According to their website, PostRank:

… measures audience engagement and provides integrated tools to enable you to customize your RSS subscriptions. Save time, boost productivity, and Read What Matters.

One of the unique things that PostRank does is take into consideration comments and mentions elsewhere on the web (Twitter, Delicious, Magnolia, etc.). It compares it to your recent posts, too. For example, when I first start a blog, getting 1 or 2 comments is a big deal, and thus, will rank that post quite high.

On the other hand, if, 4 months from now my blog has gotten more popular, has more mentions, more comments, that same post with those 1 or 2 comments won’t rank that high.

Having been a Feedburner user since I started this blog last July, I am quite new to PostRank. I have to say, though, after using it for a little over a week, I like it a lot better than Feedburner.

ReadWriteWeb has a great post about the benefits of PostRank, but it also mentions that it will face some challenges, especially with the Google/Feedburner acquisition.

PostRank has a Google Reader plug-in, but (from RWW):

Will Google Reader, now the dominant RSS reader by far, report subscriber numbers to PostRank? FeedBurner requires RSS readers to report numbers daily, something that doesn’t always work. Now that FeedBurner is owned by Google, will they hand over their huge part of the numbers to a competitor?

Great question.

There are also other concerns with how it ranks posts, but I do think that they’re headed in the right direction. I can say that I am very excited about their Feed Analytics Beta. They’re even asking for our feedback as to what functionality should be in the tool. Very cool.

I am confused about how PostRank ranks some posts, though. Some look logical, even with the *context* tracking I mentioned above, but I’m still getting posts, published just a few months ago, that aren’t ranking well and should.

Here’s an example. The posts below were posted less than a month apart. The newer one (Analytics is Attitude), gets a PostRank of 7.5 with 4 comments and 1 Google trackback. But if you look below it, another (an older one) gets a PostRank of only 1 when it received 7 Delicious bookmarks, 10 comments, 3 Twitter mentions, and a Google trackback. By the *context* logic, the Twitter – A Different Kind of Conversation post should have been ranked higher, shouldn’t it? I might be missing something. Am I?

What’s interesting is the Google Reader plug-in measures the Twitter post at 9.6. Interesting.

Don’t get me wrong, the concept is awesome. As I mentioned above, I can’t wait for the Feed Analytics Beta, but I need to understand the system better. I’m not completely convinced yet.

Check PostRank out, though. They actively ask for feedback to help continually improve their product, which is great.

The goal for most blogs is interaction (on every single page, usually) – not so with traditional websites like your university website (again, usually). This makes measuring success and analytics for blogs a bit different. Looking at visitor rate, bounce rate, path analysis for blogs is either a waste of time or not enough. Let me explain.

To measure the true success of a  blog, you need to go way beyond your regular analytics tool. It doesn’t matter what tool your using, you’ll have to look beyond it to truly find out how your student blog is doing.

I could stop here and say my usual speil about goals. Yes, it does depend on your blog goals, but most student blogs will have the same type of goals. Most blogs (whether they’re student blogs or not) want engagement … interaction … discussions. So, let’s move on.

Visitors. First, especially for new student blogs, measuring your visits and unique visitors will give you a great trend. Your goal is always to have that trend increase. This is more of an insight measurement, not an actionable measurement. It is important nonetheless.

Comments. To measure true engagement, looking at your comments is essential. Although it is true that most users will read the blog and *not* comment, since conversation is the goal of most blogs, measuring your comments is one direct measure of engagement. So, you can measure the number of comments/number of posts.

Be sure to not only measure the number of comments, but how many *new* users comment. It’s one thing to have 60 comments for a post, but if the comments are only from a select group of very engaged users, that doesn’t necessarily constitute *growth.* There is no argument that comments that add to the conversation (spam comments don’t count!) no matter if they are only from a select group of users are all valuable, but to truly grow, you want not only your core group of users comment, but you want to always be trying to get comments from other users as well.

Measure all comments: number of comments/number of posts
Measure new comments: number of new user comments/number of posts

I want to reiterate that all comments are valuable. There is no doubt about that. To truly grow, however, at some point you need to engage new users.

Tip for more engagement – If users comment on your blog, they are obviously engaged. Keep them interested in the post they commented on! How? If you use WordPress for your blogging platform, download and install the Subscribe to Comments plugin (thanks to Kyle James for suggesting this plugin way back when I started this blog). Not only does this plugin give users an easy way to come back to your blog to check out comments updates, it gives your blog an easy way to keep your commenting users interested in that post. It’s a win-win.

