Why isn’t my Facebook Page growing faster? Why aren’t people engaging more?

I’m gonna say it right off the bat, I believe growing a community or achieving higher levels of engagement with your audience is harder on a Facebook Page than on a blog or Twitter.

I usually hear this with clients and in random conversations. What is it that we fail to understand about them? Is it that we don’t really understand how the user interacts with a page or consumes its content? Do we know where this interaction happens, the Page or the News Feed? Do we see a “Like” as more commitment than a “Follow”? Are we leveraging all the available features and tools to achieve growth and interaction?

Are we supposed to deliver more in exchange of a “Like” than what we do for a Twitter “Follow”?

Today we review a few things that we might be lacking in our daily operation and what we need to do in order to build a growing and engaging community on Facebook.

What Are Your Facebook Goals?

Before we dive in, it is a big help if we have a clear picture of the desired outcome. Are you trying to generate traffic from your Facebook Page to your site or blog? Are you using the Page as a hub or final destination for your online strategy? Lists your objectives.

More importantly, do you have a clear objective of what you want your fans/likes to get out of the experience? What do you want them to walk away with?

I guarantee you that having these goals on lockdown will already help you with the following ten points. Here is the list of 10 reasons your Facebook Page is not taking off:

1. You Are Not Promoting It

Facebook has made it very easy for you to deploy assets that integrate with other platforms such as your blog (or any kind of website). Visit Facebook Badges for a wide variety of tools you can integrate including the Like button, Like Box, and even Facebook Comments or Login buttons.

The point here is that you not only integrate your blog/site with the biggest website on the face of the earth but you get to display promotional points on your property. Now the user doesn’t even have to travel to your Facebook Page to give you that precious Like.

2. You Are Not Posting Regularly

This one is a biggy. I’m also guilty since I tend to be more active on Twitter. No secret here, frequency builds momentum. With this I’m not saying you need to be posting stuff all the time. Have a plan and stick to it, 2 to 3 posts per day should be sufficient, then observe how people react and adjust.

Don’t over do it, find a good balance without annoying your fans.

3. Your Posts Are Automated

Some people try to automate content distribution by posting to multiple platforms at the same time using services like Ping.fm or integrating Twitter with Facebook. While I understand we’re trying to be productive, I have to say that I strongly disagree with this practice for so many reasons. To give you a couple of examples:

• Facebook users don’t necessarily like Twitter and when they see tweets they might get annoyed
• Facebook gives you options like adding a thumbnail to the content you’re sharing that are not always picked up by tools like Ping.fm (If you must post from a third party application, Hootsuite does a pretty god job). This might seem like a minor detail but people interact more with images
• The best timing to send a tweet out is not necessarily the best time to post something on Facebook, it might also be different for Linkedin, etc. (Again, Hootsuite allows you to schedule posts)

The best thing you can do is to manually manage your content and front-end interaction on your Page. Sorry I don’t have a magic solution for this one, I said before, Social Media is not automatic.

4. You Are Not Engaging Your Audience

If your visitors are not encouraged to participate they won’t. Ask them openly to participate and share their thoughts. Imagine if you could turn your Page into a Q&A forum in which you share your knowledge and expertise in your field to solve problems.

If you do this right, even when you’re sharing somebody else’s content, a discussion can get started if you share your thoughts on the topic at hand. Don’t just post a link, everybody does that already.

This point requires that you get some creative juice going on. Try to make it fun.

5. You Are Not Using Other Types Of Media

As opposed to Twitter where you are dealing with text-only posts, Facebook gives you the option to post different kinds of media from video to photography and even questions without having to follow a link and leaving your page. Leverage that, people engage more with visuals. There are tons of content you can share.

It’s very easy to embed outside content such as YouTube videos or go wild and create your own video right there without having to leave the page or importing anything.

6. You Are Not Posting Quality Content

I guess this is not exclusive to Facebook but the social web in general. Specially when it comes to sharing other people’s content, sometimes we make the mistake to share stuff that’s not relevant to our audience or it’s not good enough. People have to see you as a great resource.

Obviously when you post your own blog content, we’re talking top notch, right?

Content is not only links. Be a creator and craft your own shit, have a perspective on things. Be edgy. Be unique and post stuff that’s exclusive to your Facebook audience.

7. You Are Not Leveraging Customizations

One of the disadvantages of Fb Pages is that there is very little room to stand out visually and try to make a good first impression. That’s why you need to leverage every small opportunity to deliver a unique experience.

A perfect example is to have a landing tab to display as a welcome for new visitors. This is not only a perfect opportunity to introduce yourself and integrate a little branding, communicate what the page is all about and point the user in the right direction (like asking for a Like) but this piece of real estate is also great to integrate other elements like video or opt-in email boxes to build your list.

