
While the first two points above are largely accepted, the third—the amount of confidence consumer put in the opinion of other consumers online—is both powerful and highly relevant. An October 2007 Nielsen survey (Trust in Advertising - a global Nielsen consumer report) concludes that “consumers around the world still place their highest levels of trust in other consumers.” Included in the studies breadth of platforms and sources were:
“Recommendations from consumers” topped the survey with 78% of respondents indicating “they trusted - either completely or somewhat - the recommendation of other consumers.” How all platforms and sources fared can be seen in the chart below.
Clearly monitoring how your brand is being perceived (and participating in that perception) is valuable to any organization. Depending on your need, online reputation management can be handled in house or a digital marketing firm can be engaged.