Subscribers. Another true measure of success. This is like a user on your university site filling out a form and signing up to receive program updates. They are asking for you to contact them!

If you don’t use it already, use FeedBurner.

Measuring visitors is important, but measuring subscribers (the users who are *asking* you to update them on your blog postings) is key.

Offsite mentions. This could also be “buzz.” How many times is your blog referred to or linked to from elsewhere? There are a lot of ways to measure this.

1. Your blogging platform keeps track of trackbacks. How many times are other blogs mentioning your blog? This is another great way to measure success. Others are engaged and found something useful on your blog.
2. Kick it old school. Go to Google and run a link search for your blog. Type in the search box, link:http:www.yoursite.com. You’ll see who is linking to your blog.
3. Create a google alert for your blog name and maybe even the names of your student bloggers (obviously this will be easier if your student bloggers have unique names).
4. Use Twitter search to find out who’s talking about your student blog on Twitter. Again, you can search for your blog name, your URL, your student blogger names, etc. You can even subscribe to a feed via RSS to keep you updated on conversations. If your blog URL is especially long, Twitter users may be using TinyURLs to refer to your site. Search for the URL anyway. You might be surprised.
5. Rank on sharing sites. Is your blog mentioned and shared on Technorati, Digg, Delicious, etc.?

Bounce rate – may not be a great measurement for blogs. Bounce rate is measured by single page visits/entry pages. So, a bounce is when a user enters the site and exits the site from the same page without viewing any other pages within the site.

The problem with this measurement for blogs comes with RSS. When users subscribe to your blog via RSS, those users usually click from their feed reader to your blog post. The user reads the post (hopefully) and then, again, usually, exits from the same page. This would actually be measured as a bounce, even though the user may have read the entire post and even may have commented on the post.

There has been some discussion in web analytics circles about measuring bounce rate by time on site, especially for blogs. Initially this makes sense. Measuring bounce rate by number of page clearly doesn’t make much sense for blogs. Time seems to make sense. For those of you who have read this blog  or other web analytics blogs in the past year or so, you know that it isn’t that simple.

Time on site has downfalls as well because of the way analytics tools calculate time on site.

Does this mean that bounce rate is a useless measurement for blogs? No. Remember that we want to look at trends. So, if your bounce rate is flawed, it’s going to be flawed the same throughout so trends are still useful. If your bounce rates go way down or way up, you should be looking more closely at potential reasons.

I’m sure there are many other measurements of student blog success. What are some measurements you use?

Thanks to @KarlynM and @kpmccusker for the conversation on Twitter and the idea for this post.

• 10 Firefox Extensions for Web Analytics – I don’t know about you, but I’ve all but abandoned other other browsers (except for cross-browser comparison testing) just because of the breadth of extensions available for Firefox. In this post, you’ll be introduced to ten essential extensions for the web analytics freak in all of us (come on, I know there’s one in you!). Although we all probably have WASP and Greasemonkey installed, there were others in the list I hadn’t even heard of and installed immediately.
• 16 Useful .htaccess Tricks and Hacks For Web Developers – There are some great tips here. I especially like the custom error page creation and the SEO friendly 301 redirect. Another one i found very useful was the linking protection (#6).

Stuntdubl Business Search Marketing Consulting – Stuntdubl is an SEO expert site with a twist of humor thrown in. Thanks to @glenngabe for tweeting a link to this blog and introducing me to Todd Malicoat and his fantastic site. If you’re serious about SEO, you need to subscribe to Stuntdubl.

• 9 Reasons You Need Social Media Marketing in 2009 – This is a great post which states that social media is the new search engine optimization. Straight from the post: You’re banned from using the company email and internet until you read the Cluetrain, and can name at least 10 social media sites, and which 3 are likely to drive the most traffic. If you’re in a corporation that won’t listen, or change anything because of what lawyers say – you deserve your miserable cubicle dwelling existence for not standing up and pitching things better.

You’re banned from using the company email and internet until you read the Cluetrain, and can name at least 10 social media sites, and which 3 are likely to drive the most traffic. If you’re in a corporation that won’t listen, or change anything because of what lawyers say – you deserve your miserable cubicle dwelling existence for not standing up and pitching things better.

