Brandon Prebynski is an Emerging / Social Media Strategist at FKQ Advertising and Marketing and the host of a live USTREAM show called Web Trends. Brandon is one of the first people I “met” on Twitter; you can follow him @Prebynski.

Brandon and I have a panel proposal with Sarah Austin, Joel Cheesman, Christopher Kahle and Ryan Paugh for SXSW 2011 so please vote for us at http://bit.ly/howtogetajob before August 27th, 2010!

Listen to this entire episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Brandon Prebynski on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

Brandon recently joined FKQ so I asked him about his new role as a strategist. “It’s been great because within a set of guidelines I’ve been able to shape what the position is,” Brandon told me. He is helping clients create long-term strategies around marketing, customer service and product development.

He’s also been working on tracking, analysis and metrics. “We have this big myth out there that it’s really difficult to measure social media and there are many who say you can’t measure the results especially when it comes back to revenue, and that you can only look at trends over time, but frankly with the correct tools implemented correctly, you can sometimes measure it directly.” (more…)

Web analytics are cool. If you agree with that statement, there’s a good change you’ve spent some time reading Occam’s Razor, the fascinating blog about web analytics by Avinash Kaushik (author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day).

If you don’t know who Avinash is then just Google “Web Analytics” and you’ll surely find out who he is. I’ve personally  learnt much from his thought-provoking and action-oriented writings, and I’m sure you will too. Below is an interview about some of the hot topics in web analytics today.

1. Tools like Woopra have introduced us to real-time analytics. Is real-time the future of analytics? Why are we not there yet?

There is more and more real-time data available. Google Analytics is updated, officially, every hour. Then there are cool tools like Chartbeat, etc. My personal perspective on real time analytics is…. if you can’t take real-time action then why do you want real time data?

In 99% of the cases real-time data is not actionable (it is not statistically significant and people jump the gun on the wrong signals), and companies (big or small) can’t actually take any action even if there is an actionable signal (change campaigns, landing pages, stop emails from going out or whatever). Then why do you want the data?

Real-time data becomes an excuse to stare at computer screens or do data puking. It keeps people from doing thoughtful analysis and looking at non-tactical things (and adding value to their employer).

If your organization meets these two rules: a) You have enough traffic / responses on your site to get statistically significant data AND b) You have a capacity to change things (take action), you should seek out real time data and you should make use of it. If you don’t meet the two rules take a long hard look at if you are engaging in any activity that is adding to your company’s bottom-line when you tap into real time data.

2. In 2007, you wrote a post  about “engagement” often being an “excuse,” not a metric. Now that we can measure things like comments, Facebook likes, ReTweets, check-ins, etc., what are your thoughts about the importance of measuring engagement?

My point of view on engagement is simple: What the heck does it actually mean? The answer is? Everything to everyone. Hence my minor displeasure at that metric. I believe in clarity of communication and a razor sharp focus on solving specific problems. Hence precise measurements, and naming metrics for clarity.

Engagement means nothing, hence does not drive action. (more…)

Have you ever wanted to see who is on your web site at any given time? I’m not talking about the number of page views that your web site got this month. I’m talking about now, right now. Well, Woopra might be able to help.

Last night, on The Social Nerdia Show! live podcast’s 27th episode, I had a conversation with John Pozadzides, the CEO of iFusion Labs, the parent company of Woopra, an innovative web analytics application that lets you see who your visitors are and what they are doing, in real-time.

You can listen to the entire conversation with John about blogging, analytics, marketing, social media, and much more, on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to all our shows on iTunes, stream it from a mobile phone on Stitcher, and listen to it LIVE on Thursday nights on blogtalkradio.

Enter Woopra

Woopra makes me very excited about the future of real-time because real-time is how the web should be. It’s what the web needs to be. I’ve done my share of waiting, refreshing, and reloading, and if 2010 is not the year for the real-time web to explode and break out of the tech bubble and into the mainstream, then I’m going to hang out in real-time in real-life with actual friends under the real-time sky drinking some real-time water. So take note Google. And take note everybody else. Anyone creating online products and services has a bit to learn from the accomplishments of the FriendFeeds, FourSquares, Radian6s, and Woopras of the world.

I first heard about John P. and Woopra at WordCamp Dallas. I must admit that I did not realize what Woopra was at first. The words “live” and “real-time” simply did not sink in. But once installed, I was able to see who was visting socialnerdia.com at that point. I was used to getting some of this info from Google, but Google Analytics always provided it a day too late. Woopra is about the now, and that adds a whole new layer of meaning to how we measure the web. (more…)