I was pleased to see that Compete responded, multiple times — in a comment on my post; via a tweet and then subsequently in email.

Given the interest I saw from other people, I obtained Compete’s permission to publish our exchange.

Comment on my original post:

Hi Dave – Matt here, Client Relations Director at Compete.com.  I am happy to do my best to clear up any confusion if you reach out to me at support@compete.com.  Compete is based on a sample of 2 million, US based panelists.  We have a small sample warning on your website, which means we have limited data on your domain.  Even when considering your GA numbers, you are well down the long tail of the internet.  The code you’ve installed, it is just for audience profiles and it is only found within that tab of the product.  It does not impact any traffic numbers.  In any event, I’d be happy to explain more if you would like to reach out.

While I (and several people on Twitter) wasn’t thrilled with the tone of “you are well down the long tail of the internet” (which sends a message of “just wanted to remind you you’re nothing to us”), I took Matt up on his offer and emailed their support address:

Hi,

I’m reaching out following a tweet from your twitter account regarding a recent blog post of mine (http://t.co/lCXr4UN).

I’d love to understand more about why the numbers seem to diverge so much from what I’m seeing on my website logs.

Thanks,

Dave

Sure enough, a day later I received a reply:

Hi Dave,

Thanks for reaching out to us about your site. I know that it can often be confusing [Dave: no, it's not confusing; it's just irritating. Moving on...] when comparing the traffic numbers for local analytics (google, omniture, etc) to the numbers on Compete.com. At the core the methodologies are like comparing apples to oranges, they’re both fruit – just produced from different trees. Think of compete numbers as an orange – a U.S. based research numbers that help you understand your size and trends against your competition. Local analytics is more like the apple that helps you understand what’s happening on your site so you can improve your visitor’s experience. They’re great supplements to one another in terms of getting a more complete picture of the internet, but are inherently very different in the approach you take to consuming the data sets.

From a more technical perspective panel-based clickstream data (Compete.com) and web analytics data (local analytics (Google Analytics) and server logs) stems from the underlying methodologies that each approach use. At a high-level, panel-based providers like Compete measure online behavior based on consumers, whereas local analytics measure similar behaviors based on cookies. The consumer metrics that panel companies provide are based on statistically-derived estimates that are derived from a representative sample of consumers; in this instance, the behaviors of the sample are weighted and extrapolated to represent the entire internet browser population. The cookie-centric metrics that web analytics companies provide are developed on simple counts of cookies for all of the web pages that are a tagged on a site or a set of sites; when a consumer visits a specific page on a site, that visit is counted by the web analytics platform.

Both approaches have their strengths and limitations. Panel-based measurement provides excellent insight into visitor demographics, what consumers do across all of the websites they visit and analysis over long time periods. The limitation of consumer panels is that they sometimes do not provide sufficient sample to measure “low incidence” behaviors such as visiting very small sites, using rare search terms, or interacting with low-traffic pages on specific websites. Compete’s panel is one of the largest in the industry, this helps us ensure that we can measure and report on more of these infrequent behaviors compared to other panel providers.

If you take a look at information which is collected in a similar fashion below you’ll see either no data or considerably smaller numbers than local analytics.
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=davefleet.com&geo=all&date=all
http://www.quantcast.com/davefleet.com

Cookie-based web solutions are good sources of information on all of the behaviors that occur within a website, and therefore can be used to calculate and optimize site flow, conversion rate and other onsite activities. In this manner, web analytics are not subject to the same sample requirements as panel companies. However, there are some limitations that cookie-based solutions are susceptible to that panel-based measurement services are not. Cookie-based data can be affected and sometimes inflated by the deletion of a user’s cookies, incorrect page tagging, and susceptibility to bots or spiders. Also, the data found on Compete.com comes from our panel of U.S. users, local analytics and server logs collect U.S. and International data.

I hope this explanation can help clear up any questions that you might have with our numbers vs. those seen when looking at Google Analytics and server logs. Please let me know if you have any other questions that I can help you answer. If you’d like to learn more about our methodology please reference our data methodology whitepaper: http://media.compete.com/site_media/upl/img/Compete%20Data%20Methodology.pdf.