Indexed – This has got to be one of my all time favorite blogs. It’s very simple and not about any particular topic. Each post is an amusing chart, hand-written (or hand-written font written!). Take a look, subscribe to Indexed. You won’t be disappointed. Thanks to @avinashkaushik for the link from a tweet.

Anyway, on with the post.

There is a great article in this month’s “Best of Online” issue of Campus Technology called Teaching Twitter. The article appeared on the website in March, but was printed in the magazine this month.

It’s a question and answer session with David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media at The University of Texas at Dallas. An excerpt:

A lot of people built on my post in terms of, “Oh, here are some things you haven’t thought of.” People came up with some interesting uses, in particular about teaching large lecture classes, which I’ve never taught. And some were skeptical and critical: “I don’t want to keep up with what my students are doing when class is over….” So I respond: Well then, don’t. But for me it’s an effective teaching tool that can change the rules of the classroom. So I’m going to continue to use it.

Exactly! Twitter is what you want it to be. This is always such a sticking point with people for some reason. There is no one size fits all. Use it how you want to use it. That is the only way you will actually find it usable, if that makes any sense.

A lot of Twitter newbies say that one of the reasons they don’t *get* Twitter is that they’re not sure how to find people with things in common. In my last post about Twitter, I suggested a couple ways, but last week, thanks to a friend at work, I found out another way.

Go to Twitter Search. You’ll notice there are “trending topics” on the bottom of the search box. Click one of them or type in any topic you choose.

When you search for a topic or click on one of the trending topics, you’ll notice that now you can create an RSS feed for the topic (look in the right hand column).

Click the feed and add it to your favorite RSS reader. Then you can keep track of your favorite topic without having to go into Twitter. See a conversation you like? Click on the tweet, go to the profile and friend that person. Or, just keep up to date with conversations around certain topics.

Check out tweets from my iGoogle homepage.

Yet another great use for Twitter.

More ideas about uses for Twitter? I’d love to hear them.

What we’re finding, more than anything else, is that customer relationship management is not about technology at all. It’s an attitude. It’s a mentality. This isn’t a new concept, but I do think that we take it for granted. We expect the tool to just do everything inherently. That’s not how it works – GIGO is so true and happens all too often.

To have good customer relationship management, an organization doesn’t have to have any technology *tool* – it simply has to have the commitment and attitude to manage relationships better in order to make the customer’s life better. Period. Tools may make that easier to do, but if the mentality isn’t there, the tool does nothing.

The same can be said for web analytics. All this talk about Google Analytics, Omniture, WebTrends – what they can and can’t do – none if it matters if we don’t have a true desire to use the data that is pulled from these tools to improve the usability of the web site.

Before the tool, it starts with goals. No, not website goals … before that.

• What are your business goals?
• Based on your business (school) goals, what are your unit goals?
• Based on your business and unit goals, what are your website goals? What do you want your users to be able to do?

Seriously, really think about those questions. The corporate world is good at answering those questions, but higher education? Not as good. Sure, the school has a mission, but do our units? Do our websites?

Remember that all websites, even higher  education websites, are customer service sites. Yes, I know we don’t like to talk about our students as *customers* but they really are. They pay us to provide them with a service. They are customers, whether we like that term or not.

KPIs! KPIs! How I love my KPIs!! What are our key performance indicators? Do we have any baseline data to measure against? Here are some quick examples of website KPIs (remember they will be different depending upon the type of website):

• Landing page bounce rate (remember a landing page is *any* entry page!)
• Form completion rate (how many times did they view the form vs. actually fill it out)
• Percent of visitors who use the course catalog
• Percent of visitors who use the knowledge base

… and on and on and on … again … all different depending upon type of site. Also remember that analytics doesn’t mean just *online* data. Are you a support desk or a call center with a corresponding website? Track call volume. When a knowledge base is implemented, does the call volume go down? It should, especially for simple questions.

Finally, *after* we answer these questions, then we can talk about analytics implementation.

Now let’s talk implementation. Just because we slap some javascript above the </body> tag of our pages doesn’t mean we have an analytics mentality. Repeat after me – I/we have a true desire to deliver to the customer the best, most usabie website in our power. We need to become user advocates! Now we’re getting it … now we have the attitude!

