New Reporting Release
The reporting system has been consolidated to three primary reports:
- Activity by Posting
- Activity by Link
- Activity by Day
Activity by Posting
This report shows activity related to each particular message that has been posted. The tracked activity includes:
- Recipients – The total number of people who could have potentially seen this message.
- Clicks – The number of people who clicked a link contained in the message.
- Likes – The number of people who have “liked” this message in their newsfeed.
- Votes – The number of people who voted on this poll.
- Responses – The total number of responses this message has received. This includes comments, re-tweets, and replies.
- Comments – The number of comments made on this message.
- Re-Tweets – The number of times this message has been re-tweeted by others on Twitter.
- Re-Tweet Followers – The total number of followers associated with the Twitter users who re-tweeted the message.
- Replies – The number of tweets that are replying to your original tweet.
For more detail on any posting, you can click on the highlighted numbers. This will display a detailed report showing the breakdown of recipients, clicks, and responses.
Sorting Posts
By default, this report shows the most recent posts first. However, the messages can also be sorted on any key metric to answer different types of questions such as:
- What are the most/least popular posts by clicks?
- What are the most/least liked posts?
- What are the posts with the most/least responses?
- Which posts have been re-tweeted the most?
Filtering by Network and by Tag
The Activity by Posting report also provides filtering criteria which can be used to focus reporting on specific types of content. Use the Network filter to show only items posted to a particular network.
Use the Tag filter to select and display only messages that have been assigned a particular tag.
Setting the Date Range
By default, this report will show data for messages posted within the past 30 days. You may adjust this date range to include older messages and/or messages up to a certain date.
Exporting Data
Any selection of content that is displayed in the report can also be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet (or a tab delimited file) for further analysis. Choose the order and filter criteria and then click the Export button.
Activity by Link
The Activity by Link report is similar to the Activity by Posting report in terms of the statistics displayed. However, the focus of this report is to identify the URL links contained within the posted messages and to report on the overall activity occurring on these links across all of the items in which they appear.
This report includes an additional measure which is “the number of messages”. This indicates how many posted messages contain this link (within the specified date range). To see these messages, click on the number. This will show the Activity by Posting report filtered to show only the messages containing this link.
Activity by Day
This report allows activity across postings to be viewed over time. There are many flexible ways to create this report depending upon the combination of data that is selected. One or more data sets can be selected and displayed together in a single chart.
The following data series are available to be plotted:
- Clicks – Total number of clicks per day
- Page Views (from Google Analytics) – Number of page views for the site or a particular web page per day.
- Visits (from Google Analytics) – Number of unique visits to the site or a particular page per day.
- Logins – Number of times users have logged into this account each day.
- Posted Items – Number of items posted each day.
- Sends – Number of times items have been posted to a network each day.
- Recipients – Total number of people who have received messages each day.
- Likes – The number of likes associated with postings each day.
- Responses – The total number of responses (comments, re-tweets, and replies) which have occurred each day.
- Comments – The number of comments each day.
- Re-tweets – The number of messages that have been re-tweeted each day.
- Re-tweet Followers – The total number of followers who are the recipients of re-tweeted messages.
- Replies – The number of specific replies received each day.
- Mentions – The number of mentions each day.
- Wall Posts – The number of wall posts each day.
- Votes – The total number of votes which have been applied to polls each day.
Filtering by Network and by Tag
The Activity by Day report also provides filtering criteria which can be used to focus reporting on specific types of posts. Use the Network filter to show only items posted to a particular network.
Use the Tag filter to select and display only messages that have been assigned a particular tag.
Using the Left or Right Scale
When a data set is added to the chart, the data will be plotted according to the scale shown on the left side of the chart by default. When comparing data sets which have maximum values that are orders of magnitude greater than each other, it may be preferable to compare them using two different scales. This is done by clicking the “use right scale” checkbox when adding the data to the chart.
Setting the Date Range
By default, this report will show data for all messages posted within the past 30 days. You may adjust this date range to include activity within another time period.
