HowTo use ComMetrics’ tools smarter: FAQs, tips, tricks

Imagine your boss has just told you that budget cuts necessitate cutting social media expenses and you might lose your job shortly. In a semi-desperate move you suggest that she give you another three months to show what a difference you can make for the company by revamping the corporate blog.

Can we help? Absolutely! After publishing the 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies’ corporate blogs, we came to the conclusion that it might be helpful to share some of the insights we have gained.

Today we release the first installments of these tips and lessons, the second of which can be read here:
2) Lessons 5 - 7: Setting the stage - ready - go (2009-06-03)

The next set will be published July 8:
3) Lessons 8 - 11: Whatever domain or home you choose - beware
4) Lessons 12 - 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right

The final set will come your way August 12:
5) Lessons 14 - 17: Authenticity and quality are key
6) Lessons 18 - 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

To make sure that you don’t miss any of these upcoming posts, just leave your e-mail here:

Posted in FTCBI, best in class, checklists, improving the trend, trend watching |

May has been a really busy month for us. As the cartoon to the left illustrates, we talked with Dogbert and convinced him to help us come up with some nice additional features for your dashboard.

Our work with the folks at the Financial Times has also yielded satisfying results. You can get more information on our collaboration in the following posts:

- FT ComMetrics Blog Index published
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index released: KISS the blog-bride
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index: How we found you
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index: The winners are
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index: Just do it - right

Incidentally, to be notified about new features, tricks and tools first, why not enter your e-mail here and get on our VIP list:

Here is what is coming your way: My.ComMetrics.com real-time trace updates or, who is Googling you - creepy or useful? [Read more →]

Posted in new feature |

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wisdom, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will make a beaten path to your door.”

A good and insightful saying, to be sure, and the modern equivalent would have to be convincing the boss or a sceptic of the value of social media or blogging.

While blogging may be an effective way to reach many of the company’s customers and suppliers, and reduce customer calls if the help or FAQ section delivers, that may not be enough to convince a boss who neither reads nor writes a blog. [Read more →]

Posted in FTCBI, sensible metrics |

Alpha testing is critical to find any errors and flaws you may have missed in a program’s development. This post explains how we went about testing My.ComMetrics.com to ensure users’ satisfaction with the final product.

There are three types of land mines in software engineering that must be dealt with when developing software of any kind:

1) Defects: these cause the software to behave in unpredictable ways. Examples could be code showing up when it should not be, failure to handle mistakes properly or incorrectly completed calculations that inadvertently provide the user with inaccurate results.
2) Errors: these can be reduced by using quality assurance testing. The software might perform in a way contrary to what your customer expects. For example, the user enters a URL at My.ComMetrics.com, clicks on View Trend and in response the software provides an empty results page or an error as shown in the image above.
3) Flaws: these are generally viewed by the end-user as errors, without technically being an error within the developer’s code, such as presented data being correct but the visual leaves something to be desired (see image further below). [Read more →]

Posted in measuring effectively |

Five steps to turn buzz into sales
Which FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 blogs made the FT ComMetrics Blog Index
Financial Times - is blogging good value?

What is the FT ComMetrics Index?
ComMetrics has developed a detailed methodology to benchmark corporate blogs. The FT ComMetrics Blog Index uses the same methodology, but a less-detailed version.

Why create such an index?
We thought creating this index this would help promote good practice as far as corporate blogging is concerned.

If you want to find actionable insights, you need to segment your benchmarking data: pinpoint the various sources, user behavior and outcomes. The FT ComMetrics Blog Index helps corporate bloggers achieve this objective.
More issues below.
[Read more →]

Posted in FTCBI, measuring effectively, sensible metrics |

We have tried to keep our Alpha users and the other readers of this blog posted on our progress toward releasing a Beta version of our My.ComMetrics.com blog benchmarking tool.

Things are coming along nicely and the Beta release is just around the corner. In the meantime, we have opened a Twitter account to keep our users informed about:

- new features, and
- progress

So far we have succeeded in keeping the number of tweets down to one or two each week, as promised in one of our early tweets:

[Read more →]

Posted in Twitter, best in class, sensible metrics |

Twitter squatters are people who register an account on Twitter with the name of a company, brand or town. For better or worse, these people become the public face of that corportation or town on that social network. With the upcoming World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, social media features prominently, so we thought we should, among other things, outline the criteria one can use to identify the official WEF versus the non-official WEF feed(s). Read on.

We provide six criteria that, all things being equal, can be used to define an organizational microblog or identify a possible Twitter squatter account, if need be. These are:

[Read more →]

Posted in Twitter, checklists |

Why should people follow a corporate blog or what is tweeting for companies 101? It is like the old saying about wheat and chaff: with a lot of followers come a lot of hecklers. In turn, having specific standards and understanding better what works well helps weed out the worst.
This post addresses some characteristics of corporate Twitter account from Dell, ComcastCares, Tyson Foods and so forth.

Microblogging - also called microsharing has become ever more popular thanks to Twitter and the many Twitter tools that help one make better use of this communication tool. We have addressed this elsewhere like:

Twitter - what works what fails

Return on engagement - Twitter for social media experts - benchmarking with My.ComMetrics.com

Here we are particularly interested in finding a better on what distinguishes a corporate Twitter account from a business or personal type of account.

[Read more →]

Posted in Twitter, checklists |

When data are missing, the appropriate missing data analysis procedures do not generate something out of nothing but do make the most out of the data available

One of the most common forms of analysis with missing data involves simply substituting the mean for the variable whenever a value is missing. Unfortunatley, mean substitution can produce very wrong estimates of variances and covariances. In general, substituting the mean for the missing value has the effect of underestimating the magnitude of both variances and covariances

[Read more →]

Posted in best in class |

Why would you want to be an alpha tester - if your answer is yes go here: click here to register yourself now

So you want to be convinced? We could try by writing some fancy text. Instead how about asking you four questions that you should answer for yourself right here:

[Read more →]

Posted in best in class |