Ok, now that we have the attitude and the mentality of analytics, let’s get started on the technical stuff.

First, take a look at this quick list of implementation tips from our good friend Avinash. That post is almost 2 years old, but I think it still holds true today.

If you’re implementing a proprietary tool like Omniture or WebTrends, make sure to talk to your vendor about your business and web site goals before implementation.

Since most of higher ed uses Google Analytics, here is a quick list of implementation and other tips and tricks:

• Google Analytics 101: Some Basic Setup Tips
• The Ultimate Google Analytics Plugins, Hacks & Tricks Collection
• 8 Awesome Google Analytics Hacks, Tips and Tricks

There are so many more as well.

Now that we have the user/customer/student advocate mentality *and* we have the tool to help us, now we can truly say we have an analytics attitude!

Here are a few that are definitely worth adding to your reader (depending upon what tool you use).

Omniture Blogs – If you use Omniture in any capacity, the Omniture blogs are a must read. I mostly read Adam Greco’s blog about SiteCatalyst, since that is what we use most, but I’ve found a lot of the other blogs useful as well. Here are a couple highlights from this month:

• Products Variable – Great post about setting up product variables in Omniture SiteCatalyst. For our website, we actually use the product variable to pertain to a program (degree or certificate) that we offer. We’re finding success using the product variable this way and it’s actually helped us make decisions for a couple campaigns.
• SiteCatalyst Widgets – Omniture recently created functionality to feed dashboards into widgets to display in iGoogle, Google Toolbar, Windows Live, and Yahoo Desktop Widgets. I’ve created a few iGoogle widgets and I’m finding them very useful, especially because iGoogle has become such a part of my day it makes life a little easier.
• Understanding VISTA Rules – Ah, VISTA rules. If you’re an Omniture user, you know that VISTA rules can seem like an enigma. This is a great post if you’re unsure how VISTA rules work and the pros and cons to using them.

Higher education blogs have mainly focused on how Twitter can help as a marketing, recruitment, advising tool. There are so many great uses for Twitter both in higher education and for corporations.

What about us Twitter-users as individuals, though? How does it affect what we do, our sense of community, our sense of professional involvement?

It’s fantastic to talk about Twitter as a tool to help our students and customers. I’m completely on board with that.

Let’s do something that I don’t like to do a lot on this blog, though.

Let’s talk about us!

There are so many people I’ve talked to that just don’t get Twitter. They see it as a waste of time, a distraction with no possible advantages except for goofing off.

I cannot agree *and* disagree more.

Twitter is a communication tool. Like any other communication tool it can be used to do anything *you* want it to do. It can be used as a time waster or a professional development tool. It’s up to you.

Last Friday at lunch, I was talking with some friends of mine at work about the usefulness of Twitter. One said that he was trying to encourage his wife to use Twitter, but that she just didn’t get it. She didn’t understand how anyone can possibly get any useful information out of, “just woke up and about to take a shower … bummer … no clean towels.”

The great part about Twitter, though, is that you can choose your friends. That’s why it’s so important to read others past tweets before following them. If you don’t think you see anything useful, no harm done. Just don’t follow them. Remember, it’s not the tool, it’s how you use it.

I follow many people, some I know, some I don’t. I follow friends from home (Syracuse), friends from work (Penn State), and *friends* I’ve never even met before. All of the *friends* I’ve never met before are either people I consider either professional peers or experts in fields in which I’m interested (marketing, usability, web analytics, web design, web development).

Twitter is a two-way street, though. Not only can you learn from your *friends* but they learn from you! How cool is that! Everyone is an expert at something. Offer your expertise!

Why do I use Twitter? First and foremost, I use Twitter to meet new people with the same professional interests that I have. Because of Twitter, I’ve learned so much from people I’ve never even met. It’s a troubleshooter’s dream. If you’ve made sure you’re following people with your interests, you can always throw questions out to the community. Users respond within seconds or minutes. I’ve even tweeted about being frustrated with Microsoft Word or with Omniture SiteCatalyst. Within seconds I had some *friends* replying to offer help. What’s great is that when your friends ask questions, you can offer them help as well.

Some people use Twitter for social purposes only, and that’s fine too. Although I’ve learned a lot professionally, I’ve also learned so much more about my friends and the people with whom I work. I know more about my co-workers children, when my friends aren’t feeling well, what they watch on TV, the list goes on.