Kind Regards,

Lindsey
Compete.com Customer Support

While some people I spoke to felt the answer was a bit condescending, I thought it did a good job of explaining the difference in methodologies between Compete and Google Analytics in plain language. Ok, so now I understood the difference between the two services’ methodologies (I didn’t ask, but it’s helpful nonetheless). The question remained, though – why should people trust Compete to provide data on anything but the top tier of sites on the Internet?

So I asked:

Hi, [I didn't realize until afterward that the original email had been signed -- my bad]

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

I do have two follow-up questions for you:

1. For sites that are, in the words of your Client Relations Director, “well down the long tail of the internet” [Dave: I couldn't resist], do you therefore recommend using other data sources than Compete?
2. Would you mind if I published your response as an update to my blog post? I would love to include your side of the story for people to consider.

Thanks,

Dave

Compete’s response:

Hi Dave,

Thanks again for reaching out, we’re happy to have you publish our dialog and are open to answering your questions about our tools and how it relates to the industry. Though I would request that you include your follow-up question to provide context to our reply.

In terms of data sources, our client relations team advocates for two things. First, a firm understanding of the data you’re looking at through asking targeted questions about the data source. When you’re unfamiliar with a data set this can be really difficult, because you don’t know what you don’t know, right? The second challenge is using the proper tool for the job, compete specifically isn’t meant to replace your local analytics – this is not our goal.

Compete ultimately is looking to provide our customers with a better understanding of their industry and competitors from a research perspective. If your data set on our site is listed under a small sample warning, the data will have more of a directional relevance that gives you an idea of what’s going on for the industry. For sites with more traffic activity, our data is really helpful in understanding the approach competitors take in terms of SEO, SEM, and traffic acquisition to name a few popular insights typically gleaned.

If you take a look at the image attached (Blogging services 2 year category view*) you’ll notice that between the month of March and April there is a slight monthly decrease of about -2.7%. Looking at the trend in 2010 the dip was about -1.1%, so this 2 year view allows you to see that there’s something happening within US online consumer’s behavoir that makes it so that each year between March and April there is a slight dip in the amount of activity to the overall category (which includes domains like blogger and wordpress).

*Compete Categories are groups of domains we organize for our PRO and Enterprise Level Subscribers.

From my personal go-to toolkit, my data sources could include Google Trends – think search data, similar sites, and geo-demographics. If you’re looking for sentiment data visa-vi social networks, I like using Google Realtime to build out timelines that correspond with news and product happenings. I use these services a lot to supplement our information, they’re not a direct replacement in terms of the value add for a lot of digital marketers but they can help give you a better picture of what people were taking about during specific time periods, breaking news, and similar domains that may be of interest to investigate.

When it comes to studying the internet and ultimately the behavoir of users, getting familiar with new tools and services can be a difficult process if you don’t have the resources for full data immersion. If you’re looking to attempt to prompt specific actions you’d like visitors to take, it takes time and practice. One of the things that Avinash* typically preaches, and I like to echo, is that marketers should always be aiming to synthesize what the data trends indicate, rather than simply “reporting”.

Here’s the post* http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2011/04/difference-web-reporting-web-analysis.html

I hope this helps, please let us know if you have any other questions.

Kind Regards,

Lindsey

A couple of thoughts from my end:

Firstly, thank you to Matt and Lindsay from Compete for their thoughtful responses, and for allowing me to publish this exchange. I appreciate the thought and the time spent on their end.

Secondly, it appears that Compete doesn’t intend for its traffic numbers to be used for analysis – from their response, it appears that “For sites with more traffic activity, our data is really helpful in understanding the approach competitors take in terms of SEO, SEM, and traffic acquisition” insights are the primary uses for their data. Fair enough – I hadn’t thought of Compete in that way before, and it’s good to know that that’s their intent.

Thirdly, I still have two outstanding questions.

Outstanding question #1: How accurate are Compete’s/Quantcast’s/Alexa’s numbers for top-tier websites?

Are we looking at a 5% error margin? 15%? 25%? I’d love to know, because we have a duty to clients to know how accurate the numbers we’re using are.

