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.

My recommendation was that if you are measuring time spent on the site as “engagement” then call it Time on Site. If you are measuring the number of visits by one person as “engagement” call it Visitor Loyalty. Then people know what you are measuring and what to do with the data.

With regards to your point about Twitter and Facebook…. it is very very cool that we can measure new things. The metrics I like (or have formulated) are….

# of Retweets per 1000 followers. I call it Message Amplification.
# of Replies sent & received per day. I call it Conversation Rate.

Both measure “engagement”, but they are called what they actually measure. That’s what I recommend. More here: Social Media Analytics: Twitter: Quantitative & Qualitative Metrics.

In each new medium (like social now) we’ll get even more opportunities to measure if we are doing this right. Unique metrics for unique “engagement” processes. 

3. Today’s tools and vendors seem to still be fragmented so we find separate tools for web analytics, monitoring, and specific insights. Do you see the industry consolidating to provide clients with a super tool that does it all?

Yes, and no.

Yes in the sense that as things get settled you’ll see tools evolving to incorporate that reporting. AdWords reporting used to be all by itself (it was too young, too new and no one new where it was going). It is now standard reporting included in Google Analytics and Omniture and other tools.

In the last couple of years AdSense, TV, Email, Display are all incorporated into Google Analytics, as an example. Or sometimes different vendors merge things together, as it the case with the 4Q voice of customer survey which merges with Google Analytics.

So as digital strategies reach some level of maturity expect tools by Google and Yahoo! and WebTrends and more to incorporate them together.

No in the sense that we live in such an ever evolving space (I think of web analytics today as a toddler, a lot of growth/change is to come and we actually have no idea what it is going to become). So new things will keep coming and they’ll be outside and we’ll have to become comfortable with what I call Multiplicity, the idea that to do your job effectively on the web you’ll have to:

a) Use the right tool to answer the right question, and b) Be very comfortable with managing / learning / using multiple tools at one time

And I’ll tell that that to me that is just so exciting that the world changes and evolves and you can have so much fun. Every day!

4. Bloggers often pay attention to comments and Social Media sharing as a way to measure success. What should bloggers be paying more attention to?

This should not come as a surprise… I have a blog post on Blog Metrics! : ) Here it is: Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success.

It is important to focus on the impact of social media on your blogging success (retweets, likes, replies to you on twitter and facebook to posts about your blog etc etc). But blogging is about more than social media links / clicks. The essence of my blog post about is that you should measure holistic success of your blog. The metrics I recommend are:

1. Raw Author Contribution
2. Audience Growth
3. Conversation Rate
4. Citations / Ripple Index (social media falls here)
5. Cost
6. Benefit ($$)

Taking that view allows you to have a robust understanding of if you are adding value and if you should keep doing what you are doing (or change!). I encourage people to do that beyond simply checking retweets or likes.

5. Your 10/90 rule is great because it focuses on people, not tools or technologies. With that rule in mind, what advice would you give to young people getting started in marketing research and analytics?

Learn to try new things and play in the real world. There is no better medium in the world for you to try anything you want, all by yourself without the need to rely on your employer to empower you. Tools are free or cheap. Platforms are free or cheap. All you need is a pinch of effort and a dash of desire to learn in the real world. If you do that no one will refuse to hire you because you’ll actually know what the heck you are talking about. If you don’t do that… well…. life will be tougher.

Here is a blog post that outlines how to do that, at least for Web Analytics: Web Analytics Career Advice: Play In The Real World.

6. Your books “Web Analytics 2.0″ and “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” have not only helped many people, but also created excitement around web analytics. Did you ever think you would one day be the closest thing to an Analytics Rock Star?

There is no such thing as a Rock Star. From dust to dust.

But I did want to share that I feel incredibly blessed that blogging and engaging in social media allows me (and anyone else!) to simply do what I am passionate about (writing and analytics), and have something come of it. My blog is responsible for Wiley contacting me and requesting me to write a book and things kept evolving like that. All I did is focus on writing things people would find to be “incredible” and “of value” (my two mantras for blogging).

