Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
Posted on March 29, 2012 by Sayf Sharif
We’ve talked about Social Engagement before, but I thought it’d be a good idea to put everything in one spot, to make it easier for the average Joe to set up their web page to track social engagement. First though let’s go over the basics.
What is Social Engagement
Primarily this is referring to when a visitor to your website likes your page on Facebook, or clicks the Twitter button or Google’s +1, or even a share on LinkedIn. We were originally going to include Pinterest as well in this post, but we’re still having problems working nicely with their API. Hopefully they release something soon that let’s us Analytics nerds have better access.
So when someone, for instance, like’s your page, it will get recorded as that user being socially engaged. You’ll see which users are socially engaged, which pages generated the most engagement, etc.
Google’s documentation regarding social tracking can be found here.
Available Reports on Social Engagement
There are several basic reports available on social engagement by default in Google Analytics located under the Audience section.
Audience > Social > Engagement is the primary report where you can compare the number of pages viewed per visit, the average time on site, the bounce rate, and other normal metrics for visits. This can help you determine whether people who used social actions that are available on your site viewed fewer or more pages, than people who did not use social actions.
Audience > Social > Action compares the number of social actions for each social source, and social source-action combination. For example you can compare “Likes” and “sends” from Facebook on your site, or compare the total Facebook interactions, with the total Twitter interactions.
Audience > Social > Pages allows you to compare the number of actions for each page of your site. You will see the information by social source, and social source-action combination. For example you will be able to see which pages prompted the most Facebook actions or the most Facebook likes, or the most Twitter Tweets. On this report Page is where the social action takes place, and Social Entity is the page that was shared.
How to Set Up Social Analytics
You will need to use the _trackSocial action for everything other than Google + buttons. Those are included automatically by Google, however all Facebook and Twitter interactions need to be tracked independently. In his recent Pinterest post, Jim makes a great point about also for the moment tracking things as Events, but we’re going to keep it simple here and just do TrackSocial. Maybe we can do a second follow up post and have an advanced version of the code.
First, be sure to include your Google Analytics Code!
Be sure to have the Asynchronous Tracking Code running on all pages. This code won’t work properly without up-to-date tracking code from Google. Be sure that your tracking code is tracking to the correct account.
Include the ga_social_tracking.js file on all pages
You will need to include a file on every page that is called ga_social_tracking.js and contains the following code. This code does not need to be modified. It can also be found at http://code.google.com/p/analytics-api-samples/source/browse/trunk/src/tracking/javascript/v5/social/ga_social_tracking.js
Include the Twitter JS-API Async Code in the Head
Twitter requires you to include the following code in the head of your document. This code does not need to be modified.
Here’s the code if you want to ‘cut n paste’
<!– Load Twitter JS-API asynchronously –>
<script>
(function(){
var twitterWidgets = document.createElement(‘script’);
twitterWidgets.type = ‘text/javascript’;
twitterWidgets.async = true;
twitterWidgets.src = ‘http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;
// Setup a callback to track once the script loads.
twitterWidgets.onload = _ga.trackTwitter;
document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0].appendChild(twitterWidgets);
})();
</script>
Add the LinkedIn Share Button Code to the Head
Add the following code for LinkedIn sharing to the head of your document as well. This code does not need to be modified
Here’s that specific code:
<!– LinkedIn Share Button tracking–>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
function LinkedInShare() {
_gaq.push(['_trackSocial', 'LinkedIn', 'Share']);
}
</script>
Check the scripts in your head. They should be something like this…
<head>
<script>
/******Asynchronous Google Analytics Tracking Code******/
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;
ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
<!– Google Analytics Social Button Tracking –>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.yourdomainname.com/ga_social_tracking.js”></script>
<!– Load Twitter JS-API asynchronously –>
<script>
(function(){
var twitterWidgets = document.createElement(‘script’);
twitterWidgets.type = ‘text/javascript’;
twitterWidgets.async = true;
twitterWidgets.src = ‘http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;
// Setup a callback to track once the script loads.
twitterWidgets.onload = _ga.trackTwitter;
document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0].appendChild(twitterWidgets);
})();
</script>
<!– LinkedIn Share Button tracking–>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
function LinkedInShare() {
_gaq.push(['_trackSocial', 'LinkedIn', 'Share']);
}
</script>
</head>
Ok now to the bottom of the page…
Add Facebook code to the Bottom of the Page
This code for Facebook needs to be included somewhere on the page. You can put it anywhere within the <body> however because it is non-async we recommend you put it at the end of the page.
<!–Facebook Scripts–>
<script src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>_ga.trackFacebook();</script>
Add Twitter code to the Bottom of the Page
Like the Facebook script above, this is non-async code, so should be placed somewhere on the page within the <body> and we recommend placing it at the end of the page.
<!– Twitter Scripts –>
<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);</script>
Add Google+ code to the Bottom of the Page
Like the Facebook and Twitter code, Google+ buttons need a little on page help. Add this code to the bottom of the page for Google+ buttons.
<!– Google+ Scripts –>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
(function() {
var po = document.createElement(‘script’); po.type = ‘text/javascript’; po.async = true;
po.src = ‘https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
})();
</script>
Add LinkedIn code to the Bottom of the Page
And this code must be included once per page within the body, but preferably near the end of the page as it is non-async.
<!– LinkedIn Scripts–>
<script src=”http://platform.linkedin.com/in.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
Review the Bottom Code
Your code at the bottom of the page should look like this…
<!– Facebook Scripts –>
<div id=”fb-root”></div><script src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1″></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>_ga.trackFacebook();</script>
<!– Twitter Scripts–>
<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);</script>
<!– Google+ Scripts –>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
(function() {
var po = document.createElement(‘script’); po.type = ‘text/javascript’; po.async = true;
po.src = ‘https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
})();
</script>
<!– Linked In Scripts –>
<script src=”http://platform.linkedin.com/in.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
</body>
BUTTONS
Ok it’s time to add the actual buttons. Here you have a bit more leeway because the scripts you’ve set up should now enable the social tracking on all four buttons.
Adding Facebook Buttons
With the above code installed, adding a Facebook like button is as simple as including a line of code similar to the one here where you wish the Like button to be located. Be sure to change the href value to the appropriate domain and page. If it is placed on a Blog page, it should have the URL for that page placed within the code on each page, otherwise the ‘like’ will be for the blog as a whole, rather than a specific page.
<fb:like href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/pagename.htm” send=”true” width=”450″ show_faces=”false” font=”"></fb:like>
The attributes can also be found on this page: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/
You can modify the code with various attributes that are described on that page under Step 1. For instance in the line above I have “send” being true which adds the send button next to the like button. I also have show_faces as false. If true it would display profile photos beneath the URL. Width lets you control the width on the page that the button will take, it can go smaller, or wider for instance. All the attributes are on the link above, and should be reviewed.
