Melanie Baker's dashboard

No, I'm afraid we don't track Facebook. We'd LOVE to, but they don't have publicly available APIs, which means we don't have any access to their data.

If that ever changes, though, we'll be right on it.

That account appears to just be backlogged as well. Posts with comments beyond the most recent couple are accurate. Do you have some specific examples other than the most recent that you can point me to?

http://www.postrank.com/feed/8856d5cc... – Melanie Baker, on October 21, 2009 18:23

Ok, comments are getting caught up now, and I did a test run of the widget for your blog, and it's looking better. Your posts with 47 comments is showing up first in the widget.

There is still a bit of a backlog, so your most recent post doesn't have comments yet, but I checked backwards a bit, and the ones with a bunch of comments are showing up right.

Let me know if things look better on your end, or if you're still seeing any quirks.

Nope, all the trackable metrics should show up there -- comments, tweets, FriendFeed, Reddit, etc. If they're not showing up for your blog, send me the URL or your account email and we'll take a closer look: melanie@postrank.com. – Melanie Baker, on October 20, 2009 20:02

Yup, the "who's saying what..." etc. is in what we call the Conversation Feed. When you're logged in to Analytics, if you go to the Analyze view, then click on a specific post that has metrics, if you scroll down beneath the Engagement Activity Graph, the stream of metrics (tweets and things like that) are there. – Melanie Baker, on October 20, 2009 19:28

Hello -- the problem with your widget is that your feed hash is not set. It's: 2ade0cba3efa27ce8b04515fe67d5295

If you go to Settings > PostRank in WordPress > and enter that hash, it'll get the widget working right.

However, something looks wrong with your metrics. (Your PostRank scores are either 9.7 or 10, and the comments don't line up.)

I've logged the issue with the guys, and will let you know as soon as we've got things figured out.

Well, at the moment we only have one video, and since it's on the homepage, you've probably already seen it. :) (And, really, we'd rather have people try the service out for themselves and prove its value rather than hope a shiny, hand-waving video would do the selling.) :)

To give you an explanation that would make sense to you, I'd have to know more. I don't know what your blog is, what you write about, what your goals or intentions with it are, etc. If it's just a hobby, Analytics might well be more info than you need.
Well, at the moment we only have one video, and since it's on the homepage, you've probably already seen it... (And really, we think actually poking at the product has more power to convince.) :)

To give you an explanation that would make sense to you, I'd have to know more. What's your blog? What do you write about? What's your audience like, and how big is it? What are your goals or intentions with having the blog?

Analytics can help you see over time how your audience is reacting to what you write. Typically you can see trends in what topics, writing styles, etc. engage them. To increase that engagement, addressing those topic or styles more can help. You can also see how those posts are doing from a high, at-a-glance level (engagement score), or more granularly (specific numbers for each relevant metric - do you get more tweets, or do your posts tend to get bookmarked more, that sort of thing).

If using your blog to engage with the readers directly, start conversations, get feedback, answer questions, develop a community, etc. is important to you, Analytics can help by showing you who is saying what, where they're saying it, and when they said it. For some folks/venues, real-time engagement with the audience is very important, and Analytics facilitates that.

Some functionality we're hashing out now will be able to help more with the "so now what?" aspect of analytics -- you have the numbers, so what should you do to improve them?

If your blog is just a hobby, Analytics might well be more info than you need. Same if you prefer drawing your conclusions more anecdotally.

So, hope that helps. If you're looking for more specific info, let me know some answers to those questions above and we can go from there. – Melanie Baker, on October 20, 2009 19:01

Hi Jesse - as noted, more explanation is something we're working on. We have made some updates to the metrics display to to show the sources that contribute to engagement points. We can't provide a whole lot more of the secret sauce than we have here: http://www.postrank.com/postrank - but we can certainly present it in an Analytics-specific format that'll be more clear.

We're also not competing with or trying to replace Google Analytics. In fact, integrating your Google Analytics into your PostRank account is one of the things you can do right when you sign up. The two services are meant to compliment each other. – Melanie Baker, on October 19, 2009 16:12

Yep, a better explanation of engagement points and scores is something we're working on. Just isn't quite done yet. :)

Hmm, that certainly is wacked. On the plus side, at least your page looks more reasonable: http://www.postrank.com/feed/89a2925e...

I've logged the issue with the guys, and will let you know as soon as we've sorted things out.

You're right, there really should be. (And I could have sworn there was...) I've logged a dev request to add that. Thanks for the heads up. :) – Melanie Baker, on October 15, 2009 20:36

Ok, have you tried to resetting your password via https://analytics.postrank.com/forgot... and didn't receive the email? If not, could you try that? In the mean time, I can get the guys to take a look at your account. – Melanie Baker, on October 15, 2009 20:26

Hmm, looks like a two-part answer to that. We have a bit of a comments backlog that we're working through at the moment. It should be caught up within a couple of days. That would explain comment counts being off for recent articles, but from your feed it looks like it hasn't been picking up comments for a bit longer than that: http://www.postrank.com/feed/ebd84de8...

I've logged the issue with the guys and will let you know as soon as we get things sorted.

Hi Simon -- are you trying to change your password on postrank.com or on the Analytics site (analytics.postrank.com)?

Hello -- I replied in the other thread you posted in, but just to make sure we're covered, your feed hash is ebd84de8ee1d4ef78a4b13f3286dca58.

Let me know if you need any help updating it.

Ahh, that typically means your feed hash wasn't copied over correctly. In your widget's code, there will be a feed hash line. It will need to look like this:

"feed_hash": "ebd84de8ee1d4ef78a4b13f3286dca58",

That is your blog's feed hash (right now it's pulling ours).

If you have any trouble updating that, let me know. – Melanie Baker, on October 14, 2009 14:23

Hmm, certainly looks like some wires are crossed, doesn't it. Thanks for letting us know. I've logged this with the guys, and will let you know once we've sorted it out.

Yep, we're aware of that app. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find an API. (I am checking with them to see if one's been released, though.)

Interesting... Thanks for the heads up on that one. I've forwarded it to the guys, and they can have a look at that update.