Tag Archives: Analytics

Sarah Landrum

5 Tips for Using Google Analytics to Improve Your Blog’s Usability

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Bloggers want far more than just a few visitors bouncing to their sites. If you’re like most bloggers, you want content that draws in readers, helps your site rank higher in search engines and converts visitors into mailing list subscribers and/or customers.

Even the overall appearance of your site can have a huge impact on how long visitors stay there and whether or not they return. Fortunately, you don’t have to just guess what readers want. Google Analytics offers the feedback you need to improve how marketable your blog is and how readers perceive your content. You can look at overall statistics or the finest details to see how healthy your blog is. Continue reading →

Sarah Landrum

5 Ways Data Can Improve Your Campaign

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Photo by justgrimes

There is an old saying that knowledge is power, and this can also be applied to your social media campaigns. Knowing the data behind why people click on a particular post, what makes your site visitors share that post and who exactly is reading your content can result in a more targeted campaign that has a higher success rate. Continue reading →

John Trader

2013: The Year that Social Media Will Run out of Kool-Aid

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Social media strategies must be based on the unique structure of your own community.
Will this be the year that social media marketers stop "drinking the Kool-Aid?" (Photo courtesy of zombieite on Flickr)

Anyone who operates within the social media space knows all too well “the bandwagon effect” that new platforms and pundits’ prognostications can have on the entire ecosystem.  A new tool is released, a different approach to a standard procedure is introduced, predictions abound of what direction the industry is headed in, and advice on how to maximize your social media efforts are as common as spilled popcorn on a movie theatre floor. Those that blindly follow advice without critical examination or thinking of the nuances of their own communities are often referred to as “drinking the Kool-Aid.” Continue reading →

John Trader

Put Away the Toys, It’s Now Time to be Accountable

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‘Tis the season for predictions. I always enjoy this time of the year, reading and listening to what industry professionals and talking heads project will be the hot topics for the next year and what everyone should be looking at and concentrating on for success. I have read a lot of articles that speculate what themes and strategies are front and center for 2012 and where we can expect the market to turn. Most of what I have read seems spot on, like Affect’s 2012 predictions that: Continue reading →

Rebecca Denison

Reducing Attribution Uncertainty

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I’ve talked about measurement’s unsolvable problem before. Attribution is quite impossible with all of the complex and untraceable connections between our offline and online lives.

That being said, there is still plenty you can do to reduce your attribution problem. While you won’t be able to give credit to each and every piece of marketing or activity that led someone to purchase your product or visit your site, you will be able to reduce a great deal of uncertainty. Continue reading →

Rebecca Denison

Searchmetrics: A Tale of Two Visibilities

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Last month I wrote about a demo of Searchmetrics Essentials, and this weekend I had the chance to get a first-hand look at the dashboard.

Essentials looks at the connection between social and search data, particularly SEO. Take the chart below, for example. This shows Social Visibility for individual blog posts from PRBreakfastClub.com. Social Visibility is defined as follows:

With a Facebook share or a Google plus-one users can vote on the quality of a site. Therefore, the aim is to motivate users to perform as many of these actions as possible. Social Visibility presents these results and prioritizes them according to the network and type of action. Continue reading →

Rebecca Denison

Marketing Mixers May Need a Cooking Lesson

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Lately my boyfriend and I have been getting into cooking. Nothing terribly fancy just yet, but we’ve been cooking homemade meals every night for a couple months now.

Whenever we select a new recipe, I try to read a few reviews and get a sense of what worked and what didn’t from others. Maybe the peanut butter flavor was too overpowering. Sometimes others recommend cooking for a shorter period of time to prevent burning. And many times, I’m left on my own to guess what will taste best.

These recent experiments got me thinking about those of us in charge of building marketing mixes. For the vast majority of brands and companies, throwing all eggs into one basket is a bad idea. We know that, and we know that using just the right mix of channels and tactics is the key to success. Continue reading →

Rebecca Denison

PR Needs a Moneyball Makeover

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Even though The Lion King in 3D topped the box office this weekend, I raced to see the new Brad Pitt flick, Moneyball. I read the book on which the movie is based when I was in college just getting into PR and measurement. (If you haven’t yet read Michael Lewis’ book, Moneyball, I highly recommend it.)

In the movie, one baseball coach uses the power of statistics to build a record-breaking team after losing his three all-star players. The movie glosses over much of the nitty gritty math, but you walk away with the same overall message: numbers are powerful. Continue reading →

Rebecca Denison

Lazy Marketers and Faux Measurers Make Us All Better

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Hear me out. The other day, Jay Baer wrote a blog post that made my blood boil. Absolutely boil. I’m sure my eyes bugged out at my desk, and I think I may have cursed a few times while reading it.

But you know what? It made me think. Hard.  As did the comments, so read the conversation when you can.

While I get frustrated with tools like Klout claiming to be standard measure or metrics, what really frustrates me about these tools is they help lazy marketers be lazy. These tools builders know that busy marketers and other professionals using social media are looking for one-stop solutions, so they attempt to provide one. And once that tool is out there, there’s no stopping anyone from using it as they want, even if it seems ridiculous to most of us. Continue reading →