I spoke with Chris Newton , Chief Technology Officer , of Radian6 today; Chris reached out to me because he knew I was interested in how Radian6 tied in Site Analytics Data.   It turns out Radian6 built a platform that can import any data , not just site analytics, and from any vendor; however, WebTrends was the first vendor where Radian6  they tried to integrate Web Analytics . Currently, Omniture and Coremetrics are being worked on to achieve the same level of integration.

I spoke with Chris Newton, Chief Technology Officer, of Radian6 today; Chris reached out to me because he knew I was interested in how Radian6 tied in Site Analytics Data.   It turns out Radian6 built a platform that can import any data, not just site analytics, and from any vendor; however, WebTrends was the first vendor where Radian6  they tried to integrate Web Analytics.

Currently, Omniture and Coremetrics are being worked on to achieve the same level of integration.

Chris showed me a set of widgets on the top half of the screen that focus on conversation going on around Radian6’s own site; on the bottom half of the screen are widgets pulling in WebTrends data.

The current process involves telling Radian6 you want WebTrends integration enabled – then creating a referral report in WebTrends (this is the only type of report Radian6 will look at) – once you get the ID of that report – you pass it onto Radian6 and it pulls the data directly out of WebTrends database, which bypasses table limits, so I’m told (no worries, according to Chris Newton, if you have WebTrends profiles that are set to the default 200 urls or 1000 urls limits – Radian6 is supposed to work around this limitation.

Once the data is pulled in, it’s matched and correlated with the social media traffic and metrics that Radian6 collects – and Chris went over a few examples of how that might be very useful in understanding what conversations convert, or take action, on your site.

In the image above, the “WebTrends-Pages-Viewed” metric appears and you can sort the River of News by it, as well as do some other neat things that Chris shared with me.

In fact, one of the new projects Radian6 is working on is a Metrics widget to automatically extract the people and phrases found in a report – here’s what that might look like when it’s rolled out:

Comment count        inbound links      compete.com conversions

People                                  53                             30000                       12

Places                                 6000                         15000                        86

Things                                xxxx                          120000                     53

Keyword phrases       yyyyy                         12333                         22

When this Metrics Widget is operational – you’ll be able to sort results by any two factors above and get a sorted report – it should be interesting to see what that looks like.

Also, dynamic keyword selections that are used to populate widgets, for analysis, are on the horizon,  Chris mentioned.

I asked Chris about the Salesforce.com integration and if it’s in anyway related to WebTrends deal – at this time there’s no direct tie in.

Instead, what Salesforce.com integration allows for is the use of Radian6 as a listening platform, and is best used in Sales Teams, currently, but there may be other uses for this tool – in fact, I think there is.

As it stands now, with this Salesforce.com integration, it’s possible to view a River of News Widget and assign information said on the web  from someone in your Salesforce.com database  to that record – then, any other mentions will automatically be assigned to the same record – meaning you can collect information on individuals your tracking in a Salesforce.com database.

There’s certainly a lot more on the drawing board at Radian6 and I’m glad Chris Newton reached out to me .

View original post here:
Radian6’s Web Analytics and Salesforce.com Intergration

Popularity: 14% [?]

One of the lacking features of Radian6 and SM2/ Techrigy - both leading Buzz Measurement tools, they can’t yet, automatically put information into “buckets” - you, the person monitoring current trends, has to do that - and it takes some skills.   But … there are some shortcuts - and I found them (I guess that’s why you read my blog). Shortcut one - Use BlogPulse Key Phrases to analyze a contemporary event - and put stories into “buckets” as in the  case of Michael Jackson ’s Death yesterday.   I’ve spoken to Marcel LeBrun (Radian6 founder) and Aaron Newwman (Techrigy Founder) in the past about the need for Topic Aggregation (some would call it “Topic Normalization” such as Twitter Trending Terms – Could Do Better from Matthew Hurst where he points out that “ There is no attempt at normalization ( RIP MJ == RIP Michael Jackson “ ).

One of the lacking features of Radian6 and SM2/Techrigy - both leading Buzz Measurement tools, they can’t yet, automatically put information into “buckets” - you, the person monitoring current trends, has to do that - and it takes some skills.   But … there are some shortcuts - and I found them (I guess that’s why you read my blog).

