It never fails: I get tired of visiting post after post to keep track of all my content’s social engagement metrics like retweets and social bookmarks. The process for tracking social engagements has never been a simple one. It always ends with a ton of tabs open and indigestible information. Now I’ve had the pleasure of simplifying this problem through beta testing PostRank Analytics.

Admit it, you need an easier way to keep up with all the number of engagement metrics you can track. There’s hundreds of communities out there potentially sharing your idea, your product, and your services. Tracking them all can easily get out of hand or some confusing to manage. PostRank Analytics makes this look as easy as it should be.

How PostRank Can Work For You

First off, if you’re lost on why you should be tracking social engagements please read HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI before you go any further.

With PostRank, I can manage some of my most important social engagement metrics. I’ll get an “engagement score”, which is the total of all of my social engagement metrics along with a thorough breakdown of the score for individual services. From a fantastic dashboard view I’m tracking social engagements such as:

• Twitter mentions
• Twitter Retweets
• Delicious Social Bookmarks
• Diigo Social Bookmarks
• Friendfeed Conversations
• Blog Comments

For some engagements, PostRank will even pull in specific data such as who retweeted or replied to a post, or provide a shortcut where I can see more detailed analytics for services such as Delicious that already offer this feature.
    

Useful Email Notifications & Google Analytics

PostRank is one of a handful of services with email notifications I don’t have filtered in Gmail to go straight to my trash. The social engagement updates are awesome and visually streamlined with with your PostRank dashboard. Get quick and informative updates on how well your content is going in social communities. PostRank also integrates with Google Analytics making it easy to compare your social engagements with more traditional analytics.

All in all, you’d be a fool not to take advantage of their 30-day free trail, after which the services is going for an underrated $9. Start tracking your social media engagements like a pro! it easy on yourself.

Disclosure: Yes PostRank has shown me support and by SheGeeks.net. That doesn’t change that it’s still a damn good social engagement tracker and delivers on its promise through a highly active team in the tech and social media communities. Don’t like it? There’s a pretty X at the top of your screen: right for PC, left for Macs.

Today’s Twitter Tip was brought to you in part by Josh Bancroft (@jabancroft on Twitter). If you find value in this tip, stop by Josh’s site or leave him a thanks in the comments!

The Easy Way To Tweet Your Twitter Lists

Tweeting my lists was a bit of a hassle before one of my friends pointed out there’s an easier way. Before I would open my list in a new tap and use Bit.ly to shorten the link. I had the option of sending it from bit.ly or copying the link to share somewhere else. Some of you probably used this same method or something similar. Here’s a much easier way to tweet your lists:
  

@yourusername/list-name

Example: @corvida/social-media
  

Yes, it’s really that simple! If your lists have more than one word make sure to put the dash between those words. Also, this may not work in client apps, but works flawlessly with the Twitter website. Thanks Josh for the awesomesauce twitter tip of the day.

Have a Twitter Tip that you’d like featured on SheGeeks? Send them to: shegeeks@shegeeks.net

As social media continues it’s world domination around the globe, more and more sites are starting to integrate some really neat social media plugins on their blogs. Having one of these widgets or plugins on your blog can make it easy for old and new readers to share your content with friends without any hassles or extra steps. They’re an important key to blogs that have gone wildly popular within several social media communities, SheGeeks.net included.

Social Media Buttons and Widgets

• You’re going no where without integrating a plugin that connects with the King of social media, Facebook’s share widget is a must-have on every blog. Go integrate it right now and come back for more! There’s also an alternative Facebook sharecount button that is not affiliated with Facebook, but works just the same.Recommendation: Jesse Stay (@Jesse), CEO of SocialToo, has also created a Facebook Share Button. Thanks to Mark Krynsky!
• A retweet button is without a doubt, one of the most important buttons you can place in new content. They are everywhere, including here on SheGeeks.net. Two services with retweet button support are Tweetmeme and Topsy.
• If you’re blog is most news focused and you don’t mind some major Digg traffic, don’t make another post without the Digg This button on your blog!
• StumbleUpon offers a wide variety of promotion buttons to encourage visitors to recommend your site to their StumbleUpon community. These are especially good to integrate if you discover a lot of new services or tools for people to share with others.
• Do you cater your content to women more than anyone else? There’s no better badge to display than Kirtsy This! You’re missing out if your content is geared towards women and you’re not involved in the Kirtsy community.
• Another community that loves to share lists is the Delicious social bookmarking community. So be sure you’re adding the Delicious Save buttons to your lists posts.

