Great post and thanks for the mention :)

Lovely meeting you at BlogPotomac.

Dave Weinberg
Community Manager
OpenAmplify

@Michael - Thanks for reading. We talked about Filtrbox, and many of use the tool. As a matter of fact, several of us got the email about Facebook monitoring and are looking forward to checking it out.

As for a tool that has it all, take a look at Filtrbox, http://fbx.bz/E
We cover blogs, social (Twitter, FB, etc.) mainstream media, forums, video and photos.  Also, advanced analytics and engagement features....not to mention, unlimited searches and results for a reasonable cost. 

Michael Fraietta
Filtrbox
@MichaelFraietta

A few buddies and I are working on a possible solution to your Mojito woes, GarnishBar.com

...and we’ll hold out on the age verification as long as our lawyers will let us. :)

Best,
Ben

@Jipsa: Thank you!

Jipsa

i too was a little confused waiting for the response to my question. wondered about the process for responding to volumes of tweets. then i realized i should probably log in to ask my question if i wanted a timely response. Thanks for the SEO discussion too - lesson to future brands considering a new product launch… secure the tweet account along with the urls.

hope to be able to introduce the case study at a future SEMPO event.
ls

Step 5 (OPTIONAL): Create a new profile to include only your new links. Analytics = fun.

I am a bit unclear how to do this can you give me a bit of guidance?

Thanks

For example if I have a image and a text link side by side on the page, both of which go to the same link...but me being curious about which is clicked more have tagged them based on your article...will these now register results per their unique tracking tags on the site overlay?

Check this out: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55582

is all that syntax “^” and the “.*” required?

Levi

Check this article out: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55574

I am using a cms and so the header file is a logical place to put the tracking script...any thoughts?

Hopefully this means that only the companies who are actually tweeting interesting, engaging things will stick around--and the ones who aren’t engaging will shape up.  And if it’s easier for users to find good content, then they’ll use Twitter more often. 

Thanks for the insights.

@Will: Great point. What I’ll do is make a custom filter that uses regular expressions to include my landing page, and the relevant URL. Example subdirectory filter: /landing\-page.*|/internal\-link/landing\-contact.*

That’s only if I’m not using ecommerce though. And I rarely filter the internal links out of my main profile anymore.

@Levi: No, you should still use the URL builder for inbound links - just not internal (on-site) links. What some people do is create a link with the URL builder, then use that as the link href on their own site.

It doesn’t make the bounce rates useless. When someone clicks on a trackPageview link, it says to GA, “They didn’t bounce.” So, it might lower bounce rate because GA no longer considers it a one page visit, but it’s supposed to do that.

People usually complain about the setVar feature jacking up bounce rate, because it does. But that’s another topic altogether.

Thanks for reading!

Also how does trackpageview affect bounce rates and time on site? Why do people say it makes the bounce rate and navigation reports useless?

A side note… I didn’t see how the UTM stuff could even work for internal links if it relates to the referrer. I just thought I would ask because I probably missed something.

My solution is to simply leave off the custom filter for the new profile so I can get the ecommerce data I need to figure out which banners are performing well.

Joke aside; YouTube actually only has that one ‘Verify my age’ button (age being pulled from your account, as that kind of YouTube content requires you to log in), which is a lot less annoying. Then again, they’re censoring and filtering content like China, so there’s not really much use for that button either?

@Josh: I think he’s annoyed by those three select dropdowns, not the concept of having a ‘confirm splash’ before you get to the good stuff.

Have you ever seen this Onion article: ‘I Am Under 18’ Button Clicked For First Time In History Of Internet’ ?

It’s priceless: http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/i_am_under_18_button

Let me know if that doesn’t answer your question.

Thanks for your response. First, I’m excited about the car. Second, I dig Critical Mass.

I understand why you used twitter to power what you’re doing from a technological standpoint; but from a marketing standpoint it feels odd. NissaEVs twitter feed provides out of context answers and doesn’t seem useful to a potential a follower.

I’m with Doug - I think the API approach would be rad. What about being more clear on how to ask a q if you’re a twitter or non-twitter user? I think my hang-up is that the actual twitter feed of NissanEVs doesn’t add much value to its followers. You’re using twitter for it’s technological capabilities, but sort of missing the real potential of connecting with fans and using them to spread the word. And, by not having me tweet my question, you miss the opportunity for all my friends seeing my tweet at you and invoking their curiosity.

@Mark: You’re right - there are no unique URLs which is bad news bears for SEO. It would be nice if users could find this site by searching for a specific question and find a specific answer. That won’t happen with the current build. However, if this site is about building buzz and brand awareness, it might not be a big deal.

Thanks for your comments.

There are certainly some concerns around SEO. The site seems to have mitigated them by using meta descriptions in the title tags for the following keywords:

“nissan, electric car, leaf, ev, zero emissions, mpg, gas mileage, fuel economy, green car, electric vehicle, nissanusa.com”

They were likely counting on a lot of inbound links as well.

