Updated link shortener dashboard

Posted on November 15, 2010 by andrew |

As more and more of our customers are using the link shortener to create and track links by hand, we released an update today which allows you to view your link history:

  • Easily sort by date or number of clicks
  • A quick trailing 7-day graph of traffic on links
  • The ability to add an internal Label for tracking purposes (eg, who in your organization publishes the link, etc.)

Of course all of these clicks also feed into the overall metrics and social graph provided by Clickst, so you can track downstream virality as usual.

We’ll be adding conversion tracking and more detailed reporting for each link in the coming months. In the meantime, we appreciate your feedback!

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Numbers don’t move (or lie)

Posted on October 21, 2010 by andrew |

One of the things we have observed that is simultaneously frustrating and comforting about consumer Internet businesses, is that it is very hard to move the numbers once they are “pegged”. What we’re talking about is the amazing consistency you see between unrelated tests for certain types of actions. Of course, this is how rules-of-thumb are derived, and surprisingly (at least to me) they tend to hold true over a sufficient sample size. I like to think of it as noisy data converging towards an asymptote.

Most recently, this phenomenon came to our attention thanks to an article Intuit VP Seth Greenberg Evaluates The Facebook Funnel At The ANA’s Annual Conference on AdExchanger.com. TurboTax has done a great job with their use of social media, and this presentation highlights the funnel.

What I found most interested was their “lift” in terms of conversion rates: 4x. This is squarely in the 2x-5x range we have been observing for our clients for over 2 years now.

Whether you call it friendcasting, earned media or good old word-of-mouth, the numbers don’t lie… or move.

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Vocus releases White Paper: What Makes an Influencer

Posted on September 29, 2010 by andrew |

Today Vocus released their white paper we discussed in our previous blog post, describing the research they conducted with Brian Solis on “What Makes an Influencer”.

The key highlight is on page 4 where a majority of marketers suggest that a person with a handful of tightly connected friends / fans / followers is more likely to have a measurable effect on an outcome.

I would consider this paper a “must read” for any digital marketer in today’s social world. You can access the full paper here:

http://www.vocus.com/social-media/influencer/what-makes-an-influencer.pdf

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Clickst publicly announced

Posted on September 28, 2010 by andrew |

This is not news to any of you, but we finally got around to putting out a more formal announcement regarding Clickst on the wire today: http://clk.st/hdmd0

Please share this post with your friends in marketing & social media, and we look forward to serving each and every one of you!

Thanks!

- Andrew Hoag, CEO

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Vocus webinar on influence

Posted on September 22, 2010 by andrew |

Yesterday Vocus hosted a very interesting webinar regarding “The Influencer Poll” featuring Brian Solis.  I first learned about the poll via HARO, which is a great service for matching journalists with sources, and the webinar presented the results with some analysis. I’d recommend watching it, available at clk.st/hx8hxx.

The poll determined that the recipe for a successful social media campaign embodies:

  • relevant content
  • measurable outcomes
  • connected to right individuals & networks

An overwhelming 81% of respondents believe a post-click action (purchase, registration, vote, download, etc.) is the most important criteria for evaluating the success of a campaign or content.

This was reiterated by a quote from the audio track– “if you’re not driving an outcome, you are just competing for the moment … and there’s just no way to win”.

Obviously here at Clickst we have a strong vision on what it means to be an influencer, and it was nice to see that vision reinforced by an independent survey. We have always known that popularity != reach != influence, and are happy to see other marketers appreciating the difference. As Brian noted, “the ability to get someone to retweet something isn’t as important as to get them to DO something”.

We predict that the coming year will further the trend towards measuring performance across all aspects of a campaign, and tying it to measurable business objectives. This transformation will initially overwhelm but eventually transform the practice of marketing (including media, brand, direct response, social, etc.).

Update: Corrected 91% -> 81% (typo in original post)

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An honest conversation about your data

Posted on September 10, 2010 by andrew |

We tweeted about this article on WSJ.com As Web Surfers Share, Marketers Track a few weeks ago when the story first broke, and I wanted to follow it up with a post.

I find it particularly interesting that companies implement a “sharing” tool that really isn’t about sharing, it’s about data collection piggybacking off your traffic. What’s becoming clear from these series of WSJ articles is the recognition of the value of this data to marketers and to publishers (web site operators).  This may be painful in the short-term, but long-term is a good thing as we can bring more transparency to this ecosystem, to the betterment of consumers.

Our results have proven the value of sharing for bringing high-quality traffic (2x-5x better conversions) to a site, and marketers are just scratching the surface on how to use that data. We are excited about several innovative partners that we are working with, and will feature them here over the coming months.

We at Clickst believe that your data is your data, and by working to help to maximize your insight and understanding of that data, our goals are aligned with yours. By helping you be successful, we are successful. There are so many ways this data can be used by our customers to 1) reduce costs, 2) increase sales, and 3) generate awareness.

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What’s cookin’ with Clickst

Posted on August 23, 2010 by andrew |

The ubiquitous first post. What do you say here? How do you get it started?

First, let’s think about the ingredients a little bit. Looking in our pantry, we have:

  • the pantry marketing
  • social media
  • social networks (the graph kind, not the VC-backed kind)
  • data
  • analytics
  • word-of-mouth and referral marketing
  • recommendations and targeting

As we’ll discuss subsequently, the combination of these are all very topical and relevant. There are tectonic shifts happening in the internet today, and it is critically important that marketers adapt.

So our content will follow a staple of carbohydrates (marketing), with a healthy dose of protein to build muscle (technology), have the healthy fats (social), and occasionally include some sweets (trivia & off-topic) to keep things interesting.

Thanks for following!

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