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The peeps at Kel & Partners have a lot to say. After all we are public relations and social media zealots who thrive on sharing interesting news and great stories with the public. The Ampersand Blog is really the voice of our Peeps – the kick-ass team of people that work at K&P. Whether it’s a story about the way PR works NOW, Web 2.0 and the social media universe, our families, beloved pets or quirky travel experiences, you’ll find it all right here. You may laugh, you may cry, but the best part is you’ll leave feeling “wicked smaht” as we like to say here in Boston.

Archive for the ‘Klout’ Category

  • Facebook

    amandeville | Tuesday, January 24, 2012 4 Comments

    A Review of Every Social Media Measurement Tool in the History of the World

    As the Data and Marketing Analytics Guru – I tacked on the “guru” part myself – I try to find social media tools that can simplify my reporting. I thought coming up with a compilation of all the social media reporting tools in existence would be helpful to other people trying to create an effective social media strategy and determine ROI. Apparently, there are a lot more in existence than I realized. I found over a dozen of them, though there could still be more. Here is a rundown of each tool that I hope will be informative, and possibly even interesting, to social media users.

    First, let me start out with two essentials in case you get bored before making it to the end of this post: Google Analytics and Facebook Insights. Basically, if you’re good at knowing what you’re looking for and understanding vast amounts of data, these are the two tools you must have. Google Analytics is the only way to tell how people are getting to your website, from social media sources or otherwise. Facebook Insights provides, well, insight into your fan base and how they engage with your content. Both are essential for social media monitoring.

    Beyond that, there are a few categories of tools:

    • Tweet Schedulers combined with Analytics
    • Analytics with some Bonuses
    • Oo, that’s pretty. What does it mean?

    Of the first category,
    Hootsuite and Buffer will measure analytics for Tweets that you post through their websites. I recently discovered Hootsuite and am quickly falling in love with it. It has customizable reports that can include Google Analytics and Facebook Insights. But, most importantly, it lets you see how many clicks you get on your links, which is a good way of assessing the effectiveness of your Tweets. Buffer lets you see Retweets and reach for each Tweet you tweeted through them, which is nice for determining ROI. Buffer is really more for a single, personal account and not much else, but it is free. Hootsuite has pro options and reports that cost “points.” I don’t know how much 45 points cost, so for all I know it could be $100/point and be ridiculous. That’s what we call in the business “scaring away potential customers with sneaky pricing plans.”

    Of the second category,
    Sprout Social provides analytics, but also helpful tools to follow people based on profile keyword searches (like Twellow), unfollow people who don’t follow you back, etc. It costs money, including a little extra to integrate Google Analytics into reports, but the PDFs do look nice and point out the most popular Tweets and Facebook posts, as well as telling you how much traffic went to your website from social media websites (though when I compare it to Google Analytics, the numbers neglect clicks from some URL variations, such as link shorteners in Twitter or mobile Facebook). They also claim LinkedIn integration, but it does not show up in the report.

    Of the third category,
    Kred, Klout, Twitter Grader, Twitter Counter, Peek Analytics, Simply Measured, Twenty Feet, Social Bro, TweetStats, TwitSprout and Twitalyzer. Yeah, there are a lot of not too useful tools out there. Meag already discussed Klout here. There’s also a sort of knock-off, Kred. While Klout measures influence from every social media channel, Kred adds in your normal street cred. I don’t know how it fact-checks if I’m a black belt in Karate and published romance author. Like Klout and Twitter Grader, your score is based on how you compare to all other Twitter users. Klout, Kred and Twitter Grader use real data, but they abstract it to a number that compiles some useful and some not so useful data, so it doesn’t really inform your strategy. Twitalyzer is similar, though it does include some advice about where you’re falling short in your Twitter strategy. My main problem with Twitalyzer is how ugly the data is and how difficult it is to get a nice range of data, since it doesn’t seem to store data for very long.

    Peek Analytics tries to distinguish itself as being more business oriented. It is still in beta, but right now, it seems to get a lot of information that makes me wonder about internet privacy. It assesses your followers in Twitter and determines demographic data, income level, what type of college they went to, what industry they are in and their interests. I don’t know quite how it gets all of that data, but at the time of writing this, I’ve linked up my Twitter account to all of these tools, so I shouldn’t be surprised if I’m hacked and pillaged for personal information.

    Simply Measured: “Plans start at $500/month.” You’ve lost me. Plus your graphs are ugly.

    Twitter Counter is nice for graphs and you get data that goes back three months (or six months if you “pay with a Tweet”). Sometimes it’s just nice to see how far you’ve come.

    Social Bro’s main asset is being called Social Bro, but it also tells you the best time of day to Tweet and get a response. The report takes forever to load for some reason. In the category of “takes too long to get your data,” TwitSprout needs a week to pull in Twitter data. It has the prettiest user interface, plus a retro, Technicolor logo that I love. The data seems to focus too much on followers, not actual engagement, though.

    Twenty Feet, aptly named for giving you a bird’s eye view of Twitter, has some nice graphs and adjustable time periods. Plus there’s a cartoon giraffe for a logo, which is cute.

