ComMetrics info vault

The following posts are recommended reading by topic. Please be sure to peruse our tags and categories for further information.

Measurement context and bias
- Alexa.com continues to fail businesses with inaccurate usage numbers
- SocioTwitting: Developing metrics for Twitter – volume vs. influence
- 2 sensible metrics: A framework for measuring blog success
- 6 steps to get started in measurement of social media activities
- European Commission: Defining the term SME

Measurement reliability, accuracy and validity
- Sentiment analysis for online content: Honest?
- KPI experts’ top 5 secrets
- Three metrics: Influence, impact and outcome
- Unique visitors come in many guises
- The most livable city: Calgary, Melbourne or Zurich?

Benchmark
- Customer feedback: Who are my subscribers?
- Good or best practice: What shall it be?
- Social media metrics ropes to skip: What to do before benchmarking
- Financial Times: Is blogging good value?
- Why RSS fails with my readers
- The importance of competitive benchmarking
- Invitation to benchmark your blog
- Measuring blogging performance: Comparisons that make sense

Checklists
- 1) Lessons 1 – 4: Starting your blogging off on the right foot
- 2) Lessons 5 – 7: Setting the stage – ready – go
- 3) Lessons 8 – 11: Whatever domain, home you choose – beware
- 4) Lessons 12 – 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right
- 5) Lessons 14 – 17: Authenticity and quality are key
- 6) Lessons 18 – 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

FT ComMetrics Blog Index
- 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index published
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index: The winners are
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index: Who made the list?
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index released: KISS the blog-bride
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index: How we found you

Tools
- Being more effective with Tweetdeck
- Connecting Skype and Twitter
- Best 100 Twitter tools
- The best WordPress plugins for bloggers
- Top 5 SEO secrets to WordPress
- Twitter: Being more effective with Tweet Deck

Solutions worth copying
- 3 golden rules for best practice: LinkedIn and Xing
- 8 reasons to have a corporate blog
- Creating dialogue: Tweet or talk?
- 4 rules for social media success: Luxury brands
- Wall Street Blues: 4 lessons learned
- Media kits: Getting it right
- Five steps to turn buzz into sales

Case studies
- Toyota recall disaster: How to destroy your brand and reputation
- Reviving Yves Saint Laurent: 6 lessons
- Coca-Cola: Real Thing or myth?
- Paris Fashion to organize Davos 2010
- Using Twitter for documenting WEF Davos
- Scotiabank: What’s the big idea?
- FT ComMetrics Global 500 blogs case study: HSBC
- FT ComMetrics Global 500 blogs case study: Beck’s beer
- FT ComMetrics Global 500 blogs case study: Royal Bank of Canada
- FT ComMetrics Global 500 blogs case study: American Express

Trendwatch
- Statement heels are back: What is marketing for social media experts?
- Brand vs. reputation: Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Josef Ackermann and Pat Russo to the rescue
- Best business model: Free to use, pay to play
- Cloud computing: YOUR data right?
- 2010 trends: Social media marketing
- 2010 trends: Data and mobile communication

Strategy
- 7 ways to hedge your bets when building your brand
- Social media: Defining a concept
- Microsoft vs. Google: Keep it simple, stupid
- Best business model: Free to use, pay to play
- Citigroup, RBS and Google: Loads in common
- Will Twitter and Facebook save UBS?

Twitter (see also section on Tools above)
- Social media ropes to skip: Twitter FAQ 3 – why should I join and use Twitter?
- Twitter: Wake up and smell the coffee – have a conversation instead
- Five steps to Twitter success
- Mashable and TIME’s Twitter failure
- Saving time with Twitter
- SocioTwitting: Developing metrics for Twitter – volume vs. influence
- Twitter and Iran: Much ado about nothing
- Corporate microblogging or Twitter-squatting?
- Corporate microblogging on Twitter

Facebook
- Will Twitter and Facebook save UBS?

