Exploring Social Media ROI with PostRank Analytics

As a blogger, have you ever wondered about the value of a single blog post? Sure, Google Analytics allows you to track event such as engagement, comments and contacts, but then there's social media. How much value is added by a Tweet on Twitter, a Like on Facebook or a reader's comment? Today we examine a web-based tool called PostRank Analytics that attempts to answer these questions and explore the social media ROI of your blog.

I was immediately intrigued when I first heard about PostRank Analytics while reading an Avinash blog post about quantitative and qualitative web analytics tools a few weeks ago. Measuring social media ROI is the mission of the three-year-old Ontario data and analytics services company. PostRank Analytics monitors and collects any social interaction between your blog and major social networks. PostRank then assigns a value to these interactions and creates reports to put everything into perspective. Let's take a look at a few ways you could use PostRank Analytics on your blog.

Your Social Engagement Dashboard

PostRank Analytics Overview dashboard provides a summary of social engagement with your blog. I like this view because it provides a history of several different types of engagement. You can link PostRank to your Google Analytics account to see web analytics metrics such as pageviews and time on page. But then you can also see the social interactions down to the individual Tweets and Likes that reference your content. The two types of information together provide a richer story of how people are interacting with your content than by just looking at pageviews alone.

The Overview shows summary and detail social interactions next to web analytics data.

Which Social Networks Work Best for You?

You may have many social media accounts across the web, but which ones are working? PostRank Analytics' Engagement Sources report in the Trends tab provides a breakdown of your most active audiences among your social network accounts. This report may influence how you choose to spend your time on each of these hubs.

It's clear I'm more of a Twitter guy than a Facebook fella.

Who are Your Biggest Advocates?

Sometimes you can get a huge spike of traffic, RTs and new followers when someone important in your niche shares your content. The Optimize tab of PostRank Analytics helps you identify the most influential people among those that share your content on social media. Find out who these people are and look for new ways to connect with them and to create content that appeals to them.

Here are some of my new BFFs on Twitter. Hi friends!

Which of Your Blog Posts are Most Engaging?

Have you ever wondered which of your blog posts have the highest social media value? PostRank Analytics' Analyze tab provides insights into each of your blog posts. This section is probably my favorite because it takes many different engagement signals - tweets, comments, diggs, likes, etc. -- and aggregates them into a single metric: engagement points.  It then lets you assign a dollar value to your engagement points to come up with a rough idea of your social media ROI. It may not be a perfect metric, but it's a really good something.

Objective measurement and trending of all social interactions. Now we're getting somewhere.

Brave New World of Social Media ROI

I don't think anyone has developed the perfect way to measure social media ROI, but I do like what PostRank has done so far with their social media analytics tools. What tools are you using to measure interactions between your blog and the social web? What measurements carry the most meaning? I'd love to hear your thoughts on PostRank or any other social media analytics tool in the comments below. Or if you choose to tweet your thoughts, I look forward to seeing them in PostRank Analytics.

Using Google Analytics to Measure Your Contact Form

A blog can be an excellent source of new business. But if you don't have a measurement tool in place, it can be difficult, if not impossible to know which topics are bringing in leads or sales. Did you know you can easily set up a Google Analytics goal funnel to measure your contact form? Today you'll find out which blog posts are creating new business as we look at creating a goal funnel to measure your contact form.

If you're not using goals in Google Analytics, you're not using the powerful web analytics tool effectively at all. Sure, visitors, pageviews and tweets are important measures of engagement, but what about conversion? If there's a business aspect to your blog, a lead or a sale is what brings in money. We should be just as, if not more interested in measuring these things, too.

Measuring Your Contact Form: Getting Started

Setting up goals on Google Analytics is a simple process that should take you no more than five minutes on most blogging platforms. We're going to cover how set up a contact form goal on a Squarespace blog specifically, but the general process is the same for nearly every blogging platform. Before we get started, please note that you must have Google Analytics installed and you must have Administrator access to your Google Analytics profile.

Ok, let's do this. Log in to your Google Analytics account and choose your active website account.

Go to the Analytics Settings page and select the Edit option from the Actions column that corresponds to the website profile you want to measure.

Once you're into your website's profile settings, scroll down to the Goals section and select the Add goal options from the right side of the page.