Adding Twitter Buttons
Twitter buttons are similar to Facebook, in that you simply add the following code or something similar where you wish the Tweet button to be located.
<a href=”http://twitter.com/share” data–count=”horizontal” data–url=”http://www.yourexamplewebpage.com” data via=”yourtwittername” data–text=”Your custom message” class=”twitter–share–button”>Tweet</a>
This code also needs to be modified. The data-url should be for the page you are referring to, the URL and the page itself. I recommend using this Twitter page to create a button:
http://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons#tweet
When there you can choose which button to use, and add the button options. This might create something like this…
<a href=”https://twitter.com/share” class=”twitter-share-button” data-via=”YourTwitterUsername ” data-hashtags=”SocialMedia”>Tweet</a>
<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);</script>
With that code, simply delete the <script> section and only use the bolded a link area inline where you wish the button to be located. The script itself that you’re deleting here you added to the bottom of every page in step 6.
Adding Google+ Buttons
Google+ is automatically tracked by Google Analytics, but you still need a button. I recommend using the Google page that helps you add the button to your website: http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/+1/button/index.html
The standard tag is:
<g:plusone></g:plusone>
And the most minimal tag is
<g:plusone annotation=”none”></g:plusone>
When you choose your options, simply copy the tag code such as above, and ignore the <script> render call, which you’ve already included on every page in step 7.
Adding LinkedIn Buttons
LinkedIn needs a little bit of help. Like the other buttons above it’s best to use the LinkedIn code itself located at https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/share-plugin-generator to generate your button. The generated script on the page will look something like this:
<script src=”//platform.linkedin.com/in.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
<script type=”IN/Share” data-counter=”right”></script>
Be sure to only include the second line listed, as you have included the first line in the bottom of your page in step 8. There are other options, so it’s best to use the URL to be shared in the link itself, generated by your page.
<script type=”IN/Share” data-url=”http://www.yourdomain.com/pagename.htm” data-counter=”right” data-onsuccess=”LinkedInShare”></script>
Also add the line data-onsuccess=”LinkedInShare” which will activate the function included in the head to track a LinkedIn share as a social engagement.
Variations – Box Count
You like the box counts like in the first image above?
<h2>Vertical Count Buttons</h2>
<!– Vertical Count Buttons –>
<div style=”position:relative;width:270px;height:70px;margin:auto;”>
<!– Facebook Vertical Count Button –>
<div style=”position:absolute;top:0px;left:0x;”>
<div class=”fb-like” data-href=”http://www.yourdomain.com” data-send=”false” data-layout=”box_count” data-width=”450″ data-show-faces=”true”></div>
</div>
<!– LinkedIn Vertical Count Button –>
<div style=”position:absolute;top:0px;left:60px;”>
<script src=”//platform.linkedin.com/in.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
<script type=”IN/Share” data-url=http://www.yourdomain.com” data-counter=”top” data-onsuccess=”LinkedInShare”></script>
</div>
<!– Twitter Vertical Count Button –>
<div style=”position:absolute;top:0px;left:140px;”>
<a href=”http://twitter.com/share” data-count=”vertical” data-url=http://www.yourdomain.com” data-related=”Related Twitter Handle Like The Company” data-text=”Insert Twitter Default Message Here” data-via=”Your Twitter Handle” class=”twitter-share-button”>Tweet</a>
</div>
<!– Google+ Vertical Count Button –>
<div style=”position:absolute;top:0px;left:220px;”>
<g:plusone size=”tall” href=”http://www.yourdomain.com”></g:plusone>
</div>
</div>
Boom. There you go.
Variations – Horizontal Count
You like the lower kind, under the picture of the awesome puppy?
<h2>Horizontal Count Buttons</h2>
<!– Horizontal Count Buttons –>
<div style=”position:relative;width:370px;height:20px;margin:auto;”>
<!– Facebook Horizontal Count Button –>
<div style=”position:absolute;top:0px;”><div class=”fb-like” data-href=”http://www.yourdomain.com” data-send=”false” data-layout=”button_count” data-width=”70″ data-show-faces=”true”></div></div>
<!– LinkedIn Horizontal Count Button –>
<div style=”position:absolute;top:0px;left:90px;”><script type=”IN/Share” data-url=”http://www.yourdomain.com” data-counter=”right”></script></div>
<!– Twitter Horizontal Count Button –>
<div style=”position:absolute;top:0px;left:200px;”><a href=”https://twitter.com/share” class=”twitter-share-button” data-url=”http://www.yourdomain.com” data-via=”YourTwitterName” data-hashtags=”social”>Tweet</a></div>
<!– Google+ Horizontal Count Button –>
<div style=”position:absolute;top:0px;left:310px;”><g:plusone size=”medium” href=”http://www.yourdomain.com”></g:plusone></div>
</div>
Shazam. You’re welcome.
Don’t forget to add the correct domains, twitter handles, descriptions etc.
Conclusion
With the code above in place, you can place Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn buttons across any of your sites where the code is included, and all sharing on those buttons will be included as Social Engagements in your Google Analytics tracking data. There are admittedly a few steps, but it’s mostly easy cut and pasting, and before long, you should not only be helping your users share your pages with their friends and colleagues, but you’ll be able to track when they do so.
Got any questions about implementing social engagement tracking? Write us below and we’ll get back to you uncomfortably fast with the answers.
View Comments (19 Responses) | Categories: Google Analytics, Social Media
Posted on March 22, 2012 by Jim Gianoglio
This is the second of a 2-part series on using Google Spreadsheets to make social media measurement easier, quicker and almost completely automated. For a refresher, read part 1 – Tracking Social Media with Google Spreadsheets.
In the previous post, you learned how to create a Google Spreadsheet that automated the task of tagging URLs with campaign parameters and shortening the links. Now, I’m going to show you how to take it two steps further.
Step 1: Send an email from within the Google Spreadsheet
At the end of the last post, you end up with a spreadsheet that takes a URL that you enter and spits out four shortened links (each going to versions of the URL with utm campaign parameters specific to that social network). That’s certainly a time saver (it saved me 10-15 minutes each time), but it still left me copying and pasting those links into an email every time I wanted to share with coworkers (so they could share the content with their social networks using the same campaign parameters).
I wanted to be even lazier more efficient. So I added in some email functionality to the spreadsheet (you can get a copy of that spreadsheet here). Once it’s open, go to File > Make a copy so you can edit the spreadsheet (you may need to sign in to your Google account - even if you were already signed in).
You should notice at the top a new menu item named EMAIL (see below).