As you know, all my proceeds from both my books are donated to charity (Doctors Without Borders, The Smile Train and Ekal Vidyalaya), and in around two years that amount is over $100k. I am astounded at that outcome.  More than anything it shows how “powerful” each and every one of us can be when we leverage the beautiful internet and focus on adding value through our passion.

Viva la web!

I recently participated as a panelist on a webinar titled “Your Brand Advocates- How to Find Them and What They Are Worth,” along with Kety Esquivel (from Ogilvy), Rob Fuggetta (from Zuberance), and Frank Eliason (on his last day at Comcast — he’s now with Citi). We talked about what a brand advocate is, and how brands can identify and energize them. Here are my slides along with a few thoughts and tips.

Brand advocates, at their core, are people who really like and care about a brand. They are the opposite of critics because they’re out there talking about the brand and recommending it to their friends  (aprox 150 if they’re sharing those recommendations online, according to Forrester). What they say actually resonates with others because there is a trust between friends and connections. These brand advocates cannot be bought, forced or created, so others perceive them as genuine fans of the brand.

Brand advocates are brand advocates because they’ve had good experiences with a brand and they are willing and able to share some enthusiasm. Of course, brand advocates aren’t always positive and they aren’t always the most vocal or social (as we might assume they are). They do expect the best from you… and that is a good thing.

Anyone representing a company in social media should seek to connect with this special group of passionate and supportive customers. Once you find one (yes, one is a big deal), try to develop and nurture a relationship. If you’re passionate about your company and its products/services (as I happen to be at Samsung), then this should be easy and natural for you. Help them connect with other fans and try to provide them with valuable and memorable experiences (that can be anything from good on-going conversations to content they actually might want to watch/read). Whatever you do, don’t take advocates for granted (regardless of how connected or influential they might seem).

Not sure what to think yet? Here are some stats if that’s your kind of thing:

McKinsey & Company has found that 2/3rds of the economy is influenced by personal recommendations. Zuberance says that a brand advocate may help provide 5 to 7 times more economic value than the average customer. Keller Fay Group has found that consumers mention 56 brands in conversation per week. According to Weber Shandwick, 1 in 3 people come to a brand through a recommendation, and according to Bain & Company, the most recommended company in any given category grows 2.5x the category average.

So, does anyone care about your brand enough to proactively and genuinely talk about it with friends? Are you ready to be an advocate yourself and join the conversation?

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this blog are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of Samsung.

Here are videos of the Q&A at the Corporate Social Media Summit in NYC last week. Some of the questions asked were around the role of a Social Media Manager, Foursquare for brands, Twitter follower management, and how to be customer-centric when a community continues to increase in size.

There is also one video with questions by the guys at Served Fresh Media.

 Check out the slides and videos from the presentation here.

 DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this blog are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of Samsung. Posts by contributors reflect their personal opinions and not those of their employers.

Here are the slides and video for my presentation about Samsung’s Customer-Centric Approach to Twitter and Social Media at the Corporate Social Media Summit in NYC.

For videos on the Q&A, please click here.

You can follow Samsung USA @samsungtweets and follow me @samsungesteban and @socialnerdia.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this blog are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of Samsung. Posts by contributors reflect their personal opinions and not those of their employers.

The MTV Movie Awards are happening right now and I don’t have MTV. I’m not a big fan of most pop music and blockbuster movies, but I must say I am always curious, especially from a marketing perspective. Knowing that Stamen Design had created a very cool Twitter data visualization for the VMAs in 2009, I went to MTV.com looking to see if they had done it again. And alas, I found Tweet Tracker.

Stamen knows how to visualize the crazy stream of text and links and hashtags that is Twitter, and this time was no exception. I was soon able to see comments about how awkward Kristen Stewart was, how surprising Sandra Bullock’s appearance was, and who won what, when, and even why. My initial thought was that this new Tweet Tracker did not look as good as the VMAs one did (and I certainly missed Kanye’s big face due to all the very interesting and opinionated tweets), but the functionality of Tweet Tracker goes further by letting you dive deep into what people are really saying in one of two ways:

“Cloud”

Or “Stripped”

Of course, the MTV Movie Awards were not my main concern tonight. My main concern was working on a presentation while watching the NBA Finals between the LA Lakers and the Boston Celtics. I do get ABC (thank God for free over-the-air digital television), but I was wondering about what everyone was saying on Twitter.