Shortcut one - Use BlogPulse Key Phrases to analyze a contemporary event - and put stories into “buckets” as in the  case of Michael Jackson’s Death yesterday.   I’ve spoken to Marcel LeBrun (Radian6 founder) and Aaron Newwman (Techrigy Founder) in the past about the need for Topic Aggregation (some would call it “Topic Normalization” such as Twitter Trending Terms – Could Do Better from Matthew Hurst where he points out that “There is no attempt at normalization (RIP MJ == RIP Michael Jackson“).

Looking at the top phrase for yesterday (I guess this shortcut doesn’t help you if you don’t have a big story event that got all over the news - too bad Blogpulse doesn’t offer a tool for keying on the key phases for an event - oh well, you can always wish for it - or go, create it, yourself)

A number of the top terms are about Michael Jackson into Radian6 and SM2/Techrigy to compare the results and see the strengths of each platform.

I also noted my searches on Radian6, especially the Influencer Widget, executed much, much faster (about 200 times faster) within a few seconds, when I did this, than, when I just made up keywords of my own - Interesting!

Let’s take a look at what Blogpulse does with the “paramedics arrived“ phrase

Somehow, and I don’t know the details, but would like to - Blogpulse took all those stories about Michael Jackson and said …. they’re also about “paramedics arrived”.    Now, you might ask … why isn’t a Topic Cloud for June 25th, the day Michael Jackson died, yielding the same thing?   The answer is - the Topic Clouds that Radian6 and SM2/Techrigy provide are for a single word, the Topic cloud Radian t provides is simply an index and ranking to every piece of information about stories around Michael Jackson - but not the “concepts” behind them - Blogpulse provides a multi word phrease and is therefore, close in meaning to the way humans think and describe content.

You can click on any one of the words in Radian6’s topics, but they are not a “bucket” term - you can throw a bunch of stories into “cardiac” or “death” and get much that’s meaningful  - you might get away with it with “Jackson” but what would “Michael” or “heart” or “attack” do for you?  All it does is point back to a bunch of stories - but with out that multi phrase “bucket” Aggreation, as I call it, or Normalization, as Matthew Hurst calls it - your lost - you can’t get to magic land - to the Holy Grail of meaning.

SM2/Techrigy Author Tags might bring you a tad bit closer - by looking at what the authors of content being indexed is categorized as, but it doesn’t have the intelligence to learn new concepts, or bucket information past what the author has already done.

So .. now that I explained what I want to see - how does each platform do, once I use the “bucketed” terms that I came up with from Blogpulse?

New Influencer Widget - Radian6

To be totally honest - I’m leaning towards creating a seporate profile or influencer widget for each “term” that Blogpluse supplied me with - but even here - because I could drill down deeper to the meaning of the content that is behind each phase, I’ve accepted that, for the purposes of this post, I will use all the terms about Michael Jackson that happened on his death yesterday, in one profile.

I can use the Influencer Widget to find out who to contact and how to contact individuals who have a larger say on what opinions get expressed about Michael Jackson’s death - and also sort by Compete data to find out how many visitors each source has (as I covered in a post the other day on Radian6).

Jumping over to SM2/Techrigy, I get the age/sex of content creators (but the content each platform picked up around Michael Jackson might not be identical and probably isn’t).

Brand References - Positive and Negative - is tricky to do, as you might have noticed, if you read my posts aabout SM2/Techrigy and the Iran Election - it works better for some subjects than others

We don’t know what the “positive” or “negative” opinion is about - the tools aren’t that smart yet - I suspect that is why Radian6 stayed away from trying to do this - but it will work better for simpler kinds of subjects like “chocolate” - where it’s easier to pick up that someone likes, or wants something, vs, doesn’t like or want it.

There’s a lot more I want to say about Topic Aggregation - I didn’t really find a good way to do it 100%, though I did speed up my processing of the query data - and I feel, that were Radian6 able to supply Topic Aggregation for any profile, not just top news stories, for example, and then plug that into the influencer widget - a “bucket” at a time (ie: do a influener widget just for “Michael Jackson and paramedics arrived” you could then go a few steps farther in analysis of current and “pop” events by getting a “handle” as Eugene T. Gendlin wrote about, many years ago, in his groundbreaking book on “Focusing”.