This is made possible by using a little-known feature of Google Spreadsheets – the Script Editor. (If you’re looking for a complete user guide on the Script Editor, start here, otherwise keep reading.) Go to Tools > Script Editor in the menu and you’ll see how the magic happens. The first thing you’ll need to do is edit the list of email addresses you want to send to. Go to line 38 and modify the line that looks like this:
GmailApp.sendEmail("jim@example.com, betty@example.com, george@example.com",
Include the email addresses in a comma-separated list, making sure to enclose the addresses in quotes. Also be sure to leave the comma at the end of the last address, then save your changes.
Now when you go back into your spreadsheet and select EMAIL > Send Email from the menu, you’ll be presented with some initial authorization messages. The first one looks like this (click to enlarge):
Since you are using a script to access your Gmail account (to send the emails), Google requires authorization. That’s a good thing, albeit slightly cumbersome. Click on the OK button and it will pop open another window (see below) asking you to grant access to your Gmail account. Click on the Grant Access button and you’re good to go.
Now when you go back into your spreadsheet and select EMAIL > Send Email, a simple dialogue box will pop up asking “Would you like to send an email with these links to share?” Click the Send Email button to confirm and send the email to your list, or click cancel if you’ve changed your mind.
Step 2: Detect when a new post is published (and automatically send the email)
As efficient as the above process is, I still wasn’t happy. After all, every time a new blog post is published, someone still had to manually go to Google Docs, open the spreadsheet, copy/paste in the URL, then click email. My goal was to make this completely automated – no humans allowed. So I added in some additional functionality to check for new posts, and automatically send the email when a new post is published.
Of course, I’m happy to share this spreadsheet with you, our loyal readers.
In addition to adding your Bit.ly credentials on the Technical Details tab, and modifying the email addresses as mentioned above, there is one more change you need to make to get this up and running.
Go to the Behind the Scenes tab and enter your blog homepage in the cell below where it says “URL of blog homepage.” Then, in the cell next to that, below the heading “Most recent blog posts” you need to edit the formula in that cell. Before you edit it, it will look like:
=importXML(J2, "//h2[@class='post-headline']/a/@href")
That formula uses the importXML function to pull in data from a particular location, in this case your blog homepage (as indicated by the first parameter – J2). The second parameter uses Xpath to drill down to just the bits of the page we need – the URLs of the blog posts. If I’m speaking a second language to you right now, go read this more complete (and awesome) guide to importXML and Xpath.
Basically, you’ll need to specify how your blog headlines are styled – are they headings (h1, h2, h3…) and do they have a class associated with them (like ‘post-headline’ or ‘entry-title’, etc.)? To get this information, you can right click on the blog headline (in Google Chrome) and click on Inspect Element. Taking our blog homepage, for example, we can see that it is an H2 heading with a class of ‘post-headline’.
Once you’ve updated that formula, there is one last step. Go to Tools > Script Editor from the main navigation. Now click on Resource > All your triggers. Click Add a new trigger and choose “sendEmail” from the first dropdown menu, “Time-driven” from the second dropdown, “Minutes timer” from the third drop down and “Every 5 minutes” from the last dropdown. It should look like this (click to enlarge):
This sets up a time-based trigger that executes the function sendEmail every 5 minutes. (That function only sends the email if the URL of the most recent blog post has changed).
That’s it! You did it – you stuck around to the very end, and now you have a tool that saves you time and makes it easier to track your social media efforts. Now you can enjoy the fruits of you labor and spend time doing what matters (watching the dollar shave video again).
Let me know in the comments if this tool is helpful (or if you want to see more of these kinds of posts here). And don’t forget to like it, share it, tweet it, +1 it or Pin it if you really enjoyed it!
View Comments (1 Response) | Categories: Google Analytics, Social Media, Web Analytics
Posted on March 20, 2012 by Travis Loncar
One of the things that I’ve been most impressed with since starting here at LunaMetrics is the systematic, yet enthusiastic approach to coordinating blog efforts. Let me explain. Believe it or not, behind most successful blogs, there’s a defined process for writing, publishing, and sharing each post. While a great blog might garner hundreds of returning visitors daily, a new blog (which, by my estimation, has every capacity to be great) won’t be inherently populated. Wishful thinking aside, visitors won’t instinctively flock to your posts like the salmon of Capistrano. (Shameless Dumb & Dumber plug. Check.) Content is king, but it isn’t the whole kingdom. By coordinating your blog efforts with defined processes, open communication, and a little elbow grease, you can give your new blog a head start.
Let’s look at four tips for coordinating blog efforts:
1. Maintain a Post Calendar
As is true in most walks of life, when it comes to blogging, it’s good to have a plan. If you’re managing a company blog, maintaining a blog-specific Google Calendar is a great way to keep everyone prepared and informed. For each day that a blog post is set to be published, simply create an Event with the scheduled blogger’s name. Easy enough, right? It takes a little time to set up, obviously, but you can rest assured that your coworkers will appreciate your efforts.
You’ll want to decide your posting schedule ahead of time, of course. How many posts would you like published each week? On which days should posts be published? What is the best time to publish each post? You get the idea. These are all things that you’ll want to consider when crafting your calendar. If you’re just starting, don’t feel that you need to rush into publishing three or four blog posts a week. Take it slow. When you feel that you have the process down pat, you can make adjustments.
2. Link to Relevant Posts
A great way to convey a sense of company-wide ownership and trust is by promoting relevant entries via internal post links. In doing so, we’re not simply trying to flatter the man or woman typing away at the keyboard to our left or right. Instead, we’re providing the user with a link from within our own blog that we’re confident has information that they might find useful. When users are able to trust the insights of multiple authors on your blog, they’re more likely to see value in returning. Linking to your own posts can be effective, as well, if done when appropriate. Remember, apart from just referencing relevant posts, internal linking has direct SEO benefits.
3. List or Share Blog Post Ideas
Unique ideas, although infectious, are often hard to come by. Something that you may want to do, via Google Docs, Dropbox, what have you, is maintain a list of blog post ideas that others can draw from and contribute to. If your blog covers a wide spectrum of topics from within an overarching industry, this can be especially useful. For instance, if I notice that Reid (a colleague here at LunaMetrics) has a post coming up on the calendar, I might add a link to an article that I find interesting, in hopes that it spurs his imagination. An alternative to this, which we do often, is sharing directly via email or chat. In general, if you find something industry-related interesting, chances are that your colleagues will, as well. You’ll have your duds, of course, but that’s okay! Inspiration requires only one impetus.
4. Have a Social Strategy
Unique, thought-provoking content is great, and so is making it happen on a regular basis. Do you know what’s better, though? People reading, responding to, and sharing your content. Sounds like a community, right? Right. While it takes time and effort to build a blog community, having a strategy in place for social sharing is a great way to get a head start. Consider the following options when planning your social outreach:
- Social Buttons/Plugins – Social media is the medium through which outstanding blog posts take flight – being read, promoted, and shared by thousands, or hundreds of thousands. Needless to say, I highly recommend giving your users the option to share or vote for (Like or +1) your blog posts socially. Check out this list of social plugins for WordPress.
