Posts Tagged: analytics

Blog Marketing / Social Media — No Comments
8
Apr 10

Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

As companies that realize the value of online marketing understand the need to publish engaging content, one of the most common considerations is a company blog.  Blog software is fundamentally one of the easiest content management software systems to install and use. Of course the software isn’t magic. The content and ability to reach and engage with customers is a big part of what makes a business blog successful. For those companies that are thinking of starting a blog or reinvesting resources into a company blogging effort that has gone stale, some of the most important questions to ask are:  Have you identified specific goals for the blog? How will you measure success? In sports you can’t score if there isn’t a goal and it’s no different with business blogging.  There are a variety of reasons why publishing ongoing communications that allow readers to interact adds value to a business. Add to that the distribution via RSS that extends the reach of your message and  it’s easy to see why so many companies start blogging. The failure for many business blogs is centered around not making a connection between business goals, blog specific objectives and most importantly, how meeting customer needs leads to the first two. Here are three key questions to consider as you design your plan for business blogging success: Why start a business blog? What end goals or outcomes can you reasonably expect? There are many good reasons to start a blog. But are those reasons good enough to start and stay blogging for the long haul? Our survey on blogging and SEO showed 90% citing blogging as important, significantly important or a primary SEO tactic. 94% of bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging within 12 months. Initiate and foster customer engagement Improve coverage by media and bloggers Improve search engine visibility Increase mentions on other blogs, social networking, news, bookmarking and media sites Build thought leadership Provide an informative communication channel Recognize employees, clients, marketing partners and especially brand evangelists How will you know your blogging efforts are successful according to those goals? How are you measuring blogging success? We ran a poll last year with our readers that ranked their most important measures of blogging success. Here is the distribution: Engagement: comments, links 36% Improved brand recognition 31% Build thought leadership 31% Search engine rankings 31% Better communicate with customers 30% Traffic to the blog 27% Coverage by media and other blogs 18% Traffic to the corporate web site 16% Sales leads 16% Industry Recognition 13% Sell products 2% Improved customer satisfaction 11% Page views 9% Time on Site 6% Ad revenue on the blog 5% What tools are you using to measure blog performance? Goals for business and the blog are great but it’s essential to have the right tools in place for analytics. One of the biggest mistakes is to rely on things like Google Alerts. Web analytics (Google Analytics, Woopra, Clicky, etc) Feedburner Social media monitoring tools Link analysis tools Comment tracking tools Clipping services Forum conversation tracking tools It’s fundamental, this notion of setting goals, understanding outcomes and the tools needed to measure. But you know the saying, “Common sense is the least common thing on Earth.”  Companies can achieve great return on investment with the right plan and leadership in a blogging effort. The key is to do the baseline work to build a foundation upon which it can grow and succeed.  Stay the course and leverage both listening and engagement tools to guide content. Develop networks and distribution channels to grow readership and reach. Take the time to really understand the impact of data provided by reporting tools and create reports for executives that highlight business goals. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced with setting, measuring and reaching business goals through corporate blogging? Have you started a business blog only to shut it down? Have your company blogging efforts been successful beyond expectations? © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging | No comment | http://toprankweb2.mn2.visi.com

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Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