I could go to Twitter and search for “Lakers” or “Finals,”  but a data visualization does the sorting and analyzing for you, so I was excited to find the Post-Season Twitter Playoffs sponsored by Nike (and of course, created by Stamen).

I am quite interested about Stamen’s Eddy, the “media aggregation platform built for the public display of up-to-the-minute activity on realtime services like Twitter” that was used for this Nike/NBA visualization.

You can find all of Stamen’s fantastic work, including the the “Olympic Tracker” Twitter visualization on NBC.com for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, at www.stamen.com.

You probably already heard about the fake @BPGlobalPR Twitter account that was created to criticize the tragic BP oil spill. The account pretends to be an official BP handle, and with a mere 138 tweets, it already has aproximately 85K followers (and it has been listed by 2095 users!) in just a few days.

Of course, the AdAge article and other media have helped spread awareness of the account, but the reason for its speedy rise in followers is mostly due to the severity of BP’s oil spill combined with the the cleverness and relevance of the tweets.

Humor goes a long way when it comes to Twitter. Fake accounts like this one are created all the time, but they rarely make much of an impact. We’ve seen fake Twitter accounts for everything from presidents dictators (ie. @ChavezCandanga_) to Star Wars characters (ie. @DarthVader), but the most effective ”fake” Twitter accounts are often parodies (ie. @BogusBogusky, @ChuckNorris_ @Nick_Nolte) or created by actual fans (ie. @PeggyOlson and maybe @BadPeggyOlson). However, @BPGlobalPR is going against BP with intelligence, and dare I say it.. strategy?

I have no idea who is behind this @BPGlobalPR account, but I wouldn’t be surprised if another “fake” Twitterer like @michael_bay was doing it.

BP has decided not to go after the rogue account, at least for now, and I applaud this because they have decided to focus on communicating through their real account @BP_America and seem to be doing a very good job there despite the huge challenge they are facing. (Update: The @BP_America account was recently hacked for a short time.)

BP could’ve easily asked Twitter to suspend the @BPGlobalPR account soon after it was created, as most companies would’ve done, and as CNN and Megan Fox probably did with @cnnbreaking and @the_megan_fox, respectively. I guess BP could try to reach out to the creator(s) to try to make some peace, but who knows whether much would come out of doing so.

So where does a fake @BPGlobalPR account with a potentially serious, long-term agenda go from here?

Some fakers like @stephentcolbert, with an impressive 96K followers, seem to be trying to profit from their clever tweets through Ad.ly ads. Of course, independent Twitter ad networks are on the way out so @stephentcolbert better have a book something in mind because his ad.ly tweets are not going to keep paying for the broadband connection.

Unless suspended, the @BPGlobalPR account will likely stay open for a long time. And what about spreading itself to other social networks? Well, they seem to have recently opened a fake Facebook Page.

The Facebook Page only has 8 fans at this point, but with several comments (spammy ones) on Mashable’s FB posts, I’m sure other people will start to “like” the FB Page.

(Update: Looks like there is a another “BP Global PR” Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/BPGlobalPR and that one has 315 fans.)

One thing is for sure: The @BPGlobalPR account will be remembered as one of the most toxic (very sorry for the pun) cases to remember when considering a crisis response plan. It’s become quite obvious that every company needs a very integrated approach to PR, customer service, and social marketing so everyone should consider the worst of the worst when it comes to getting prepared. We should also pay close  attention to the way that companies like BP, Nestle, United, Domino’s, and others have reacted in difficult times. Learn from those who have been proactive, those who have responded quickly, and those who have extended heartfelt apologies.

More importantly, we should not point a finger at the companies that have failed to respond effectively because as real-time communication becomes the norm and as lurkers become “critics” and “creators”… this could easily happen to any company or person for any kind of problem or crisis. If you think you’re immune because of the industry you’re in or the history you’ve had, it’s time to let go of your complacency because we live in a brave new social world that can be quickly changed by anyone with an Internet connection.