Social Media Metrics For Dummies

Finding Metrics for Feeds

Great metrics tools for feeds (I’m specifically referring to RSS [Real Simple Syndication] feeds here) are hard to come by. Though feeds are widely used to keep up with news and content, even in the age of the tablet, getting the open data on a feed has been hit or miss. (I talk about how the tablet and mobile surfing is changing metrics in Chapter 9.)

FeedBurner, bought by Google, was one of the best ways to run a feed with analytics attached, and it integrated their AdSense program to help you make a bit of money off of your feed. Google recently announced that it wouldn’t be developing for FeedBurner anymore, however. It doesn’t sound like Google will kill FeedBurner, so it may still work for some time, but Google won’t be developing for it, which means it might break, which is too bad. Use with caution for that reason. (Note: I am still a happy FeedBurner user at the time of this writing.)

Other feed metrics programs that have had some success besides FeedBurner include Pheedo (http://site.pheedo.com ), FeedBlitz (www.feedblitz. com), and BBU’s RSS Feed Campaign Tagger plug-in for WordPress. (A mouthful, this last one lets you tag your feed links so that you can catch them in analytics programs if you don’t use FeedBurner.)

The two basic metrics for feeds that most services measure are number of subscribers and number of clicks. Using tags and other ...