Social Media — No Comments
18
Mar 10

10 Reasons SES New York is a Must-Attend Marketing Conference

Let’s get it out of the way that Online Marketing Blog is a media sponsor for Search Engine Strategies conferences and also that I serve on the advisory board . In fact, the blog you’re reading right now was the very first blog to be recognized as a media sponsor by a major marketing industry conference. Specifically, Search Engine Strategies thanks to Matt McGowan . As a long time speaker at SES New York in combination with our other involvement, you could say I have a pretty strong opinion of this event. Here are 10 reasons why I think SES New York is a “must attend” marketing conference: 1. Keynotes! Starting the day with big picture content is a great way to get the synapse firing in your brain. Well, that and a few cups of coffee from the Starbucks inside the Hilton.  With David Meerman Scott – Author of the New Rules of Marketing & PR, Avinash Kaushik – Analytics Guru & Author from Google and Yusuf Mehdi SVP from Bing, you are sure to get riveting insight about the future of internet marketing and where companies should be focusing their efforts in the long term. David Meerman Scott is an excellent speaker and the release of the second edition of his groundbreaking book is very timely as the intersection of Search, Social Media and PR converge.  The best internet marketing campaigns start and scale based on good insight from analytics and what better person to share the wisdom that Avinash Kaushik .  Bing has experienced the best growth it’s ever had in the past few months and the search marketing industry is starting to take it more seriously. Yusuf Mehdi is the man to tell the story of how Microsoft plans to continue that growth. 2.  Connect with the Industry I’ve heard that over 5,000 online marketing professionals will be attending SES New York this year. That’s 5,000 people you have the potential to network with including industry peers, rock stars, potential candidates to hire, potential employers to be hired by, possible partners, investors, news media and of course, the coopetition. Take a look at the conference agenda and you’ll see an excellent mix of smart marketers from agencies and from major brands like New York Times, Autodesk, IBM and Facebook. Plus you might get to meet people like Mike Grehan , VP and Global Content Director for for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ and Search Engine Strategies. 3.  All the Knowledge You Can Absorb There are over 70+ sessions over 3 days covering the gamut of internet marketing topics from the expected SEO and Social Media to Analytics, Conversion Optimization, Geeky technical sessions, Advertising, Real Time search and one of my favorites, the Business Track. The conference is also sandwiched with a day of hands on training before and after the conference for those that want more than just 12 minute snippets from each speaker. Whether you’re new to the field of internet marketing or whether you’re looking for more advanced tactics, there’s a session for just about everyone. And that’s not easy to do. Just ask Stewart Quealy , Marilyn Crafts or Jackie Ortez . 4. It’s New York! As the CEO of an agency that pays for employees to attend conferences, you might think it a bit frivolous to suggest attending an event because it’s in New York, but the attraction of one of the world’s greatest cities brings a variety of people and a unique conference experience.  Why not get smarter in a city that can offer you an experience unmatched anywhere?  Whether you’re a fan of the Falafel stand outside the Hilton (be sure to go to the one with a long line) seeing shows on Broadway ( Wicked was Excellent. Equus was ah, different) or the lights of Times Square , that’s a never ending supply of new things to see and do in the big apple. That attraction brings together a group of international conference attendees that is unlike events in other cities and well worth taking advantage of. 5. Conference Box Lunches Maybe not! Whether you decide to go with the lunch offered by the conference or you decide to arrange meetings during lunch at one of the many, many restaurants in the area around the Hilton New York, networking over food is something I’ve found to be incredibly productive. Find a table near full of people, sit down and introduce yourself. Ask lots of questions, be a great listener and people will remember you more than if you try and “sell” everyone you meet. Sure, you may network at bars and clubs during after-conference parties, but the music is often so loud you can’t hear what people are saying and let’s face it: When SEO’s get near a bar, distractions are plentiful. The focus isn’t going to be on business. Connect with people during the day and suggest coffee, lunch or dinner before going out. Then have fun (in moderation of course) with them in the evening.  It will likely be the best networking decision you make during the conference. 6. Create Content Attending conferences can be one of the most productive content opportunities because there are so many ways to do it.  If a session is interesting, take notes – aka live blogging . If you meet someone smart and interesting, take notes. If you see something sensational at a networking party, no need to take notes on that. Logging what you learn as you hear it can help retention but it also becomes a source of content that you can use for blog posts, sharing with the team back in the office or with your clients. Content doesn’t need to be limited to text either. If you meet a smart industry expert, ask if they mind doing a short video interview. You’re in New York after all, take advantage of the city backdrop (sans the car horn and siren noise) to shoot a series of videos with people you respect in the industry.  Those videos can be de-constructed into a variety of content types for digital asset optimization and other SEO tactics. Photos are also useful not only for company blog posts but for use as stock photos long after SESNY has ended. In fact, the photo of Grand Central Station above was taken while I was in New York for a SES conference last year. 7. Live Consulting On day 3 of SES NY there is a track called “Clinics”, which could also be called, “Free Consulting for My Business”.  There are clinics covering Paid Search, Ecommerce, Conversions and Big Sites/Big Brand Sites. These sessions are a great opportunity for companies to have their web sites or advertising reviewed by industry experts and get recommendations. Keep in mind, that advice is often direct and to the point – yet polite.  Panelists have been solving web site and online advertising problems for years and they’ll be able to see issues immediately and share possible solutions just as quickly. The advice a company might get in one of the clinics can be worth several times the cost of attending the conference. 8. Find New Resources to Grow Your Business At SES New York, the exhibit hall will have over 100 companies presenting their products and services.  Cruising the booths and talking to reps (early in the conference, not late) is a great way to learn about companies that might have just the service you need to make your marketing more effective. Heck, if you’re really good, you might be able to reverse roles and pick up a few exhibitors as clients, depending on what it is that your company does. Finding consultants and services isn’t limited to the exhibit hall. You can find great resources by attending sessions where representatives from some of the top companies in the industry will be sharing their insights and expertise. Hearing an employee speak gives you some insight into their processes and how they approach working with clients.   You can also find potential employees by networking with speakers, either directly or through referral. 9. Digital Asset Optimization DAO is the name of the panel I’m presenting on, day 1 of the conference at 10:45 am right after the keynote from David Meerman Scott. Optimizing for the new Google takes a unique and creative approach to content strategy and SEO.  Optimizing and promoting Digital Assets present a tremendous opportunity to grow business through organic search. My presentation will focus on successful DAO implementations for a small business, a publisher/ecommerce site and a very large company.  Plus I’ll be offering a new TopRank Guide for download.  You won’t want to miss this session! 10.  I’ve saved the best for last What are YOUR favorite reasons for attending SES New York? Whatever it is that you’re considering getting out of SES New York, be sure to get more information on the session agenda here.