Leverage these opportunities, focus on conversion. Hire a designer or if budget is limited and you want to do something simple read the How To Build Your Facebook Landing Page tutorial to do it by yourself. Also take in consideration that we mostly talk about landing/welcome pages but you can create whatever you want with these tabs. In the example Nick Unsworth is using multiple tabs, the one I’m showing if called “Sweepstakes”. Be creative.

8. You’re Not Present

Another one that might seem like a no brainer but we’re often guilty as sin. If you’re able to get people to comment and interact with your content, you also need to be present to turn this comments into a live conversation. In other words, you need to host this puppy. You wouldn’t throw a comment or a question in a group conversation and walk away, right?

The problem here is that when you come back the next day to follow up on comments the person is no longer there. This is called “Front-End Interaction” and you need to have a plan to approach it. It is key if you want to build loyalty in your present audience.

A great solution for this is getting email alerts when somebody writes a comment on your page, that way you can react in a timely manner. Since Facebook seems to have forgotten that feature, you will need to rely on a 3rd-party solution. HyperAlerts does the trick with a simple web application that you setup in 2 minutes, connect your Facebook Page and choose the frequency of the alerts.

I have to give credit to my friend Antonia Harler for this one. She has a list of free social media tools you probably don’t know yet.

9. You’re Posting At The Wrong Times

A lot has been said about the best times to post content on different networks, for example, some say that rush hours on Twitter are 9am, 12pm and 3pm and you have more exposure at those times. Facebook is the same, people seem to spend longer periods of time during weekends and when they get off from the daily grind while Twitter on the other hand pretty much dies.

Instead of recommending best times for you I’ll suggest you experiment with different times and track when people interacts the most. This is a testing game and we’re all in different industries and parts of the planet.

10. You’re Not Paying Attention To Your Analytics

Most people I talk to spend little to no time observing web analytics for their sites or any other online platforms. I don’t blame you if you’re resisting it, it can be tedious and it gets worse if we don’t really know what we’re looking at.

We discussed this with Srini Rao on a recent interview for BlogcastFM and we agreed that we should not spend too much time looking at these numbers, there are far more important things to do. What I recommend as good practice is to allocate a small period of time for analytics each month and while you’re there make an effort to learn a little bit more.

Believe me, when you start to understand this not only is a bit more fun but you’ll be able to make decisions and actually see how testing different approaches can impact the outcome. When you a spike on your weekly interactions don’t focus on the pretty chart, focus on how you were able to deliver a better experience.

Facebook Insights has been improving a lot if you haven’t paid a visit in a while, there is sufficient data there to get to know your audience a little better and be aware of your performance.

Your Turn

So there are my 1,800+ words on how to make your Facebook Page take off. Now it’s your turn, what are your secrets for success? How are you engaging your audience? Or are you struggling with this? Share your thoughts or your questions in the comment section. I’m pretty sure you have something to say!

Elsewhere…

Check out this very cool interview I did for Deva Coach, I love how Sandi titled it Rebel With A Cause: Spotlight On SocialMouths. It’s part of a series of interviews she calls “Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things“. I’m not really sharing this with you because I did the interview (well, a little) but because I believe going through this set of questions Sandi puts together is a great exercise for yourself. Also to put back the spotlight on Sandi, if you don’t know her, this is a blog I happily recommend. Thank you Sandi!

Turning your blog into a profit center. It sound like a dream, right?

We’ll continue to talk more about these things here on SocialMouths, hopefully you can benefit from them.

In this post we’ll take a closer look at what I call a perfect setup for your online income powerhouse, in other words, the tools you need to run your blog as a business.

Notice that I don’t include advertising or affiliate programs as ways of blog revenue, it’s because I talk about blogging as part of a marketing strategy for business rather than becoming a full-time blogger.

One thing I will mention before diving into the list is that while none of these applications are free, they are very affordable. And since we’re already in the subject, I will also say that I do love the whole “Free” concept BUT (uuuh… the big “but”!), when we’re talking about our business, and I will assume we want to be successful at it, we should be open to invest.

So I’ll include the cost of each service and at the end of the post we’ll add it to see how much we need to spend in order to turn your blog into a true profit center.

Disclosure: None of these companies has asked me or pay me to review their products or services. It would be nice… but they didn’t.

1. MailChimp

Let me put it this way, an email list is a list of people that have said “Yes, I like you and want to know about your updates, events or products”. My preference at the moment is Mailchimp but there are also other products like Aweber, MyEmma and others.

When you’re shopping around for a system to handle your email marketing, you need to consider things like how it integrates with your blogging platform, what kind of metrics it offers, if you can connect to Google Analytics, etc.