- Promote Your Posts – Promoting your posts via company and personal social media accounts is a great way to inform your fans or followers about both recently published and dated content. The key here is providing value on a consistent basis. If you’re utilizing your accounts simply to broadcast your latest blog post (or worse, having a bot do it) and not adding any value to the community, you’re not going to keep your followers for very long. However, if you share your own content intermittently, in the midst of general insights and relevant articles from other sources, you’ll add value and retain your community. The same goes for personal accounts.
- Track Social Shares – Tracking social shares from your company and personal accounts is a great way to see how your social outreach strategy is playing out. One way to do this, which Jim has kindly set up for us (and you!), is to track with Google Spreadsheets.
Those three should get you started! You’ll learn to implement more tactics in your social strategy as you develop your blog community.
• • •
Remember, coordinating blog efforts is a process that takes time, energy, and a little easing into. By keeping things organized, communicating with one another, and taking a personal stake in the company blog, you and your colleagues can create a community that users are thrilled to be a part of.
What has your company done to coordinate blog posts? Have any of the above tips worked for you? Let us know in the comments below!
View Comments (1 Response) | Categories: Search Engine Optimization, Social Media
Posted on March 19, 2012 by Dan Wilkerson
In a change aimed at increasing the relevance of its suggested videos and discouraging misleading thumbnail practices, YouTube announced that it has changed its video recommendation algorithm. Now, total viewing time will be factored into the suggested video algorithm, meaning videos with spammy, irrelevant content or deceptive thumbnails will not rank as well as more focused and rewarding clips. It’s important to note that rather than determining the video’s viewer retention as a percentage of video watched, the algorithm instead accounts for the total number of seconds someone watches a video, regardless of overall length. Here’s three ways to increase your viewing time and keep your viewers hovering at the edge of their seats instead of hovering over the back button.
1.) Thumbnails are still important
Although total viewing time is the new change that will affect the recommended selections, clicks will still be incorporated into the overall algorithms suggestions. To that end, it’s still very important to make an expressive thumbnail to draw in potential viewers. Think of your thumbnail like a movie trailer – it should capture enough of the video’s essence to let viewers know what it’s about without giving away the ending. It also should be reflective of the title of the video – don’t forget that these will come up in search results, so don’t rely on your channel or personal brand to provide the entire context. Just like a movie series, it should also incorporate some standardized branding visuals as well, providing a link in the viewer’s mind between videos.
2.) Monitor your response and adjust accordingly
YouTube is adding additional tools to help manage videos and monitor their progress. In addition to their tools for tracking viewership and traffic sources, YouTube has debuted their downloadable Watch Time report, accessed in the top banner of the Analytics Views Report, with helpful metrics like Total Watch Time for videos as well as standard demographic and referral data. Use these metrics to help shape the content and timing of your videos. Additionally, the Audience Retention tool provides a visual way to break down where your videos are losing or gaining traffic.
3.) Get Brand Messages in before your content
Most viewership peters out towards the end of the video, dropping sharply when the outro includes company or personal branding. Content-hungry users will skip onto another video, losing you extra seconds of viewership that can factor into your videos relevant ranking. A simple way to diffuse this is to move all branding and ‘credits’ towards the beginning of the video. Be careful to include an introduction before your credits to ensure the viewer doesn’t simply skip past them in the beginning as well. This simple shift will earn you extra viewing time and ensure that your brand is getting exposure to the viewer.
Do you think the changes to the Suggested Videos algorithm will be helpful or hurtful? Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think.
View Comments (8 Responses) | Categories: Social Media, YouTube
Posted on March 12, 2012 by Jim Gianoglio
Now that Pinterest is all the rage, and more sites are starting to put the Pin It buttons next to their images, the next logical step is to track those buttons. Just like we want to know more about the people who share our content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others, we’ll obviously want to do the same for Pinterest.
We can do this with Google Analytics, but there are two problems:
- Pinterest uses an iFrame for their Pin It button, making event tracking difficult
- They don’t have a publicly available API, making social interaction tracking a challenge
Today I’ll show you a workaround for the first problem, while the second problem will be the subject for a later post.
Event Tracking on the Pinterest “Pin It” Button
Because the code for adding the Pin It button sets it up in an iFrame, we can’t just add the event tracking code whenever someone clicks on the button. Tracking across iFrames requires the _getLinkerUrl method to transfer visitor and campaign cookies between domains. This also requires cross domain tracking to be set up between the domains. Since you can’t put your own tracking code on Pinterest.com, that option is out.
The other option is to take the code that Pinterest tells you to copy and paste, and hack around it a little bit. That sounds like fun, don’t you think?
You can get the code from the Goodies page on Pinterest. There are two versions – basic and advanced. The advanced code is asynchronous and lets you add the button to multiple images on the same page. If you only have one instance of the Pin It button on your page, then the basic code is all you need.
From the Pinterest goodies page, once you fill in the details (URL of the page the pin is on, URL of the image to be pinned, and description) the basic code will look like this:
<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com&media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fimage.jpg
&description=Awesome%20description" class="pin-it-button" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It</a>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js"></script>
The line I highlighted in bold is the culprit that inserts the iFrame and takes the joy out of event tracking. It pulls in the pinit.js file (you can see the contents here). To restore our event tracking joy, we need to modify the code above to look like below:
<a onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'pinterest', 'pinned']); window.open(this.href, 'signin', 'height=300,width=665'); return false" href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url='document.URL' + &media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fimage.jpg&description=awesome%20description" style="position: absolute; background: url('http://assets.pinterest.com/images/pinit6.png');font: 11px Arial, sans-serif; text-indent: -9999em; font-size: .01em; color: #CD1F1F; height: 20px; width: 43px; background-position: 0 -7px;" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It</a>
You should recognize the part in green as the event tracking code. This makes sure that a click on the Pin It button gets recorded in GA as an event. (Don’t forget to track your events as goals!) In the example above, we’re setting the category to “pinterest” and the action to “pinned.” You could also include an optional event label for additional info, like the page they’re on or the image being pinned.
The code in blue is what opens up the new window where the user can write a description for the image and complete the pinning process. The code in orange is all for looks – it includes the styling that controls how the Pin It button will look on the page. This information originally comes from a different source – pinit.html (you can see the source code here). That file, however, is usually referenced by the pinit.js file and placed in an iFrame. Since we are no longer including the pinit.js file, we need to include the styling that is lost.
If you’re using the advanced code for the Pin It button (shown below), you’ll need to remove the first part (the section that starts “Include ONCE for ALL buttons in the page”). In the advanced code, this is the part that calls the pinit.js file. Then, you’ll need to modify the second section (the part that starts with ”Customize and include for EACH button in the page”) to look like our color-coded code above.
