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.