Cost: With Mailchimp you can manage lists of up to 1,000 subscribers for $15/month

2. SalesForce

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is not always necessary, let me explain. If you sell a quick check out product such as an ebook for $24.99, people come to the site and pay for it then maybe you don’t need to capture any data other than what you get on an email subscription.

Now, if you provide services as a freelancer, let’s say web design, copy writing or life coaching, then it is important to establish a stronger connection with your prospect or client. This requires more information than a name and an email.

SalesForce can capture those leads right from your site.

Cost: The “Group” package which includes basic sales and marketing for up to 5 user costs $25/month per user.

3. Paypal

Not much to say about Paypal other than you MUST have it, like it or not. It’s been a while since Paypal became an online standard for payment processing, even if you had your own merchant account, Paypal should not be ignored.

Cost: Since you pay a percentage for each transaction you run, I’m not adding a monthly charge here. We’ll leave it open.

4. E-Junkie

E-Junkie is one of those “behind the scenes” kind of application. Some of you might not even know it. What it does is help you sell stuff online. It is an excellent tool if you are selling digital (downloads) products such as an ebook or an mp3 recording. It protects your file by being downloaded multiple times and it hides your url so it is not visible to the user.

You can also use it to redirect traffic to your own page if you want to host the file to download. E-Junkie also works for tangible products.

2 more things, it’s very cool that it makes Paypal part of its ordering process and lastly, you can manage affiliate programs for your products.

Cost: If you have 10 available products, e-junkie will cost you only $5/month including 50 MB of storage and 100 daily checkouts. You gotta be kidding me!

5. Flowtown

Email lists are usually very limited since we usually capture a simple name and email address. Flowtown takes that information and pulls all the social profiles affiliated with that address.

Don’t take this lightly, in my opinion this is pretty powerful, you just went from having an email address to a full profile that allows you to search and filter subscribers by different criteria. AND, having the opportunity to connect on different social networks with that person that just gave you his/her email address, that’s building community right there.

Two more cool things about Flowtown, first, if you manage your email lists with Mailchimp, you can now integrate Flowtown to add muscle to your plain mailing database. And second, the integration of Klout in their system so you can actually tell how influential your contacts are.

Cost: Flowtown packages start at $17/month and you have to add 4.5¢ per import OR, you can “pay-as-you-go” 5¢ per import, 250 emails/month, which means you’ll be paying $12.50/month. This is just ridiculous…

6. SurveyMonkey

You might be thinking what do surveys have to do with turning my blog into a profit powerhouse. Remember how for the last couple of years we’ve been talking about how social media is a 2-way channel? a dialogue rather than a monologue? Well, bloggers are changing dramatically and are becoming more and more engaging with their audiences. Technology also allows us to push the envelope and get more creative.

The concept of crowsourcing is huge, your community is now telling you what they want, with detail. We just have to listen. Tools such as SurveyMonkey or SurveyGizmo make it very easy and affordable to take those conversations with your reader and kick it up a notch, now you can ask questions directly and the best part of all is… your reader, prospect or existing customer loves being asked!

Cost: For $16.67/month, SurveyMonkey gives you an unlimited account, that means you can setup as many surveys as you want with as many questions as you want.

7. Unbounce

Pretty cool stuff here. Unbounce helps you build landing pages, track your traffic and conversion, run A/B tests and set up your own domains. They also have some pretty kick-ass templates that you can just grab to customize or you can create your own from scratch. You can run several campaigns at the same time.

This is a great tool for lead generation.

Cost: You can check it out by using the Free package which offers 200 visits/month, after that, the Basic package offers 500 visits for $25/month and it doesn’t show any Unbounce branding on your pages.

8. Google Analytics

Don’t you feel like it does matter what we’re talking about, Analytics is always mentioned? Well, the application is pretty powerful and we probably use only a small fraction of it. When you’re running a profit center, besides measuring your visits, your bounce rate and all that stuff, you also want to track conversion.

The good thing about Analytics is that you can seamlessly integrate it with other platforms, for example, you can connect it to e-junkie to know each time a person bought your ebook or, you can track ROI on all your Mailchimp email pieces going out.

The truth is that Analytics is pretty powerful and you should commit to learn more about it no matter what you do online. Cost: AND… it’s Free!

So how much is your profit center?

Let’s see, we have…

• Email list management and marketing for $15
• Customer Relationship Management for $25
• Payment processing (open)
• Ordering process and downloadable files for $5
• Subscriber visibility, demographics, location and social profiles for $12.50
• Online surveys for some kick-ass, crowdsourcing product development for $16.67
• Landing Pages for $25
• And web analytics of all kinds for $0

Our monthly cost to handle business online like true ninjas is $97.17!!!

