Best of the web – April 2012

1. Pinterest analytics site receives 36,000 sign-ups in one week

The Next Web chats with Rick Kats, one of the founders of Pinerly, an analytics tool designed to help Pinterest users keep track not only of repins and likes that posts are receiving, but how many click-throughs each post receives. Kats says: “You’d be surprised to see how some pins get high re-pins and likes, but little click-throughs. This is exactly what we’re trying to help brands understand – the fundamental way to approach users to get the maximum clicks to their destination.”

2. If you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing

“I’m flabbergasted by the number of SMB owners that either don’t track their website stats and figures, or, have some form of analytics installed, but don’t truly know what they’re looking at,” writes digital media consultant Dan Taylor. “Sure, business continues as usual, but for those out there trying to grow and expand, answer me this, without proper tracking and conversion numbers, how do you know which percentage of your sales leads are arriving via your website, or more specifically, your fine tuned landing page?”

3. Facebook enhances analytics to enable smarter ad targeting for marketers

Hubspot’s Corey Eridon previews the new targeting capabilities in Facebook’s Ads Manager: “In the past, Facebook’s Ads API only allowed marketers to target their ads to users based on pretty basic things – like clicks, likes, or checkins. With this newest change, however, advertisers can target ads only to those people most likely to take a certain post-click action – in other words, a conversion event that actually means something for marketers.”

4. Text analytics for (very smart) dummies, part 1

Tom H C Anderson of Anderson Analytics gives Marc Dresner of IIR USA an introduction to the field of text analytics. He reckons that within marketing research, “There is a bit too much attention focused on social media monitoring. This is just one single source of text data. Most firms have a wealth of rich unstructured data within their organisation already that they need to understand – larger survey data studies, CRM feedback etc.”

5. Top 10 TED talks every researcher should see

Courtesy of The Researchist blog comes this useful list of videos featuring inspiring figures offering illuminating thoughts on a variety of topics, all of which have some lessons for market researchers. I particularly like Jane McGonigal’s talk (pictured), if only because it helps me believe that the hours I spend plugged into my Xbox are actually of some benefit to society.

Also, check out:

6. Should social media replace surveys?

7. Decision management in the cloud: Learning from our pal HAL

8. The importance of social media analytics for international organisations

9. How to know you’re asking the wrong questions

10. Data discovery and exploration – IBM buys Vivisimo

^{Best of the Web is a roundup of the most-shared links on Twitter, based on analysis of all tweets generated by the MR community (as defined in our last project to map the MR Twitter network – see here for more details). Analysis by Dollywagon. Data collected 1–27 April.}