If you’re constantly targeting more than one community and have a wide variety of supporters, integrating all of the buttons above will make your blog posts seem cluttered with unnecessary widgets. Instead of adding everything, pick 1 – 2 of the communities that your content targets the most. Let those buttons display loud and proud on your content.

Social Media WordPress Plugins

To cover other communities, I recommend checking out these social media plugins, that are easily integrated into your blogs and support a wide variety of communities and services that your readers can choose to share to. Think of them as a social media buffet.

• Socialable
• SexyBookmarks (see “share the wealth” below)
• AddThis
• ShareThis

Bonus: Drag to Share!

This is an amazing plugin that mimics the creative sharing functionality on Mashable. Drag-to-Share allows you to drag any media on the page to share to a particular social community such as Twitter, Delicious, and Facebook. Check out the plugin in action here!

Benefits Of Social Sharing Widgets

These social media buttons, widgets and plugins are super easy to install. They’re also well worth the time investment of 5 minutes to install, as they’re more likely to help you increase your blog’s traffic and can cause your content to go viral more swiftly. It let’s these communities know that you also care about providing great information to the members and participants of the community.

While attending PayPal X Innovate 09 in San Francisco this week, there was a very interesting theme that PayPal presented to attendees: cash is dead.

Not really, but PayPal seems to think that cash is overrated and inefficient. At the end of the day, digital dollars should rule the world. It could not only be safer, but more convenient and very much easier to manage. “No cash? No problem, we accept PayPal too!” Now all you have to do is take out your phone and send the money to any of the many companies that will plug into PayPal’s new open API. This could be done via a text, mobile formatted site, or from inside a mobile app. On a global scale, you could make payments on the fly while you’re in another country.  No currency conversions necessary. All of that will be done for you.

Sounds neat right? But could you really see your company doing business in such a way? Share your thoughts on what you think about PayPal’s vision for the future of money.

Earlier this month I reported on Twitter’s launch of a new feature, Twitter lists. Initially this was being rolled out in testing phases, but recently more tweeters are reporting their lists have been activate on their account. Twitter lists is a new way to group your Twitter followers. You can even add people that you don’t want to follow to a Twitter list. I listed 5 effective ways to use Twitter lists to your advantage. Using Twitter lists, you can keep track of a host of people you follow on Twitter including:

• Clients
• Brands (and their Twitter accounts)
• Bloggers
• Industry Experts
• Hashtagged Events

Note: Not everyone may have Twitter Lists enabled. If you don’t, you’ll have to wait for Twitter to roll it out to your account. If so, bookmark this post for later.

Creating Public Lists for Visitors

So how do you create a list. If you want to list the people you’re following, simply head to their Twitter profile and you should see the following (see image below):

• Hit the new list icon and add anyone to an existing list or a new list on the fly.
• When creating a new list you can also do a search for Twitter users that you’d like to add.
• Once your done, your lists will appear between your saved searches and twitter trend sidebar options.

To share a list:

• Open the list you’d like to share. Double check the URL for your list. It should be in this format:

‘http://twitter.com/yourusername/list-name’

• Use a URL shortener or bookmarklet to share your lists with others.
• Or you could just do a good old copy-and-paste.

6 Resourceful Twitter Lists (Add Yours!)

Not only can you track your followers, but you can also follow the lists of your friends and others in the Twitter community. My list suggestions were only the beginning of the opportunities for you to better organize your Twitter world with lists. I’d love to hear what lists you’ve created and even the ones you’ve started following.

While, I do have private lists for work, I’ve created a few public lists and you’re more than welcome to recommend people that I should add to these list or follow them:

• Tech, Gadgets, & Mobile Twitter List
• Social Media Twitter List

I’m still updating these lists, so if you have a recommendation for me to add leave a comment on this post. In the meantime, I’ve also started following a few list creations from my followers. Lists that I’m following made by you include:

• From @Scobleizer: Tech News People Twitter List (200 People)
• From @JeffisaGeek: The Social Geeks  Twitter List (5 People)
• From @EricaJoy: Blacks In Tech Twitter List (21 People)
• From @_Antonella_: Fierce and Smart Women Twitter List (17 People)

Share Your Twitter Lists

So what’s your latest creation? Who do you find value in on Twitter? Show off your Twitter lists in the comments below!

