From Denmark to Detroit, social media is a worldwide phenomenon that seems to be part addiction and part necessity. With Facebook’s recent announcement that it’s hit 500 million users and Twitter’s move toward advertising with @earlybird it’s becoming more apparent that if you want to get the word out about your business you need to step into the social media arena. However, all the excitement about social media doesn’t mean much if you can’t decipher what it means and what it’s doing. Analytics to social media are like a compass to a navigator – if you don’t understand where you’re at you won’t know where to go.

If the thought of analytics and numbers makes you shudder you’re not alone. There are more people than not who feel intimidated by numerical data. The two toughest aspects of social media analytics are interpreting information and deciding what analytic tools best meet your needs. Fortunately, basic analytics doesn’t require a PhD in statistics and the internet is filled with outstanding free tools and resources to help make metric crunching easy. So, if you can’t afford enterprise-level services like Scout Labs, Radian6 or Sysomos, you’ll want to check out some of the freebies below to help you get a grip on your analytics.

Blogs

Use PostRank to help rank your blog content and news and and to determine what your fans are reading, sharing and organizing. It also identifies what your most popular posts are in your RSS feed.

Think of BlogPulse as a search engine for blogs and their posts. It’s similar to Technorati, but it provides additional views such as trending and conversations so that you can see search competitive topics and how other blogs are ranking.

Comments

Beyond standard search for keywords and brand names you’ll want to penetrate what’s being discussed in blog commenting systems too. That’s where YackTrack comes in. Simply enter your keywords or terms to see a nicely organized list that you can drilldown to get specific mentions from.

Branding

One of the more substantial branding tools available is Social Mention. It aggregates user generated content from across multiple social media platforms and streamlines outcomes into a very simple and easy to interpret web page. The one thing Social Mention doesn’t do is show a report over time. A work around this missing feature is to create an Excel spreadsheet and manually enter daily data that you gather. Otherwise, it’s a great (and free) tool.

Perhaps more of an entertainment tool rather than a true metric evaluator, How Sociable measures your brand’s keywords throughout 32 different social media sites. There’s some confusion around the ‘visibility score’ that How Sociable has developed and not all data appears to be accurate. For example, if you run a search on iPhone it yields a visibility score of 9,453 and a Google PageRank score of zero. Odd to say the least. Looks like brand visibility metrics might have a few glitches, but it’ still worth exploring.

Trends & Topics

Head over to Addict-o-Matic and enter a unique search term, brand or product name or just about anything and it will perform a search that delivers the buzz (or results) broken down by social media platform. It’s a very convenient snapshot that let’s you look at your social reach and the social sites where you have more presence in comparison to others.

Twitter

There are so many Twitter tools available that deciding which one to use can be a daunting task. For the purpose of benchmarking your brand against your competition, Twitalyzer is ideal. It shows you what social media strategies are working and what’s not, which makes it easy to adjust social media campaigns to maximize better results.

The power of influence is a core component in any social media campaign. Knowing who has better reach and strength and engaging with them can help persuade your audience to promote your brand. Klout measures influence as it relates to your brand through Twitter. You can identify which customers and communities are more likely to become brand evangelists and work with them to drive conversations.

Another hand Twitter tool is TweetStats. You can graph how many tweets per hour, day and month, as well as look at your tweet timeline and reply statistics. TweetStats is a fantastic way to track your level of interaction and look at areas that need improvement.

Google

Google Analytics (GA) may leave you feeling unnerved, but it actually does a tremendous job on tracking numbers and data. We’ll save GA how-tos for a future post. In the meantime, use PageRank Checker to see what Google thinks of your site. Using a scale from zero to 10, with 10 holding the most authority, you can run a quick search to find out how you rank.

In order for GA to actually work on your website you need to install tracking code on each page that you want the Google bot spiders to crawl. To make sure that you’ve set-up your code use SiteScan to confirm that you’ve performed a correct installation. Although SiteScan and PageRank Checker aren’t direct analytic tools they are helpful in gauging Google-related tasks and standards.