Currently, the site is the #1 result on Google for a search of “Nissan Leaf” and “Nissan Electric” but #9 for “Nissan EV” and too far down the list for me to find for “Nissan EVs”. In fact, the Twitter site (http://twitter.com/NissanEVs) is 78th for the “Nissan EVs” search on Google (it is #1 for “NissanEVs” without the space in between). This makes me question their strategy on selecting @NissanEVs as the Twitter username. There is a @NissanLeaf on Twitter but it may have already been taken by a fan and not have been an option. However, Nissan was the only one who knew the official name before it was announced so they would have had the opportunity to secure @NissanLeaf ahead of time.

Great point on users not being able to cite/link to a particular QA pair! I hadn’t thought of that but it certainly is a miss. They could have enabled their fans to point people to specific answers instead of just a FAQ page.

Best,
Doug

I agree with Doug that an optional log-in box would be a great implementation. Also, I wish the data stream on the site catches up better to the actually @NissaEVs. A gap of over a day, to me, defeats the whole meaning behind twitter.

Also.. I hesitate to mention this, but from the SEO perspective, the (over?) reliance of jQuery/AJAX is also a bit worrying for the site’s growth. Not only search engines would have problem crawling your wonderfully compiled data, users will also find it impossible to cite/link to a particular QA pair.

Thanks for the comments, clarifications, and insights.

I completely agree with your decision to allow anyone (with or without a Twitter account) to ask a question from the micro-site. By allowing anyone to post a question you broaden your reach and are much more inclusive. As you mentioned, it would be impossible to @reply those without a Twitter account. The confusion was, at the time of writing, the anonymous questions were being posted as, “Asked by @EVQuestion” (see screenshot above) with a link to a private Twitter feed. By the time I got this post up it seems that had been changed to, “Asked by a site visitor” which is much clearer. I’m assuming that was changed as a result of Josh’s tweet and other feedback received. It’s always refreshing when feedback is listened to and incorporated quickly, as was the case here. I think there is still some confusion on the Twitter side by having @NissanEVs reply to @EVQuestion (it begs the question, “who is @EVQuestion?”) but I understand the technical need to do so.

I’d like to see the micro-site take better advantage of the Twitter API by allowing Twitter users to provide their Twitter username directly on the site. That way, @NissanEVs could @reply the answer to Twitter users who ask a question from the micro-site.

Also, I understand the need to moderate questions prior to posting them to a corporate micro-site. However, since the @NissanEVs Twitter account is moderated I think it would enhance the micro-site to include the entire @NissanEVs feed. This would provide more content, more quickly, a key benefit of Twitter. This, of course, would be a slightly different approach to, “build(ing) a… moderated twitter driven FAQ.” You’ve done an excellent job doing that!

Finally, having looked a little deeper I did find a few questions submitted early on with full @username attribution. I apologize for that oversight.

In my opinion what’s most innovative about this micro-site is, as you said, “Those who aren’t on twitter get the benefit of deeper content coming from twitter and those within the twitter environment can see the answers live on NissanEVs.”

Thanks again for being so responsive.

Best,
Doug

I’m on the Nissan EV site team and I just thought I’d pop by to give you a little insight into our motivations and process.

Firstly, there are a couple (small) things I should clear up about how the system works. When someone asks a question from the site, it goes straight to @EVQuestion which is basically a proxy account between our site and twitter. Only the moderator can see this due to the huge volume of tweets it receives (8500 in the first day, almost 1000 a day after that). People asking from the site remain anonymous and so it’s impossible for us to @reply them. The reason we decided to do it this for the benefit of those who don’t have a twitter account (the vast majority).

Also, anyone can ask a question to @NissanEVs from twitter and they’ll get an @reply to their username. If the question is reasonable and hasn’t been asked yet they’ll also make it on the site with a credit. I’m sure if you look closely you’ll find a number of questions coming from twitter on our site with full @username attribution.

We get the question from twitter to our site using a # system. Our site scrapes @NissanEVs for tweets that contain a #category marker and pulls that answer and it’s respective question into our site and provides meta information that can be searched. Basically our motivation was to build a sort of moderated twitter driven FAQ. Those who aren’t on twitter get the benefit of deeper content coming from twitter and those within the twitter environment can see the answers live on NissanEVs.

So as you can see, it’s an experimental approach. Our motivation was two-fold. We knew that Twitter did social conversation better and bigger then we could so we wanted to tap that but we also wanted anyone to be able to participate in the conversation, even those who aren’t so tech facing. I think our system accomplishes that. It’s not perfect, I’ll admit that but I think it helps get the conversation started.

Thanks for providing feedback, we always appreciate it.

Regards,
Adam

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Working on implementing this now. Rock on.

Great post. I have one issue however. While having a carefully crafted and strategic marketing message before jumping into social media is of the utmost importance for established brands, there is something to be said for leveraging social media to build brand awareness, conduct consumer research, and drive traffic for brands or start-ups with little recognition.

When it comes to driving traffic, creating brand awareness, and building a community around a new or small brand, sometimes getting out there and interacting with your customer base is as important as spending months branding or creating a perfectly crafted corporate message.

Looking forward to reading future posts!

I just tested to see if I get any results in google analytics and still no luck :(

Any more suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks again

@Owen & @ Emily - Thanks for the comments!

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly!

I have put the GA code before the </head> tag.

I also checked the quotes and they were straight quotes; not curly.

Hopefully I will get some results now.

Thank you so much for your help!