Compete’s team, for all heir helpfulness, still hasn’t explained why people should trust their traffic numbers for sites (although, frankly, I could have been clearer as to why I was asking). This is still a critical issue – to quote my original post:

Should I believe that CNN.com’s traffic went up by 27% in March compared to February? Should I believe that Mashable’s traffic went down by nearly 30% in the last year?

Why is it important? Because I and many other people look at Compete’s numbers to determine sites’ traffic numbers when reporting on the results of our activities. If we can’t believe those numbers, we need to look elsewhere.

Outstanding question #2: What is the best site – free or paid – for providing reach analysis of lower-tier websites?

I readily acknowledge that Compete is a free service (it doesn’t sound like their Pro service adds much in terms of accuracy – just longer time periods and additional data for analysis), and that perhaps I shouldn’t expect too much from a free service.

I’ll be clear, though: I would be happy to consider paid services if they’re able to offer accurate reports.

Let’s face it – few companies are able to conduct outreach targeting only top-tier websites. Especially when you get into niches, there are relatively few relevant sites with traffic comparable to the top-tier of the Internet. So, where do we go for analysis of the rest?

What do you think? My questions again:

1. How accurate are Compete’s/Quantcast’s/Alexa’s numbers for top-tier websites?
2. What, in your opinion, is the best site – free or paid – for providing reach analysis of lower-tier websites?

Why do people still use Compete.com?

Case in point

Let’s take a look at my site – davefleet.com.

I’m not going to lie — I’ve neglected this poor thing recently, so traffic numbers have dropped… but Compete makes it look as though someone dropped a bomb on my server.

Let’s compare a few stats between Compete and Google Analytics, and see how things look.

Unique Visitors

• Google Analytics: 14,972
• Compete: 1,579 - an 89% variance

Visits

• Google Analytics: 17,186
• Compete: 1,900 – again, an 89% variance

“Ah but Dave, perhaps those Google numbers included bots,” I hear you say. Well, I heard myself say it too, so I thought I’d take a closer look.

That’s 97% of visits from browsers – from IE, Firefox, Chrome or Safari. My analytics also tell me that nearly 60% of traffic to the site comes from search engines.

So, where does that leave Compete. Maybe if I gave them access to my site, they’d be able to give more accurate numbers, right?

Wrong.

I have the Compete.com analytics code installed on my site, yet it still spills-out this garbage.

If I can’t trust Compete to get the numbers right when its own code is installed, how can I trust it to get it right when I’m looking at other sites? The numbers it reports border on bizarre, yet we just nod and keep on using it.

Should I believe that CNN.com’s traffic went up by 27% in March compared to February? Should I believe that Mashable’s traffic went down by nearly 30% in the last year?

*twitch*

I think I need to lie down now.

What tools do you use to estimate traffic on third party sites?

The changes to functionality are four-fold:

1. Extensibility
2. User roles and permissions
3. Improved search functionality
4. Shared macros

Extensibility

The latest version of the console allows developers to build new extensions into the console through the Engagement Console API. This might take the form of additional commands, built-in searches, or web pages pulled into new windows.

User roles and permissions

One of the new changes I touched on in the last post was the addition of “Super User” roles. Super users have an additional screen in Radian6′s online dashboard where they can see users and profiles, and edit each.

The inclusion of Super User functionality in the Engagement Console brings with it the ability to define “workspaces” and “permissions” for other users.

Workspaces

Workspaces are the areas where the stacks (columns) in the consoles are displayed. Super Users can set the base Workspaces for sets of users so, for example, certain users would always see certain topic profiles in their console.

Permissions

Permissions let you control how the console is configured for other users. As Ryan Strynatka, Director of Product Management, put it to me:

“You can turn various components and capabilities on and off.  For example, want to remove the ability to launch a personal FB stack and restrict the ability to respond on Twitter stacks – you can now do that.  In fact, you can completely pare down the EC you so that it looks and feels more like a desktop widget – just content flowing in without workflow capabilities and so forth.  In the Agency world, this might be interesting for routing content to customers.”