<!-- Include ONCE for ALL buttons in the page -->
<script type="text/javascript">
(function() {
window.PinIt = window.PinIt || { loaded:false };
if (window.PinIt.loaded) return;
window.PinIt.loaded = true;
function async_load(){
var s = document.createElement("script");
s.type = "text/javascript";
s.async = true;
if (window.location.protocol == "https:")
s.src = "https://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js";
else
s.src = "http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js";
var x = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];
x.parentNode.insertBefore(s, x);
}
if (window.attachEvent)
window.attachEvent("onload", async_load);
else
window.addEventListener("load", async_load, false);
})();
</script>
<!-- Customize and include for EACH button in the page -->
<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com&media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fimage.jpg&description=awesome%20description" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It</a>
It’s your turn
How are you tracking Pinterest? Do you think Pinterest is even worth tracking? Let us know in the comments!
View Comments (14 Responses) | Categories: Google Analytics, Social Media, Web Analytics
Posted on March 5, 2012 by Brian Honigman
Facebook begun rolling out Timeline for brand pages recentely, which presents many opportunities for brands to showcase themselves on Facebook like never before. The new format will be pushed live to everyone on March 30, but for now, you have time to get comfortable with the layout, add content and prepare for when you either choose to publish Timeline for your Page or hold out till March 30th. Here’s a comprehensive guide to all the new features Timeline for Pages offers your business with this new layout.
1. The Cover Photo: This feature is already well known among the Facebook community since it’s already incorporated as a feature of Facebook Timeline for Profiles. Now brands can use a Facebook cover photo at the very top of their Timeline to show a new, striking visual layer to their offerings the moment a fan lands on your Page. Is the cover photo the death of the Facebook landing page/fan gate? Most likely yes, but not just because of the cover photo but due to the removal of a default landing page when a user initially lands on your Page. More on this later in the article. When it comes to customizing your Facebook cover photo, crop a branded image to 855 by 320 pixels. Here are some other important dimensions for Facebook’s interface.
Burberry’s Facebook Cover Photo
Louis Vuitton’s Facebook Cover Photo
Zena Caffe’s Facebook Cover Photo
Take into account your now much smaller traditional profile picture and how this plays into your new cover photo. There’s been a lot of creative examples of cover photos over the last few months, so the opportunities are endless. Think outside of the box and make use of this worthwhile feature. Above are a few examples of cover photos from Pages that have made their Timeline live such as Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Canlis and Zena Caffè.
2. A Smaller Profile Picture: The height of the profile picture has drastically changed, therefore it’s time to change your photo as soon as possible to reflect the new format. The appropriate dimensions for a profile photo are now 180 x 180. Try using just your logo or another image that quickly summarizes your brand.
3. The About Section: The about section has long been a part of your Facebook Page, but now it’s more predominately featured at the top of your Timeline. It’s important that you update this section of your Timeline, depending on the which of the two versions of the about section applies to your Timeline.
- About Section for Timelines with Physical Location: If your Timeline is associated with a physical location (categorized as a local business), then it will look like this. It lists any Place Sub-categories an admin previously defined, your address, telephone number and your hours of operation. Fill out any of the missing information by clicking on the section and add what’s missing.
- About Section for Timelines with no Physical Location: If your Timeline features a business without one physical location (your Page is not in the local business category), then it will look like this below. The section lets you add a description of your Timeline up to 255 characters. It’s important to be extremely clear and concise, giving first time visitors a clear understanding of what your Timeline is all about.
4. The Applications Banner: Replacing the photo banner at the top of the previous Facebook Page design, the new brands Timeline design highlights the applications added to a particular Timeline. The applications you previously had as tabs on the left hand side of your Page will now appear here on your Timeline in this banner. Admins can choose which applications to show in the 3 available slots in your banner. Choose the most important applications to be highlighted here, a custom application, videos, the public version of your Timeline insights and others. You can and should customize the image for each of theses applications as well by clicking on the pencil symbol on the application box, then edit settings to choose a new photo. These images should be 111 x 74 pixels. All your applications can be seen here at the top of your Timeline, but to access the others a user most click the drop down menu. It’s unlikely these hidden applications will receive the same amount of visibility because there’s another click required to view them. Therefore, be selective when choosing what to highlight in your application banner.
Butterfinger’s Facebook Application Banner at the top of their Timeline.
Here’s where you can swap out which 3 applications you wish to feature at the top of your Timeline.
This is where your old fan gate/landing page application will now live, making it obsolete as a way of converting new visitors into fans because it won’t be the first thing that’s seen when you land on a Timeline. There’s no longer an option in the Admin settings to select a landing page, your Timeline is your permanent landing page. This is where the cover photo will pick up the slack in terms of a fan gate, although it’s still important to fan gate your other applications and content encouraging a user to like your Timeline before they can access it.
5. Turn On/Off Timeline Messages from Fan: Fans now have the ability to privately message a brand’s Timeline through the new message feature located at the top right hand corner of your Timeline, above the application banner. As an admin, you can choose to turn this feature on or off. One advantage or reason to turn this feature on is so fans can report issues to your Timeline privately, especially issues dealing with customer service concerns about your products or services. It’s a way to deal with negative feedback by keeping the conversation off of your public Timeline, but still on Facebook in a private setting. To turn it on go to the Admin Panel, Manage, Edit Page and then to Manage Permissions.
A reason to turn off this feature would be if it become burdensome to check yet another place for customer feedback. By keeping this feature off, you could limit where customers reach out to just your wall. I’d recommend turning this feature on to give your customers as many ways to reach out to you as possible, but you’ll have to decide if this feature is right for your Timeline.
6. Choose to Hide the “Recent Posts by Others” Section: Timeline now features a section at the top right that highlights a list of recent postings from fans. It’s suggested that you leave this visible to help show engagement across your Timeline, but many Pages in the past have only chose to make their own posts front and center in the past, therefore they may continue to do this in the future by hiding this section. When you’re in Manage Permissions, you can turn off the section of your Timeline easily.
7. Change the Default Visibility for Posts by Others/Activity Log: This is a similar feature that currently exists on Facebook Timeline for Profiles, it now allows a company to approve content posted about them before it goes live on their Timeline. Turn on this approval under Manage Permissions simply to have greater control of what is shown front and center on your Timeline.
The Activity Log for your Timeline is basically a list of every post or activity involving your Page in the past. You’ll see stories of photos, tags and more involving your Timeline. You can edit the content to be highlighted on your Timeline, changed the date, delete it and more depending on what you would to change this piece of past content, as seen below.
