Now open source: our WordPress social metrics tracker
April 24, 2014
The Chapman University web marketing team wanted to find out which blog posts resonated the most with readers. Because Social Networks make data about shares and likes publicly available, we built a WordPress plugin to track which posts were being shared and liked the most.
Download plugin from WordPress.org
Fork us on Github
Our software is now published as an open source project and is available for anyone to use for free on WordPress.org and Github. Because it is open source, other software developers who find the project useful will be able to contribute ideas and code to make it even better.
Sharing with the world
We presented this project at two different conferences, and many folks at other universities expressed interest in this project. People were excited at the possibility to collaborate and work together on a piece of software that would benefit multiple institutions. We promised that the plugin would be made available, and now it’s finally here!
https://twitter.com/jennshurkus/status/387576093529477121
https://twitter.com/JuntaeDeLane/status/341677862824316928
Dream It, Build It: What we Can Create with Social Media APIs
Meghan and Ben at High Ed Web West
On June 3, 2013 I presented with Meghan Farrington at the first ever High Ed Web West conference which was hosted at Chapman University. We shared about how our web team had used Node.js to create a real-time social media content hub.
In Users We Trust: Using Social Media APIs to Build Community
Ben & Sheri presenting at High Ed Web in Buffalo NY. Photo by High Ed Web.
On October 8, 2013 I presented with Sheri Lehman at the High Ed Web national conference in Buffalo NY about the importance of understanding how your audiences are engaging with your content on the web.
Read more about our presentation on Sheri’s blog
Building it bigger and better
As conference attendees said, using stories to share our message and understanding how our audiences react to those stories is the core of content marketing. We want to continue to develop this plugin to be a tool for content marketers to measure and understand how their content is reaching social networks.
https://twitter.com/cmsabato/status/387575893142417408
https://twitter.com/jesskry/status/387580718584303617
Because the project is now open sourced, we are hoping to be able to collaborate with other universities and professionals in the web & marketing fields. If you have an idea to improve this WordPress plugin, or if you would like to collaborate on writing code to add new features, please send us a message! You can comment on this post, or submit an official issue through the project pages on Github.com or WordPress.org