Keeping business and pleasure separate. But what happens when you have social *friends* and professional *friends* – how can you keep the two separate using Twitter? When I’m at work, I may not care who’s had their second cup of coffee, but I do care about new features Google Analytics just implemented … or a web analytics report that a *virtual* colleague just made available … or when a friend has an idea for a new module that may help our Drupal install … or whatever I may be doing at work that day. That’s where Twitter clients come in handy.

Twitter clients. Like IM clients, Twitter has a lot of clients to help you … well … tweet better. Arguably the most popular Twitter client is Twhirl, a client I’ve used extensively and love. But there are many more. That blog post is quite old and more have popped up since it was written. For instance, my new favorite Twitter client is TweetDeck, which is still in beta.

Why TweetDeck rocks. TweetDeck lets you segment your friends. You usually know what type of things your friends tweet about. Figure out what you want to pay attention to that day and create a group centered around that topic. For instance, if you’re at work and your a Drupal developer, you may want to group your *Drupal* friends together and pay more attention to their tweets at that time. This doesn’t mean you can’t see all tweets. It just means that you now have one channel dedicated to the *friends* who usually tweet about Drupal. Very cool.

Creating groups in TweetDeck:

I can create as many groups as I want and choose which ones to display.

Ok, so I downloaded a cool Twitter client, but how do I find people to follow? There are a couple of ways. First, you can *friend* people you know are on Twitter. Then look through their list of friends. You can choose to follow your friends of your friends.

Another way is to search for topics that interest you. Use Twitter search and type in keywords that match your interests. You’ll get all tweets that include your search word. For example, here’s a recent search for the word omniture:

I can then click on any Twitter name and scan the profile and tweets of that person. If I like what I read, I click follow. It’s that simple.

Another way to search is through hashtags. A hashtag is word you embed in your post with a “#” in the front of it. You can then search for the hashtag to see posts pertaining to your topic.

I follow many people in the web analytics community who tag their tweets with #wa. I can simply go to Twitter Search and search for #wa.

Just like the first search I did for omniture, I click on a Twitter name of someone who’s tweeted something interesting and read their profile and tweets. If I like what I see, I follow that person.

Conferences and communication. Another fantastic use for Twitter is at a conference. If attendees can agree on a hashtag to use, they can then tweet through their sessions. It’s kind of like live blogging, but on a smaller scale. I can tell you from experience that it’s invaluable for those who are *not* attending the conference. For instance, I was able to stay up-to-date with what was happening at the recent Stamats conference in Florida. Attendees tweeted through their sessions and used the #stamats08 hashtag. You get real-time updates on the action.

The bottom line. I guess the point of this post is that Twitter is whatever you want it to be. It’s a professional development tool. It’s a networking tool. It’s a time-waster. Most people who don’t *get it* think that users are only updating their status with mundane things like, “going for my second cup of coffee.” That can’t be further from the truth. If that’s not how *you* want to use it, then don’t. The burden is on the user to search for friends. Choose wisely.

So, what do you use Twitter for?

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

- Niccolo Machiavelli from The Prince, 1532

That quote was the intro paragraph to an interesting article in the September issue of Campus Technology called Change Management Meets Web 2.0. Wow. Isn’t it amazing that a quote from 1532 could hold as true today as it did then? What’s more interesting is the next line of that original quote:

Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

How true. How true. Of course now we’re talking about Web 2.0 (new technologies, new attitudes toward web content) instead of acquiring principalities. But what do we fear? Why is there still some apprehension about Web 2.0 in higher education? I think it can all boil down to losing control (and something else I’ll get into later). As instructors, we lose control to our students. As marketers, we lose control to our advisers, admissions staff, and students. I think we need to come to grips with the fact that losing control in this scenario is ok. In fact, I think it’s essential.

Most of the Web 2.0 crowd, almost by definition, rejects anything canned, pushed, promoted, advertising-ish, or marketing-ish. Why? Because that is exactly the opposite of the user-generated experience. It’s about the conversation – conversation being two-sided.

Those traditionally in control of web content (any college/unit/department within the university), must give up that control in a Web 2.0 world. That isn’t to say it should be a free-for-all. Not at all. The trick, however, is to moderate the conversations without anybody thinking that you’re moderating the conversations.

