Over the weekend, we released a few new features in the A-List Platform based on user feedback.  The most obvious features enable enhanced filtering in the Influencers Monitors.  We have also added another user level (Manager) which will offer more flexibility to multi-layer agencies with many users.  Read on for more details:

Filter by Influencer Tags

As of this weekend, you can filter your Influencer Monitors by specific groups of influencers which you’ve tagged in the A-List.  This means, if you want to see the posts generated by those influencers that you’ve tagged as “analyst” or “tier 1″ or “conference speaker”, you can do that by selecting the appropriate tag in the drop down menu underneath the keywords on your Monitor page (see screenshot below).  This feature was borne from some of our power users who wanted to be able to better segment the tracking of their influencers.

Filter Monitor by Individual

We’ve also added the ability to filter the Monitor a specific individual.  By clicking on any individual influencer’s name in the Monitor, you will generate a “personalized” Monitor for that person.

These two filtering options give you much more flexibility when analyzing the content generated by your influencers.  We have more Monitoring enhancements coming soon as well!

New User Level – Manager

We have also created a new user level in this release which we call MANAGER.  Managers are users that sit between Team Members and Account Admins.  The Manager role is ideal for Account Managers in many of our agency clients.  These are people that need the ability to create new TRAACKR campaigns for their clients, but don’t need to view the campaigns that other people in the organization are creating and managing.  Managers can create new campaigns and manage any campaigns that he/she creates.

The Account Admin user level has not changed.  Account Admins can still view all the campaigns created in the account, create new users and manage all other Account-level functionality.

We have also made several other improvements/optimizations of the system in this release.  One thing you will surely notice is the overall speed of the application.  You should notice a significant improvement in the load times for any page in the platform.

As always, let us know if you have any feedback.  Thanks!

DS

We are very excited to announce our much anticipated feature release with the campaign edit function! With the release comes some significant changes on the interface, so we want to be sure to keep you up-to-date on everything. Please check out our video below or read the highlights for details on what to expect when you log-in to your TRAACKR account. If you have any questions or concerns, you know we’re always around to help!

New Search Workflow

Highlights Include:

1. Keywords can now be edited!

Editing keywords is available for current live A-lists as well, but you may have to reverse the collapse on your keywords to view and edit them.

Note that refreshing edited lists will only capture results in our database – no web searches will be conducted. In order to prompt a web search, you’ll have to activate a new campaign.

2. Activating Campaigns

Any new searches you begin will not be counted towards your subscription. Once a search is activated it becomes a campaign, which goes towards your monthly subscription amount.

3. Launch a new search from the dashboard

4. New searches give you an immediate preview of your potential results with the look and feel of a published A-list

You can utilize these immediate results to test your keywords by filtering the matching content by post or exact keyword matches. This will help you to see whether you can expect results that align with the goals of your final A-list.

5. Team members can now create lists

Team members now have the ability to create and activate new searches. With this access level update, anyone on the team who wants to create a list doesn’t have to be an account admin. Notifications will now go to the person who created the campaign and anyone who makes additional changes to it.

6. Testing features for keywords

In addition to the immediate sample results you get while adding keywords, the keyword indicator is still present for testing keywords. This indicator allows you to gauge whether your results from the added keyword will be focused or unfocused, and if it runs the risk of being an outlier.

7. Keyword prioritization automatically done for you!

Your keywords will automatically be prioritized based on their weight, so there is no need to worry about doing this manually. However, if you want to prioritize, you can utilize the starred keywords feature which gives any keywords that are starred top priority and will be weighed most heavily in the final relevance score.

We are very pleased to announce the latest feature to TRAACKR’s A-List platform.  This has not only been a feature which our clients have requested, but also something that we have wanted to add to our application for a LONG TIME….

The Feature:  Adding Influencers

As our users already know, the output of any search in TRAACKR is a highly relevant and targeted list of top influencers.  To date, this list has been limited to the Top25 influencers in any topic.  As of this weekend, however, these lists are not limited by just this Top25 provided by Traackr.  Our users can now extend and customize their A-Lists by adding anyone they want.  When adding influencers to an A-list, these influencers will be scored and tracked alongside all the other influencers on the list.  It’s a simple, but powerful feature that gives our users the ability to make their TRAACKR A-Lists completely customized to fit their campaign goals.

It’s also important to note that any influencers added to an A-List will also be tracked in the Influencer Monitor.

Along with being able to add influencers to lists, users can also exclude and edit influencers as well.