Competitive

Quarkbase has been touted as the ‘imdb.com for websites’. By entering a website’s URL you are presented with names of people associated with the site, traffic data, social popularity, site description and sites that are similar. This is one of the best free competitive research tools available. Data can be used to help you better position your brand and establish goals and objectives.

There you have it. Granted, there are so many tools, free and paid, that accessible on the web, we hope that this short list gets you moving in the right direction.

What are some of the other free tools that you’re using? How do you make them work for your brand and what do you like best about them? Share with us.

Back in the early days of instant messaging (IM), users could only IM other users through the same IM platform. If you were using AOL Instant Messaging (AIM) then you could only chat with another AIM member. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. There are a variety of chat clients available that provide multi-client support to enable you and your pals to IM regardless of the IM service that they’re using.

Why would you want to use IM? For a variety of beneficial reasons. IM allows instant communication between people, which can save time and money. No long distance charges apply and it transmits information quickly to simulate the natural flow of conversation. It can reduce the amount of email sent, conference calls scheduled and IM is capable of holding multiple sessions with many people. IM can also be integrated into your existing website, which makes it a fantastic customer service tool.

There are more than 80 chat client applications available and each one has its pros and cons. The list was whittled down based on social media integration, multi-client platform capabilities and number of supported chat networks. Knowing what chat clients are available and what some of their key features are can be helpful in determining what will be the best solution for you.

NOTE: Most of these applications have mobile access from your handheld, however, not all mentions were included in this blog post.

Here’s an alphabetical roll call that features six of the best:

Adium

Let me start with an apology to my PC peeps. The first chat client on the list is for Mac users only (promise that the remaining reviews will be more embracing of both operating systems).

Adium started in September 2001 and has grown rapidly among Mac users in terms of popularity. One of Adium’s more notable features involves contact management. Contacts can be combined, which allows you to merge your contacts so that each one represents a person, not an account. A great way to keep things organized.

Customizing Adium is accomplished through a suite of Xtras. Everything from layout and themes to sounds, emoticons and message styles. The sky’s the limit with Adium.

One of the main reason for using Adium is that it integrates with Facebook Chat and Twitter. This makes it incredibly convenient to monitor direct messages from Twitter and IMs from Facebook through one central location. The Twitter

Currently, Adium is 100% freeware and it supports more than 17 chat networks.

Digsby

By a huge margin, Digsby is one of the most comprehensive multi-client chat clients available. First off, it plays well with Windows, Mac and Linux. Next, its features are so robust that not listing some of the standouts would be a disservice.

• Chat with visitors and friends by placing a widget on your blog, website or social media profile
• Manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP and POP accounts from Digsby
• Manage multiple conversations with tabbed windows
• Use a combined buddy list for all your contacts regardless of chat platform and rename them with an alias to eliminate hard to remember chat handles like ‘pinkbunny25’
• Audio and video chat availability (good-bye Skype)
• Complete customization with Digsby application skins and themes

Pretty amazing considering that Digsby has only been around since January 2008. So what can it do with your social media networks? Quite a bit. Digsby supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace. You can receive alerts for new friend requests, messages and event invites, plus get a newsfeed of everyone’s status updates. The bonus of bonuses is that you can update your own status for all four networks with Digsby.

A total of seven chat networks are supported including, Windows LIve, AIM, ICQ, MobileMe, XMPP and Yahoo! IM and Facebook Chat.

Meebo

The main difference between Meebo and the other applications reviewed is that Meebo isn’t really a ‘desktop’ chat client. It’s web-based, but can be used through a widget that users can embed in their blogs or websites, as well as the Meebo Bar, which is a gadget that lets users connect to Meebo through the base of a webpage. Meebo’s more of a pseudo-desktop chat client that’s housed through your browser. Like the widget, it can be incorporated into the bottom pages of your website.

