Two Twitter Surveys That Need 2 Minutes Of Your Time

I am sure that you all have heard about Twitter and many of you have a Twitter account. But do you think all the twittering is worth the effort?

I have designed two Surveys to understand how people measure the success on Twitter. I will make the results available on this blog and also Tweet about it (@anilbatra)

Survey 1: The intent of this short survey is to understand if and how people track URLs they post on Twitter. http://batraonlinetwitter.questionpro.com/

Survey 2: The intent of this survey is to understand the Click-Through Rate on Twitter URLs http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=1289844

If you can please twitter about this survey or post it on your blog that will be a great help.

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Comments? Questions?
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Free Social Media Monitoring Tools for Small Businesses

One of my blog reader sent me the following question in response to my blog post, Social Media Analytics Part I

Anil, are there any free tools for social media monitoring (twitter) that you can recommend? Tools, that a small business can use until they can justify the budget for one of the mainstream tools?

Short answer is "Yes, there are free tools for Social Media Monitoring". Below are two of the tools that I suggest.

1. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is one of the best free tool for monitoring the social media. Google Alert is an email alert service from Google that monitors news, blogs, twitter, sites, youtube etc. and sends you an email whenever a keyword, specified by you, appears in those places.

You can access Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts

Google Alerts provides 6 types of alerts - 'News', 'Web', 'Blogs', 'Comprehensive', 'Video' and 'Groups'. According to Google Alerts FAQ

A 'News' alert is an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.
A 'Web' alert is an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.
A 'Blogs' alert is an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.
A 'Comprehensive' alert is an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) into a single email to provide maximum coverage on
the topic of your choice.
A 'Video' alert is an email aggregate of the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.
A 'Groups' alert is an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.

I always use comprehensive so that it can cover all the sources. (Note: Recently Google has also started to cover Twitter feeds)




Alert Signup Page

An alert in my inbox


Google Alerts allows you to set the frequency of the alert notifications. There are three options
1. "once a day"
2. "once a week",
3. "as it happens"

I suggest starting with “as-it-happens” option and if you find yourself drowning in too many emails then scale it down to “once a day” or “once a week”.

2. SM2 – SM2 from Techrigy

SM2 has a free version. It is limited to 5 keywords that you can search on and only shows 1000 results but that should be enough for a Small Business.

There are few other tools that are under $15 a month. I will write about them after I have reviewed them.



Screenshot of SM2


If you need help with setting up any of these services please feel free to email me.

Comments? Questions?
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Upcoming Conferences and Events

I will be participating in following events this month. If you are attending any of these conferences we should meet. Send me an email at batraonline at gmail.com

1. Web Analytics Wednesday - July 15th
   POP will be sponsoring WAW in Seattle. I will be doing a short presentation on Social Media Analytics
   
   This is a great opportunity to network with other Web Analytics, Optimization and Online Marketing professionals from Seattle area in a very informal and fun setting.
   
   Please RSVP at Web Analytics Wednesday site or send me a note at batraonline at gmail.com (or @anilbatra on Twitter) so that they we know how many people to expect.
   
   Location:
   
   POP
   1326 5th Ave, Suite 800
   Seattle, WA 98101
   POP
   
   Date: July 15th Wednesday
   Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM


2. Moderator for Making Social Media Behave at OMMA Behavioral – July 30th
   
   The social media explosion has flooded the Internet with a mosh pit of user attitudes, preferences, and billions and billions of un-monetized page views. How can behavioral tracking and targeting technologies best leverage the social graph? Is behavioral targeting into social media inventory moving the needle for that segment’s notoriously low CPMs and ad effectiveness? Have any of the new data companies cracked the code in their attempts to leverage knowledge about social networking in places where these users really do pay attention to marketers? And have marketers really found effective and scalable ways of weaving their brands into online social activity? For years, behavioral technologies have promised many ways to solve the social media problem. What’s working?
   OMMA Behavioral


3. On the panel of The "Ins and Outs" of Measuring Social Media at OMMA Metrics & Measurements – July 31st
   
   It isn’t just about how many times your brand is talked about, but what exactly is being said. Social Media has opened up multiple channels for customers to speak their mind, ask for help and make decisions. Each word, action and comment that they make could be helping you or hurting you. This panel will explore how to measure and monitor your Social Media vibe in the online world by listening and measuring what your customers are saying to you or about you.
   OMMA Metrics & Measurement
   

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Retargeting 101

According to Wikipedia

Behavioral retargeting (also known as behavioral search retargeting, or simply, retargeting ) is a form of online targeted advertising by which online advertising is delivered to consumers based on previous Internet actions that did not in the past result in a conversion.