What Gendlin came up with - a human being is a complex set of feelings, some feelings and ideas push others - but in order to understand them, you need to find the “handle” to the idea, so you can “manipulate” and move the feeling.

In analysis of comtemporary events, the Social Media Buzz Monitoring - soon to be morphing into Social CRM and Web Analytics tool platform, should also be able to provide the “handle” that allows a user of Radian6 or SM2/Techrigy, the ability to “summerize” all that news that Radian6 is picking up, for example, about Michael Jackson and say - yes, this information is really all about “Michael Jackson and his Cardaic Arrest at his home, and here’s the influencer and sentiment for that “bucket” of stories.

This is much as the human mind and heart does - when it overlays meaning onto events - that in themselves are meaningless - that’s what Paul Cezanne did with Mount St. Victorie, when he painted the mountain and saw something pure in it, that no one else had been able to quite express - it’s the ability to find meaning out of chaos, and I think Blogpulse, with it’s Key Terms, moved one step closer to what I asked both Marcel LeBrun and Aaron Newwman to provide - Topic Aggregation of information - tell me what it all means - tell me what Radian6 thinks all these stories mean, that’s what I’m looking for.

View post: 
Combining Topic Aggregation from BlogPulse with Radian6 and SM2/Techrigy - going one step further

Popularity: 15% [?]

Now I have access again, I found it refreshing to work with Radian6 and find things that I asked for last year, were added, and then some (see my last post on  Radian6 New Enhancements plus Social CRM, WebTrends and SalesForce Intergration ). First off, you can now add a set of keywords to a “keyword group” and use it with three of the 5 widgets that require keyword data - before you had to add the keywords manually to each widget.   I asked for this feature last September (see screenshot below where I added a set of keywords to a preset set group called “ Brands “ ): While it may not be a big deal with a small Topic Profile and a few keywords - for a big Profile with many keywords, having a way to group and use keywords (found under “advanced configuration”) is extremely helpful and avoids operational “fatigue”, by eliminating tedious configuration tasks ,that aren’t really necessary, and tend to fog our minds, leaving less room for analysis and insight

Now I have access again, I found it refreshing to work with Radian6 and find things that I asked for last year, were added, and then some (see my last post on Radian6 New Enhancements plus Social CRM, WebTrends and SalesForce Intergration).

First off, you can now add a set of keywords to a “keyword group” and use it with three of the 5 widgets that require keyword data - before you had to add the keywords manually to each widget.   I asked for this feature last September (see screenshot below where I added a set of keywords to a preset set group called “Brands“):

While it may not be a big deal with a small Topic Profile and a few keywords - for a big Profile with many keywords, having a way to group and use keywords (found under “advanced configuration”) is extremely helpful and avoids operational “fatigue”, by eliminating tedious configuration tasks ,that aren’t really necessary, and tend to fog our minds, leaving less room for analysis and insight.

Also, while your setting up a Topic Profile in Radian6, you can purchase Compete.com traffic data connected with the profile -this was a good move (and something I heard about a few months ago from Compete.com in a meeting with Aaron Prebluda, Director of Market Development at Compete.com, who I briefly met with a few weeks earlier at Search Engine Strategies conference in at the New York Hilton).

You can see that data you just purchased in the Influencer Widget (probably the more powerful feature of Radian6 that makes it stands apart - it’s not that SM2/Techrigy can’t show you, more or less the same thing, it’s that doesn’t yet have the integration, but I’m sure Techrigy will try to match this and the CRM capabilities announced yesterday - and the industry could use some healthy competition - (which is what America is all about, anyway, right?).

Influencer Widget - notice the “Compete.com” traffic data on the far right, in the last 4 columns.  What’s being added from Compete is the

1 - Unique Visitors per month for every influencer

2- Visits per month for every influnecer

3 - Average monthly time spent on site (which in may cases, seems kinda low, but hey, this is “Social Media” and visits are often very directed and of short duration - viewing a page from Twitter or Facebook, you might look at what you want and then leave).

4- Monthly Site Views (Pageviews)

The Compete data intergation helps a Radian6 user decide if an “influener” found in a profile is “worth” going after - in other words - if my client is a translation service that wants Social Media Traffic - would an influener have the traffic I needed to make the effort of contacting them and getting a relationship or link, worthwhile (since this all takes effort to do, it’s worth putting on the table anything that can make your decision of who you want to have a relationship with, as accessable as possible, and the Compete data helps to do that)?