Ok, so you’re not very impressed… let me share this with you, about 7 years ago I spent $70k on a web-based CRM that is now obsolete, around the same time I purchased a $60k phone system that is now worth $2k, if I wanted to hear my prospects opinions I would have to organize a focus group for a couple of thousands to get bullshit results, I paid around $20k for a static website that the only interactivity it had was the contact form and, believe or not, I never got to know any of my customers, hell! I barely had their location!

Let’s just leave it there, you don’t want to get me started with mailing lists… what is this water coming out of my eyes?

Your Turn…

What are your thoughts? are you using any of these tools or maybe different ones? What are your suggestions if you already have some experience or what are your questions if you are barely jumping in the water?

Happy profiting!

Being successful online requires that you beat a pretty long learning curve and while I try to contribute with my 2 cents, there are amazing bloggers out there that you should be reading on a regular basis.

These people put their amazing talent and knowledge into blog content and deliver it to their online communities week after week.

I have to advise you that if you see that I’m not going with the obvious is for 2 reasons, one because I like helping you discover stuff that you might have missed (there is just too much content out there…) and two, not that I don’t occasionally read the usual suspects, but this is the stuff I visit frequently. Also let me say that this is not a ranking so don’t pay attention to the order.

Why am I sending traffic to other blogs? Am I crazy? That’s just how I roll… enjoy and I hope you find something awesome!

Think Traffic

I just love the approach, it presents a different view at building website traffic. It delivers advice that’s easy to understand and also the transparency to showcase itself as a case study so you can learn from real experience. ThinkTraffic is the second blog from Corbett Barr, author of FreePursuits.

The Launch Coach

Dave Navarro, known as @rockyourday on Twitter, takes it to the next level by teaching you how to launch and sell products online like there’s no tomorrow. TheLaunchCoach is a great resource to learn how to monetize your online presence. He’s also the author of the famous ebook “How to launch the **** out of your ebook”.

ViperChill

Glen Allsopp teaches you how to build traffic, get hundreds of comments, tweets and subscribers. My advice is that when you are trying to learn from somebody, do so from a person whose achievements are obvious. ViperChill has that. If you need creds, this kid was the social manager for brands like Land Rover, HP and Nissan at 18 (No, that’s not a typo…).

Mars Dorian

If you’re tired of reading the same old boring crap about online marketing and personal branding, Mars Dorian is your guy. Just out of the ordinary, kick-ass content with fresh design and writing style. One more thing, you gotta love the photography! Also follow him on Twitter.

Fuel Your Blogging

Part of the Fuel Brand Network, it delivers advice on all aspects of blogging from writing content to promoting and building community. Fuel Your Blogging feels very light as they usually craft very short and fresh posts. Most of the content here is created by Brandon Cox, who deserves a special mention.

IttyBiz

IttyBiz has the perfect tagline to describe itself, “Marketing for businesses without marketing departments”. The blog is ran by Naomi Dunford, who is a true ninja if you hang around the social platforms and the blogosphere. Make sure you visit the store for a collection of kick-ass marketing products.

CopyBlogger

I don’t need to introduce CopyBlogger. The only reason I have included it in this list is because I think this is really a solid source for any level. The blog includes amazing sections on topics such as Landing Pages, SEO or Copywriting 101 (look over the left sidebar…).

Social Media Examiner

Solid social media advice for business people, lots of it. Usually very meaty posts with lots to chew on. What I love the most about Social Media Examiner are the contributors, you get content from people like Denise Wakeman or Mari Smith.

The Hubspot Blog

Hubspot talks about blogging, SEO, social media, analytics and other stuff, but what I like about it is the Lead Generation advice. In this case we’re talking about a company rather than a blogger but we are after the knowledge to beat the learning curve. Hubspot also offers a lot of webinars that are very good resources to speed up you learning process.

Convince & Convert

Another one in the social media department, this one is a little bit more on the advance side. Jay Baer’s Convince & Convert is probably one of the only blogs I read on social media. Solid and consistent content.

Kikolani

Straight up kick-ass advice on blogging and social media. Kristi Hines of Kikolani is not afraid to lay it all out, she shares a lot of resources, links, tutorials, etc. She also contributes to sites like SME.

Famous Bloggers

Do you want lots and lots of content on blogging in general? Famous Bloggers has an awesome frequency of quality advice. This is another one with lots of contributors, I particularly look for stuff from Kristi Hines, Hesham (its founder) and Julius Kuhn-Regnier.

TopRank

One of the most recognized blogs in the online marketing world. Top Rank is definitely one of the few you need to have in your learning toolbox. It covers SEO, social media, content marketing and PR. Top 5 in the AdAge Power150 blogs. Also, follow Lee Oden on Twitter.