Did you know that Twitter is beginning to filter out tweets from Twitter Search? Did you know that you can’t twitter the same tweet twice? Neither did I until read  “Recurring Tweets On Twitter Accounts Have Been Discontinued”. Joel Postman, author of Social Corp, performed a quick test that successfully verified that Twitter is filtering out recurring tweets. However, those aren’t the only type of tweets being filtered.

Tweet sent from accounts marked as spam and people who are blocked by others too often will have their tweets filtered out of Twitter Search too. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, having your tweets filtered from Twitter Search is not a good look for your social presence and people will have a hard time hearing you on the very channel they wish to connect. It’s like being on a call and you can barely hear the person on the other line. You get all this other feedback, but you never actually hear the person you want to talk to. Here are 5 ways to avoid that on Twitter:

5 Ways To Avoid Being Filtered From Twitter Search

1. Don’t broadcast your content every 10 seconds. They saw your first tweet, ok? Instead, try spacing tweets for your content over a few hours (2-3). Focus on catching a different group in a different time zone instead of attempting to brainwash people with mass tweeting. It’s a sure way to get you marked as spam.

2. Don’t get marked as spam. Self explanatory (see suggestion 1 if lost).

3. Mix up your headlines.  You can’t tweet the same tweet, but you can mix up your headlines when you’ve updated a post. Use these opportunities as a way to do a little SEO target practice . You could also crowdsource your community for the good headlines.

4. Monitor your tweets via Twitter Search. It’s up to you to make sure things are running smoothly on the front-end. Twitter’s development team can address problems more quickly, when they actually know what’s you’re getting on your end of the computer. They’re not psychics and they can’t do everything. Check your username on Twitter Search at least once a week to see if your tweets are showing up properly. Keep reading to find out how to do this.

5. Check Your Followings. They say “one bad apple, spoils the bunch”. Well, the same applies on Twitter. That’s right, you can be guilty through association. Retweeting others that are marked as spam or spam-like content are sure ways to get your account flagged. You might want to start looking at the little box in the top right corner of every Twitter profile. Yes, it’s called a Bio. Read it! Click through to websites listed in profiles with suspicious content. You might be surprised by what comes up.

Find Out If Your Profile Is Showing Up In Twitter Search

Head to Twitter search. Enter the following in the search box:  from:username, without the @ symbol. For example:

from:corvida

When you hit search, make sure that the last tweets you sent out are showing up in Twitter Search. I’d suggest opening a separate tab in your browser to compare and contrast your profile with Twitter Search results.

From Google Wave to Mozilla (the makers of Firefox) recently announcing Mozilla Raindrop, developers are looking to take all of your communication platforms and turn them into one centralized inbox stream. The future is heading towards a new inbox, full of emails, tweets, direct messages, Facebook updates and whatever else they can throw in the mix, passed through a personalized filtering system. In theory, it sounds great. However in practice, it may be the most chaotic scene of communication we ever experience.

Our inbox is already full of Facebook notifications, Twitter alerts and direct messages, follower updates, and emails from marketing, PR, friends, and family. The mixture of all of these messages already looks like a nightmare in Gmail. In turn, it’s a nightmare just to get out of your inbox and feel productive after leaving it.

• Would filtering these messages make a difference for your workload?

Relevance: What, When, and Why

Wave and Raindrop promise to highlight the messages that it thinks would be most important to you. Yet, how would these tools know what’s important to you? Importance changes on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. What was important yesterday, may be completely irrelevant today. Within mere seconds we could change our minds about the importance of personal messages over a mailing list that might generate tons of income.

Start By Filtering Your Own Actions

So is the solution filtering the messages? Or is the problem more “we’re signing up for too much”? Have you stopped to think about the myriad of ways you want to communicate with people? Why not simply stop following the noise. Turn off the alerts. Unsubscribe from mailing lists that you’re starting to delete without even reading the headlines for. Filtering isn’t enough anymore. You have to cut the noise out or prepare to forever filter the random knots of communication lines that will pipe into one huge mess…I mean tool.

What Do You Think?

We brought these overloads on ourselves and there’s no denying that. I’m happy to see developers helping as best as they can, but I can’t help thinking that tools like Wave and Raindrop won’t help us cut the noise out. Filtering is great and definitely necessary next step for social media and most communication platforms we’ll be experience in the near future. We also need to do more to keep the noise from entering into our inbox in the first place, but filtering our own actions, instead of depending on these tools to solve all of our problems.

