Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Google Analytics is the world’s most widely used web analytics service. Because Google Analytics is free (unless you need the enterprise level of service), constantly evolving, and backed by one of the technology industries’ largest companies, the service has become the industry standard for measuring website performance.

But like most industries, the web analytics industry has a number of other options you may want to consider when deciding which technology to use to track the performance of your website. Below we’ve compiled a list of 10 top Google Analytics alternatives you may want to consider when making this choice, each with a different approach to how Google tracks the performance of your pages. If you’re looking for a different viewpoint or set of metrics around how and why your website is performing at the level it currently is, and what you can do to improve those metrics, each of these Analytics alternatives can help out....

With so much data swimming around, knowing which metrics to pay attention to can be difficult. Knowing which ones matter to your company and which ones are simply vanity metrics is important if you are to improve your social media efforts...

No matter what industry you’re in, data will always play a key part. Data provides certainly and cold, hard facts that can help businesses thrive. It’s no surprise that by their very nature, the Web and social media have sped up the progress of analytic tools, becoming faster and more accurate. It’s why the majority of social media sites offer up their own analytics tools and why there are many so many are looking for real stats to work from.

Yet sometimes having a lot of data at your fingertips can be a hindrance. Our analytics can be filled with so much data that it can be difficult to determine what data is useful. It can be dangerous to take one metric on its own at face value so a combination of different metrics can help paint a picture of how well your social media activity is going.

Type of Metrics
There are a number of different engagement types out there, but here are the ones you should keep in mind when you’re devising a strategy....

[Simply Zesty provides an excellent overview of social media measurement metrics. If you're serious about measuring ROI, this is a must-read. ~ Jeff]

Check out NetBase.com's “real-time mood meter,” with dials that deliver up-to-the-minute voter sentiment on the upcoming election.. It's an example of a content strategy that brings new meaning to metrics.

When you land at NetBase.com, the online home of a company that sells serious software to major enterprises, a comic book character greets you — NetBase calls him “Captain Insight,” a super hero of “social intelligence.” The masked man has the super power needed to unlock the customer’s mind.

When you’re done with the Marvel-style sequence, you can click into some of the usual content you’d expect to find on a software company’s website. However, between now and election day, you’re more likely to point your cursor at a more mysterious element —a gauge marked “Obama.”

You’ll then discover a “real-time mood meter,” a dashboard of sorts with dials that deliver up-to-the-minute voter sentiment on the upcoming election. Indicators display the sentiment of Twitter users who, in the previous 10 minutes, have expressed opinions on the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

Have a look:...