Webinar review: Social Media Analytics by Awareness, Inc.

Earlier today Awareness, Inc. offered a webinar called "Social Media Analytics: Effective Tools for Building, Interpreting, and Using Metrics".  After a bit of technical difficulties (a bit surprising since previous webinars have been smooth as silk) and a bit of general orientation to the subject (understanding that the attendees must have had a wide range of social media experience), there were some good tidbits of information (which is all most of us should hope for when attending any kind of training offering - especially when they are free).

Marshall Spooner was the main draw with his book of the same name as the webinar title above.  He did demonstrate a wide range of knowledge of social media, especially in the question and answer phase at the end of the webinar.  I will say first that in such a fast moving space as social media, to produce a book is a difficult prospect at best.  While much of the basics may be relevant for a short period of time, there is no doubt that books cannot be written fast enough to keep up.  So based on that, this blogger appreciates Mr. Spooner's attempt at describing the current state of social media analytics.

Aside from the basic information about using Google Analytics to track traffic and aggregators such as the product by the webinar's host, there were a couple of new things that he brought up. Shareaholic has a great browser add-on that makes sharing links much easier across social media applications.  Tynt.com has a unique measuring tool called an Interest Graph.  It is a visual representation of the online network of people that share interests with you on the Web.  And then of course there are the aggregator tools such as the Hub from Awareness, Inc., the webinar's sponsor, as well as Radian6, Alterian, Synthesio Unity and Socialflow.com.  While each of these has their strengths and weaknesses, it is highly recommended here that you do your due diligence on each option to see what will work for you.  If you are in an organization where coordination and collaboration of social media activity is a must, then these are the places to start your investigation into this space. 

I will say that while this webinar was a big disorganized up front and a bit choppy on the flow of the presentation, I did get something out of this one.  And one other disappointing note: the redirect to Amazon.com when exiting the webinar.  It just seemed a bit pushy.  I can imagine that there must be a better way to give attendees the choice to go to Amazon on their own.  After all, isn't social media all about opting IN and not being soullessly sold a product?