How it Works

Adding influencers to an A-List is very easy.  On any full A-List view, simply click on the Add Influencer button at the top of the page.  This will trigger a pop-up box which will ask you to enter the name of the influencer as well as a URL on which he/she publishes.  You can enter a Twitter URL (http://twitter.com/#!/BARACKOBAMA), a blog URL (http://techcrunch.com/), YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy), etc.  [*using a Twitter URL is preferable for our system]

With these two pieces of information, the TRAACKR engine can try to locate the person you want to add.  Once that search happens, you will confirm the person you want to add and place him/her into your list.  At that point, you will find that person at the bottom of your list.

Now all you have to do is click on the message next to the influencer profile (it says, CLICK HERE TO RETRIEVE DATA FOR UNSCORED INFLUENCERS) and the TRAACKR system will “refresh” that influencer.  This means the system will search and score that influencer for each of the TRAACKR metrics (Reach/Resonance/Relevance).  If that influencer mentioned any of the keywords in your search, he/she will record a Relevance score and you will be able to see his/her posts in his/her profile.

Pretty cool, right?

Why it’s Significant

For us, this feature is much more than a simple enhancement to our A-List interface.  For us, giving our users the ability to add influencers & customize lists is actually a significant paradigm shift, not only for our tool, but (I would argue) for the “influencer identification” market as a whole.

How so?

Well…there are a bunch of tools/services/applications out there that do “influencer identification” on the social web.  Some are not-so-good, some are ok (and one is GREAT…I’ll let you guess which one that is .  But one of the things on which we all compete is our definition of influence.  These definitions of influence are pretty much based on the magical algorithms that drive their scoring system.  The “our algorithm is better than your algorithm” is a battle that we will all continue to fight as we develop our place in the market.  No doubt.  And I believe the science behind these systems is definitely important.  It’s a huge part of TRAACKR’s core technology, our differentiator and our success.

However, as arguably the top influencer tool on the market, we are very comfortable saying…..we don’t know it all.

We are a technology company.  Our system and our algorithms are quantitatively based.  Our definition of influence is based on things we can measure.  Not on things we can’t.  We can measure linkbacks or retweets.  We can’t measure whether or not someone is a good writer, a funny writer, or a passionate writer.  We can’t measure whether or not someone shares a common “spirit” with your product or brand.  And we can’t measure someone’s willingness to talk to you or about your product.  These are all qualitative indicators that we will never be able to measure.  However, they may have a significant impact on your definition of “influence” for your particular goals of the moment.

The fact is that the social web gives us access to a lot of data which, when used effectively, can provide amazing insights into a person’s influence.  But, we will be the first to admit that this data offers a perspective.  One perspective.  It’s an important and necessary perspective.  But it’s still one perspective.  There remains plenty of room for important qualitative insights to enhance and shape the definition of influence in any particular context.  And these are the kinds of insights that good PR/Mktg professionals provide.  This is where they provide significant value and this is how they differentiate themselves.

And this is why we added this Add Influencer feature to our A-List tool.  We identify and deliver a list of the top influencers in a space as defined by our algorithms.  Now you have the ability to add your own value on top of that list and build the list that meets your needs of the moment.

Now, let me ask again; pretty cool, right?

Over the weekend, TRAACKR’s crack engineering team released a new feature in our A-List tool — here is what it’s all about.

Over the past couple of months, several of our clients have requested the ability to more easily and effectively filter through an influencer’s relevant content on his/her profile page.  Well, we are  very happy to oblige…

As of this weekend, if you login to your TRAACKR account and click on any influencer profile, you will notice a new area, above the list of Recent Posts which will allow you to sort the influencer posts by Date, Keyword, or Platform.

By default, the list is sorted by Date (from most recent to oldest). If you sort by Keyword, the list will be sorted so that posts sharing the same keyword will be grouped together. If you sort by Platform, all the posts will be sorted by the Platform on which it was published (Blog, Twitter, YouTube, etc).

Also, on the right column of this page, you see a list of the keywords from your search that the influencer used in his/her content. By clicking on any of these keywords, you can quickly filter the influencer’s Recent Posts by those matching that specific keyword.

Finally, you will notice a little radio button (very technical term) in this section which will allow you to toggle between posts mentioning the keywords in your A-List search and posts mentioned by that influencer in the Monitor you have set up.  Pretty nifty!

All of these filtering options provide TRAACKR users with the power to quickly and easily find the posts that matter most to them and their campaign goals.  Many of our clients have told us that they spend countless hours manually searching Twitter and content feeds to find this kind of valuable data.  So, at the very least, these new features should save you countless hours

As always, if you have any questions on this feature or any additional questions on the A-List, please let us know!