Improved search functionality

The new console incorporates three new elements into the existing search functionality:

1. Creation of topic stacks by keyword group: allowing more targeted search results to be displayed (you could, for example, focus in on company and brand mentions rather than broader industry conversation).
2. Filtering of search results by custom date: a very useful feature, especially for people working on social media audits and reports after the fact – in the past the lack of this feature rendered the console largely unusable for this purpose.
3. Twitter profile search: Improved integration with Twitter allows you to quickly search for Twitter user names and have user profiles pop up within the console. Useful for folks engaged in real-time monitoring.

Macro sharing

Right from the beta version of the Engagement Console, the inclusion of easy-to-create macros has been a winning feature, allowing users to easily recreate previously time-consuming tasks, and apply them to multiple posts, with the click of a button.

With the new version of the console, you can now share your macros with other members of your team, or with members of specific projects – bringing a new element of consistency to macros which might otherwise be intimidating for less-advanced users.

Summary

When I first reviewed the Engagement Console earlier this year, it provided an excellent tool for engagement from an end-user perspective. These recent changes add additional benefits from the user side, but also from an enterprise viewpoint.

All-in-all, this is a very useful set of changes. Combined with the enhancements to the Radian6 dashboard, this represents a useful step forward for Radian6 which benefits both end users and enterprise administrators alike.

What would you like to see?

The Radian6 team will undoubtedly keep rolling-out adjustments over time. So, what other changes would you like to see?

This time around: changes to the Radian6 dashboard.

Key Changes

• Refresh button
• Keyword proximity searches
• Enhanced query support
• Better special character support
• Percentage change analysis
• Quick search function
• Super user functionality
• Google Analytics integration
• Enhanced security

Here’s what they mean to you…

Refresh Button

This feature – a really simple one – is one I’ve been asking for for months now. Nothing flashy; just the ability to refresh widgets by hitting a button instead of waiting for the next refresh or going into the widget settings, toggling a setting then coming back out. Yes, it should have been there already. Yes, I’m happy that it’s there now.

Keyword Proximity Searches

Proximity searching is a logical addition to solve the problem of irrelevant and spam search results. A “proximity slider” lets you choose the maximum distance that can separate your keywords, up to a maximum of 20 words.

Enhanced Queries

Radian6′s lack of boolean or boolean-esque support has been a pain point for me over the last few years. As a result, creating queries has been a time-consuming beast. The latest update simplifies things – instead of creating:

• Term A AND Term B; or
• Term A AND Term C; or
• Term A AND Term D

you can instead easily create the equivalent of:

• Term A AND (Term B OR Term C OR Term D)

Better Character Support

47 additional special characters are now recognized. The main implication: you can specifically identify @replies and hashtags; especially useful when searching for a hashtag that may double as a regular word.

Percentage Change Analysis

In a nod to people using Radian6 to produce regular reports, you can now include a comparison of time periods within your topic analysis widgets.

Quick Search Function

Radian6′s new ‘quick search’ functionality lets you both filter your existing River of News widgets quickly, and quickly create new widgets from the left-hand sidebar. Useful for following a hunch around emerging conversation trends.

Other changes:

• Super Users – power users who can set other users’ permissions (from read-only accounts to folks with full) and create new accounts.
• Google Analytics – adding Google Analytics to the suite of integrations that Radian6 enables. Given the number of sites that use Google Analytics, this could be helpful for many companies.
• Enhanced Security – SSL-enabled login.

Conclusion

Overall, this is an excellent set of new features from Radian6. There’s nothing ground-breaking in here, but for regular users of the dashboard, there are a host of features that should make their lives incrementally easier.

In particular, the query improvements and user administration enhancements should make those overseeing monitoring accounts happy. Meanwhile, the special character recognition, refresh button, percentage change analysis and quick searches will help those using the system on a day-to-basis.

(Coming soon: a look at the changes to the Radian6 engagement console)

This system dragged me back from the brink a while back, at a time when I felt overwhelmed, and I’ve relied on it ever since.

1. Always-accessible to-do list

My to-do list, along with my calendar, is my bible. Everything I do revolves around this. So, I’ve adopted a system that lets me access and update my to-do list wherever I am.