WordPress
- Top 5 SEO secrets to WordPress
- WordPress plugins: Only the best

Learning from other people’s mistakes
- Of libraries, doctorates and Web 2.0
- Yes Virginia, social media client-engagement IS a myth!
- 3 lessons for bloggers: Fashion, BP and the FTC
- TV Guide and Business Week: Twins?
- Bottomless goody bag: Fair product reviews
- From fee to free: Will e-readers revive newspapers?

MOST POPULAR DOWNLOADS (each several thousands…)
Research papers
- Atkinson, R. D., Ezell, S., Anders, S. M., Castro, D., & Bennett, R. (March 15, 2010). The Internet Economy 25 Years After .com – Transforming commerce and life. Washington, DC: The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) (2.8 MB)
- Second Life: Social Influence and the Diffusion of User-Created Content (1.8 MB)
- Cha, M., Haddadi, H., Benevenuto, F., Gummadi, I. P. (2010) Measuring user influene in Twitter: the million follower fallacy (201 KB)
- Burke, M., Joyce, E., Kim, T., Anand, V., & Kraut, R. (2007). Introductions and requests: Rhetorical strategies that elicit response in online communities (734 KB)
- White Paper: Nokia – Evaluating your Online success with Web Analytics (190.4 KB)
- Jansen, B. J., Zhang, M., & Sobel, K. (June 2009).  Twitter power: Tweets as electronic word of mouth – business uses Twitter to improve brand awareness, knowledge + customer relations => personal use… (1.3 MB)
- RISK MGMT: Stealing data from Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) (300.5 KB)

White Papers, trend reports, etc.
- 2009-06-24: OECD Economic Outlook 2009 – Preliminary Edition (5.3 MB)
- 2009-09-08: WEF 2010 Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010 (3.9 MB)
- 2009-2014 interactive marketing forecast by Forrester for US: Cannibalization of traditional media (847 KB)

Presentation slides
- Barcamp Liechtenstein 09: Wie braucht man soziale Medien… (399.7 KB)
- 2010-Webinar-Maerz-18-20_30-CET => Wie messen Sie den Erfolg: 5 wichtige Schritte fuer Weblogs (245 KB)
- 2010-Webinar-March-11-10:30-CET-Corporate-Blogging-Benchmarking => what analytics to measure and what analytics not to be concerned about (143 KB)

Just very interesting stuff
- 2009-06-27: Most Popular Car Colors – resale value (31.3 KB)
- SEO Management: Anatomy of URLs according to Dr. Pete (105.7 KB)
- Freebie: Google Adware Campaign (850.8 KB)
- Google Class Action Settlement: Systemic Risk for Authors and Book Publishers (175.3 KB)
- Matthew Robson Gets 1000 Tweets about what? FREE is king (40.4 KB)
- 2010-02-24 Prepared testimony of Akio Toyoda, President, Toyota Motor Corporation to the US Senate Committee on oversight and government reform (13 KB)

Policies, regulation, legal stuff, guides for WordPress/Twitter, etc.
- 2010-02-26 US Military Social Media Policy (66 KB)
- US FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising – bloggers beware (376.7 KB)
- WordPress plugin wpSEO: Options that work best (702.8 KB)
- Agreement Between US and Swiss Confederation: DEVIL is in the DETAILS (282.3 KB)
- IRS and Swiss Agreement on UBS case: 4,450 accounts (493.4 KB)

ComMetrics eBook series – 30 pages compact – GAIN INSIGHT FAST
Available in a ‘virtual’ bookstore near you …

Why benchmark social media => ComMetrics eBook series #2010-01 (1st week 2850 downloads alone and still going very strong!)

The above book is part of the section on benchmark essentials, which includes amongst other books:

#2010-01 – Why benchmark social media?
#2010-02 – What is your social media mission?
#2010-03 – Getting solution-driven answers
#2010-04 – Focusing on quality traffic with social media
#2010-05 – How it all makes your data matter

Want more of these books for free? Please just sign-up with  My.ComMetrics (register yourself – benchmark your blog(s) => improve performance) => get the latest updates and releases for free as an e-book.

Complementary Webinars
2010-03-11 – Corporate Blogging : How benchmarking can help improve performance
2010-02-18 – Die richtigen Metrics fuer das erfolgreiche Benchmarking von Weblogs