DS

Over the weekend we launched a complete redesign of the Traackr interface, and for weeks now we’ve been bursting at the seams to tell you about it. Now, before a quick tour of the brand new UI, I must give props to our awesome tech team for putting in countless coding hours to make everything shiny and new. There are also some significant releases in the works for the upcoming weeks – so be sure to check back to get the scoop.

So what’s new

To put it simply: everything. We wanted to create a better user experience so we redesigned everything – the Dashboard, Campaign page, A-List page, Influencer profiles and even had some time to add some new features. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new:

• Account Dashboard offers you a summary of the activity in your account as well as a quick look at any new influencers appearing on any of your lists. Soon you will be able to add an Influencer Monitor to your dashboard as well as see more recent activity.
• Main site Menu allows you to quickly move from your Dashboard, to your Campaigns, to your Monitors.
• Multiple ways to complete an action like create a new campaign or Influencer Monitor.
• New Influencer Profiles with clear and separate tabs for recent, relevant posts from the influencer & the influencer’s full online footprint.
• A breakdown of the keywords used by an influencer displayed with their recent posts.  Very shortly, you will be able to sort an influencer’s content by keyword.
• Ability to export any list to a data feed (JSON) which can be used to integrate your A-List into a separate application
• A separate page for your Influencer Monitors.
• Ability to Subscribe to any Influencer Monitor via an RSS feed

Also, just a reminder that we have officially implemented the Diversity Index in our Relevance scoring (which Derek blogged about last week).  While this feature isn’t necessarily visible in the interface, it’s an important improvement behind the scenes.

We are very excited to announce a new feature that will help you keep track of the influencers important to you. With the introduction of our dynamic lists, we realized that there was no way to make sure a favorite influencer never dropped from the list.

Even though summer may be ending, we still have something to celebrate – the launch of TRAACKR subscription! AND we are offering any TRAACKR client (new or existing) 20% off any new project launched in our A-List  Platform for the month of September!

As you can probably tell, it’s been a very busy season at TRAACKR. We have spent our summer scouring the web for top influencers and further building our A-List application into the web’s most robust Influencer Platform.

TRAACKR’S SUBSCRIPTION PLATFORM
We are very excited to release the first version of TRAACKR’s subscription platform with two major new features:

DYNAMIC A-LISTS
In order to match the ever-changing and evolving influencer landscape, all TRAACKR A-LISTS are now dynamic and fluid.

What this means is that TRAACKR clients will now see their A-LISTS refreshed on a weekly basis. Updated scores, adjusted influencer rankings, new influencers and refreshed content every week.

With dynamic TRAACKR A-LISTS, you will always be up-to-date on those who have the greatest impact on the success of your campaigns or business.

INFLUENCER MONITORS
Are you tired of monitoring every online mention of your brand and manually trying to understand which ones matter?  TRAACKR’s Influencer Monitors enable you to filter the noise by those who matter most.

TRAACKR’s Influencer Monitors track the influencers on each of your A-LISTS and allow you to discover and measure their mentions of your brand over time.  On a weekly basis, you can see how many mentions your A-LIST generated; which influencers are talking about you (and which are not); what they’ve said; and where they’ve posted.  Over time, your Influencer Monitor will track mentions of your brand and display it on a main heartbeat chart.

If you would like to learn how you can get started with TRAACKR and uncover those online contributors which matter most to you and your business, click here and we will schedule a demo.

We sincerely want to thank all of our new and old clients for your continued support and belief in TRAACKR – we couldn’t do it without you!

You can also check out the press release here – http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/InfluencerPlatform/prweb4513094.htm.

CSV Export

Finally, we have added a Export Button to the main Authority List page which will allow you to export your A-List as a CSV file.

Thank you all for your support!

Today, the Traackr team is proud to announce the release of our new website. Beyond our cool looking new web pages, our new site represent Traackr’s new Social Media Services for Marketing and PR Professionals.

After months of working on our new offerings and partnering with corporate marketers and communication agencies to fine tune it, Traackr is coming out of the woods and making public our new business vision, approach and solutions.

So, go and check out our new site and tell us what you think!

For our loyal Traackr users, no reason to panic: you can still log in to your account from any page on the new site to get into familiar territory. Though we should warn you that our user site is also about to get a major facelift soon.  Stay tuned!

We have experienced a little snafu with our weekly email that showed a score of 0 for all Traackr users… For those interested, we migrated servers last week and it messed up the queries we run for these weekly emails that compares the scores of week n to week n-1.

Apologies to all for this. No need to hyperventilate though: your score is kept safe and sound in our database (and its backup) ; you can go see for yourself by logging in Traackr.