Another feature that is, in my opinion, a “deal breaker“, and that is presently unmatched by Techrigy or anyone else, is the “Social Graph” of a Influener, or any source that comes up as a River of News source (the River of News is one of the 5 Widgets that Radian6 provides and its akin it’s name - a stream of news related to the Topic Profile at a certain point in time).

Social Profile of an “Influencer”

Consider what this means - even though you can isolate influencers - figuring out how to contact them (and which channel to do so - Twitter vs LinkedIn, vs Google Profile, vs Facebook profile, vs email, to name a few, and having that on hand, for any influential - makes Social Media CRM so much easier and more effective).

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that, just because you can isolate an influencer in this way, using Radian6, in this case, that you should automatically go and contact them.

Gary Vaynerchuk mentions, at the 140 Character Conferecne, which I attended last week, and I was sitting right in the front and to the left of Gary, as he gave this talk, 1.4 minutes in, that he owns a company with is younger brother, and he contacts a lot of people, using Social Media, but this come under fire, because, you still have to form a relationship and get permission first, before going off and contacting anyone, and that’s what makes this an Art, not a mass promotion techinique.

I bring it up because, the temptation is - if you can get this data off of Radian6, stick it into a Social CRM via SalesForce, and now see the traffic come in to the site using WebTrends, and estimate Influencer traffic using Compete - your all set, and can go and contact whomever you want.   Except - you still need to find a meaningful and valid way to interact with the influencer, in the first place.  These tools don’t do that for you - you have to figure out a way to do - all the tools can do is identify possible to contact and give you their addresses, you, as the marketer, must decide the right way to connect with that person - and if you can’t do it in a non-invasive way, you many not want to engage with that influencer, at all, because it can backfire, as it did, I’m told, to Gary Vaynerchuk and his brother.

I’m not saying - don’t go out and contact people - I am saying - figure out how you can do it in a way where that contact, identified by Radian6, is going to be welcomed, or don’t bother contacting the influener, at all.     Since the Social CRM tools now make such contacting “easy” we need to figure out the right way to “engage” with that customer, influencer, what ever you want to call them.

Another feature which might be new is the “On Topic Forum Replies” - i don’t think that was in the versions I was using last year - but it is now.   One the reasons why the “On Topic” features of Radian6 is useful is for linking strategy and SEO. Here’s why.

Sopose you wanted to get a lot of links from Social Media to your blog or corporate website - and you were doing SEO on the site, but you knew that Google (still the main Search Engine, but Bing is starting to move up and challange Yahoo!) would rank your site higher if it determined the backlinks your page (either the homepage or a specific page on your site) were more relevent - but how do you find the relevent link (where you might want to leave a comment -even if it ends up being a “no follow” link back to yoru page) - well …. here’s where find that specific comment, specific webpage that is relevent to what your own content is - and that’s the page you want to go after - and get the link from.  While there is still debate on the value of “no follow” links (see Duct Tape Marketing Social Media Profiles as Tools for Links and Traffic)

Radian6 could be very useful for SEO, using Social Media for backlinks, even when they are “no follow” links (which isn’t always the case, btw) - by helping the SEO person identify the right pages to the get the links from.

Getting back to another feature of Radian6 that I mentioned above, the you can add keywords to a list, and then use them for Topic Analysis or Topic Trends Widgets, where this process of adding keywords used to manual, for each widget (and painful) - here’s that this looks like.

To end this long, long post of mine - there’s  a lot to like about Radian6 and it seems to be getting better, and justifying the cost for many firms, as long as you use it as part of a strategy, and you know what your doing and want to accomplish.

Which gets me on my last point - the work it takes to reach out to people - to identify those individuals you want to reach out to.

One thing is becoming more and more obvious - and it can’t be ignored - that Radian6, or any tool with similar intentions - to identify information that is meaningful to your business or cause - has to be sifted through - processed, understood (by you) and responded to - and the Social CRM aspects that are being added with SalesForce and being confirmed, by WebTrends, certainly do help with the task of storing and structuring the data - they don’t really address the nagging question of … do I need to hire people to do this kind of work?

