2 social tools tell brands worth of shared content

First, Audience Index. This tool helps brands and marketers to compare the influence of bloggers or social profiles compared to the influence of other websites or content portals in the segment. This should help brands determine where they are connecting well and where they are not.

Second, the Social Reach tool, which analyzes how content or information about a brand's product is being shared. Attaching analytics to the shared content gives brands the ability to place a worth of the circulation of a piece of content.

"It's becoming absolutely essential that online publishers are able to accurately measure, optimize and value the sharing and social habits of their audience," was written on the ShareThis blog. "Social Reach and Audience Index...will help publishers do just that."

According to the latest data from Experian/Hitwise, Facebook is still the leader in the social network wars with more than 59% of visits for the week ending August 21, 2010. Youtube (16% of visits) and MySpace (8% of visits) were Facebook's closest competitors. Twitter still only captures about 1% of social visits.

Facebook seems, for now at least, to have a lock on the social space. Between actual visits and search queries, the social networking site is well within the public consciousness at this point. The social site surpassed Google as the most visited website a few weeks ago and for this reporting period remains in the number one position with just over 9.8% of all online visits.

'Facebook' and 'facebook login' are the two leading search terms for the same period, with more than 15% of searches divided between the two terms. Facebook is also pushing about 11.24% of upstream clicks; only Google (19.2% of upstream clicks) leads the social site.

Tools like Social Reach and Audience Index will help brands harness the power of the social world.

Tags: Facebook, ShareThis, social marketing, social metrics, social networking tools, social networks, Twitter