Social Media Analytics is the most comprehensive book I’ve read on, you guessed it, social media analytics.  It is an advanced read that takes a deeper dive that most.  I have discovered that the majority of books on social media, web 2.0, etc. all say the same thing, just wrapped in a different package.  I was wondering if this book would be like that, yet I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is not.  It is target to the advanced level social media professional.  It goes beyond just measuring likes and followers.  If you are interested in learning how to actually put some real analytics in place this book can help you get there.  Here are the key topics that I found the most helpful:

International social media monitoring

• Unless you’ve worked on social projects with a global brand/company you may not realize the limitations and challenges associated with social media monitoring outside of the USA. Sponder outlines several strategies and options to conquer the complicated enigma that is international listening in the social space.

Social Intelligence

• Social intelligence is the next level of social media.  I have been seeking more information on what the social intelligence landscape looks like and where it is going.  Since it is such a quickly evolving world, it can be hard to keep up.  In this book the author cuts right to the chase:

Online social intelligence is much more than a series of advanced artificial algorithms running on disparate computing platforms…online listening systems often fail to capture much of the “intelligence” within online mentions, such as underlying feelings, emotions, ideas, and themes.  p.69

Viterbi logic decoder reads online content and compares it with a set of “probable” interpretations.  The interpretation with the “least error” is selected and used.  This logic is trainable within systems such as Glide Intelligence and Crimson Hexagon. p. 72

• Yes, the future is here!  My prediction is that brands that understand this concept and figure out how to appropriately utilize social intelligence sooner rather than later will have a significant advantage over their competition.  This book does a very good job of explaining what social intelligence is and why it is important.

Influence

• I love the fact that the author of this book openly admits that Influence is a constantly evolving metric and that the standard for influence is yet to be defined.  Ahem, Klout.
• I very much agree with one statement that Sponder makes in Chapter 6:

My fundamental belief is that influence and social media ROI can be fully tracked, but the right formulas and the data to populate the formulas have not been developed or standardized to the extent they are useful to business. P. 102

Monitoring tools & platforms

• It seems like every other day there is another social media monitoring tool, platform, publisher, tracker, counter, grader, listener, etc.  So, obviously in such a crowded landscape it is difficult to keep up with the latest and greatest trends. 
• It was very interesting to read about some of the tools that this book recommends.   Some I was very familiar with and some I needed to do more research on.
• Not only does the other tell you the names of popular tools, he also explains how they work and how they should be used.  Some notable tools and technologies explored include Sysomos Heartbeat, Radian6, Chrimson Hexagon.
• In this section other social media enigmas become demystified including “the full Twitter firehose,” search queries and algorithms, social intelligence and influence.

So, if you are a social media marketer, strategist, analyst, community manager or the like, this book is definitely a good read.  You will feel very comfortable with the format of the book and the topics covered.  The content is relevant, different and very detailed.

Take a look at my copy of the book... I literally flagged about 100 pages and highlighted/underlines half the book.  This is some seriously good stuff.  Pretty sure I went through a whole pack of neon green flags…

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