Social Media — No Comments
17
Feb 10

Basic Tips on Web Analytics

Just about every business with a web site does something to market and promote it. When those companies are asked about web analytics, it’s surprising how many look back with a blank stare.  This isn’t the case with mature online marketers but it does happen a lot with new business web sites and blogs. For many companies that are new to web analytics the idea of digging in and finding useful information can be daunting.  It’s common marketing sense to measure what you’re marketing, but making sense of analytics data doesn’t always find time in the mix of duties a small business or new web site owner is responsible for. The amount of information that analytics packages deliver isn’t always easy to sort through and turn into business decisions. So what should those that are new to web analytics do? Keep it simple and start off with the basics. Each analytics package is different in features, price and learning curve. I’d suggest starting out with Google Analytics as it’s free, feature rich, and not too complicated to learn. Start off by looking at the items below. Unique Visitors – Unique visitors are are an important metric as it counts everyone as one for any given time period. This means that if you had 250 unique visitors, 250 different people visited your site at least once. If your unique visitor number is low, it could mean that your site is either having issues in search engines, or need more content. Traffic Sources – Are you getting traffic from Google, Yahoo, Twitter, or other sites? Referring information can help you see where your traffic is coming from which you can then use to make decisions on where and how to promote your future content. Referring Keywords – These are the phrases that someone put into a search engine and arrived at your site with. Ideally they’d be keyword phrases that related to your company. If not, then it may be an indication that you’re either not optimized, or optimized for the wrong phrases. Top Content – No matter what size your site is, knowing what pages get the most traffic can help you when building out new pages. Using the same format, or building out content on that topic, can help drive more traffic. These are also pages that call to action (CTA) buttons should be added if you want your visitors to do download a white paper or do something specific. Location – If your business wants a strong local presence, the location area in analytics can tell you country, state and city of where your visitors are coming from. Are your visitors actually local? That’d be a good thing to know. Campaign Tracking –  Track visitors from sources where you are marketing to a particular goal page or conversion. As you feel more comfortable with Google Analytics you can then start to explore other actionable data including conversions, trends and features such as the most often used search terms on your internal search engine. Features like goals, top entrance/exit pages, bounce rates, and time on site are also a good metrics to use in understanding how visitors are interacting with your content. Visit the Google Analytics Help page to find out everything you need to know to make the most out of GA. Web analytics can be overwhelming as there is a lot of information to be analyzed and then decisions that need to be made from that data. Instead of trying to jump in and consume it all, take it one step at a time.