Meebo is IM in a web page. Just go to the Meebo site, login and you’re instantly connected to all of your chat buddies through your Meebo account. The benefit of a web-based client is that you eliminate the hassle of software installation and you always have instant access to IM as long as you can find an internet connection.

Meebo offers video and audio chat, as well as file transfer. You could potentially take chatting from something you do with friends to a fresh way to conduct business conference calls and meetings. It’s convenient and flexible.

• Because of Meebo’s online interface, it has an array of fantastic features that can’t be found with other desktop chat clients.
• Mobile access was mentioned earlier, but Meebo is built for iPhone, Android and other web-based handsets.
• Join Meebo rooms to meet and connect with new users, or create a custom Meebo room of your own and feature it on your website or blog. A super way to harness conversations about you and your business in primary place.
• Notifications are sent to an icon in your system tray so you’ll never miss anyone who’s trying to contact you.
• A snappy FireFox extension allows for easy integration of Meebo.
• Have a restricted computer (hardcore firewalls or an IT policing department on steroids)? The Meebo Repeater is a beta version of downloadable software that enables chat when IM access is restricted.
• Excellent analytic tool to monitor and track information about your site.
• Connect your Meebo bar to any social media site and drag headlines and links to share through those sites.

Last but not least, Meebo lets users advertise. You can see one of the ad options in action on the Meebo Bar and click it to see even more. You’ll need to contact Meebo directly to learn more about pricing and program options based on your budget and objectives.

Meebo connects you to Facebook and five other chat networks. It would be nice to see Meebo offer additional social media site support, but for now you have access to the biggest of the bunch.

Nimbuzz

With Nimbuzz, users can choose to use it as a desktop chat client for Windows or Mac, a web-based client or mobile client. For users who aren’t looking for all the bells and whistles, or anyone who feels a little intimidated by choices, Nimbuzz is your solution.

It’s incredibly lite, maybe too much, like  feather actually, as far as features go. In a nutshell, Nimbuzz supports around 12 chat networks, including Facebook and MySpace (at the time of this writing details on support for Twitter couldn’t be located).

Nimbuzz also has a secondary service called NimbuzzOut that works as an internet phone service through their IM application. A better way of explaining this would be to call it Skype with fewer features and branded with a new name.

There’s not too much more to share about Nimbuzz, other than it’s a plain and simple multi-client chat product. If you’re new to the world of IM, Nimbuzz could be a good starter application. Once you get situated you may find yourself wanting other features and you can always experiment with a new product as your needs grow.

Trillian Astra

Now it’s my turn to apologize to Mac users – at this time, Trillian Astra is only available for Windows, but a version of Max OS X is in the works. In the meantime, Mac users can still use Trillian and experience it through the web-based version. All is not lost fellow Appleheads.

Developed by Cerulean Studios, Trillian Astra a real powerhouse in the desktop chat client realm. The functionality that it delivers makes it a truly outstanding tool and one that you’ll want to have in your social media arsenal. Trillian boasts 450+ features to help organize your online life.

Facebook, Twitter and MySpaceIM have been incorporated into Trillian’s social media round-up. An added network that many users see as a ‘deal maker’ is the inclusion of Skype. Through its applications, users can place Skype calls, control group conversations, support multiple identities (nice for personal and business profiles) and work with file transfer protocols. Sweet indeed!

Trillian Astra aligns more closely with Digsby. It has many features in common (not all) like support for more than nine chat networks and email capabilities. Customization on the surface is accommodated with plugins, skins and themes and usage management that enables you to optimize performance, have proxy control and hands-on identity and connection management.

VoxOx

VoxOx is one serious hybrid. It’s part Adium, Digsby and Skype all rolled into one interface. You can make phone calls, send IMs and emails, monitor social media, share updates and a whole lot more.