Gerry at Giraffe Forum put it nicely in a recent post when he said,”To manage in the Web 2.0 world is to converse, to listen, to be honest and upfront, to collaborate, to moderate, and constantly watch out for the trends and patterns that always emerge when many minds mingle and mix in the network.”

That brings up another good point. A lot of apprehension about using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. (anything user-generated) is that users/applicants/students might actually say something negative. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “but what if they say something bad about us?” Well, unless it’s offensive, leave it up! Why? Because keeping the positive *and* the negative adds credibility.

I think it goes even further than this, though. If we open ourselves up to using these tools, it also means we will have to take responsibility for the issues that may lead to negative comments, posts, tweets, etc. If your course registration process is horrid and someone replies negatively to a blog post about class registration deadlines, then you have to take responsibility for that horrid process. This scares *a lot* of people.

This actually brings me to another issue within higher education. Silos. The silos are killing us. I know what you’re saying, “but what do silos have to do with Web 2.0?” Let me explain.

If one part of your university owns a blog and part of their registration/admissions/search/account process (it can be *any* process) lives within another *silo* what happens when they receive a negative comment or post about that process that they don’t own? Should they post a comment in reply that says, “well, that process isn’t our fault, it’s [enter college or unit here]‘s fault. We have no control over that.” Obviously not. This is a real issue, though, especially for larger institutions.

So maybe I’m being dramatic. Maybe I’m blowing this way out of proportion. Is this worth discussing, though? Will the increasing use of user-generated content on our university sites expose our silos even more? Will the silos even care?

Hopefully.

How do you know it’s working? How do you know your users/students/etc are finding this stuff useful?

Obviously different types of higher education websites might use Web 2.0 differently. For smaller schools, it might be a little easier (or not!) as there may be one website for all aspects of the higher education experience. For larger schools, however, each department, each school, each athletic team, each *course* may have different websites. (Yikes!) So how can each of those websites use Web 2.0? Let’s look at a couple ways:

1. The helpdesk can use RSS to update students, faculty, and staff of any IT alerts and issues.
2. Admissions can use Twitter to announce upcoming application and registration deadlines, and more.
3. Instructors, advisers, and admissions can create blogs to keep their students and prospects involved.

This list could go on and on. The question becomes, however, how do you know any of it is useful for your users/students/faculty/etc.?

First, of course, create some goals for your user of these technologies and applications. Stop rolling your eyes, just do it! I guarantee you’ll thank me later.

So how do we create goals for something we’ve never used before? Remember, goals aren’t set in stone. Put *something* down. Anything.

Facilitation goals. These might be the most important. If you are going to use Twitter, blogs, Facebook, any type of collaboration tool, then *use* it. Make a goal that states how many times you’ll post or update in a day/week/month and make sure you meet that goal. I’m not suggesting that the posts or updates be forced, however there must be fresh content or it shouldn’t be done!

Analytics goals. Now let’s talk about usage. How do we know if people are actually using this stuff? Let’s put some goals down. How about something like these:

1. Helpdesk and RSS: RSS subscriber count to increase by 2% monthly. Good start! Now, how do you measure that? How about using Feedburner?
2. Admissions and Twitter: Increase our twitter friend count by 2% monthly. Ok, but let’s go further with this one. How about tracking the URLs that you post for your announcements? Usually in Twitter you use the “tiny URLs” to save space. You could also use “vanity URLs” to do the same and keep your branded URL. But, either of these URLs can be tracked so you can see how many of those Twitter *friends* are actually clicking through and taking some action.
3. Instructors/advisors/admissions and Blogs: Increase visit rate by 5% monthly. Increase RSS subscriber count by 1% monthly. That was too easy. If your instructors, advisers, admissions, or anybody else is running a blog, there should be many well-defined goals and strategy around that. Let’s talk about that more in-depth in a later post.

The bottom line is that the goals don’t have to be complex or lofty. Start small … but put something down. Why? Don’t you want to know if your users/students/faculty are actually engaged in what you have to say?

If you’re posting registration deadlines on Twitter and nobody is clicking-through, don’t you want to know so you can change your strategy? Maybe just slightly changing your wording helps. Maybe posting more relevant information with *no* link will help the click-through-rate of the information you *do* post with a link. But, again, you won’t know any of this unless you’re using some kind of analytics.

It all goes back to your users and students. *They* need to find these things useful. How about finding out if they do!