8. New Admin Panel Incorporates Notifications & Insights: Your Timeline notifications, insights, Timeline settings and private message inbox are all now available in one interface known as the Admin Panel located at the top of your Timeline, obviously only visible to admins. This new dashboard gives you a quick oversight over the 4 areas of administrating a Facebook Timeline and allows you to dive deeper into each section from here as well by clicking see all on the desired section. You can also invite your Facebook friends and email contacts to join your Timeline’s audience, as well as start a Facebook ad and use Facebook as your Page from here as well.
9. Add Milestones To Your Timeline: One of the most interesting aspects of Timeline for brands is the ability to go back and add past events related to the history of your organization. For instance, a pizza shop could add a milestone of their store opening in 1992 with a photo, then add another milestone about the addition of pepperoni pizza to the shop in 2000 with a status update. Adding these past events helps create a concise story-line for your brand, while really making use of the Timeline interface to it’s fullest. Simply go to where you would normally post an update to begin posting pass milestones. Before you can begin, it’ll require you posting a milestone of when you’re organization was first founded. Here’s some examples of the milestones the New York Times and the Today Show posted on their Timelines for some inspiration.
An example of a milestone, as added by the Today Show’s Timeline.
10. Pin Your Posts: Brands can now choose to pin particular posts to the top of their pages for up to 7 days. This makes it easier to highlight important, newsworthy topics to the top of your Timeline for longer promotion and visibility. Go to a piece of content on your Page, click edit and then choose Pin to Top to have this piece of content featured.
View Comments (18 Responses) | Categories: Announcements, Facebook, Social Media
Posted on February 23, 2012 by Brian Honigman
This article was originally published in HubSpot’s Blog.
B2B companies don’t often see how location based social platforms like Foursquare, SCVNGR or Facebook Places can benefit them or their customers. However, there are numerous opportunities for these type of companies to market themselves, its just harder to identify the strategies that’ll help draw the same results a B2C company would see using these social channels. Here are the 9 best B2B uses of check-in based social platforms with some of the companies that use them.
1.) Claim Your Business – It may seem like a no-brainer, but many companies don’t have their business listings claimed in Foursquare, Facebook Places, SCVNGR or other widely used services. This is a missed opportunity for your business, regardless of industry. It’s not required that you claim your location before someone is able to check-in but you may be missing vital information like a phone number, web address, Twitter handle or a physical address that a user was looking for. Claim your listings to ensure they’re both branded and optimized at every location for the best experience every time someone decides to check-in, no matter the service they’re using. All verification requires is a phone number or a bill to claim a location as your own. Unfortunately, this can be quite a tedious process if you have multiple locations.
2.) Add Foursquare Tips – Companies are now able to leave tips at various venues (physical locations) from their very own Foursquare page as their brand and not as an individual user. These tips will pop up on a user’s mobile phone if a user checks-in nearby or at the venue where your B2B left a tip. The tips generated by your B2B will appear on your Foursquare page for viewing on the Foursquare application on your phone or on your desktop/laptop. Tips offer insights about a location that are helpful and will drive further recognition of your business.
The key to applying Foursquare tips to a B2B is understanding where physical location factors into your sales funnel. Think long and hard, where will your customers (other businesses) see these tips and also find them relevant to the location and the products and services you offer.
For example, Barracuda Networks is a security, networking and storage solutions company that provides most, if not all of their services to other businesses. This B2B has started a promotional tour of the nation called the 2012 Velocity Tour to promote their product offerings. They’re stopping at relevant conferences, hotels, restaurants and other locations to spread the word of their company. This marketing tour is the perfect opportunity for Barracuda Networks to leave tips about their upcoming showing at the particular locations they are planning to stop and promote at. Leaving tips at the conference locations throughout the tour will be the most beneficial because conferences often attract other businesses and tech savvy individuals, giving you more opportunity for exposure on Foursquare. This could work for Barracuda Networks because it is an easy addition to an existing marketing campaign. An important question for you is how can you adapt using Foursquare tips at physical locations so that it makes sense for your B2B?
3.) Creating Lists of Tips on Foursquare – Creating lists of your Foursquare tips allows you to group your tips based on a subject of your choice like a list of airports with WiFi or restaurants with vegan options. B2B’s can group their existing tips based on the nature of their tips. Lists of tips are beneficial because it helps users quickly see which tips are most applicable to them, while also allowing users to follow these grouping of tips for future additions to the list. Based on the example above, Barracuda Networks could group all the tips for their 2012 Velocity Tour on one list, separating it from other tips on their page. The creation of lists is up to you, as long as their relevant to your B2B and truly benefit your audience based on how you’ve organized them.
4.) Networking & Buzz at Conferences – Like we just discussed above, conferences are often an amazing networking opportunity for businesses to connect with other businesses and industry professionals. Many B2B’s thrive when it comes to attending industry conferences for sales leads and more. Take your networking to the next level at these conferences, not just with tweets and posts on Facebook, but by checking and promoting yourself on Foursquare, Facebook Places and SCVNGR. These services allow you to check in alerting others on these networks that you’ve here, allowing you to post a message as well. It’s one way to standout from the other conference attendees. Reach out to your audience, let them know where your B2B can be found at the conference, as well as what you’re looking to accomplish while you’re there. Do research on your own as well, by seeing who else has checked in and what they’re messaging about. Comment on check-ins of relevance and make lasting connections with other B2B’s, potential customers and others.
5.) Check in with Clients – Whether you’ve got an existing network or you’re starting from scratch on SCVNGR, Facebook Places or Foursquare, showing your current and future friends/followers you’re active is a vital way to increase buzz about your business. Check in at meetings with your clients, showing you’re involved in your industry and most importantly, thriving. Be sure not to share before the time is right with particular clients, simply practice common sense. To ensure the most exposure from these check-ins, follow your employees, existing clients, potential clients, industry partners, competitors and other B2B’s of interest to your business. They’ll be more likely to follow you in return if you’re active on the particular network, thus seeing where you’ve recently checked in.
6.) Partnerships – Explore partnerships with other B2B’s, B2C’s and nonprofits to promote a particular campaign that has a location based component. This is an effective way to incorporate your branding into a service like Foursquare, even if your products or services wouldn’t regularly fit the platform.
For example, American Express started partnerships with Sports Authority, H&M and a handful of restaurants in New York City offering a loyalty coupon. Through this campaign they’re using Foursquare to draw customers to the physical stores of a few B2C’s, while increasing impressions of their brand and giving incentives to Foursquare users to use their services. In terms of your B2B, stop and think about what organizations would make sense to partner with on a local, state or national level and decide what benefit they would receive from a partnership of this nature.
7.) Market Research – When it comes to truly making long lasting relationships with industry partners, as well as existing and prospective clients, understanding their activity on every channel is key. Any information your sales team can gather about your market can aid in strengthening existing and future relationships. Monitoring where others check-in, as well as the activities they complete on these location based networks is more information to work with in the future. This research can help tell you what locations to leave Foursquare tips at, give you ideas for campaigns that will help engage your customers, understand which location based networks your audience is on and keep you active on these networks to increase interest in your B2B.