The answer is, Yes, and you need to pay them well.   Here’s why (one more “rant” of mine, before I sign off)

We know that all this “Social Media” content is now being created, much of it “worthless” but parts of it valuable - and as more people engage in Social Media - more and more content is created - at an ever increasing rate - we know we need to “engage ” with that data, but only a human mind can truly analyze it and intelligently respond, and even if we end up inventing positronic brains (like Data, in Star Trek, The Next Generation), we will never be able to replace the human element of what makes communication satisfying and neccessary.

Because we can now sift through the data - we need the right people to understand what to with it - how to build relationships from it - the tools are rapidly maturing - but the human element is atrophying in that, in many cases, we forget to make the effort to reach out and listen.

We need to have insight and wisdom in the use of these tools - experimentation, perhaps making some mistakes, breaking a few plates, so to speak - to learn valuable lessons on how to approach and engage people.   But having said that - you need to sift though this data, and it’s massive - and you need people, good people, great people, and the right strategy to do it.

That’s what I plan on focusing - perhaps the next incarnation of  ”me”, of Webmetricsguru, to be one of the people who figures that out, who “gets it”.

Social CRM is useless without Heart, Compassion and Understanding.

See the rest here:
New Features I like about Radian6 and what you can do with them to drive traffic to your site

Popularity: 25% [?]

I just read  Radian6 integrates Webtrends and Salesforce data in the WebTrends blog, and it reminded me that I wanted to write about Radian6 since I now have access, plus some new information directly from Radian6 today (see Slideshare, Press Release in this post and additional Flickr photos ).

I just read Radian6 integrates Webtrends and Salesforce data in the WebTrends blog, and it reminded me that I wanted to write about Radian6 since I now have access, plus some new information directly from Radian6 today (see Slideshare, Press Release in this post and additional Flickr photos).

There was also a Webinar that took place today - The Rockstars of Social CRM, Hosted by Chris Brogan and Radian6

First,  it’s  kinda interesting this  idea of integration with Site Analytics data may well have come from me, a year ago, or so - when I first got to use Radian6 after meeting Marcel LeBrun in Toronto at the Social Media Roundtable.  After using Radian6 I told LeBrun and a few others at Radian6 that I wanted to use it in ways other than what it was designed for - and that I was frustrated with the interface -Radian6 looked like a product that should be able to do thing it could not do (yet).

I was told Radian6 was designed for PR and Communications people mainly; I replied that Web Analysts need it too - and why wasn’t he trying to sell it to us as well …….   Well, that was a year ago …. and looked what happened - the obvious.  What good is “Buzz” that Radian6 and similar products tracked about your Brand, site or product, if you can’t tie it back to the traffic that actually came to you site and did something?

Today, you can get that data out of Radian6, according to a press release just sent to me this evening by Warren Sukernek at Radian6 (who is also based in New York and whom I’ve met a few times, as recently as last week at a CRM Meetup (see Social CRM - Bantam @ NYC CRM Meetup)

Radian6 has now extended its platform to equip team members with deep social media listening and measurement capabilities within the tools they already use. With features developed on their platform API and Social Metrics Framework for integrating third-party data, Radian6 now supports the integration of social customer relationship management (CRM), web analytics, and other enterprise systems.

Social CRM

Customer expectations are shifting, and companies must address the changing needs of the new social customer.  With the proliferation of social networks and other online communities, customers are now more accessible than ever before, and companies are able to connect and provide a remarkable customer experience by listening to their customers and reaching out to them online.

Based on tremendous market demand from its existing and prospective enterprise customers, Radian6 has developed, and is today announcing the availability of the Radian6 and Salesforce.com Social CRM integration.

Notice the Salesforce.com icon in the Workflow view of a sample profile, below

These new Social CRM integrated capabilities empower your teams across the enterprise, with the following:

Sales teams are now equipped with significantly more relevant information about their customers through an integrated view of their customers’ online conversations combined with existing CRM activity history

Marketing teams can now meet prospects at their point of need, connecting much earlier in the buying process with real-time listening of online conversations, and reduce the overall cost of qualified leads

Customer service teams are now empowered to provide remarkable service by proactively responding to customers on their terms, equipped with an integrated view of their entire case and conversation history.