Blog Marketing / Social Media — No Comments
15
Feb 10

Ten Must Read Tips to Start a Small Business Blog

A friend of mine who is an experienced corporate marketer started a new business. The store just opened and being the good pal that I am, I was able to provide some advice regarding marketing on the web – specifically regarding blog marketing. This is a new small business, so considerations for what to do about a web site included: cost, functionality, flexibility, ease of maintenance and marketability. The web site needed to serve as both an online representation of the business, but without transactional functionality, as well as a host for landing pages used with email and PPC campaigns. My recommendation for a low cost, easy to use and search engine friendly content mangagement system? Blog software. What often happens when friends ask for advice regarding web marketing is that I’ll make some recommendations in a casual setting or email links to a few resources like this one on blog marketing tips , then a few weeks or months later, the conversation will turn to, “So, how is your blog or web site doing?”, and I find out that the site/blog was either not started at all, it was created in a way that blows away any chance of SEO or marketability outside of advertising or it was built using resources with no cost of entry but without the capabilities to scale if successful. Something along those lines happend with my friend’s blog. What was the issue? The blog was started using Blogger.com, which by itself is not a problem, but the blog address selected was: nameofstore.blogspot.com. This is understandable because it’s the default URL selection when you create a blog with Blogger.com. However, picking a third party domain for the blog address violates one of the most important rules in sustainable blogging: Always host the blog address with a domain name you control. That means yourdomainname.com/blog or blog.yourdomainname.com or yourdomainnameblog.com. Otherwise, you give up control. How so? What if the blog host goes down? Free services rarely provide support. Also, what if the service does not support the functionality you need? You can’t change their entire platform to suit your individual needs. There are other reasons for keeping the blog address as part of your own domain name including the ability to change blog software services without having to change your blog address. Of course there’s also a benefit for search engine optimization if you host the blog as a sub directory of your main company domain name such as yourdomainname.com/blog. Blogs are very linkable entities and other blogs tend to be enthusiastic about linking, so any links to your blog can be percieved as a vote of credibility to your main web site since the blog and the web site share the same domain name. Now back to our tale of the small business blog. My friend had only made one post on the blogspot.com URL so nothing would be lost by moving to a dedicated domain name. My own experience with Online Marketing Blog was different. After blogging for nearly 2 years at a blogspot.com address, I decided to move to a dedicated domain name and WordPress. It took some talented optimization and 6 months of aggressive promotion to recoup the linking footprint (100,000+ inbound links) that was lost. Of course, now our traffic is multiple times more than what it was. What my friend decided to do was register a domain name and setup a hosting account. Since there was no main company web site to attach the blog to, this makes the most sense. Essentially, the blog became the company web site. With more and more businesses, this is becoming a very practical, cost effective and functionally efficient way to manage web site content: Using blog software as a content management system. As my friend asked what to do next, writing everything down in a notebook, it became clear that there’s a litany of things you COULD do with setting up a blog. Even if we filtered it down to what one SHOULD do, the list was amazingly long. As someone new to the whole idea of blogging and this not being a formal consulting arrangement, I decided to create what I think, is a short list of what a small businesses CAN do when starting a blog. 1. Decide the purpose of the blog. Do this before going out and registering a domain name or anything else. Is the blog going to serve as a journal for starting the business? Is it a search marketing tool? Is it to be used to demonstrate thought leadership and create credibility? Will it be a communication tool for customers? Will it also serve as the main company web site? Is the purpose some or all of the above? I could elaborate on setting up each of these types of blogs if I ever decided to write that book, but for now, we’ll stick with a blog that serves as a company web site, hosts landing pages, serves as a small business resource and marketing tool. 2. Pick a URL. If the purpose of the blog is to support company brand and audience, then the URL should be part of the company web site. Ideally, the blog hosting situation allows for a sub directory such as companysite.com/blog.  