This should keep folks talking about Microsoft a lot more after Mac Tuesday’s drooling annoucements!
        

Will Bing Replace Twitter Search?

Today, Bing will integrate Twitter and Facebook status updates into their search services. Essentially, all of your updates will be available for public consumption like never before. This has the opportunity to propel your voice into the stratosphere of new outlets. Yet, pose some privacy and security concerns all in the same breath.

If you head to http://bing.com/twitter you’ll notice a tag cloud of trending twitter topics along with shared links of the trending topics. Type in a search query get the most recent Twitter results, or sort them by Best Match by viewing more tweets for your query.

Twitter Trends On Bing
   

How Important Are Social Media Search Results?

Is social media important to search? For me, it’s become necessary for the majority of my search queries as of lately. I start off in Google with some things, and move over to Twitter. Often times, I find my questions getting answered more quickly through Twitter. How many times do you find yourself heading to search.twitter.com in a day? Now think about how many times you’ve skipped out on going to your default search engine, by using Twitter’s search?

On the other hand, there are just as many cases where Twitter is useless as opinions and rumors flood out facts. This is especially prevalent within breaking news stories. In the end, I think there’s something nice about searching for the facts on bigger news outlets, and also receiving the enlightening truth of what communities have to say about what news outlets are covering. Sometimes, they know a lot more.
    

Bing’s Twitter Search Results
      
         

8 Questions To Ask Yourself

• Would incorporating them make an overall difference in the search results you’re seeking today?
• Would it make searching easier for you? Will you get the answers you need faster via real-time updates?
• Will it truly feel personalized or will it tweets and status updates begin to look more and more like…well…search results and not people’s genuine opinions?
• Is this enough to make you start using Bing as your default search engine?
• Will this push Bing into a more real-time search engine or another aggregator?
• How important and successful will this move prove to be for Microsoft?
• Are social media properties like Twitter and Facebook big enough to move Bing above or closer to Google’s number #1 search engine ranking?

Unless you enjoyed Twitter via txt, mobile Twitter clients have only just begun their breakthrough into the masses. In early 2008, ReadWriteWeb released an article on 20 of the most popular Twitter clients surveyed from a pool of 37,000 tweets. Only one mobile Twitter client made the list: PocketTweets.

Mobile Twitter Clients Break Out

Fast forward over a year later and popular mobile Twitter clients such as UberTwitter, Tweetie for iPhone, TweetDeck for the iPhone, and Echofon are ranking higher and higher in the race to be the best Twitter client. Not too far down the list are clients such as Twitterberry and the Symbian king of Twitter, Gravity (mobile twitter client review). Other mobile clients and services are also making the cut though they aren’t solely Twitter clients like Viigo, Foursquare, and PixelPipe. This is definitely only the beginning of mobile breakthroughs, especially with Twitter clients.

Getting Value Out of Mobile Twitter Clients

They offer a ton of advantages over desktop clients:

• You’re not tied to your desktop.
• You don’t need to be at home.
• Mobile Twitter clients immediately take care of your most basic twitter needs.
• Bells and whistles (more apps and service integrations) are supported. Yes even link shortening.
• Save tweets and links to read them later.
• Less distracting. You can only stare down at your phone screen for so long before your neck cramps
• Support for numerous mobile gadgets and platforms including Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, and of course the iPhone.

There’s plenty of mobile twitter clients to go around. In the end, the focus is always on the best and quickest way for you to get your Twitter updates on the go.

What’s Next?

They’re part of a growing trend where desktop developers are finding the addition of a mobile service to be extremely valuable for adding new users. More clients are coming out of the wild specifically for tweeting other forms of media such as video and images. Twitpic, a popular photo-sharing service for Twitter, has their own iPhone app. Twitter users are finding mobile clients to be fun for keeping their friends updated on the weekends, and also getting their news on the go during the week.

We’re clearly going to be increasing our usage of Twitter on the go, especially at conferences where twitter hashtags are a popular way of keeping others up to date on what’s what.

• Have you started using a mobile Twitter client?
• What’s your favorite so far? What platform is it for (iPhone, Android, Blackberry)?
• How much has your mobile usage on Twitter increased since you started using a mobile client to twitter?
• Has using a mobile Twitter client become vital to your work on Twitter?

Some people find that the biggest drawbacks of social media is making a connection with millions of people with bigger problems than you.

You’re failing at social media if you don’t have faith that you can help 1 million others that have problems that you know the solution to.