A quick summary:

• Social networking
• Text messaging
• Instant messaging
• Voice calling
• File sharing
• Email
• Fax

VoxOx has also kicked it up a notch with their universal translator. Whatever you’re typing can easily be converted into the language of your choice. Check out the VoxOx list to see what countries are supported.

Another swanky feature is the VoxOx Personal Assistant (VOPA). She’s the real deal and she also puts celebrity assistants to shame with her admin skills. She can screen your calls, eavesdrop on voicemails to see if you should pick-up or let it roll on through and coordinate fax pick-up.

The VOPA also offers a ‘Stalker Feature’ and caller ID spoofing. The Stalker Feature let’s VOPA send out a busy signal, disconnected message or personal greeting recorded for any specific person that you’d like to avoid. Caller ID spoofing let’s you create a customized number that others see when you contact them. You could create something easy to remember or spell out something fun. Endless possibilities.

Last, but not least, you can include ringback tones to identify clients, friends or family and set-up on-hold music when calls are in queue.

Social media coordination with Facebook, Twitter and MySpace (hey, where’s LinkedIn?) let you share videos, pictures, update your status, chat with friends and reply to Tweets. Now that LinkedIn has opened up its API to developers, VoxOx may integrate this social network in the future.

HONORABLE MENTION

Pidgin is a free downloadable chat client that make is very easy to connect with just about anyone. Pidgin supports 17 different chat networks, however, it’s only available for Mac. It’s been around since 1998 and has more than 3 million users.

Hopefully this list of chat applications works as a nice resource that will help you manage your social media conversations more efficiently. Let us know about others chat applications that you’re using. We value your feedback.

Less than two years old, the blogging platform Posterous (pronounced PO-sterous) has quickly become a major part of the social media world. It’s completely reinvented the way that people upload and share blog posts, videos, photos and more. Because of its simplicity, Posterous makes blog updating completely effortless. Here’s a rundown on Posterous and why you should be using it.

To understand what Posterous is pretend that you have a line and on one end is traditional blogging, think WordPress and Moveable Type, and on the other end is micro-blogging, like Twitter. In between these two formats is Posterous, which can best be described as mini-blogging. And, when Posterous says that it’s ‘the dead simple place to post everything’ they aren’t kidding around.

Using your own email account users can submit MP3s, photos, videos, files, blogs and just about anything else that you can think of. Whatever you write or attach to your email is automatically posted to your Posterous account with the push of a ‘send’ button. We’ve put together 10 useful tips and highlights to help you get the most out of Posterous and to get you up and running with Posterous in no time.

1.  A Social Media Posting Roundup

By using your personal email account, you can submit posts via Posterous to an array of social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, Xanga and more. You can even do a test run just to see what a post would look like before you join the community. Through a very simple email address system, users can pick and choose where they’d like share their content.

• post@posterous.com creates a public post and automatically shares to the social medias services you’ve set up.
• private@posterous.com creates a non-public post.
• post.posterous@posterous.com makes a public post that is not automatically tweeted.

Here’s where you can get creative with your posting. By combining different social media recipients, you can direct your posts to specific platforms. For instance:

• twitter@posterous.com spreads your post only via Twitter.
• twitter+facebook@posterous.com spreads your post via Twitter and Facebook.
• wordpress@posterous.com delivers to your traditional blog.

You can even post to different Posterous blogs that you’ve created. For example, xanga@janesmith.posterous.com will  send a post to Xanga and Jane’s Posterous site at http://janesmith.posterous.com. Pretty cool.

2. Kicking Code To The Curb

Another convenient Posterous feature is the elimination of copy and pasting embed code for photos and videos that you want to share in your posts. This makes integrating clips from YouTube and pictures from Flickr a breeze. Posterous automatically takes the URL of the item that you’ve selected and converts and embeds for you. All you have to do is email a link and Posterous takes care of the rest. Nice.