Kaushik

You can’t ignore analytics. This one is from Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0. Leaning more towards the advance level. Long posts loaded with great concepts, thoughts, examples and graphics.

Search Engine Journal

I have to admit I don’t read much about SEO, Search Engine Journal is probably one of the only places I visit because of the content, easy to understand for regular human beings. The blog also delivers content on social media, PPC and other very useful topics. Look for Ann Smarty‘s posts…

Me?

Hopefully I can continue to build up SocialMouths and provide value too. Let me know if there is something you would like to read here or if you have any ideas on what direction you would like me to take. I’m always open to ideas, specially if they’re kind of crazy!

Your Turn…

As usual, in these kind of lists, there is always somebody left out… I’m sure there are lots of cool people and blogs delivering awesome content that I failed to include, but I need to keep working, you know?

So why don’t you help me by adding your favorite blogs and participating in the discussion by adding in the comments!

Tweet

The point of setting goals and tracking results is to become aware of how your actions impact the outcome.

If you take conscious steps and then observe the reactions, you become responsible and completely aware of how you control those results.

Awareness = Control

If you think you can’t control what happens in social media, perhaps you should try taking a look from a different angle. Just looking at the pretty charts on Google Analytics or the number of Retweets on your posts won’t be enough to actually gain control over the results.

One of the things I love about blogs like ThinkTraffic is how they publish monthly reports, mostly on how they grow blog traffic. They turn themselves into a case study as a way of teaching people with their own experience.

I am considering following their example and start publishing this kind of content, maybe we do it at the end of this month. For now, let’s look at how to do it and use some dummy figures…

Set Some Rules

• Establish the metrics you want to track.
• Document everything to keep comparing month after month.
• Each monthly report should be divided in 2 parts: Goals and Results.
• Be consistent, set a date to work on this report every month. A good day to do this is a couple of days after the previous month is over, allow analytics to gather all necessary data.
• Take a different approach, let’s not put all the focus on the data. Let’s actually support that data by acknowledging what happened.

Report Of The Ending Month

Blog Traffic

Head over to your Google Analytics and grab the digits for Visits, Pageviews, Average Time on Site, Bounce Rate and whatever else is important to your business.

Now compare to the previous month’s numbers to see if it’s increasing or decreasing and get the rates (%). Keep it very simple, it should look like something like this:

• Visits: 11,619 (Increment of 12%)
  
• Pageviews: 18.073 (Increment of 14,2%)

We’ll also need Traffic Sources which is very important because it will tell you exactly where you need to focus. The truth is that this not about getting love from some sites more than others, you need to see this different, a social platform could give you more traffic because you’re more active there or because that’s where your prospect hangs out.

Observe those things and you will soon know what to do, where and how frequently instead of blindly shooting everywhere to see if you hit something and consume all your energy…

Get only the top 5 or 10 traffic sources and more importantly, write a comment about it.

• Twitter visits: 2,233 (Decreased 5,3%) – Activity level was lower the last week of the month.
  
• Digg visits: 457 (Increased 14,4%) – The post “Top 10 Ways for Kicking Serious Ass” received 87 Diggs.
  

Also look for unexpected events.

• Holy Kaw! visit: 867 – The post “Top 10 Whatever List” got picked up by Holy Kaw! at the beginning of the month.
  

Content

It has been said before, great content does NOT promote itself. Let me put it this way, if you create it already why not put it in front of the world? And, if already put it in front of the world, why not see how the world likes it?

• First, what did you publish? Make a list of the titles and “live” dates.
• How many posts? How many each week?
• What types of posts did you publish? or divide them into blog categories if you like.

Make it look like this:

• 9 posts were publish (2.25 per week).
• 4 posts on social media strategy and how-to’s.
• 3 fun Top 10 lists.
• 2 polls.
• Add the list of each piece of content.

Social Media

You can count retweets, likes, bookmarks and so on if you want or you can use PostRank services to measure content performance and get all the data processed for you and looking like a million dollars:

Again, don’t get stuck in the numbers and pretty charts. Let’s just look at the big picture. Get the totals for the month like this:

• 562 Retweets (Increased 7,1%) – I was more active sharing other people’s content and double the self-promotion tweets on the days I published content.
• 365 Delicious bookmarks (Increased 57,4%) – I provided more resources, tools and links on my posts and people usually bookmark those.
• 126 Facebook Likes (Decreased 23,1%) – Some posts were more business-oriented, maybe not appealing to the Facebook crowd.

You get the picture.

Subscriptions

Also very important if what you run is a blog and it says a lot of what you put out there because it represents people that finds you valuable enough to want to keep getting it on a regular basis. Much more important than a retweet or a bookmark.