How does it work?

You visit a site, look at some products, maybe add some of the products to the shopping cart but then decide not to buy them because you need some more time to think about it. You close your browser and are done for the day. Next morning you go back to your computer and browse to a news site. As the page of that site loads so does an Ad that is from the site that you visited yesterday (where you looked at some products but did not buy)


Example

Neel visited Sketcher’s site (They engage in retargeting - http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=109038. He looked at few shoes, added one to his cart but then decided that he is going to look some more before he buys them. He was tired after long day so he decided to logoff from his computer and takes some rest.

Few minutes later he gets back on his computer but before he goes and checks more shoes, an article about online privacy in an email catches his eyes so he clicks on the link to open the webpage to read that article. As he browses to that article on NYTimes.com, he sees an ad from sketchers on that same page. The page content has nothing to do with the shoes but the person reading it has. Sketchers is retargeting to bring back the visitor who had left the site (sketchers.com) without converting (purchasing). The main idea behind retargeting is to reinforce the brand message and bring the visitors back to the site so that visitor can convert and become customers.




Shopping at Sketchers.com



NYTimes Serves Sketchers Ad

How does it work technically?

When a visitor visits a site (sketchers in this case), the site (sketchers.com) runs a JavaScript from a 3rd party ad network or an ad exchange, which (the JavaScript)then drops a cookie on the visitor’s computer. This cookie is usually anonymous i.e. it contains an identifiers to identify the visitor (computer) but does not know any personally identifiable information such as name, phone, email etc. of the visitor. As the visitor browses the site this JavaScript can collect the information about visitors browsing behavior and then tie it back to the cookie. All an ad network (3rd party) knows that cookie id 123ABC67NBZ looked at some product, put them in shopping cart and then left without completing the purchase. Most likely, it does not know that cookie id 123ABC67NBZ belongs to Neel (some retargeting products now are tying PII information too but most of them are still anonymous).

If the visitor then browses to another sites on the internet (NYTimes.com in this case) which also has a relationship with that same ad network (the relationship between sites and ad network gets complex but that’s beyond the scope of this post) i.e. this other site also has a JavaScript from that same ad network on their pages then that JavaScript(on a page on NYTimes.com) can read the previously set cookie to identify the visitor. By reading the cookie, the Ad Network knows who this visitors (computer) is (anonymously) and what sites this visitor (computer) was on, what products he looked at and if he abandoned the shopping cart or not and then serve up an appropriate retargeting ad.


Related Post
Behavioral Targeting 101

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Web Analytics Wednesday in Seattle

After a long hiatus, Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) is back in Seattle with a POP.

This is a great opportunity to network with other Web Analytics, Optimization and Online Marketing professionals from Seattle area in a very informal and fun setting.

Do we have a speaker or any presentation? Nothing planned yet but if you are interested in speaking then please send me your proposal for a 30 min presentation.

Do you have topic that you would like to discuss with fellow analysts? If yes, send me your thoughts as well.

Need another reason to attend? How about Free Beer and snacks.

Please RSVP at Web Analytics Wednesday site or send me a note at batraonline at gmail.com (or @anilbatra on Twitter) so that they we know how many people to expect.

Location:

POP
1326 5th Ave, Suite 800
Seattle, WA 98101
http://pop.us/#/about/what-we-do/optimization/

Date: July 15th Wednesday
Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

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Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position? Post your open jobs on http://www.web-analytics-jobs.com/
Latest Job: Senior Web Analyst at Vml (Kansas City, MO)
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Site: AnilBatra.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/anilbatra
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