3.  Select And Share It

The bookmarklet option can be installed on your browser with a simple drag and drop. Once it’s there you’ll be able to instantly post anything that you find on the web. Highlight text, share a show from Hulu or a song from SoundCloud – the Posterous bookmarklet takes a quick click and your internet find is instantly included.

4.  Come One, Come All

Do you have multiple blog contributors? Well, Posterous can help with that too. Your various bloggers don’t need to create individual accounts. Yep, you heard it right. They use the primary Posterous site that you created and email posts straight from their own email accounts by sending to post@sitename.posterous.com. Each contributor will be notified when a new post is made or when a comment is left.

5.  It’s All About Me, Me, Me

Users can choose from a handful of standard layouts and templates to customize their sites. But, if you’re searching for something more personalized, you can use the CSS/HTML options available to dress things up to your liking.

A standard domain name is assigned with each Posterous account (sitename.posterous.com), however you can make a vanity URL that points the address in your name server to Posterous’ web servers.

Further customization ties into inline picture posting. When users post photos Posterous automatically converts them to gallery view (where readers click from picture to picture), but if that’s not your style you can include ‘((no gallery))’ in the subject line and voila! – photos can be viewed one after the next.

6.  Tag, You’re It

Tagging is used to organize information and make it easier to for others to identify what they’re looking for during general searches. Think of tagging like anindex in the back of a book. When you post from your email account you can specify what tags you want associated with your post. In the subject line include ‘((tags: coffee, latte, Colorado))’ and you’re done.

7.  It’s So Nice To Meet You

It’s tough for many businesses to adapt to social media. There’s so much out there and deciding what’s best for their company can be difficult. Posterous lets businesses connect their current website to a new social media service. It’s a wonderful way to introduce social media to your business and your audience.

8.  Testing 1, 2, 3

With a traditional blog, you’re limited in terms of what type of content can be shared and with what audience. For instance, if you blog about butterflies and their migration habits and that’s what your blog base has come to know and rely on, it might be tricky to test out blog posts about wing colors or fluttering patterns. With Posterous, you can test out different angles and sub-topics that wouldn’t necessarily float (pathetic pun with the butterfly example) with your readers.

9.  Seeing Is Believing

An added bonus with Posterous is how quickly Google indexes their blogs. That added exposure might be just enough bump that a business needs to climb the search ranking ladder.

10.  Let Yourself Be Heard

Engage with different audiences by expanding different social content. Try using a different tone and style to reach new people and express your views.

On a side note, if you have a built-in signature in your email that you don’t want included when you email your posts just type ‘#end’ after your content in the body of the email. Posterous will not post beyond that hashtag. Definitely give Posterous a try and let us know what you think and how you’re using it. We’d love to hear from you.

By the way, this entire post was published to the company blog and Posterous blog site using our email account.

Despite all the hoopla surrounding Facebook and how its new privacy policy will effect members, the public is still hungry for unique ways to share information about themselves. If posting photos and uploading videos is leaving you feeling a little ho-hum, then perhaps you should consider joining Blippy. Unlike traditional social networking sites that focus on sharing contact information, photos and status updates, Blippy lets users share their financial information.

What’s the 411

In a nutshell, Blippy is a service that lets members automatically share their credit card transactions as they make them. Not only will members see the amount of your purchase, but they’ll also be privy to the place of purchase and items included in the transaction. Signing up is pretty easy and actually similar to other social networking sites with one exception, you provide your debit card or credit card information. Once you’ve established an account you’re transactions are populated into the system and can even be cross-posted to Twitter.

Safe and Secure

According to a 2009 study conducted by Javelin Strategy and Research, there were 10 million victims of identity theft in 2008 in the United States. Nearly half, or 43 percent, of all identity theft observed was through stolen wallets and physical paperwork, whereas online methods had accounted for only 11 percent. However unsettling these figures are they haven’t stopped the thousands of people who are clammering to become members of Blippy. Founders insist that their state-of-the-art encryption will protect data from being stolen or reused.