• RSS New Subscriptions: 109 (Increased 5,2%)
• Email New Subscriptions: 29 (Increased 2,6%) – The subscription box was positioned at the top of the sidebar.

Conversion

It would be nice if you could also tell if you got any real results, you know, the kind that represents actual business… Wait! if you are willing to keep things simple and manual this could be very easy depending on the type of product or service. Let me illustrate by sharing a piece of a conversation with one of my latest clients:

Me: “Hey Mr. Customer, do you mind if I ask how did you find me?”

Client: “Oh yeah! last week I followed your tweet and read your post about the 7 examples of kick-ass personal brands…”

As simple as that. Imagine what you can do with that! Here is an idea:

• New Prospects: 8 (6 from Twitter/1 from Facebook/1 from LinkedIn)
• New Clients: 4 (3 from Twitter/1 from LinkedIn).

Compare

Before you continue to set your goals for the next month, review the goals you setup last month to see if you were successful, how close you got or where did you fail to achieve them.

Be honest.

Goals For The Starting Month

A couple of pointers before you dive in:

• Set only a few very specific goals.
• Be realistic. Set goals having in mind what you need to do in order to reach them.
• Stretch a little, being realistic doesn’t mean being comfortable. Doing the things you usually resist is a good exercise.
• Make sure you can measure the results.

This is a simple list that will look like this:

• Increase the number of posts to 12 in order to build momentum. This should result in more traffic.
• Write at least 2 guest post on other blogs.
• Comment on other blogs. At least 5 comments per week. I don’t do this enough.
• Be more active on Sphinn and Digg. Connect with people there and comment on posts.
• Determine what social platforms to stop using.
• Be more conversational on Twitter.
• Start tracking the time I spend a day in social media.

Final Thought

If you try to set goals based on numbers, such as “Increase traffic by 20%” without a solid foundation and an action plan, the only thing you are increasing for sure are your chances of failing at the end.

Stop thinking about digits.

One more thing before I wrap this baby up, make sure your monthly goals are aligned with the general objectives of having your business online. It is very easy to get distracted by shiny objects and believe me… social media is very shiny!

Now go set some kick-ass goals for next month.

Is Sentiment important for your social media analysis? Is it relevant or even accurate? There is a lot of talk about it, that’s for sure.

Sentiment is probably one of the hardest aspects to analyze in social media and some of the brightest minds in web analytics say we are not there yet. So why bother?

Well, there are a few reasons but in my opinion, being aware of your business or brand’s impact on the web is essential, both positive and negative and even though you can’t rely 100% on this data, it gives you a general idea and a starting point to adjust your strategy.

I’m listing 5 tools here to help you get your feet wet on the whole Sentiment analysis thing. Also, I will mention that I’m not including more robust platforms such as Radian6 because we are looking into basic tools. You can use these tools to track mentions about yourself or your business/brand or to get an analysis on a specif topic or keyword, perhaps your industry or even your competition.

Twitter Sentiment

Twitter Sentiment is very simple (no clutter here) and it has a couple of cool features:

• You can save your searches.
• It creates a chart so can visualize the sentiment over a period of time.
• You don’t need to sign up, just log in with your Google account.

Twitrratr

Twitrratr organizes positive, neutral and negative sentiment into columns for a very visual experience. It also highlights the terms that decide the type of sentiment so it’s easy to see why a particular tweet is considered positive or negative.

Social Mention

SocialMention is of course more than just sentiment, it also provides analysis on Strength, Passion and Reach. Here are a couple of things you should know:

• It includes other platforms, you can get results for mentions on blogs or social networks also.
• It also gives you a breakdown of positive, neutral and negative.
• And it displays a positive to negative ratio.

UberVu

UberVu has recently upgraded all their services and one of the new inclusions is sentiment. In this image you can see what they call Sentiment Evolution, which is the trend over the last 30 days. It is not the main feature of the platform, you should really consider it for more than just sentiment.

Twendz

While the focus seems to go to the actual tweets on the right and taking most of the interface, what’s important is on the left sidebar. The one thing I like about Twendz is the analysis on subtopics.

TweetFeel

TweetFeel works well if you want to look at the sentiment of a trend on Twitter. It also shows the tweets classifying them by color so you can see what’s consider positive or negative. Other than that, no much to do here.

Final Word…

What is important here is that you become aware of your brand’s sentiment by accessing this information, now you should determine what to consider positive and negative and make decisions based on that. One thing I can tell you is that you do have an impact online, whether you know it or not…

Finally, I will mention ViralHeat, a service I haven’t had the chance to test yet but will find the time in the next few days.

Let us know what you think or if you are using other tools.

