Pam is a Marketing Communications and Social Media Manager at Intronis Cloud Backup + Recovery in Boston, MA. Pam recently graduated from Suffolk with an MBA. She’s a freelance blogger, social media geek, and avid Red Sox Fan. While working for Holland-Mark, Pam was able to use PostRank Analytics to listen, analyze and keep in touch with what was happening with client’s online content.

“Online content is important because without content you have no value to offer the target market online. You can use social media, but without the content, social media cannot do as much for your brand.” said Pam as we discussed the importance of online content for the clients she worked with. “Content shows what a company does, the people behind the brand and give consumers what they want (or what they will want). As many say ‘content is king’.”

Like many PostRanker’s using our tools in an agency environment, Pam found that PostRank Analytics does a great job of demonstrating to clients what content is relevant, valuable and shared among audiences on the social web. When using PostRank with clients, Pam found that “it assisted in seeing whether the client’s content was relevant, as well as the content of the competition, bloggers in the sphere and others. It was great for curating content, as well as keeping track of what was being said online and analytics.” Specifically she said that “PostRank is great for assisting clients in starting out with their content hub, especially those who had not used social media in the past and needed to start fresh.”

I want to personally give a big shout out to Pam and thank her for taking some time out of her busy schedule to talk to me about her experience. The thoughts and insights she shared have help us here at PostRank learn more about how our tools are being put to use.

The Reports offer an at-a-glance overview of how your site’s content performed the previous day, and whether that’s better or worse than expected based on past performance.

There is also an engagement activity breakdown by social hub, giving you a view of your content’ “culture” and where your audience likes sharing best.

And there is the Activity Stream, giving you a snapshot of the specific fans, actions, and hubs on which your content is getting the most traction.

For the traditionalists, at the top of each report is a link to the old style if you’d like to do a comparison. And we’d love to hear your feedback. There is a link in the light blue-grey section near the bottom of the report as well where you can let us know what you think of the updated Reports, and your preferences so we can make them even better.

At PostRank, we’ve been incredibly fortunate over the years to receive a lot of feedback about our products and services. There have been many blog posts, tweets and emails from community members and we can’t thank each and every one of them enough for their support and insight. We think some of the stories they’ve shared with us are incredibly valuable and so, we’d like to share them with you.

We’ve been spending some serious time reaching out and connecting with our community members using analytics everyday to monitor the content that they and their clients publish online. We will be showcasing a few of these individuals in a 30 minute live webinar on May 11th, 2011 at 2pm EST. Our scheduled guests are:

• Gini Dietrich – Founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich Inc. and author of Spin Sucks
• Angie Nelson – Blogger and creator of The Work at Home Wife
• Aaron Schoenberger – Founder and CEO of The Brainchild Group

Join us as we learn a little about who are guests are, what they do and how they’re using PostRank Analytics. There will be a portion at the end of the webinar so you can ask some questions and get some answers from our insightful and experienced guests. Registration is now open.

Well, kinda… Recently we rolled out some great updates to PostRank Analytics, and we’ve just finished adding even more polish to the site.

When you login, you’ll notice that things look a little different. A little more crisp, a little clearer, a little easier to read. Earth-shattering? Perhaps not. But we do think it’s just as important to look marvelous as to analyze marvelous(ly).

Web technologies change constantly, and savvy designers (like our own) can do some amazing things. We think it’s important to keep up with changes that can give our community a better user experience.

Guess it’s time to do a bit of a makeup touch-up on those team photos now…

PostRank’s suite of tools for monitoring, measuring and analyzing social engagement with online content have been proven useful for companies and organizations of different sizes and areas of expertise. Unsurprisingly, many of our customers and avid users are entrepreneurs, just like our founder, Ilya Grigorik, and indeed, by extension, everyone here on the PostRank team.

About a month ago, I had the pleasure of being introduced to a brilliant entrepreneur by the name of Natalie Sisson. Natalie is a Suitcase Entrepreneur and adventurer who travels the world running her business from anywhere while literally living out of a suitcase. As a former co-founder of a technology startup herself, Natalie loves demystifying tools and cutting through the technical jargon to show others how to find and use the right tools to streamline their business and save time and money.

I was incredibly excited to learn that Natalie would be including PostRank in an exciting and timely e-book called: The Ultimate Toolkit for Evolutionary Entrepreneurs. The Customer Development team here was so thrilled about this opportunity that we decided to sponsor the digital publication.

The e-book is a simple yet powerful guide, designed not to overwhelm but to help entrepreneurs immensely. Every tool outlined has been made easy to understand and organized by function, price and ideal business use. This clear and concise digital publication can help:

• Create professional marketing campaigns for less
• Optimize your website to attract more of the right customers
• Better understand your customers’ needs
• Do more of the important stuff in less time
• Master cost-effective self-promotion
• Create multiple streams of income on your website
• Track and monitor your social media return on investment
• And much much more!

