The Open Source Marketer

Yesterday you and I talked about using TwitterScan to perform keyword research on Twitter conversations. We discovered that we can explore what other people are talking about by searching for keywords and we can get an idea of what people are saying about a particular topic.

Now let’s talk about TweetStats, another Twitter research tool that helps us dig even further into the stream of on-going global conversation that is Twitter.

TweetStats offers the ability to search for tweets by username and then it analyzes what it finds. You can get statistics that are charted or presented as a tag cloud.

TweetStats will show you a users tweet timeline, aggregate daily tweets, aggregate hourly tweets, who they’ve replied to, and what Twitter interface they most commonly use.

Some of the information is a little confusing because aggregate data is mixed with specific data, like replies. But, overall if you’re willing to infer a few things, you can tell a lot from the information, especially if you run it against some of the most heavily followed people on Twitter.

Tomorrow I’ll show you a tool that helps you determine who the most followed people on Twitter are and then after that we’ll look at a tool that helps you find people in their lists that you might want to follow. Remember, following people is a good way to get your own followers.

Perspective:

Twitter has many uses and how you use the tool has a lot to do with your own objectives. Right now people are still trying to wrap their minds about what it’s for and how does it help them communicate. While everyone is learning it is important to pay attention to what is going on. Spotting trends before they happen is an important part of gaining an edge and these Twitter research tools will be a big part of gaining insight into what’s happening.

So, what do your Twitter statistics look like?

Researching,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Let’s follow each other on Twitter

Today’s Microtween is on TwitterScan.com. TwitterScan lets you research Twitter posts using keyword searches. You can research just a particular keyword, like “Obama”, or you can search for keywords by user. This is extremely helpful if you want to see what people are saying about a particular subject or if you want to track what a person is saying on a specific topic.

Depending on your keywords you can pull back some interesting results. For example if you put in the search phrase “darren rowse” you can see all the things that are said about him. Run that through some more analysis and you might find a trend.

TwitterScan even provides an RSS option so you can subscribe to a Twitter search result. Personally I think that is genius because it invites others to use the site like a service, which should promote usage and build value.

They also provide a search engine plugin that lets you put the TwitterScan search in your toolbar. This is handy if you switch between the various search engines like I do.

Perspective:

Twitter is growing exponentially and like all social networking tools it is still maturing. How to effectively use Twitter is still undefined for some and clearly defined for others. One thing is clear though, because conversations on Twitter are public and searchable, there will continue to be growing interest in search, indexing, analyzing and reporting on what is said on Twitter. There is definitely some potential market gold in the data and in the next few Microtweens you and I will look at the tools that will help us dig into that data.

Twitter Scanning,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Starting today I’m going to be posting to my blog on a regular basis. I know what your thinking, “Show me the money.” Well, I certainly intend to do just that.

As part of an effort to post to my blog every day I’m starting a series called, Microtweens.

Microtweens will be short blog posts that link to one new daily resource that I find on the web. I’ll include a short note about any possible marketing angles and a related thumbnail image.

Mainly I want to ensure that you’re getting regular updates from me as I find new tools for you to consider. I already have a stack of Del.icio.us bookmarks and emails that I’ve collected with the idea that I’d eventually write about them and tell you. The reality is I like to give a lot of detail, maybe too much detail, in my regular articles and that means it takes me a while to hammer out a final post.

So Microtweens should solve that problem because I can sit down and create a months worth of short posts, and then as time allows, I can slip the longer full calorie articles in between the Microtweens.

Obviously you’ll experience the result from your end as you get the updates, but I’ll be sure to update you on how the plan is actually working for me on the blogging end.

If you have a better suggestion, leave a comment and tell everyone about it. I’m sure I’m not the only one looking for ways to make sure their blog stays active while they work on other projects.

Oh, and here’s today’s Microtween:

Resource:

“SocialSpark is a Social Marketing Network that connects advertisers and bloggers through an online advertising marketplace. Advertisers are able to target blogs based on conversational topics and make cash sponsorship offers to the bloggers who publish them. Bloggers can make money by either placing display advertisements on their blog or by writing sponsored content. The sponsorships offered through the SocialSpark marketplace allow advertisers to build buzz, generate traffic and maximize social media exposure.”