Google Analytics Goal Information

The first step of the Google Analytics goal setup form is entering information about your goal. Give you goal a name, make it active and position it within your profile. Be sure to select URL Destination as your Goal Type.

Google Analytics Goal Details

Most websites' contact forms behave in a very similar fashion. The web page someone visits directly after submitting the contact form is typically a simple variation of the contact form's URL containing the word Success or True or something like that. Submit a contact form on your own site to determine the specific URL seen after someone submits a contact form. Make note of the URL of this page. This is your destination, or Goal URL. 

Contact Form URL:

Example Squarespace Goal URL:

Now, take your goal URL and strip out your domain name.

Place this relative URL in the Goal URL field within the Goal Details section of the goal setup process. Also, make sure you've selected Exact Match as the Match Type.

You also have the chance to use a Goal Value. If you know your average lead or sales value, use that dollar figure here. If in doubt, just use an arbitrary number at first so you can at least see the relative performance of your website content until you know an exact average goal value.

Google Analytics Goal Funnel

Now let's set up a goal funnel for your goal. With a goal funnel, you can specify the sequence of web pages involved in a goal (e.g., Shopping Cart -> Checkout -> Payment Details -> Order Confirmation). Your goal funnel for your contact form process starts on your contact page and finishes on your Goal Url page. Simple right?

Enter the relative URL and a label for your contact page in the Step 1 row. Make sure to select the Required step checkbox. Save your goal.

Congratulations! You've just unlocked the real power of Google Analytics. You now have a goldmine of data pouring into the Goals section of your Google Analytics account.

Which Blog Post Lead to Contact Form Submissions?

Now that your goal is set up, you can start to collect data on which blog posts are converting into contacts. Looking in the Goals section of Google Analytics, you can see which blog posts are getting people to reach out and ask you for more information. You can also create and email custom reports to yourself that tell you exactly how you did each month.

What we've seen today is the step-by-step process on how to set up a Google Analytics goal funnel for a contact form submission on a Squarespace website. Although the steps may vary slightly on your specific website, the general process is the same regardless of what you use to publish your blog or webiste. Find your start and destination URLs and then carefully configure them in your Google Analytics account's goal setup interface.

Spending some time to set up goal funnels like this on your blog/website is the best way to use Google Analytics to its fullest potential. Set up your contact form goal funnel on your site. I bet you'll be surprised by what content is driving new business.

What goals do you have for your website? Could you use the steps described in this blog post to set up a funnel on your site? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Hey Twin Cities: Need Some Google Analytics Help?

What are your feelings towards Google Analytics, or web analytics in general? Does the mention of traffic reports leave you with anxiety or are you at home amidst your website's glorious data? As someone who believes strongly in the value of measuring web performance, it always surprises me that we're all not huge fans of web analytics. Then it occurred to me. Maybe people aren't fans because they don't know how to be. Maybe folks just need a little Google Analytics help to get them started?

One of my favorite things about online marketing is the ability to measure all of your efforts. Yet it surprises me how many website owners I run into don't have a tool like Google Analytics installed. Why would you not want to know what people thought about your articles? How could you not want to know what pages on your site contribute to sales and/or new clients? This must be stopped.

I'd like to coordinate a free gathering of some sort for those looking to learn more about Google Analytics in the Twin Cities. Maybe it'll be a meetup; maybe it'll be a full-on workshop; maybe we'll form a club. Who knows. The format will be picked based on the needs of those interested.

What would the perfect free Google Analytics help look like to you? If you'd be interested in attending such a gathering, fill out the brief questionnaire below. Also, be sure to leave a comment or tweet a link to this post with the hashtag #bpwga. Based on your answers, I'll see what I can put together to best meet the needs of those who respond.

If you live in the Twin Cities, here is your chance for some free Google Analytics help. Help me make it as useful as possible by passing this survey along to anyone you think might be interested.

A MN Blogger Conference Recap: Coffee, Directions and 20 Other Lessons

This past weekend I was among the 130+ extremely lucky people to be a part of the MN Blogger Conference. I initially didn't get a ticket because they sold out almost immediately. Then I missed another shot when I didn't win Top Rank's contest for a free pass. Finally, conference co-founder Arik Hanson took pity on me and let me volunteer my labor in exchange for a seat at the event. And after all that effort to get in, you bet I'm going to blog about my experience at the first-ever MN Blogger Conference.