Community and social media teams are provided with context for their outreach and engagement efforts

Radian6 has worked with a variety of its valued enterprise customers, including Comcast, to help define its Social CRM strategy and product capabilities.

“Comcast has always viewed social media as an important communications channel for customers, similar to phone or email,” explains Frank Eliason, Comcast’s Director of Digital Care. “We’re excited to see tools that share this vision of customer service, and are looking forward to tapping Radian6’s integrated social CRM capabilities.”

Web Analytics Integration

Radian6 now brings together web and social media analytics, providing the richest combination of social and online metrics available to determine and articulate social media ROI.

Marketing, community, and social media teams can now map their word-of-mouth or social media initiatives directly to click-throughs and purchases on the website, and view their web activity and performance through the lens of social media. By integrating with WebTrends, Radian6 will enable users to leverage conversational web analytics and:

Calculate the ROI of your content marketing and outreach efforts by connecting the associated social media conversations to results in terms of website traffic, downloads, conversions or sales.

Measure the direct benefits of customer advocacy and quantify the value of engaging customers and influencers online

Compare which types of social media and communities are most effective in generating positive word-of-mouth, resulting in the desired actions on your website

“The Radian6 platform can now help businesses understand, on a global level, what kind of impact and resonance their social media content has online, how it’s driving website traffic and sales, and how their customer and prospect base behaves and grows as a result of social media,” says Lebrun. “Connecting the dots between web analytics, CRM, and social media measurement brings significant clarity and insight to an enterprise’s social media ROI equation.”

For more information about Radian6’s new capabilities and integrations or to request a demo, visit the Radian6 website at http://www.radian6.com.

Note - you still actually have to get the data in your WebTrends, SalesForce and Radian6 “hooked up” - it doesn’t happen by itself (for example, I’m in Radian6 right now, but I don’t see any of those features yet in any of my dashboards)- but, at least if you want those capabilities, Radian6 can tie WebTrends and Salesforce together, opening up some interesting possibilities, which I’ll cover in a minute, in my next post.   After all - if I put everything into one post - you’d not read the whole thing - that’s often what I do when I read some of the longer posts by some of my Web Analytics friends - I don’t want to read the chapter of a book as a blog post - if I want to read a book, I’ll buy one.

Anyway, to finish up this post, Marcel LeBrun, and team at Radian6, heard what I had to say, and what others had asked for, and clearly made a decision - they had to grow past being “Buzz Measurement” to really make a lot of money with the product - and sell it to groups within Corporations they never targeted.   Now, it’s seems obvious - but a year ago, its wasn’t - and I give them credit for forseeing, and listening.

The rest is here:
Radian6 New Enhancements plus Social CRM, WebTrends and SalesForce Intergration

Popularity: 11% [?]

Finally, a Web Analytics post, and I haven’t written enough of them, lately.   One of the things I noted earlier this week was the announcement WebTrends had partnered with Radian6 to provide a version of WebTrends for Social Media Measurement (see Web trends Social Measurement Powered by Radian6 Provides Advanced Tools For Customer Engagement Across The Web ). The announcement is yet another example of how Site Analytics is being transformed and here’s part of what was  said: How it Works Radian6 has built a complete social media monitoring and analysis solution for companies to listen, share, learn, and engage their customers across the entire social web. Through Webtrends Open Exchange, businesses will have a complete view of customer engagement, both in terms of what’s happening within their own web of data, such as web site analysis, PPC and ad campaigns and direct marketing efforts, as well as what’s happening outside their domain across the social web

Finally, a Web Analytics post, and I haven’t written enough of them, lately.   One of the things I noted earlier this week was the announcement WebTrends had partnered with Radian6 to provide a version of WebTrends for Social Media Measurement (see Web trends Social Measurement Powered by Radian6 Provides Advanced Tools For Customer Engagement Across The Web).

The announcement is yet another example of how Site Analytics is being transformed and here’s part of what was  said:

How it Works
Radian6 has built a complete social media monitoring and analysis solution for companies to listen, share, learn, and engage their customers across the entire social web. Through Webtrends Open Exchange, businesses will have a complete view of customer engagement, both in terms of what’s happening within their own web of data, such as web site analysis, PPC and ad campaigns and direct marketing efforts, as well as what’s happening outside their domain across the social web.
For resource-strapped marketing departments, monitoring and engaging in social communications can be hard to manage. Webtrends Social Measurement includes Radian6’s powerful As-It-Happens alerts and workflow management capabilities, which help customers better collect, manage and respond to the conversations happening about their brand online.