Perspective:

Paid blogging is a touch subject for some people. I’m not one of those people. I do believe there is a right way to do it and a not so right way. Overall the market is still maturing and to me the most important aspect of the concept should be ensuring quality, providing value to everyone involved, and giving the blogger the freedom to choose what they right about.

Social spark looks like it’s moving heavily in that direction by creating a social network of advertisers and bloggers that can interact and do business openly.

I haven’t fully explored this resource, so I’ll reserve my full comments for a later date, but I do suggest that you go take a look at what they have to offer.

Be sure to post your feedback on the Open Source Marketer Community and let us know what you think.

Microtweening,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

At the March WordCamp Dallas 2008 conference I was introduced to a new analytics package from Layered Technologies called Woopra. The tool offers realtime stats tracking and historical reporting of visitor traffic on your blog or website.

Currently Woopra is in beta and usage is by invitation only. But, fortunately as an attendee of WordCamp, I received an invitation and have the privilege of getting to use Woopra before the general public.

So I thought I’d give you an inside look so you can be ready when they finally open things up.

Woopra departs from the standard linear analytics reporting that you currently get most of the shelf analytic tools by putting all the information you care about in one executive dashboard.

Realtime stats are displayed as they happen and additional analytic reports can be created from historical data. It’s possible to jump from keyword searches to top referring sites and actually get a sense of how they relate.

Installing Woopra was simple. If you’ve ever pasted a line of code into your website or uploaded a plugin to your WordPress blog, then you can install Woopra in a matter of minutes.

Here are the steps I took to get it installed as well as some screen shots of Woopra in action. I’ll try to include a video later to give you a walk through of how the software works.

After creating an account on the Woopra website, I added my blog. The Woopra site then provided me with a site ID and a WordPress plugin. I downloaded Woopra’s WordPress plugin, installed it on my blog, activated it, and then entered my site ID in the plugin settings.

Once that was done, Woopra began collecting stats about my visitor traffic, much like Google Analytics or StatCounter would do.

The next step was to install the desktop client so that I could see realtime stats.

The Woopra site has reporting in the browser, but it’s not realtime unless you want to click the refresh button on your browser every five seconds.

Having access to statistics from the Woopra website is a nice option if you’re away from your desktop client, but it’s not as much fun as the desktop version.

There is a Windows version of the desktop client and Mac version. Both require Java to be installed on the system before you can install Woopra.

Since I use a MacBook so I downloaded the OSX client installer from Woopra and the Java 1.6 Runtime from Apple.

After installing Java 1.6 I found that I couldn’t install Woopra because, I still needed to change the Java preferences on the Mac. Once I did that I installed Woopra without issues.

Once the desktop client was running, I logged in just as I would have on the Woopra website and the client instantly began giving me statistics on my visitor traffic.

I was able to see when someone entered my site, what pages they visited, how long they were there, where they came from, what keywords they used to find my blog, and a whole range of other information all without changing a single screen.

It was absolutely amazing! I had never seen anything close to this before. As people came and went on my blog, I could see all my important stats in one place like some sort of rocket powered Wall Street stock ticker.

If you’ve used Google Analytics, you know how much of an improvement it is over some of the other solutions for web analytics.

But, you also know that your stats are delayed by a day because Google doesn’t report your number realtime. You also know that you still have to dig for important information.

Even though Google lets you build your own dashboard, it’s really still very linear information because you have to drill down two or three pages to get to the information you want and you don’t really have a side by side comparison of information to get any real sense of what the information means.

Woopra changes all that by giving you realtime stats, historical reporting, and side by side data comparisons. I promise I’ll show you all of this in upcoming articles and videos. Screen shots are nice, but seeing Woopra in action really demonstrates the power of the tool.

Up until this point, the information has been very hard to extract from log files, and off the shelf analytics software. I can’t wait till Woopra goes live. It’s the only analytics service I’ve seen that I would want to pay for.

What about you? What analytics software are you using? Could you gain a competitive edge from realtime statistics?

Amazed,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com