In the last weeks I managed to reconsider some of the potential uses of shortening services, while I was at the university I created a shortening service called 21Url (now closed and offline) that had the idea to generate the creation of analytics for the urls that were shortened by the users.

A service that I personally use (and love) is Bit.Ly, that integrates perfectly with my Twitter Client and manages to give me an accurate feedback on my twitter activity, giving me a feedback on how I’m acting in that environment and more important about the feedback that I get from my followers.

This service can be used also in the opposite side of the analytics, with the data that it gather we can understand also how a specific blog/site/page is performing globally between the twitter users, those data can be considered at the same level of Alexa. Here are some points:

Market Share & Validity of Bit.Ly
First of all we have to understand how valid are the data that this service provide. We have to assume that the data comes from a good source composed by a sufficient number of individuals that uses the service, in this way looking at the traffic generated we can think that it serves a wide range of users, that can give an objectivity of the data. To do that there is the need to compare different services by using a good (and almost reilable) source, Alexa.

As can be seen Bit.Ly is the one that has a bigger reach between similar services, giving us the idea that the data that provides comes from a big variety of people, giving validity to the data provided.

Personal Analysis
Looking at the times that people made a click on the link you shared, you can understand how much your followers cares about what you share with them, creating a big understanding about the very real activity of your network. It’s good to have thousands of followers, but how many of them actually cares about you and what you share, are they looking forward to see what you are reading? Looking at the difference between Followers and Clicks you can start understanding how much you are considered by the community. With a little passion you can also see what categories of links receive more clicks by the community, giving you also a feedback about what the community care, and what they think you are good at. If you receive a lot of click on links about Agriculture and less about Phones, probably your community is made by farmers, or they consider yourself a good source of links about agriculture.

Like Alexa for Twitter
Just by giving a brief look at the total number of clicks received, you can actually see the grade of authority that it owns on Internet. If it received a lot of clicks can mean for example that a lot of people shared it (empowering it with authority), or that some super followed people shared it… but the real information that manages to validate the info is the number of people that actually shared the link on their profile. Looking at the Echo (we can call so the resonance of the link on twitter) that the link owns, we are able to own an objective data about the real traffic and consideration of a web-site.
If a site that talks about Online Branding has a low Echo can mean for example that it is not considered by the community as important, that their efforts haven’t been inside Social Media, or that the community doesn’t use bit.Ly.

New People
There is the possibility to see if someone else decided to share your link the same page via Twitter. This is an opportunity for profiling other users, managing in this way to understand their ideas and what else they share and what they are interested to. Doing that you have the possibility to discover also new source of information, and discover by using them new trends and possibilities.

Demographic
Like every analytics works you can see for example where and when you receive more clicks, giving you an hint about the type of users that are more “attracted” by your sharing stream, and in this way decide where to put more effort and resources.

Those are some of the many possibilities that this service can give us on analytics… and those information combined between them can give to every user insights important to create a better brand and improve the communication.

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In the last days I have been considering the various evolutions of Twitter and I had some time to monitor the changes that those brought not only to companies that need to update their clients, but also to people and how they tend to use those features to save time and also to use them to get the best for their Branding Efforts.

Twitter introduced the List feature that is important in a way to categorize your friends for themes or any way you want it. like every person we own something that distinguish ourself from others (like a brand) and this idea can be categorized by people. Lists means that you can can put followers in more than a basket in a way to monitor their stream in the most effective way possible. For the ones of you that haven’t tried it at the moment, you can create public or private lists that I have to say are really important also for Public Relations and Brand Management.

On the Personal Branding monitoring, when you look the list that people put you in you can see a lot about the reputation that you have for them, and how your actions managed to create your personal brand. Looking for example I can see that some people insert (I feel honored about) in lists like Marketing and SEO (that is what I do for a living) and also in categories more personal like Suggested or Friends, this mean to me that I’m considered in a good way on my professional and personal side.

This is anyway only the surface of the Brand Monitoring, because we can use the same system of PageRank to understand the real value of our mention on that list. If you are insert on a list named SEO from a person that does SEO full time (and that is listed in other SEO lists), means that your effort in becoming a SEO are well spent, because he knows your value that is proven by his knowledge. The same happens for every other type of category that you want to be insert into, you have to monitor not only the lists you are into, but also the lists that the people list you are inside.

On Personal Relations, I will bring a personal example, I have a private list on twitter, and it’s called “Best Buddies” and this is a list of people that I worked or studied together, that I shared a lot with and I talk to them regularly, doesn’t matter if they are pro or not, they are people that i can call friends. Why this list is private? Simple for PR reasons. I don’t want that people look in this list and feel bad because they are not inside, some of them can take it as a personal thing, even if they know the reason. This is in my opinion a good opportunity to use private lists, so that you can monitor the people close to you and that you share things with and in the same way not make anyone feel bad.

As can be seen there is a lot that can be done with the right use of lists (and also ranking products that can be developed), there is just to understand what the goals are and which are the people that in your opinion are worth to follow to persuade your branding goal.

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