So what’s the hook? Why would you want to share financial information with others? Details regarding our finances have always been considered taboo in social circles. People aren’t supposed to share what or where they’re plunking down their cash. But with the advent of Blippy, discussing personal expenditures is no longer off limits. Society has always been curious about the lives of others –  think about reality shows or rubber necking a traffic collision – so it seems only natural that the fascination would continue with a stranger’s personal finances.

What You’ll Get From It

The most interesting aspect of Blippy is its most unexpected one. Instead of gasping at prices or snickering at purchases, members are actually exchanging details about great finds and super bargains. Even more common, is discovering places to shop that are off the beaten path and alerting others to special discounts to be found. Blippy can really be described as something similar to a tweet-feed based on shopping.

As a tool, Blippy has a ton of potential. For instance, a competition was created to see who could spend the least amount of money for an item using their debit card. The winner was able to buy a single Tootsie Roll using a credit card for $0.03. Organizations have the potential to fundraise and challenge supporters to out-donate each other. Along these same lines, stores could alert shoppers about local deals and make recommendations based on items previously purchased. Marketing firms could review spending habits to understand consumers and deliver targeted products and services that would be more appealing to them. The possibilities are endless.

In the meantime, trend experts predict that Blippy is the next big thing. Giving the world a sneak peek inside your wallet is definitely a way to channel discussion on spending habits and connect with other people with similar interests by way of spend pattern. Blippy is worth watching to see how it evolves and how it can become the next social media tool that can be used to catapult your business, product or service to the next level.

Since we’re in the early stages of tax season and I’m pretty sure that all of us are scrambling through old files, receipts and papers, I thought that it would be helpful to share some information on a Mac application that I came across.

If being eco-conscious and getting organized were on your New Year’s list of resolutions for 2010, then Mariner Software’s Paperless product is just for you. Paperless is a program that uses OCR (optical character recognition) technology to translate scanned receipts, warranties, manuals, documents and other important paper-based items into an electronic library.

Once you’ve scanned in your items, Paperless allows you to enter customized and detailed information that can be used to create unique reports, export receipt images for tax purposes, access product manuals or reference important legal documents in the event of an unforeseen disaster. Not only is Paperless extremely multi-functional, but it’s exceptionally easy to use.

Paperless recommends using a TWAIN compliant scanner to ensure that functionality of its installed drivers matches up to the capabilities of Paperless. According to Paperless, Fujitsu and Pentax have the best drivers on the market. I will say that I’m using this program with an HP 6210 All-in-One and it’s been great. No problems to report at all.

Using Paperless has gotten me used to requesting electronic versions of receipts for purchases that I’ve made. It’s much easier to use the drag-and-drop feature instead of manually scanning receipts in. After my receipts are entered, I organize them using the Paperless Collection feature. What’s nice about this is that I have the option to assign my receipts to category names of my choosing and then viewing them in collections based on the category.

The Smart Collection feature makes it simple to organize and view receipts by category.

For instance, any office-related purchase falls into the category of ‘office supplies’. Next, I create a ‘smart collection’ that automatically filters my receipts looking for that category and voila! – I’m able to see all my office supply receipts in one easy place.

Although Paperless contains a report option, in my opinion, it’s one of the weaker features. Users are limited by drop-down boxes and pre-installed search parameters that make it difficult, if not impossible, to produce reports that evaluate accounting-level details. It would be nice if a set of pre-installed report templates were available to select. If Mariner is listening, I hope you might be able to add in your next upgrade.

Lastly, Paperless is marketed at a fair price point based on the applications functions, features and capabilities. Coming in just under $50 ain’t too shabby. If you’re still not quite sure about the program, do a trial-run before you purchase.

If anyone has discovered other Mac products or solutions for organizing receipts and finances please feel free to share.