8.) Competitive Analysis – Just as you can look to see how customers and industry partners are interacting on location based channels, you should also look to follow the activity of your direct competitors. See what they are doing right and what they’re doing wrong, changing your strategy accordingly. See what locations seem popular in your industry to optimize and create your own spin on an existing technique by creating your own unique list of tips on Foursquare or one of a kind challenge on SCVNGR.
9.) Lighten Up – One of the most important things you can do is have fun with whatever location based social network you choose to utilize for your B2B. Social media should be a fun and engaging experience for your users, providing them with a true value from their engagement with your company, whether it’s on Facebook Places or any other network. If you force participation from one of these communities, it’ll come off as such. Work with what you know best, your company. Take what you do well and relate it to a common experience you share with your existing audience. Your strategy will resonate best if it’s relevant, engaging and most of all rewarding to your audience.
View Comments (No Responses) | Categories: Foursquare, Social Media
Posted on February 14, 2012 by Jim Gianoglio
This is part 1 of a 2-part series on using Google Spreadsheets to make social media measurement easier, quicker and almost completely automated. When you’re done reading this, Part 2 awaits!
There are two problems I’m going to solve for you today:
1. Tracking social media is hard
2. You don’t have time to track social media
Tracking social media is hard
Let’s tackle the first problem. Yes, tracking social media is incredibly difficult. There are a million things you can track, including content on your site that’s being shared, people that are mentioning your brand or products online, tweets, shares, likes, pluses – you name it. It seems like everything is social these days, which makes tracking it kind of like counting grains of sand as they fall through your fingers.
But you have to start somewhere, and the easiest place to start is on your own site. With your own content. Which raises a number of other tracking issues. For instance, there’s a difference between tracking how many people click the social sharing buttons on your pages vs. how many people click on the links in your tweets vs. how many people copy and paste your URL and share it on their own (and how many people click on the links in their tweets/shares/posts etc.).
Again, you have to start somewhere. Today, we’ll start with tracking how many people click on the links to your content that you share on your social networks. This is actually rather easy, and I’ve broken it down into 5 steps:
- Copy the URL of the content you’re sharing
- Paste that URL into the Google Analytics URL builder, along with the following:
- Campaign Source – twitter (or facebook, linkedin, googleplus, etc.)
- Campaign Medium – social
- Campaign Name – blog (or something that signifies the type of content you’re sharing)
- Take the full URL (for example, http://www.yoursite.com/awesome-blog-post?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=blog) and shorten it with Bit.ly (because every character counts when you only have 140)
- Share that shortened link on the specific social platform that you identified for the utm_source
- Rinse and repeat steps 2-4 for every social network you want to use
Wondering why I chose those source, medium and campaign names? Read up on this refresher for campaign tagging in Google Analytics. Doing the above will make it very easy for you to get insights into which social media channels are worth your time. Just go to Traffic Sources > Sources > Campaigns, click on blog (or whatever campaign name you chose), and do a little happy dance when you see a report like below:
Notice, I ditched the standard data table view for the sexy comparison view.
I don’t have time to track social media
It’s true, the steps above take time. In fact, it used to take me at least 15 minutes to add the campaign parameters, shorten the links, and then share them on the various social networks. I can’t stand wasting time doing repetitive tasks that can be easily programmed. Thanks to Tom Critchlow’s post on how to build agile SEO tools using Google spreadsheets I can choose to spend my time building tools that do the repetitive nonsense for me. I’ve been using Google spreadsheets to hack together tools very quickly to do all sorts of things, including automating the task of tagging URLs with campaign parameters and shortening the links.
I’ve done the dirty work for you, so go grab your copy of the spreadsheet here. Once it’s open, go to File > Make a copy so you can edit the spreadsheet (you may need to sign in to your Google account - even if you were already signed in). All you need to do is enter your Bit.ly username and API Key (you can find that here) on the ‘Technical Details’ tab, then enter the URL of whatever page you’re sharing and voila! This tool takes your URL, appends campaign parameters for Twitter, Facebook, Gooogle+ and LinkedIn and shortens each one for you so you can quickly and easily share those links. How you spend the 15 minutes you saved is up to you, but please take just 2 of those minutes and tweet this post. I don’t ask for much 
How it works
This is for those of you interested in peeking behind the curtain to see how this works. The real magic happens on the ‘Behind the Scenes’ tab. You’ll see that cell B3 pulls in the URL that is typed in on the main tab. Columns C, D, and E hold our values for utm_source, medium and campaign.
In cells B8 through B11, you’ll see a formula like this:
=concatenate($B$3, "?utm_source=",C3, "%26utm_medium=",$D$3, "%26utm_campaign=",$E$3)
This simply takes the URL in B3 (the page that you’re sharing) and concatenates that with the values for source, medium and campaign. One thing to note is that instead of a “&” I’ve used “%26″ – which is the URL encoding for the ampersand character. This is necessary for the Bit.ly API.
In cells B13 through B16, we take the campaign tagged URLs from the previous step and run them through the Bit.ly API. The following formula accomplishes that:
=concatenate(importdata(concatenate
("https://api-ssl.bitly.com/v3/shorten?login="&'Technical Details'!$A$4&"&apiKey="&'Technical Details'!$A$7&"&longUrl="&B8&"&format=xml")))
The important thing to notice in the above formula is the use of the importdata function. It lets us pull in the results of the Bit.ly shortening operation. For more details, check out the Google spreadsheet function list.
Finally, back on the main tab (ShareMe!), the Bit.ly shortened links are pulled in from the ‘Behind the Scenes’ tab using the following formula:
=mid('Behind the Scenes'!B13, (find("<url>",'Behind the Scenes'!B13)+5), 20)
So if you want to add more social networks (or change the ones listed), you’ll need to go into the ‘Behind the Scenes’ tab and make your modifications there.
Stay tuned for Part 2
Next time, I’ll show you how to use scripts within Google Spreadsheets to detect when you’ve published a new post, and automatically send an email with the shortened links.
In the meantime, let me know if this is helpful, or if you have other ways to streamline your social media workflow. The comments are yours!
View Comments (7 Responses) | Categories: Google Analytics, Social Media
Posted on February 13, 2012 by Brian Honigman
This article was originally published in Social Media Today.
Location-based social platforms like Foursquare are making good use of the opportunities the social and mobile web offer. Foursquare is continually adding more features to make the world easier to use and explore. Many nonprofits are using these features on Foursquare to amplifying their messaging to new and old audiences alike. Here are some tactics for making the most of what you have to offer on Foursquare and some of the nonprofits doing just that.