This is the third and last post on the Social Power Tools To Kick It Up A Notch series. In the previous posts we reviewed ObjectiveMarketer and ClickTale and I showed you how to leverage from those tools to step up your online game. This week we’ll take a closer look at PostRank.

I’m guessing the first question to arise will be “why do I need more metrics if I’m already running Google Analytics on my blog?” and the answer is that PostRank does more than counting your pageviews. Today, you need to know how your content is performing socially, how successful are you at engaging the user, inside and outside your blog. The new media has taken the content outside to where the user hangs out, whether you’re there or not.

PostRank measures how people engages with your content and where. The whole concept behind the application is based on 2 definitions you need to learn:

Engagement Events

An event is a single activity that derives from your content. A good example of an event is a comment to your post, this takes place inside your blog. Then you have events occurring outside your blog like a tweet, a digg or a bookmark on Delicious. Engagement events are tracked wherever they happen.

Engagement Points

Points are earned based on the level of engagement, a comment on your post for example has more value than a simple click, it takes more effort by the user and it’s also far more important to you.

Then you also have Engagement Score, which is the total points accumulated by a single piece of content, in this case, a blog post. Remember that we are measuring posts, not just the big picture.

Google Analytics Integration

PostRank seamlessly integrates key traffic metrics provided by your existing Google Analytics account. This process is all done for you with a couple of clicks making it super easy. This data includes Unique Visits, Pageviews, Bounce Rate and Average Viewing Time.

A Quick Snapshot

A quick look at the overview already provides you with enough data to get a pretty good idea of what’s up just recently. What are your Pageviews and Engagement Points compared with the last 7 days and even a count of your Twitter followers (which by the way requires that you integrate your Twitter account of course).

Post Analysis

One of the things I love is the organization and simplicity when you want to analyze each piece of content in detail. The next graphic shows you how well organized each post is displayed so you can compare before you jump into a more in-depth analysis. It is a perfect example of great usability and design.

Measure Engagement On Each Piece Of Content

This is where you get all the juice, an in-depth analysis of each post, from Google key metrics to engagement events, points, averages and even how this was distributed in different social platforms. The Engagement Activity chart makes it very easy to visualize the life of each post and the conversation feed brings everything together in one place.

Engagement Trends

Engagement Trends are measured in time over the last 3 months, by region and source, displaying each social platform.

Final Thought

As I always say, tools are just tools, it’s what you do with them that’s going to make a difference. This is definitely a nice set of tools for a blogger to leverage from and it has a very affordable monthly fee of $9. Take advantage of the trial period and take it for a spin, the setup is only a few minutes and there is nothing to install on your blog.

See if you can improve how your user engages with your content.

Any thoughts?

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You can’t play with the big dogs if you pee like a puppy.

I’m writing a series of 3 or 4 posts with the intention of showcasing some of the tools you can use to upgrade your game in social media. This week, a closer look into ObjectiveMarketer, the application used by some of the top influencers like Guy Kawasaki.

I will focus more on the individual use of the tool since the blog is based on personal branding but, I should point out that ObjectiveMarketer has the strength to be used by organizations and even agencies handling multiple clients. Also, I will try to emphasize on the features that make this app unique rather than what is already offered out there.

So let’s take a look at some of those features…

Multiple Users, Accounts And Platforms

This is one of the areas where the game is taken to the next level. You not only have the ability to handle multiple Twitter accounts but you can setup different users under the same account with their own roles and permissions.

For now ObjectiveMarketer can handle channels like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, but according to its founder Amita Paul, they are currently working on the integration of MySpace and Orkut with more to come in the near future.

Campaigns

If you have different objectives in your social media activity, you can design separate campaigns to track individual performance for them. For example, if you promote your own content and also share content from other sources or you are running two different promotions for your product or service, you can create two different campaigns and analyze their performance individually. You decide how to design your campaigns. Be creative.

Goals

The best way to determine if a campaign has been successful is by setting your goals or expectations in advance. Be specific, setup goals for clicks, retweets and even average clicks per post for individual campaigns.

Keywords

Keywords are used to monitor any mentions on Twitter that are related to your campaign, you can monitor specific events or product names and listen to what is been said out there.

Om.ly

ObjectiveMarketer has its own short URL so there is no need to setup any third-party services or make two stops to send out your message. As long as you are using Om.ly, everything gets tracked.

There is also a bookmark plugin available so you can share from anywhere in the web.

Post Your Messages Like A Rockstar

Sending out a Tweet is one thing, choosing the account, scheduling it, assigning a specific campaign and adding tags to your post is something else. All these features allow you to track your performance and adjust your strategy like no other application.

Calendar

Scheduling posts in advance is a good way to control your frequency and collaboration with other users. OM generates a calendar with a unique URL that you can then export to your Google Calendar.