I use Evernote to keep track of my to-dos. I can access it on my BlackBerry, on my iPad, on my laptop and on my home computer. It ensures that, whenever I think of something I need to do, I can capture it.

For each item, I capture several pieces of information:

1. Project involved
2. Specific task
3. Estimated time required to complete the task
4. Deadline
5. Priority (I number things from 1-3 – for high/medium/low)

This becomes the basis of how I schedule my week and prioritize my tasks.

Power tip: Set up a notebook in Evernote just for to-do items, and just flip a quick email to your account to capture items in that notebook when you only have a couple of seconds. Then, when you have a few moments later, you can go back through those items and add them to your master to-do list.

2. Plan out the week

At the beginning of each weekI  I review my to-do list and my calendar as it stands to identify how I need to allocate my time for each day that week. So, if I have four hours of meetings one day, I know I have four hours to work with. I then work through my to-do list in order of priority, and assign tasks to a day.

I use a simple spreadsheet to accomplish this (thanks to Andrea Pietkiewicz who introduced me to this), with tasks down the left-hand side and days of the week across the top. In the middle I enter the hours required for the various meetings and tasks I need to accommodate. At the bottom I have a total so I can see how many hours of work I’ve scheduled for each day.

I have an hour blocked off at the beginning of each week for this process.

3. Defensive scheduling

I now know what I need to do, when I need to do it and how long it will take. The next step is to defensively block-off my calendar. I add every task to my calendar as an appointment, for several reasons:

1. Because “the work” takes time to do
2. Because other people will fill the day with meetings if I don’t
3. Because it helps me to track how I use my time

4. Constantly adjust

The process doesn’t end at the beginning of the week, of course. Things change – tasks take longer than planned; work arises unexpectedly and new meetings are scheduled. I constantly update my calendar as priorities shift during the week. If an item needs to be scheduled, it goes into the to-do list. If it needs to happen in the current week then it goes into the calendar immediately; if the work needs to happen in the future then I have a little more time to schedule it in later.

The beauty of this approach is two-fold:

1. You know what needs to move to accommodate change. You need three hours for an urgent request from your boss? You know what needs to be pushed and the effect it will have later on in the week.
2. You have a system for prioritizing your decisions. When someone comes to you with a last-minute task or meeting request, you have a clear list of tasks to which you can compare and prioritize it. Is it more important than Task 2? No? Then can it wait?

Your mileage may vary

I adopted this system in response to a time when I dealt with hundreds of emails and 5 or 6 hours of meetings daily in addition to my “regular work,” and industry events several nights per week. It worked for me, and the way I work. It may or may not work for you.

What systems do you use to manage your time?

(Image: Shutterstock)

Take a look, and add to the list in the comments.

Business/Productivity

1. Pages – Word processor. Sadly, not very compatible with MS Word (go figure) but suffices. $9.99.
2. Keynote – Presentation tool. While I haven’t tried this yet, I’m hoping that this app may stop me from having to lug my laptop around to presentations. $9.99.
3. Numbers – Spreadsheet tool. Enough said. $9.99.
4. Dragon Dictation – Speech-to-text app. Makes dictating notes and ideas easy, and lets you text/email them quickly when you’re done. Free.
5. Evernote – Wonderfully intuitive and easy to use. Integrates with the other interfaces (web, desktop, Blackberry etc). Free.
6. LinkedIn – Sadly just an iPhone app for now. Hoping an iPad-optimized one is released soon. Free.
7. Skype – It’s just an iPhone app right now so the interface isn’t great, but it lets you chat and call so who cares? Free.
8. GoToMeeting – Lets you log into online meetings while on-the-go. Great way to save multi-task while travelling. Free.
9. WebEx – Like GoToMeeting – lets you log into online meetings. Having both of these free apps will cover you for most meetings. Free.
10. Dropbox – Lets you sync and share files online and across computers. Free.
11. Dictionary.com – Dictionary for your iPad. Free.
12. Adobe Ideas 1.0 – Sketchbook for your iPad. Great for jotting down ideas. Free.

