Roost reveals lush new social media analytics

Engagement scores based on retweets (Twitter) or likes, shares, comments and impressions (Facebook)

Social marketing platform Roost revealed Tuesday a rich social media analytics offering for its clients, which assigns engagement scores to individual social interactions.

Aiming to measure the effect of Facebook and Twitter posts, Roost says it has developed a “proprietary algorithm” that outputs engagement scores based on how many times users interact with that content.

Engagement means different things on the two sites. On Twitter, it’s a retweet. On Facebook, likes, shares, comments and impressions all count toward the score, with link conversions and hides to be considered further down the line.

For those who want to bypass the automatically generated score, Roost also offers basic statistics on these engagement actions. And all the data, no matter of what sort, is designed to be actionable.

Existing and new clients alike will have immediate access to the newly announced analytics.

“Businesses grapple every day with how to measure the effectiveness of their social marketing efforts, which is why Roost aims to provide all of the necessary tools to create, run, measure and optimize social campaigns,” said Alex Chang, CEO of Roost. “We are excited about our new analytics engine that gives users a consolidated view of their social activities and performance.”

Roost, which first emerged from private beta in March, has a built a social marketing platform that serves wide interests, from individual professionals (realtors, personal trainers) to businesses (restaurants, nonprofits) to consultants and agencies (PR).

The sector occupied by Roost is, as always, red hot.

Latest evidence of its unquenchable heat came last week, when social business provider Jive Software filed an S-1 form signalling the company’s aim to raise $100 million in an IPO. And Jive isn’t even close to profitable, having lost $30.6 million in the first half of 2011.

Still, everyone realizes that there’s something to social media marketing, explaining the explosion of startups in that space: Extole, Hearsay Social, Ignite Social Media, Mass Relevance, Shoutlet, Syncapse and Zuberance. Each offers a unique approach to the infinitely intricate social networks and yet all are bound in seeking to master engagement on those networks.

Some of those competitors already offered solutions similar to the one Roost announced today, though it’s unclear whether any stands above the rest as the best analytics provider.