Over 200 million online searches happen every day
78% of people trust recommendations of other consumers*
Twitter, as a micro-blogging service, stores a collection of personal comments and opinions. And enough people are hooked on it that Twitter has reached critical mass.
But the most interesting thing is that with a 900% growth over the past year Twitter is also transforming into a powerful search engine where consumers can now find information about just about anything.
If something big is going on in the world, you can get information about it from Twitter.
Twitter is also where people talk about their experiences with products and services as they interact with them. They mention delays in flights, while waiting at the airport. They complain about hotel services, when the AC in their room doesn’t work. They broadcast how great a new movie is, while still sitting in the theater.
More and more people are starting to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time as they interact with them. And those brands want to know all about what people are saying.
Twitter Analytics (an Omniture Plug-In) is a fully configurable feature designed to track brand popularity by capturing comments from Twitter into Omniture SiteCatalyst in real time. The plug-in is based on the Twitter Integration concept that was introduced by Adam Greco at Omniture Summit 2009.
Delivering Twitter Analytics in Real Time
| Feature | Reporting |
|---|---|
| Keyword Trending | Site Metrics report - trends the volume of brand related keywords (Monthly, Weekly, Daily, and Hourly) |
| Monitoring Brand Comments | Traffic and Conversion reports - deliver the actual content of the Twitter Comments (full set of 140 characters from Twitter) |
| Tweet Alerts | SiteCatalyst Alerts notify users via e-mail or mobile text when Twitter comments hit a certain threshold or changes more than a specified percentage  |
| Tweet Author Reports | A ‘Tweet Author’ variable is being captured with every comment, and allows for a breakdown of the “Brand Twitter Comments” metric by author, to see who is Twittering about your brand the most |
| Keyword Mining | Use SiteCatalyst’s built in advanced search feature to mine Twitter comments for product keywords |
| Multi-Brand Tracking | Each Twitter comment is marked with a ‘Brand Category‘, allowing groups of keywords to get rolled up to specific brand categories  |
| Measuring your brand’s ‘Buzz Value’ | A brand mention by a Twitter author with 3,000 followers carries more weight than a mention by someone with only 24 followers. Tracking the number of follower for each of the authors allows for the quantification of your company’s ‘buzz value’, by assigning a magnitude to each comment  |
How are companies using Twitter Analytics?
People are talking about brands Right Now!
Social Media is not a fad. It’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.
Companies can now be “the watcher” of these conversations, and better understand the “fish” they are trying to catch. This tool was built to help them successfully connect with communities of consumers.
Since Twitter is continuously updated with more comments, companies are using this feature to deal with the following types of Twitter users quickly and efficiently:
- Feedback – companies can listen to positive or negative feedback about their products, and stay sensitive to members’ needs.
- Success Stories – companies can contact those who have a success story for a product or brand.
- Legitimate Complaints – those are members who raise issues about a companies product. Companies can offer to solve their problem or explain policies, publicly when possible.
- Competitor Tweets – those are Twitter users who want to promote the competition, and so they continuously mention other brands. Companies can watch for Twitter keywords that highlight their competitors, see what people are saying, and engage them rationally and respectfully with their perspective.
- Engaged Critics – those are the users who will make suggestions and respond intelligently to others’ criticism. Companies may want to create a forum to encourage their discussion and recognize good ideas publicly.
- Troublemakers – those that have a grudge against a company will complain continuously. Companies can work to address them individually and privately.
How does the Product work?
Brand mentions are retrieved from Twitter, using Twitter’s Search API. They are then processed and stored in an Omniture Report Suite, using Omniture’s Data Insertion API.
An hourly cron job is set up to run and pull data from Twitter every hour, on the hour. Data is immediately available in SiteCatalyst and any alerts that are set up will execute instantly.
All trended reports will show a comparison against previous day (or week) as well as a 4-week moving average trendline.
All traffic and conversion reports will be fully searchable for sub-keywords.
Find more details about the Product features here –> Features
* Source: Pricewaterhouse Coopers