News/RSS

1. GoodReader – Integrates with Google Docs, Dropbox, box.net and other services. Lets you download and read multiple file formats including MS Office, iWork, HTML, images, audio, video and PDFs on your iPad. $0.99.
2. Reeder – The best pure-play RSS reader I’ve found so far. $4.99.
3. Pulse News Reader – This app alone has doubled how much news I consume. I sit down with this app and a cup of coffee every morning. $3.99.
4. Instapaper – For all those posts you don’t have time to read in the office but want to later. $4.99.
5. NYT Editors’ Choice – It’s the NYT. Free.
6. BBC News – Great mobile interface for catching up on the latest news. Free.
7. NPR – Another great news app. NPR content, in magazine format. Free.

Social Networking

1. Twitterific – My favourite Twitter app for the iPad so far. Great interface. Free, or $4.99 for premium version.
2. HelloTxt – Lets you update multiple social networks from one app. Free.
3. TweetDeck – Interface could use some work, but still a good app. Free.
4. TweetAgora – If you find yourself wanting to filter events out of your Twitter stream, this client is for you. Just an iPhone app for now, but hopeful that they’ll release an iPad version soon. Free.
5. IM+ Lite – Integrates with multiple IM and social network tools. Free or $9.99 for upgraded version.
6. WordPress – Reasonable interface for this iPad app, but editing features currently not as good as the web experience on a computer. Free.
7. Darkslide – Another iPhone app; good for uploading photos to Flickr and browsing your friends’ latest photos. Free.
8. Facebook – Still no iPad interface for this, which is surprising as Facebook could do great things with a bigger screen. Free.

Media

1. Air Video – Converts and streams video from your computer, as well as being a nice interface for the iPad. Best $2.99 you’ll spend.
2. Remote – Neat for controlling iTunes on your computer from the iPad. Free.
3. Shazam – Figure out what that song on the radio is. Free.

Reading

1. iBooks – Apple’s e-reader app. Almost no books available in Canada, but a nice interface if Apple ever decides to notice we exist up here. Free.
2. Kobo HD – Another nice interface, but this one has books available too. Free.
3. Kindle – App for Amazon’s e-reader. Free.
4. Stanza – Another nice e-reader app. Free.

Location-based

1. TwentyThree – Lets you access and update multiple location-based networks from one app, and see where your friends are. $0.99.
2. TripIt – Popular app for organizing trips and seeing what your friends are up to. No iPad version for this yet. Free.
3. TripCase – Like TripIt, another app for organizing and coordinating trips (note: associated with Travelocity.ca, which is a Thornley Fallis client). Free.
4. Plancast – Let your friends know where you plan to be. Free.
5. Foursquare – iPhone app for the popular location-based social network. Free.
6. Gowalla – iPad app for the location-based social network. Free.
7. Google Earth – Excellent port of the tool over to the iPad. Free.
8. Kayak – Pulls in prices from numerous travel sites, including Travelocity (#client). Free.
9. OpenTable – See which restaurants near you have tables available. Free.
10. Urbanspoon – Check out reviews and ratings of restaurants near you. Great when you’re travelling in a new city. Free.
11. Google – Suite of Google apps. Free.
12. AccuWeather – Great, easy-to-use interface. Free.
13. WeatherBug – Condenses a mind-boggling amount of information into a clean interface. Free.

Miscellaneous

1. Epicurious – Recipes. On your iPad. Free.
2. Craigsphone – Craigslist for iPad. Much better interface than the web version. Free.
3. Digital Photo Frame – Another logical use for the monstrous storage capacity of the iPad – load your photos and off you go. Free

What about you? What apps have you liked so far?

One area in particular which is fast-evolving is social media monitoring (my ex-colleague Michael O’Connor Clarke quipped last week that there’s probably a micro-industry dedicated to watching it).

After several weeks of back and forth, and rescheduled meetings, I finally managed to get a demo of Sysomos Audience last week. I came away impressed.

Placing a Value on your Visitors

Sysomos Audience is an addition to the Heartbeat monitoring and engagement tool. At first glance it seems similar to Google Analytics in nature – in fact, I previously under the incorrect impression it simply connected social media traffic to web analytics. However, Audience really focuses in a different direction, providing tools that should pique the interest of your sales, marketing and community management folks alike.

