Traditional web analytics tools like Google Analytics are a great for both small and large bloggers and publishers. However, traffic data can only tell you so much. As conversations surrounding blog posts start to take in place other places (Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc.) and people use tumble blogs like Tumblr and Posterous to quickly comment and share helpful information, tracking that data and its correlation to overall traffic numbers can become really, really helpful.For smaller publishers or bloggers, getting all of this information in one place can be difficult. Today, PostRank is publicly launching PostRank Analytics as a way to capture social engagement and traditional metrics all in one place.
When you sign-up for a PostRank Analytics account, you just need to enter in your blog address and connect your Google Analytics account. You can also enter in your Twitter username, so that your Twitter follower stats can be monitored in tandem with your web traffic.
What PostRank Analytics does is take the Google Analytics data and show you the pageviews, Twitter followers and “engagement score” for the day before. You can see how your figures stand up over time, by week, month or quarter.
But that’s just the beginning. The really cool part about PostRank Analytics comes when you evaluate individual blog entries. Not only can you see your total page views, unique visitors, bounce rate and average time on the post for each entry — you can also see how many people have tweeted about the post, how many comments it received, if there are any FriendFeed or Reddit reactions, was it re-posted on Tumblr, etc.
You can also see all of those reactions underneath the post. You get points for engagement and you can quickly determine which posts have high engagement scores and which don’t. What’s nice about this system is that you can compare the raw traffic metrics against the level of social engagement. So you might notice that something is a strong traffic performer, but has lower engagement details. Or maybe something is the opposite.
You can also see what types of posts tend to work best on what types of networks, and what impact that has on your traffic number or Twitter followers.
Earlier this week, I wrote about a new study that said 84% of social media programs don’t measure ROI. Although blogging is only one aspect of social media, it’s one of the easiest ways to measure feedback.
PostRank Analytics is a great add-on to Google’s own data. I would love to see the service monitor other types of social media accounts (like Facebook friends or fans) or plug into other analytics engines, but the data that PageRank Analytics can offer already is fantastic.
You can sign-up for a free 30-day test drive. Pricing starts at $9 a month after that.
How do you measure your blog and social metrics?