Integration to Google Analytics Accounts
In addition to the activity results collected by the system, the Activity by Day report has the ability to overlay Page Views and Page Visits from one or more Google Analytics Accounts. This is useful for comparing posting activity with web traffic trends on a web site.
To include Google Page Views or Visits on the chart, you must first have a network connection to a Google Analytics account. This connection is created through the Manage Networks area accessible through the Settings tab.
When selecting Page Views or Visits, you have the option of including data for the whole site or selecting a particular tracked page from the site. A drop-down list will appear to allow you to make this selection.
Totals, Average, and Maximum Values
Below the chart you will find a section where the total number, average per day, and maximum values for each selected data set are shown. You can also expand this area to see all of the raw data used in the chart by clicking the VIEW DATA button.
Removing Posts
Occasionally you may find that you have posted an update or tweet that you wish you could take back. While we can’t get every genie back in the bottle, we have added functionality that allows posts to be selectively removed from Facebook or Twitter.
To retract a posting, find it in the Posted Messages area. Then click the red X to the right of the item to begin the deletion process. You will then see a list of all of the networks to which this message has been posted. To delete the posted item from one or all of these networks, select the corresponding check boxes. Then, click the Apply button.
Google Campaign Variables
The campaign tracking feature sends information to websites that are tracked using Google Analytics. It can be used to show which posted messages are really paying off. This feature works by appending campaign codes that you define to the links in your messages. These links must point back to websites that include the Google Analytics tracking widget. Google will then extract this additional tracking information and allow you to use it when creating reports.
Google Analytics tracks online campaigns using a combination of the following five marketing dimensions:
- Source
- Medium
- Term
- Content
- Campaign
Source
Every referral to a web site has an origin, or source. Examples of sources are Facebook, Twitter, the name of a blog, or the name of a referring web site.
Medium
The medium helps to qualify the source; together, the source and medium provide specific information about the origin of a referral. For example,
Term
The term or keyword is the word or phrase that a user types into a search engine.
Content
The content dimension describes the version of an advertisement on which a visitor clicked. It is used in content-targeted advertising and Content (A/B) Testing to determine which version of an advertisement is most effective at attracting profitable leads.
Campaign
The campaign dimension differentiates collections of messages promoting the same event or relating to the same subject. For instance, all posts promoting a seminar at the end of the month might be part of the same campaign.
For more information about how Google Analytics connects with your marketing campaigns, go here:http://www.google.it/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55579
Configuring Campaign Variables
There are two ways to configure Google campaign variables to be used in new postings: they can be assigned to a network connection or they can be assigned to a tag definition.
Campaign Variables for a Network
Assigning campaign variables to a particular network will add campaign information to every message sent through that network. For example, if you have defined a network connection to Facebook, you might set the Source variable to “Facebook” so that all content sent through this network will have this Source value in the Google reports. If you have more than one Facebook network, you might pass the Medium variable as a secondary dimension to allow you to distinguish web traffic coming from these two places.
To specify network level campaign variables, go to the Settings area and expand the Networks and Sources tab. Click to Manage Networks. Then click to edit a network. When editing a network, you will see the section for Google Campaign Variables part way down the page.
Campaign Variables for a Tag
Assigning campaign variables to tags will allow campaign information to be applied on a message by message basis. This allows you to distinguish between different marketing initiatives. For instance, all of the Tweets associated with an upcoming seminar might be assigned to the same Seminar tag. This tag would have a Campaign variable set to “Seminar”.
To specify campaign variables for a tag, go to the Settings area and click the Manage Tags option. Then, select the tag to edit. When editing a tag definition you will see the section where Google Campaign Variables can be defined.
Combining Campaign Variables from Networks and Tags
When a message is assigned a tag with campaign variables and that message is posted to a network with campaign variables, the campaign variables will be merged to form one set of variables. If the same variable is defined in both places, the tag level variables will override the network level variables. For example, if the network variables are:
Source = “Facebook”
Campaign = “Daily Tweets”
And the tag level variables are:
Content = “Version 1”
Campaign = “Seminar”
The Google Campaign Variables that will be submitted with this posting will be:
Source = “Facebook”
Content = “Version 1”
Campaign = “Seminar”