There are several new features in this release – along with other bug fixes and improvements.
Google Analytics Reporting
This marks the first release of our new reporting system based on Google Analytics. Instead of inventing yet another tracking and reporting engine, we have tightly integrated our reporting into the popular and powerful Google Analytics platform. All you need is a free Google Analytics account. You can create a new one, or even better, use an existing account that is tracking all of your website visits. Then, create a Google Analytics network connection to this account through Butterfly Publisher.
Reports are accessible through the Reports tab at the top of the screen.
- The initial All Activity Report will show total clicks and total responses over the past month (the default period). If your Google Analytics account is tracking your Website traffic, the total page views from your site will also be shown. This overlay lets you see trends between your postings and your Web site traffic. To display only the page views for a particular page on your site, you can select this page form the Page URL drop-down list and then click Apply.
- The Activity by Posting report will display your previous posts with the total number of recipients, clicks, and responses for each item overlayed next to it. Click on one of these numbers to drill down to the Posting Detail report.
- The Posting Detail report breaks down a posting to indicate how many recipients, clicks, and responses there are, broken down by social network.
Quick Polls
Another exciting feature in this release are Quick Polls. A Quick Poll is a simple survey with one question and multiple-choice answers. You can create a Quick Poll and then post it to all of your networks as part of a message. Your recipients will be asked to choose an answer from the poll. The total number of votes can then appear in a chart that is displayed immediately after the vote is collected, or the results can be broadcast as a separate message to the same audience.
To create a Quick Poll, expand the Quick Polls area on the Butterfly Publisher home page. Then, click the Add Poll button. You will then be prompted to define the poll question and possible answers. You can also define other properties such as the start and end time for the poll, what to do after the user votes, and the type of chart to use to display the results.
Once the Quick Poll is created you can select it for inclusion with a message by clicking the Select Poll button next to the poll in the Quick Polls area. To see the poll question and the poll results, click the [+] to expand the Quick Poll. You will then be able to switch back and forth between the Poll and Results tabs. To post the results of your poll, click the Results tab and then click the Select Results button which will appear to the upper right.
Posting Confirmation Page
Another improvement in this release is the new confirmation page. This page appears after you click the Post button and will show you what your final message will look like with shortened links. The message length will be checked if you are posting to Twitter, and other checks will be made. If all of the settings are correct, you can then click Confirm to post the message or schedule it for posting at the specified time.