Audience tracks visitors to your site alongside their previous web activity, and helps to determine whether each person is a real lead or is just browsing. It does so by examining peoples’ previous web activity, including competitors’ websites, blogs, social networks and so on. In doing so, it determines whether your visitors are qualified leads or just browsing. For example, people are much more likely to be serious sales leads if they’ve been researching other competitive products first than if they’ve just clicked through from a random site.

Critically, Audience also lets you assign a dollar value to visitors based on their visits to competitor sites, to help determine the ROI of your social media activities. It does so by letting you assign values for visits to different areas of your site (those key to your sales funnel might have a higher value, for example) and other factors. In doing so, you gain a relative value for each visitor to your site. This might seem familiar to web analytics (Google Analytics lets you assign goal values, for example) but this goes above and beyond by incorporating activities outside your own site, and by aggregating values per user.

This has implications for several functions within companies:

1. Sales
2. Community management
3. Public relations

Sales

Sales folks – wouldn’t you like to know who your most valuable leads are right at the beginning of the process, so you can prioritize them accordingly? While Audience generally only provides generic tracking information for most people, if you hook the system into any web forms you have, it can link their name and information into their activities (note: you’ll likely need to amend your privacy policy in order to do this). Right now, the system doesn’t hook into Salesforce but according to Sysomos co-founder Nilesh Bansal, that functionality is on the way.

Community Management

Just as Audience lets you track your most valuable visitors, it also lets you identify the sites that are the source of the most valuable traffic to your website. In the demonstration I saw, for example, I saw that while TechCrunch drove a lot of traffic to Sysomos, the traffic from other sites on a per-user basis was actually worth more to them. For community managers, pulled in a thousand directions, this can be valuable information to help them prioritize their focus.

Public Relations

The idea of being able to place a value on the traffic from a piece of coverage is mouth-watering to me. For one, it gives a great answer to the “what’s the ROI of this pitch” question (which even traditional media relations hasn’t solved yet) but also it helps you to figure out who you need to build relationships with and on whom you should focus your pitching. Of course, it doesn’t remove the hands-on targeting and tailoring work that goes into each project, but this kind of data would still be immensely valuable.

Privacy Concerns?

The only question that worried me during the demo I received revolved around online privacy. How does Audience determine which sites people have visited recently? Every site I’ve seen reviewing Audience – from TechCrunch to ReadWriteWeb to Web Metrics Guru – have wondered but no answers are forthcoming. While Sysomos doesn’t currently pull user profiles in, it’s only a small step from there to linking a Twitter or Blogger profile into things and having a complete record of your visitors’ browsing habits. That’s hypothetical but a little concerning as I’m sure they’ll experience pressure to add that feature.

Sysomos’ Nilesh Bansal wouldn’t shed any light on the question when I spoke with him. He told me they don’t look at cookies, but that Audience uses a piece of JavaScript code which you embed on your site and correlates that with their social media monitoring database. So, how do they know people have been on a competitor’s site? It sounds a little dubious to me. As long as they don’t shed any insight into this, people will continue to wonder what’s going on.

Exciting Potential

Setting aside the privacy concerns for a moment, Audience really does have a lot of potential, especially if you’re already a Sysomos client. The product is still in closed beta testing for now and Sysomos hasn’t announced pricing but, like Radian6′s engagement console, this looks to be a differentiating addition to Sysomos’ portfolio of services. I do think they need to answer the privacy questions, though.

What’s your take?

The Radian6 Engagement Console combines two of the best tools out there – Tweetdeck and Radian6 – in an Adobe Air-based desktop tool. In doing so, the console makes radical improvements to the workflow process for Radian6 users. We’ve been test-driving the console in our office for a little while now, and I’ve been very impressed by the utility – and future potential – of this new tool.