“This partnership is an exciting example of how the Webtrends Open Exchange Partner Program can help companies embrace the potential of the online space,” said Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, vice president, marketing, at Webtrends. “The partnership with Radian6 allows Webtrends customers to monitor conversations and engage with their customers, both online and off. Monitoring across your own properties and the entire web simultaneously has traditionally been difficult, but this collaboration makes it possible. Companies can track both activity related to their own site, and conversations happening on blogs, multimedia sites, social networks, and microblogs like Twitter.”

“Both Radian6 and Webtrends share the view that social media and the web are changing how companies and marketers do business,” said Chris Newton, CTO and founder, Radian6. “The Webtrends Open Exchange Program provides an ideal launching pad for integration with solutions like Radian6, and we look forward to helping empower companies with the information they need about their entire online presence so they can effectively engage and connect with their customers.”

I know the capabilities of both platforms - not sure they integrate well, at this point and Radian6 is not a complete profile  of buzz about a brand because it doesn’t deal well with walled gardens like Facebook and MySpace - and a lot of what’s going on - is happening in Facebook, and in other parts of the Social Web that Radian6, last I looked, can’t yet crawl.

However, this agreement does fulfill part of the original advice I gave Marcel LeBrun and Radian6, in general, several months ago - I was trying to use Radian6 in a way it wasn’t designed for - more like the Site Analytics platforms I have been accustomed to - and Radian6 wasn’t really built for that.

Radian6 is more like a dashboard for events on the web that are happening, built around profiles, but it doesn’t have any capacity to categorize that information automatically, it all has to be manually done.

I suggested to Marcel, that Radian6 would be improved if it could somehow be merged with Site Analytics, and that, in fact, Web Analysts such as myself, were an audience for the product, but that Radian6 was not being directed to groups like the one I work in - they were targeted to Marketing, Communications or Public Relations - when we also needed it for Analytics Insight.

I can’t prove that it was my advice that helped steer Radian6 to form a partnership with a major Web Analytics Platform, such as WebTrends, but I strongly suspect that if I didn’t inspire it directly - I had a role in planting the seed for it - even though I suspect it would have happened, anyway.

Not to be left out, it turns out that Compete.com also has a partnership with Radian6, but it was not yet formally announced - but still not a secret - in fact, for the last several months, most of the Web Analytics platforms have been busy making inroads to Social Media monitoring - just as I predicted, would happen - and Web Analytics will soon, cease to be identified with Site Analytics and become something bigger - and perhaps, even change it’s name - to be called something else.

Meanwhile, last month it was announced Omniture Brings Twitter Tracking to SiteCatalyst and according to BNET

“…Omniture customers can import Twitter data into SiteCatalyst , allowing them to answer important questions about their business, such as “who is talking about my brand and whom are we reaching?” Furthermore, online marketers will be able to better identify brand advocates and brand detractors. Product managers can also better identify important feature requests and recommendations from their most loyal users as they plan their product roadmaps. The SiteCatalyst integration with Twitter data also enables marketers to take advantage of the SiteCatalyst real-time alert feature, which can be used to send e-mails and SMS messages to mobile devices based on pre-determined criteria, such as a spike in mentions of brand-related terms. The integration can also be used to classify Twitter users into marketing segments such as customers, vendors and employees.”

What we are seeing, I think, is Web Analytics platforms like Omniture and WebTrends, receiving alerts which, I hope, will tie into pages of a site - that way you can look at traffic that is coming from Social Media to a particular page.

But, I’m wondering how WebTrends is actually going to pull that off - will they use an approach like Tealium.com, and make that WebTrends or Omniture JavaScript Tag do extra work and collect information from passed by Radian6, or Twitter, and then match it up with existing site analytics.

Or … will Site Analytics start turning into a Social Media Monitoring platform that just happens to have a full blown suite of tools to measure site activity?

That’s the question we’ll see answered in the next 6-18 months - just a guess on my part (the time frame - but I’m probably not far off in predicting how long it’ll take).

Excerpt from: 
New Developments with Analytics Tracking

Popularity: 16% [?]