    TweetStats gives you data about your Twitter handle back to the beginning of time, including who you’ve Retweeted and @mentioned, but not the other way around. It comes in pretty colors, too.

    I’ve heard that Twitter will be rolling out its own analytics sometime this year, so hopefully the glut of useless tools will stop. I can’t wait for that day.

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  • Facebook

    redheadmeag | Monday, December 12, 2011 6 Comments

    Klout, schmout

    In the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of negative backlash directed at Klout, based on an algorithm change that caused a lot of people’s scores to plummet. As for me, I’ve been a skeptic since I got my first Klout score. Now, I’m no Ashton Kutcher (gratefully) but I’ve been on Twitter for nearly 4 years and consider myself something of a Twitterholic. Imagine my surprise when I got my Klout score -– a meager 30- – and learned that I’m considered “influential” about…real estate?

    Real estate? A happy renter that’s never even been to an open-house, I can’t imagine in what universe I’d be considered knowledgeable on the subject, let alone influential. (Editorial side note – a recent check of my Klout score now has me influential about PR, family and Massachusetts…perhaps thanks to those recent algorithm changes? More info in this article from Adweek: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/klout-faces-foes-136721)

    As our collective consciousness has evolved past the “my follower/friend count defines my SM self worth” stage of evolution (see posts from Ginny Pitcher and Chris Brogan for more on that), I think we all look for some metrics that will define our status as “rock star.” (I’ve always been a fan of HubSpot’s continuously evolving Twitter Grader –- perhaps because it gives me an A+?) Tools like Klout can either be validation, or useful for those starting out to figure out if they’re “doing it right.” I’m not so sure that Klout is an effective tool for either of those situations.

    A recent post by Hollis Tibbetts on SocialMediaToday has a nice little case study on “gaming” Klout that I think is a pretty clear illustration of what (IMO) is wrong with the service: http://socialmediatoday.com/softwarehollis/385964/exposed-klout-scores-still-garbage-after-all-these-days.

    Maybe my 30 isn’t so bad? Some interesting insights in this piece: “Why I deleted my Klout profile,” (check out the insights under #6), http://socialmediatoday.com/pammoore/389381/why-i-deleted-my-klout-profile

    With the advent of +Ks, I think there’s a chance that Klout’s “influencer” metrics may be improved by some user-generated control. While the site is still technically in beta, I’ll look to see continued improvement that makes what they’re measuring more meaningful. I wonder if by the time they get there, though, anyone will consider it so.

    What’s your Klout score? Are you a fan of the service?

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  • Facebook

    redheadmeag | Thursday, September 1, 2011 4 Comments

    Facebook announcing music streaming through facebook.com at F8

    Madonna said it best – music makes the people come together.

    I’m something of an early adopter of “online music”. Sean Fanning went to my High School (sure, he was a freshman when I graduated and is now a millionaire…sigh…) and my addiction to LimeWire crashed my family’s computer at least a dozen times. I was the type that updated the song on my MySpace profile with great frequency, even. All told, the rise of music streaming marks one of the most significant impacts the internet has had on my life.

    A few years ago, Pandora was my jam. For the uninitiated, Pandora lets you create “stations” based on a specific artist/song. It will then serve up “similar” songs based on that selection. What a fantastic tool for discovering new music! (I owe my awareness of/love for the Black Keys to Pandora). It applied intelligence to these selections by enabling you to “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” the songs it played. I managed that ish like Joe Jackson – I was on it, and if any of my stations served up something I didn’t like, those songs were dealt with in the harshest way possible (that’s right, thumbs down to YOU Pussycat Dolls!) The problem is, when I gave a thumbs up to an artist, say, I don’t know, Justin Timberlake, those songs began to permeate my other channels. When you’re in the mood for Slipknot, JT mixing in just does not work.

    Craving more control, I jumped on the GrooveShark bandwagon. Now, let me say this plainly – Grooveshark has changed my life. You have access to the music collections of the estimated 35,000,000 users!! I’ve yet to search for a song/artist and not get something back – even my beloved Josh Homme’s Dessert Sessions are on there, and you should hear the Chieftans/Dropkick/assorted bagpipe/12 versions of “toura loura” mix I made for Saint Patrick’s Day.  You choose your songs, add them to a list, and that list lives forever.  The only problem – no mobile app?! (Give that a big ol’ #WTF. Come on, Grooveshark.) Of course, this left me stranded at a party a few weekends ago that needed DJ RedHeadMeag’s touch.

    Enter Spotify. Like the rest of the Twitterverse, I used Klout to gain access to this much buzzed about service. But I got there and….meh. Where was the selection? That’s a bandwagon with a personal best high bounce rate – 2 tries, and I was out.  Did I walk away too quickly? (comments and thoughts are welcome!)

    Now, I’m reading that Facebook is going to announce at F8 later this month that they’re partnering with Spotify (and others) to stream music through FB.com. Check out the Mashable story: http://mashable.com/2011/08/31/facebook-music-platform/

    Adding reco’s based on what my friends like? Hmmm. I’m friends with a pretty musically diverse group of individuals – I’m not sure that this is really going to do it for me.  Also – I like free.

    Are you excited about this launch? What is your favorite music service?

     

     

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