The Open Source Marketer

If you want to know how much website traffic a competitor is getting then you’ll want to take a look at Compete.com. Compete offers site analytic that let you do side by side website traffic comparisons between several sites. Compete also offers search analytics that can tell you what keywords a specific website is getting traffic for or what websites in general are getting traffic for specific keywords.

Here’s how the Compete website describes their Search Analytics, “It’s your starting point to build and optimize search marketing campaigns that create brand awareness, drive site traffic and increase sales. Use Compete Search Analytics to discover keywords driving traffic to any domain, identify gaps in your search strategy, invest in terms that drive the most engaged visitors, and track your performance against competitors and peers.”

Compete offers a great service that really puts important information in your hands. I personally like the site comparison tool because you can begin to get a rough idea of how sites are doing compared to each other in terms of traffic. You can use this information either as a benchmark for your current competitive efforts or you can use it as a gauge to research a market or plan strategies for acquiring visitor traffic.

The service offers some bare bones free information, but if you really want to dig into the keyword research, you’ll need to buy some Compete credits. Credits are purchased with real money and each report deducts a few credits from your overall balance. The system seems to be very fair.

I received free trial credits when I created a free account and the overall theme seemed to be that the more potential valuable you stand to gain from a report, the more credits it will cost you.

Perspective:

Gaining insight into what is going on with websites in your topic of interest is as much a necessity of picking a direction as it is a part of trying to gain a competitive edge.

While compete is not a complete picture of everything that is happening with a competitors website, it is a lot better than not knowing anything at all.

Combined with keyword research tools like WordTracker and Google Trends, Compete can be a very useful tool in your research toolbox.

Competing,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

So, who are you following on Twitter? I mean really following? Do you have a list only of people you know or is it mixed between real personal contacts and complete strangers?

My guess is you’re like most people using Twitter and you have a mixed list. Maybe your following Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak. Maybe your following me. It’s hard not to have one or two curiosity follows. So, the next question is why are you following strangers on Twitter? Do you expect them to say something interesting or do you think they will one day be your close friend? Again my guess is your like most people and you don’t know. Let’s come back to this in a moment.

What if you don’t know who to follow? Maybe your new to Twitter and you want to follow someone, because that’s what your suppose to do right? But who, who do you follow in a sea of little thumbnail faces and cartoon icons?

Well whether you’re following Steve Jobs for no apparent reason or your looking for someone to follow, you might want to check out the Twitter friend finder tool at Twubble.com.

According to their website, “Twubble can help expand your Twitter bubble—it searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.”

This is an interesting way to stalk, er research people to follow on Twitter because it gives you a loose reason to choose those people. Twubble looks at your follow list and tries to match you up with other people you might be interested in following. I’m not sure exactly how they determine who to recommend, but I think it has to do with common friends.

Twubble gives you a list similar to this one and you can choose who you want to follow from there. You can also Google search the person to find out more about them.

There is a transference of trust and an element of social proof that is carried in the list that is returned because Twubble tells you who and how many people are following the people they recommend to you. So six of your friends are following someone, you might want to follow them too.

Personally I see this as a research tool that can lead you to groups of people who are thought leaders in a particular subject.

Let me give you an example of why this might be useful information.

A few days ago I received an email from Twitter telling me that ObamaNews was following me. I didn’t think it too strange because I am following Obama and Hillary on Twitter. But when I eventually went to check out ObamaNews to see if I wanted to follow them I found more of an adsense site than a campaign site. This got me to thinking. Is it possible to follow people just to get them to follow you, or at the very least to visit your blog?

I think the answer is definitely yes. It is possible to find a Twitter group, follow everyone within that group and wait for them to either follow you in return or at least visit your blog to check our who you are.

This might not be your thing and you might see it as underhanded. I’m not debating that point here. What I am saying is that there are unexplored automatic response at work here that are largely untapped on Twitter. But, as people discover this you can bet you’ll see more of it and it will likely make some people a lot of money.

Perspective:

Take some time and evaluate exactly who you’re following on Twitter and honestly ask yourself why you’re following them. If there is a reason fine. If there isn’t a reason fine. Just know that there is more to Twitter than just following strangers for no apparent reason and don’t be surprised when people you don’t know start following you.

Use the tools we’ve discussed so far to find people to follow and look for trends and opportunity in the connections you create. You’ll be amazed at what’s there if you just that the time to look.

Researching,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

I’m on the road to Austin Texas today to visit the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Conservatory so this Microtween will be really short. Last time you learned that you can get a variety of Twitter stats by individual from TweetStats.com.

Today, let’s find out who the top followed people are on Twitter so we can begin to explore trends and look for people we might be interested in following. Remember, when we follow people they are inclined to do the same which in turn raises our perceived value. For a good example of this be sure to read my article on how Obama and Hillary are using Twitter for their political campaigns.

To find the top people on Twitter we’ll be using Twitterholic. According to Twitterholic, “Our twittastic robots scan the Twitter public timeline for new users to watch. A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each user in our database.”

Twitterholic provides a top 100 list of most followed people on Twitter. This gives us a nice list of prospective people to watch and analyze for trends. It also gives us the chance to drill down into their lists and look for people and trends that might be interesting.

Perspective:

Dig around with this tool and the other tools we’ve talked about to do your own research. See if you can find interesting connections between people and look for valuable conversations. Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, but the frequency and nature of the messages may tell you all you need to know.

The next Microtween will be about how to find people to follow and we’ll talk about why you might want to target specific groups of people to follow.

Do you know why people are following you?

Off to the flowers,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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