If you were there Saturday, you probably saw me either directing foot traffic towards the CoCo entrance before the event or in the kitchen brewing coffee for the caffeine-craving blogging crowd.

If you think about it, I couldn't have asked for a better assignment from the impeccably well-organized Arik and his conference coordinating partner in crime, Missy Berggren.

Between the complete havoc that was the road construction on 4th St. in downtown Saint Paul and the fact that most bloggers love a good cup of fair-trade organic coffee in the morning (courtesy of Don Ball), I ended up thanking Arik and Missy  for the one-way street to a bunch of new friends and a chance to be a part of the MN Blogger Conference!

The Big List of Lessons Learned from the MN Blogger Conference

My head is still spinning from Saturday's event. I'm not sure there was a definitive theme, but there were countless perspectives, tactics and points of view that no doubt left everyone with a lot to think about. Let's come up with a list of all the lessons we learned. I'll start with this list of 20!

(I was only in 1/4 of the sessions so I'm going to need your help with this list. Make sure to leave any blogging tidbits of knowledge that you gained down in the comments.)

1. Blogging is about "unbridled narcissism," according to James Lileks. This joke got a huge laugh from the crowd in the opening keynote panel featuring popular Minnesota bloggers. What's that old saying about there being some truth in the best humor?
2. Clockwork President Nancy Lyons suggested that bloggers must think carefully about how much personal information they want to share because "the Internet is forever." Just exactly how much information is that? See #10.
3. Nancy also highlighted your blog's ability to help you establish credibility, regardless of how saturated your market may be.
4. It's practically a given that people will blog on Wordpress, which I think is a crying shame. Wordpress is a great for some, but there are many excellent blogging platforms out there. For example, I'm a user of and evangelist for Squarespace. I was particularly encouraged by Julio Ojeda-Zapata's breakout session, which featured a live Skype session with Leo Laporte (tech pundit/legend and advocate of Squarespace). If you're sick of Wordpress or still haven't picked your platform, make sure you consider Squarespace (You can hit me up with questions if you have them.).Julio Ojeda-Zapata talking about Squarespace!
5. Julio also pointed out the importance of being consistent with your personal brand. Use the same avatar/image and username across platforms/channels.
6. There are incredible deals on hand bags on the internet. James Lileks, you crack me up.
7. Bloggers are writers. There is no way around it. And writing isn't an ability, but rather a journey towards finding your voice and creating something that makes you proud. This point is thanks to my new friend and prolific blogger, Patrick Rhone. (I ordered On Writing by Stephen King this morning. Thanks for the tip and inspiration!).
8. And on that note, anyone can write. Teresa Boardman said it and she has a serious learning disability. Matt Logelin said it and he is a single dad, widower and self-admittedly types like a third grader. Anyone can write. Especially you.
9. Tony Saucier gave us this great quote to think about: "The next big thing in social media is journalism."
10. Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make extra money as a blogger, but it's important to consider moral and legal responsibilities when doing so. Each blogger is probably a little different in how they choose to participate and disclaim their involvement. For example, I chose not to embed an affiliate link to the book reference above because I haven't read it yet and can't recommend it. That's my stance on linking to products on Big Picture Web.
11. Jen Emmert added that she always asks for a giveaway for her readership if she's offered a product to review. I thought that was a great way to give back to your audience while still making a little extra on the side.
    A packed room at CoCo as the panel discusses compensation for blogging.
12. Heather King of The Extraordinary Ordinary suggested that you should share as much as you would tell your sister on your blog. 
13. Heather also suggested to listen to your heart's gut to know what to share and to how find your voice as a blogger.
14. The best blogging is a balance between niche and personality.
15. Bloggers are craving information on Google Analytics. Aaron Landry's session on the free web analytics platform attracted a ton of the conference attendees, all of whom were taking notes furiously as Landry spoke. (As it just so happens, friends, I also write about Google Analytics. Hit me with your questions and I'd be glad to help you out.)
16. 20% of conference attendees are building on rented land. According to the list of conference attendees put together by Ian Schwartz, 15 of the 72 unique blogs on the list are on a sub-domain instead of their own domain (e.g., <name>.blogspot.com instead of <name>.com). I can't think of a good reason not to be on  your own domain. Just saying.
17. Diane Kulseth will probably never need a resume or Careerbuilder.com. Diane's still in college and yet has a social media internship, blogs and attends industry events like the MN Blogger Conference. I wish I would have had the sense to do all these things ten years ago. If you're not engaged with your professional community, you're missing out... big time
18. Conferences are a great place to meet your online friends. After months of trading tweets and blog comments with the likes of David Erickson, Rick Mahn, Adam Singer, Joel Carlson, etc., etc., etc., I finally got a chance to meet these fine folks. Social media is great, but nothing beats a handshake, a good laugh and a great,synchronous conversation.
19. The human struggle is universal and you are never alone on the Internet. Thanks to Heather King and Matt Logelin for that point.
20. Volunteering is an underrated. Being a volunteer for the MN Blogger Conference felt like having a back-stage pass for the simple price of moving some chairs around and helping folks out throughout the day. Consider me signed up to volunteer at the next one too. Dibs on brewing the coffee. The coffee setup at CoCo on 4th St. in Saint Paul.