Influencers vs. Amplifiers

This is another feature I haven’t seen before. OM classifies your followers into two categories, “Influencers” is a count of your followers retweeting your posts and the “Amplifiers” are determined by the times your follower has been retweeted. Your follower is promoted from influencer to amplifier when he/she amplifies your message to a 2nd level.

Analytics

Setting up goals, tags and some of the other criteria on your posts and campaigns provides you with a great set of metrics to analyze your performance. The main dashboard gives you the big picture but you can also get in-depth charts of all kinds…

You can measure an individual post or campaign by its lifetime and performance during the day, by clicks and by different channels where it has been posted.

Compare between campaigns and even archive these reports.

Track daily trending topics from your tweets and your followers. OM also generates a tag cloud once a week.

Final Thought

If you are a serious entrepreneur or independent trying to step up your social media results, leveraging from tools like ObjectiveMarketer is a must.

Oh, one last thing and this is for the awesome team at OM… thanks for not calling it Twobjective or Twiketer!

Photo Credit: banola

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I’m guessing if you are reading this is because you use or want to use Twitter for more than just pure fun. Maybe you even have an objective in mind. Maybe you are trying to convert followers into prospects for your product or service or you are trying to increase traffic to your website or blog.

Whatever those objectives are, having the right tools handy is always important. Think of a traditional marketing campaign, big or small, there are tools that help you measure your performance, compare with the competition, manage your cost, track your conversion rate and many more that will allow you to adjust your strategy and go after the right prospect. Social media is no different, but I’m sure at some point you have felt that Twitter doesn’t provide you with those tools.

The good news is that there are applications out there that you can use to get some visibility on how you are doing and help you get in front of the right public. So I made a list of 10 websites to help you track, perform better and hopefully leverage from Twitter.

1. TwitterCounter

TwitterCounter shows you stats based on your growth, it obviously counts your followers and following over a period of time but it also gives you a couple of cool digits like a projection of what your following base will be in a specific time, your ranking and your average daily growth. It also offers a paid service if you manage multiple accounts and need to compare to each other. Pretty cool and simple.

2. SocialMention

Another destination with some cool data to take in consideration. SocialMention, which gathers data from all social sites and not just Twitter,  analyzes positive versus negative mentions, your reach with unique authors, top keywords, users, hashtags and resources on those mentions.

3. Klout

One of my favorites. Klout measures Twitter influence. It tells you if you are a Persona, a Connector, Climber or Casual. It gives you a score from 1 to 100 based on influence and it analyzes reach, demand, engagement, velocity and activity. The other very cool feature is that you can search for a topic and it will show you who the biggest influencers are so you can learn from them.

4. Twitter Grader

Very simple, TwitterGrader gives you a grade based on the number of followers, power of those followers, updates, follower/following ratio and engagement. It also provides you with a ranking. HubSpot has also launched the FacebookGrader, but that’s a whole different conversation…

5. Monitter

What if you had the power to know what people are talking about on specific topics, let’s say… your industry or a product you sell. Better yet, what if you had a dashboard in front of you that let’s you track these conversations so you would know what step to take next, in real-time! That is exactly what Monitter does.

6. Xefer

Xefer creates a graph of your tweets by day and times in relationship with the replies you get. It is a good method to visualize the quality of your tweets.

7. HootSuite

I think I mentioned enough features on my post “10 Reasons Why I Use HootSuite… And You Should Too” but in this case, I want to point out the stats. As long as you use the Ow.ly URL shortener, HootSuite tracks all your clicks and it also displays the most popular ones. If you have a blog, this is a good tool to see what content had good responses so you can follow that trend.

8. GraphEdge

GraphEdge is not free but is very affordable depending on the number of followers you have. This is another tool that presents some pretty cool data to analyze. Some of this data includes your legitimate followers and the percentage in relationship to your total followers, your followers’ most relevant friends, which I think will be the next person you need to follow and it also shows your churn rate.

9. Bit.ly

Bit.ly is more than a URL shortener. What I like about it is the simple way of displaying data related to one specific link. It includes the clicks, the reactions on different websites including Facebook and all the conversation generated around it.

10. Tweepi

Tweepi helps you manage your followers/following by sorting information by different criteria. It helps you “flush” the people that you are following but are not following you back and keep a good ratio. At the same time, it helps you increase your following in bulk, but it is not your typical mass-following application. It is free at the moment but I expect that to change soon.

Final Thought

I’m not suggesting that you become a Twitter analytic junkie but looking at some stats from time to time can give you the answers you need to perform better. As I always say, tools are only tools. The main thing is that you have a clear objective of what you want and they help you accomplish that.

Are you using other tools? Share them in the comments…

Icon Credit: Kailoon