While reading through the e-book myself I discovered some amazingly useful tools I only ever dreamed existed. Natalie has done a fantastic job at discovering and providing succinct overviews of some of the many free and paid tools for website building and optimization, personal productivity and time management, marketing design and public relations, social media management, and other facets of running a small business that matter to entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial. The Ultimate Toolkit for Evolutionary Entrepreneurs is a great resource: check it out.

Folks who have recently signed up for our Connect service can login to Analytics with their Connect account email and password here.

Account Navigation

In a nutshell, we’ve moved navigation up to the top right of the page where you login, and have separated and clarified working with the types of content you can track.

My Analytics is now Blogs, and within that section, the Overview, Analyze, and other tab names remain the same.

Custom Pages is now Pages, and is now a top-level navigation item, rather than a sub-section.

The various account-related functions under My Sites are now found under Account, which is a top-level navigation item, rather than several sub-sections.

New navigation:

(Click on the image to view a larger version.)

Old navigation:

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Blogs

One big change in this section is that Pages is no longer a sub-section and has been moved. (More on that below.)

Engagement Events and Engagement Scores metrics remain the same, as they provide the most depth and precision for publishers to learn and improve their content’s performance with their audiences.

The PostRank score “chiclet” (with a red, orange, or yellow background) has been removed from the Blogs section, as more detailed and precise metrics to judge a story’s performance with your audience are already displayed. Additionally, there was often confusion over the scores and an assumption that they represented absolute analysis, when in fact they were relative.

We have also removed the Sort By functions for publish date or most recent engagement activity.

Pages

We’ve given this section some love, since our research showed that while we were getting plenty of ”I want to be able to do this…” inquiries, many people weren’t actually finding or understanding that a section already existed with the features they were looking for.

(Click on the image to view a larger version.)

The former Custom Pages section is now Pages and has moved into a new section. Once you’re there the title is now Your Tracked Pages. Previously this content was accessible from the Analyze tab in its own sub-section, and you could add up to 20 custom pages per site (site = RSS-enabled blog or other website you’d added to your account).

All existing account holders’ Pages have been migrated into the new system.

Now, Influencer account holders (those who’ve signed up for the Connect service) and Personal account holders (Analytics only, our smallest size account) will be able to add up to 20 Pages.

Business and Agency account holders will be able to add up to 40 Pages.

These changes to Page limits will not affect existing customers (i.e. you won’t lose any that you already have).

We’ve also added the Track Another Page function to the Pages overview, and have added the Edit Settings function for each Page to make it really easy to update your content.

For the social engagement analysis of Pages, Google Analytics on-site pageview data will no longer be displayed. There are a couple of technical reasons for this, but the main one is that members often add Pages for competitive analysis or interest purposes, but as the members are not the sites’ administrators, they don’t have access to the associated Google Analytics account to access the on-site data, so this feature becomes moot.

The “chiclet” that contains PostRank scores (with a red, orange, or yellow background) has also been removed, since much more detailed metrics are displayed, and the Engagement Score is a much more precise metric to quickly judge a story’s performance with your audience.

Account

Account details have now been re-organized under the Account section, which includes all of your contact information, password settings, referral functions, social profiles, and billing information.

(Click on the image to view a larger version.)

The Your Details section (formerly My Details) has moved up a level in navigation. This section contains your contact information (name, email, etc.), password settings, unique referral code, and the email referral tool. (The referral code and email referral will appear on paid Analytics accounts only.)

Your Social Accounts (formerly Associated Accounts) is where you verify your Facebook account, and will be where you can add additional social network profiles in the future.

Your Payment Details retains its name and functionality and is where paid account holders will see their credit card information. Non-paying customers (i.e. Connect service members) will not see this section.

Cancel Account retains the same name and functionality, and is also found under the Account section.

Let us know what you think

Let us know your thoughts, questions, or feedback on the new navigation and presentation of Analytics. And, of course, we’re always interested in hearing about new features you want.

And yes, we know there are a few requests we’ve received that we haven’t been able to implement, but rest assured that our development team has explored all of them, and if the feature hasn’t been built, it’s likely because the tools we’d need aren’t yet available or our system just can’t support it yet. But when that changes, we’ll do our best to add all of that good stuff.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our webinar last week. Here’s a recording of the webinar for those who missed it:

Using PostRank Analytics to Improve Your Blogging from PostRank Inc. on Vimeo.

The article that Jason mentioned that talks about Mashable’s success and “evergreen content”: How Mashable Won.

For an additional end-to-end overview of PostRank Analytics: PostRank Analytics Demo.

For individual publishers, check out our PostRank Connect service: PostRank Connect. (Accounts come with a free PostRank Analytics account.)