Insightful Tips from LIVESTRONG
With the creation of Foursquare pages, nonprofits were able to have a place on the web to create Foursquare tips about various locations of interest. These tips live on a branded page on the web, but most importantly appear as tips on different Foursquare venues accessed via the mobile application. When a user checks-in on their phone they’ll see this tip listed among the other tips at the location. This tip is different because it came from a nonprofit, not another user you may not even know. Let’s take a quick look at how LIVESTRONG is leaving powerful tips that resonate past the 200 character limit.
LIVESTRONG helped amplify their message of living a healthy lifestyle with users in the Foursquare community by writing 70 tips about popular places throughout the California area. The innovative part about some of these tips is that they included a
Read More link that led to a relevant page on LIVESTRONG’s website. For instance, the tip above leads to a food, fitness and equipment
diary tool that helps keep track of their pursuit of a healthy lifestyle. Another tip lead to a page on their site with a tool to help you plan your next bike ride, while another leads to a sushi nutrition guide. LIVESTRONG took their messaging to the locations their audiences were visiting and brought them tips that went beyond just Foursquare, but incorporated the assets of their website as well.
Give Blood, Check in & Earn an American Red Cross Badge
Badges are awarded throughout Foursquare as a means of rewarding various achievements like your first check-in, your first check-in with a friend or even checking into the same place three times in one week. Nonprofits can become a part of this fun Foursquare feature by creating their own partner badge to be rewarded after a certain type of check-in. The American Red Cross did just this with their very own Partner Badge. Every time a Foursquare user checks-in at an American Red Cross blood drive, they receive this badge in return for giving blood at this location. The badge serves as a thank you and a reminder on your Foursquare account to remember to donate blood with the Red Cross at a later date.
Using Lists to Highlight Your Mission
The list feature allows users or a Foursquare page owner to collate their own list of locations based around the topic of their choosing. Here a nonprofit can select a few venues and highlight their insider tips at these various locations. Users can follow these lists, picking and choosing which lists are relevant to them, giving your audience another opportunity to follow your nonprofit and your messaging. Not as many nonprofits are making use of the list feature on their Foursquare page as you would hope, but here’s a suggestion from a nonprofit using lists and another that should be using lists.
The Foundation Center is the world’s leader in providing information on philanthropy, fundraising and grant programs. Their Foursquare page doesn’t currently have any tips on it, but the nonprofit is using a list on their page to highlight all the locations of their offices. It’s wonderful they’re using the list feature to highlight the structure of their organization, but they could certainly take this feature farther. By adding a few tips and lists to their page about different locations (like libraries, nonprofits, think tanks, etc) where users can get information on philanthropy, fundraising and grant programs; it would go a long way towards turning their Foursquare page into a powerful resource.
Another nonprofit that could really succeed by using Foursquare lists is the National Wildlife Federation. Their page is currently filled to the brim with 200+ valuable tips about a plethora of locations throughout the United States where wildlife can be observed and enjoyed. By simply grouping these tips into lists centered around states, parks, zoos, museums or by the type of wildlife being observed; it could help organize the helpful tips, give users another way to follow the NWF and another opportunity for users to take part in the nonprofit’s mission.
Communicate at Advocacy Events & Conferences
Foursquare can be a wonderful way for nonprofits to network at their annual advocacy event or national conference. First off, simply check-in as your organization to let other nonprofits and attendees know that you’re there and ready to collaborate. By monitoring check ins at an event like the Nonprofit Technology Conference, you can quickly see who some of the conference attendees are and prepare yourself for networking online and offline. Which nonprofits are currently doing this? Too many to count! It’s such a simple networking tool that many nonprofits use it as a complement to other networking tactics at these events.
Is your non-profit using Foursquare? Tell us in the comments!
View Comments (No Responses) | Categories: Foursquare, Social Media
Posted on February 2, 2012 by Brian Honigman
This article was originally published in Social Times.
Have you ever used Quora before to solve an unanswered question or start a conversation about an interesting topic? As a platform, Quora allows its community to post and answer questions about anything of their choosing to gain collective knowledge. One way to take advantage of this question and answer based feedback is using it for your day to day researching needs.
Follow Boards on Any Given Topic
This past December Quora launched boards, making it easier to organize questions and answers on a particular topic. This newly launched feature is a great research tool because it often pulls quality conversations and articles all to one place. It helps bring the best content on a topic to the top of the board based on votes by the Quora community. Think of it as a search engine based on the input of your friends, followers and surrounding community on Quora.
Insider Travel & Public Transit Advice
Follow questions, topics and boards about your city to get tips on the most effective ways to get around. Search for phrases related to your city like New York Travel or Philadelphia Airport to find alternate routes, time savers in the airport, less traveled back roads, the locations of affordable parking garages, etc.
Recipes & Cooking Tips
Planning on cooking up a Mexican feast, but can’t quite remember what ingredients taste best to make your own guacamole? Quora gives you the opportunity to rely on genuine feedback from real people, often your friends that have been there and already cooked that. Take a gander at the many recipes available with insider tips into what worked with that recipe and what really didn’t.
Restaurant & Shopping Suggestions for Your City
Quora can help if you’re looking to research where to get a specific type of food in your area but you just don’t know where to start. Your network of friends and family are often the best sources of recommendations for dining and shopping, but they can’t possibly know it all. This is where you can look and see if someone had the same question previously or post your question for some in the Quora community to answer. Use it as barometer for what range of restaurants and stores are available in your area, reading the feedback on that question or topic about a particular type of food, restaurant, store or product.
Business Insights from the Experts
There are many aspects about the business world that aren’t easy and it’s okay to ask for help sometimes. A question or an issue with your business may not require hiring an expert, but nevertheless you might need some input. Turn to Quora as a research tool by searching if your question already exists or if you should post it under a particular topic or board to get expert input. This can be extremely helpful if the answer to your question is from a valid source, look up who answered your question just to be sure. Nevertheless, answering a quick question like the one above can be done rather quickly and for free, letting you get back to running your business with added insight.
Help on the Job/Hiring Front
Looking for a job can often be a long, tedious process. Having as many outlets for finding jobs as possible can help streamline your efforts. Therefore, be active on Quora and other social channels, especially if you’re looking for a job in a tech based industry. Fill out your profile to its fullest and participate by answering and posting questions on a variety of topics as an expert in your field. See who else is posting and what they’re posting about. Many experts weigh into discussions on Quora, follow them and see what makes them tick. Learn what you can about the companies they run or the companies they work for, getting to know them as you go along. You can get an insider’s look into a company’s culture, while getting your name and some recognition so that you’re more than a faceless resume.
On the other side of the desk, you can learn what others in HR are doing to find qualified candidates. See if the types of questions and screening tactics you’re using are working for others or if you need to sharpen your approach to the hiring process. Search for phrases like jobs, employment and human resources to see what job seekers and HR experts are curious about so you can learn from their discussions and contribute.
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