From time to time, I like to highlight new social networking sites or technologies that could benefit organizations, particularly small-staff ones. Today, that application is PostRank.

If you already use Google Analytics, that’s great – but there’s only so much that Web traffic data can tell you. Of course, conversation can take place in multiple places across the Web – blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Friendfeed – and tracking that information and comments can be very useful, especially how it relates to Web traffic.

Enter PostRank.

To get a PostRank Analytics account, users enter their blog URL and Google Analytics account information to connect them. (If you want to get stats on your organization’s Twitter account, enter that URL as well. PostRank takes the Google Analytics data and gives you an “engagement score” for the previous day. You can compare figures by week, month or quarter to see how your engagement looks over time.

However, as Mashable explained:

The really cool part about PostRank Analytics comes when you evaluate individual blog entries. Not only can you see your total page views, unique visitors, bounce rate and average time on the post for each entry — you can also see how many people have tweeted about the post, how many comments it received, if there are any FriendFeed or Reddit reactions, was it re-posted on Tumblr, etc.

Because posts with high engagement get more points than others, you can quickly figure out what was popular and what wasn’t, giving you a good gauge for what your readers want to find at your blog.

PostRank also offers real-time social media monitoring. You’ll see comments, tweets and “likes” as they happen. You’ll be able to easily judge which social media networks are getting the most engagement and hosting the most conversations, thus determining which ones are worth your organization’s time.

If your organization is really active on the social Web, this could be a good investment. However, if you’re just getting started, Google Analytics and Google Alerts are probably still the way to go with regards to monitoring. To learn more, check out PostRank here. The site offers a 30-day trial to new customers; monthly accounts are $9 per month.