If you’re a brand or company, contact us to discuss how you can develop relationships with publishers through PostRank Connect!

Questions from the webinar

Q: Can we connect getclicky.com analytics? I don’t use Google Analytics.

A: At this time, only Google Analytics is integrated with PostRank Analytics, though recently Webtrends announced PostRank integration in their Analytics 10 product.

Q: Do you have your own PostRank Analytics vs. Google?

A: PostRank Analytics covers off-site metrics on the social web (so your audience’s activities on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.), and Google Analytics cover on-site metrics (pageviews, bounce rates, time on site, etc.) These days, 80% of a site’s engagement comes from the social web – so tracking offsite analytics is increasingly important.

Q: Can you did a little deeper into the optimize aspect of PR?

A: There is a section in the Analytics overview about Optimize. Basically, it gives you the “flavour” of popular social networks and their cultures, as well as who your biggest champions are on each and what content of yours they’re posting, sharing, etc.

Q: Can you provide the Yahoo Cornell study details again. and Q: Where can we see its findings about “evergreen” content?

A: That data is all in the article Jason referenced: How Mashable Won.

Q: Wait. I’m sorry. Jason just mentioned where there are some optimization tips and tricks.

A: In Analytics under the Optimize tab, you can see, for example, your top influencers on Twitter: who they are, how many followers they have, and what content of yours they’ve (re)tweeted. You can then track their influence and sharing over time, as well as across networks, which really gives you a fuller picture of who your content’s champions are. You can also get a sense of what topics or styles of posts resonate most with those people, and, most importantly, build relationships with them to get their feedback and encourage even more engagement with your content.

And, of course, reciprocation is one of a blogger’s best tools. You want comments, trackbacks, retweets, diggs, etc., right? One of the best ways to get them is to give them. Read what others are writing, leave your own thoughtful comments. Share cool articles with your Twitter network. Bookmark posts and tag them well so others can find them and use them as resources.

Q: Could you display an exploded view of the engagement points section of the report?

A: For a closer view of engagement points, you can check out our Analytics overview. Feel free to contact us with additional questions about how engagement works, or if you have questions about seeing the breakdown for your own content.

For those who attended or who watch the recording, please let us know what you thought about the webinar by completing this quick poll.

In a 30-minute live webinar on March 31st, 2011 we would like to help you learn about some of the insights you can gather from your blog posts and audience using our analytics service. Understanding what posts are engaging your audience by looking at social engagement events and scores is the first step. But finding what it is about those posts that’s catching people’s interest and identifying your own best practices is a key component to making every post a success.

PostRank Analytics is an intelligence service that presents off-site data and metrics about how your blog engages audiences on the social web. This data is presented to you within the context of the content of your unique RSS feed, benchmarking yourself against your own performance over time. What it can clarify for you are opportunities for self-improvement as a content creator because it’s all about you – the stories you tell and how those stories engage others.

There are many things to be considered when comparing posts that engage and those that don’t. Style, topics, the effect of networks and the influencers within them all play a role in generating engagement. Join us online for a brief guide to some of the ways you can begin to use analytics to optimize the performance of your posts, engage your audience and grow your influence through your blog and the content you create. Registration for this webinar is now open.

Over the last year and a half we’ve added new features, developed tips and tricks, and learned from our community. Especially how monitoring and tracking a post’s engagement on the social web says a lot about your influence as a blogger and the relevance of the topics you write about.

You can find several resources, including videos, on how to set up PostRank Analytics and its features, and now we want to give you more.

Since many of you strive to continuously improve your blogging and find meaningful ways to develop relationships with your readers, we’re taking it one step further with a live webinar on how to get the most out of PostRank Analytics. Whether you’re already an Analytics user, or looking to start tracking and engaging your audience on the social web, you’ll benefit from attending this session.

If you haven’t already — subscribe to this blog and/or follow us on Twitter — and stay tuned for registration details to attend the webinar on March 31st, 2011. In this 30-minute event we will pull together some of the collective wisdom PostRank Analytics users have shared with us. You’ll learn how to analyze the data and apply it to your posts in order to optimize their performance, find your audience, and grow your influence.

And who knows what other surprises we’ll have in store for you? We may be giving away more than information!

Which is a rambly way of saying that, by popular demand, we’ve introduced a new PostRank Analytics plan that’s aimed at small businesses, consultants, boutique agencies, etc. Folks who need more than the Influencer or Personal accounts’ 5 sites, but not nearly as many as the Agency account’s 200.

Introducing the Business account, which offers 20 sites and 20 custom pages per site for $49/month.

We think that plan option is a lot closer to “just right” for many people, and we’ll continue collect your feedback on our services, features, and porridge.

And for those who are wondering: this is the difference between the Influencer and Personal accounts.