Measuring user engagement by leveraging the power of ‘copy-and-paste’
A year or so ago I wrote about the system Tynt “What’s being copied from your website?” and I thought it warranted an update, seeing as the service is very different to what it was back then. Tynt is:
“Improve your seo, keep users longer and measure your user engagement by leveraging the power of copy and paste.”
Tynt now has four distinct ‘products’, these being:
- Keywords: Unlock the secrets to outbound traffic and keep users on your site longer.
- SEO: Leverage copy and paste functionality to improve your search ranking.
- Content: Measure user engagement and shape subject matter that matters.
- Social: Identify which social channels produce the most lift and impact for your site.
What is Tynt?
How does it work?
Once you’ve signed up on the website you’ll be given some code to place in your website (if you’re running a CMS then you’ll need to put it in the template, as per the video above), and then sit back and watch the copy-and-paste happen.
Each time someone copies something from your website, a ‘read more’ link will go with it along with a link back to your website and the copied text is highlighted for whoever received the link.
You can configure the text that is appended to the text on the Tynt website, adding attribution and modifying the text/link that is pasted.
You can also set your preferences to receiving notifications on content copied to daily, weekly, or monthly, or just log back to the website to see the latest report:
If you’re a WordPress user then I’d suggest using one of the plugins readily available (hosted or self-hosted) which will post the code in the page for you: just search the plugin directory for ‘tynt’ and try one out. There is plenty of support for other blogging platforms on the Tynt installation help page (including Blogger, Ning, Typepad, Tumblr, etc).
My greatest surprise in looking through the copied content is how well my older posts are still doing with regard views and copied content. I am also intrigued by the number of instances my images are used on other peoples website – this is not downloaded and uploaded to their own, this is sourced from my website … no wonder the bandwidth for the blog is so high!
Are you using Tynt, have you seen anything in the stats that surprised or shocked (or disappointed) you? If you’re not using it, will you? Drop a comment below and share your thoughts.