I could probably keep rattling off takeaways, but I'd like to hear your thoughts too. What was your favorite moment of the conference? What are you most happy to have learned/experienced? Also, how can Big Picture Web help you with future blog posts about Squarespace, Google Analytics or SEO? Leave a comment below and keep the excitement alive from the MN Blogger Conference.

10 Ways to Find Your Social Traffic Sources

If you've got a blog or website, you're probably trying to connect with new visitors using multiple social media channels. And when your content does go hot on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, you want to find the people that helped and shake their hand. Today we'll examine 5 easy tools used to find the people that are helping to make you popular in social media.

Social traffic is getting to be a hot topic in the industry right now. In fact, finding your social media traffic sources was an important takeaway from SES San Fransisco.

But to say it's important is one thing. How do you actually find your biggest senders of social traffic? Take a gander at some of the tools on this list and you'll find your most terrific tweeters and fantastic fans in no time.

10 Tools to Find Your Social Traffic Sources

1. Google Alerts - By now almost everyone has at least heard of Google Alerts. You may have them emailed to you or maybe you subscribe to them as an RSS feeder in your Google Reader browser. Either way is fine, but at this point, you should be using them to monitor your brand in some fashion.
2. Mentions - This is simple. Be sure to review your "mentions" stream for every social channel on a regular basis. Yes it's obvious, but it's easy to forget the basics in a world with scores of apps/services, each with infinite options for customizing how information is presented to you.
3. Backtweets.com - Did someone tweet or retweet a link to your website, sending a spike in unexpected traffic? Find out who by using Backtweets.com. Just enter the URL of the popular page and see a recent history of the people tweeting your content.
4. Google Analytics - That's right folks. Good old fashioned web analytics can tell you a lot about your social media traffic sources. Just look into the Referring Sites traffic sources on your reports.
5. SEO Site Tools - Want to use Backtweets.com and save a bunch of steps? Download the SEO Site Tools Chrome extension to automatically embed social research tools like Backtweets.com into your Google Analytics content reports. 
6. Topsy.com - Using Twitter Search or Backtweets can be frustrating with Twitter's limited search history. Topsy.com to the rescue! Topsy built their own database of tweets, making the task of examining historic tweets a bit easier.
7. Klout.com - Let's say you're a little more popular and want a macro view of your biggest social media advocates. Klout provides this and many other Twitter profile tidbits in its robust tool set.
8. Advanced Twitter Search - Never underestimate the power of using Twitter's advanced search to dig through large amount of tweets and re-tweets.
9. Google Realtime - Just recently announced, Google Realtime is Google's new way to search through the social web. Do a search for your name, brand or content and see what comes up.
10. Social Monitoring Tools - Of course, if you're a bit more sophisticated and have a budget, there are a ton of social media monitoring tools, Radian6 and Trackur to name a few, in the market right now that will deliver up-to-the minute reports on what's being said about you.

What are You Using?

Are you using any special tools or techniques to find your social traffic sources? Have you found ways to thank and promote them in a special way? Share them here in the comments below! Also, I realize that my list is a little biased towards Twitter and web searches. Can you share additional insights about finding your traffic sources on other social networks (e.g., Facebook, Linkedin, or Youtube)?