The Low-Down

Some of the key features of the console:

• Supports multiple Twitter accounts and Facebook, so you can combine your personal and professional engagement – posting and replying on both of these services
• Allows you to set up “stacks” (as they call columns) from multiple Radian6 profiles, based on numerous criteria
• Incorporates Radian6′s search functionality, pulling from searches covering blogs, Twitter, Google Buzz, forums, Flickr, YouTube and more
• Far, far faster than the Radian6 web interface – both in terms of interaction but also refresh frequency, which can be as frequent as every 30 seconds
• Supports conversation threading – a feature missing from Radian6 previously
• Built-in URL shortener
• Allows team-wide collaboration on engagement, as you can see updates from colleagues in near-real time and can view previous conversations with people
• Resizeable columns (hear that, Tweetdeck??)
• Incorporates all of Radian6′s workflow features within the tool
• Allows you to create custom macros for bulk management of posts.

Check out Radian6 CEO Marcel Lebrun discussing the console in this video:

Workflow At Your FingerTips

These last two features are central to the console’s value. One of the biggest barriers to using the full potential of the Radian6 workflow has, in the past, been the slow speed of the web interface and the 15-minute refresh cycle within that interface. This, combined with the preference people for tools such as Tweetdeck for their own personal posts, makes it hard to ensure that messages all flow through one system from a workflow perspective. This all changes with the Engagement Console.

The Engagement Console is intended for use as a front-line tool. In contrast, the Radian6 web interface is built much more around its reporting functionality. By taking the popular layout of Tweetdeck, building-in Radian6 data and workflow, and also essentially co-opting many of the features that have made tools like Hootsuite and CoTweet popular for team-based approaches recently, Radian6 is releasing a tool that has the potential to dramatically ease the monitoring and engagement process for companies.

Of course, the web interface remains for report generation purposes – this tool is intended as an addition, not a replacement.

Macros are your friend

The macro feature is another very cool addition. Macros aim to streamline your interactions by letting you automate recurring tasks. So, if you have a type of post that frequently comes up, you can set a standard way of dealing with them, save it as a macro and then click one button to handle all of that post’s workflow actions.

Confusing? Imagine a macro for product complaints, for example. You could create a macro that sets sentiment to ‘negative’, sets the post classification to ‘product complaint’, adds a post tag of “support” and assigns posts to a particular team member. Then, when future complaints arise, you can click the macro and all of that is taken care of in one click.

Bottom line

The Radian6 Engagement Console really could be a game-changer in their market. It combines the powerful search, workflow and team functionality of Radian6 with an easy-to-use interface which is a front-line person’s dream come true. Given all of the relatively similar social media monitoring services out there, this tips the balance. Once this tool rolls out fully (it’s in private beta until April), I see no reason why companies looking for both social media analytics and real-time engagement wouldn’t choose Radian6.

Now, where’s that mobile app…?

Frankly, I’m surprised that Foursquare doesn’t already have this feature itself – this would be a nice addition to the mobile app, especially given the potential to combine this mashup with your friends list to show where all your friends are.

Sysomos says it will continue to enhance FourWhere by adding content analytics down the road. It’ll be interesting to see how this works – it might prioritize places by the biggest number of check-ins, for example. This is another great example of the wealth of data that monitoring and analytics companies such as Sysomos, Radian6 and Alterian SM2 possess, and the uses to which this data can be put.

FourWhere is free and open – you don’t need a Foursquare account to use it. Check it out at http://fourwhere.com.

The primary changes in the new version:

• Foursquare integration (now alongside Twitter, Facebook, Flickr)
• Twitter lists

If you aren’t aware, Foursquare is a location-based social network combining geographic context with gaming elements. I’m fascinated with it thanks to its myriad marketing opportunities, but unfortunately there’s no way to use it on a BlackBerry right now aside from a less-than-satisfying mobile site (there’s an app in closed beta testing right now, but I haven’t received an invite yet).

The new SocialScope app almost negates the need for a stand-alone Foursquare app entirely. Using the Foursquare API, the app accesses your BlackBerry’s GPS functionality to determine your location (no news on how it works on older models) and lets you check-in to places quickly and easily.

(Note the built-in typo in the standard “off the grid” messages)

While SocialScope has supported creating groups of users in the app itself for a while, the latest update also supports Twitter lists, allowing you to display your pre-created lists, add to existing lists or create new lists from scratch.

SocialScope has already won its place as my BlackBerry Twitter app of choice due to its user-friendly interface and easy integration of other social networks, but this easily cements its spot.