Otherwise, a sub-domain such as blog.companysite.com will work and you can can host the blog elsewhere, separate from the company web servers. IT will like that. If the purpose of the blog is independent of the primary company brand, or messaging, then a dedicated domain name such as topicgoeshereblog.com might work better. It’s tempting to use a keyword only domain name, but those keywords will not be a silver bullet for search engine rankings. A catchy, meaningul brand name for the blog will go much farther as content can always be optimized for search engine rankings. 3. Pick blog software. In most cases, WordPress is the way to go. An inexpensive Linux platform hosting account that supports PHP and mySQL can be secured for $10-$20 per month. However, should the blog get really popular, expect to upgrade to support increased demand. It’s entirely worth it. The blog software will need to be installed on the server that will host it and the database will also need to be set up. This is fairly straightforward, but in all honesty, it’s best to have someone that knows what they’re doing help. As an example, I do very little of the technical work on our blog and prefer to have a specialist (Thomas McMahon) take care of maintenance, adding plugins, design and functionality updates. We have outside programmers do any heavy lifting in the application development department. WordPress software is open source, ie free, so if you are code/technically savvy and you have the time to figure it out, it’s certainly doable. There is no one “right way” to setup a blog. There are literally hundreds of shades of gray. It can cost a hundreds to thousand of dollars for a blog consultant to install, setup and customize the design of your blog. You’re not paying for the software, you’re paying for expertise that will save you MONTHS of time and allow you to get to market more quickly and efficiently. 4. Customize the blog. After installation of the core blog software, there are a number of customization tasks. First, the blog design should be modified to match your branding. If you don’t hire a consultant to do this, there are many free templates that can then be customized, but many of them require a link to the author at the bottom. Personally, I’m not a fan of those, but they are a low/no cost place to start. Design customization involves modifying the CSS, JavaScript, graphics and possibly a few database elements. The second set of customization tasks involves plug-ins to improve the adminstration, front end functionality and the SEO friendliness of the blog. Thanks to Twitter and Thomas for this recommended minimum list of plug-ins: Redirection HeadSpace2 Google XML sitemaps Gravity forms All In One SEO PostPost ACE WP Plug ComLuv Disqus Members only Cookies for comments Section widget Page order Related posts FeedSmith FeedBurner Plugin Sociable Askimet or WP-SpamFree Post Teaser 5. Create a content plan. In concert with the purpose of the blog, it’s important to generate a basic editorial guideline for creating content. The easiest way to manage this is by creating categories for the kinds of content you plan on posting. Before you create those categories, it’s a good idea to do some keyword research as the categories will become excellent repositories of related content. Why not make it even easier for search engines to understand and rank them? Common keyword research tools include: WordTracker and Google . Paid keyword tools include WordStream.com and KeywordDiscovery.com Once you identify which keyword phrases best represent the content you’ll be publishing, use them to name your content categories. Each time you make a blog post, that entry will be associated with one or more categories, creating a very search engine friendly repository of content. Create an editorial calendar or schedule of posts to keep you on topic for your audience and true to the purpose of the blog. Leverage interactions with blog readers as well as your analytics to know if your content and keyword picks are productive or not. 6. Pick your blogging team. In the case of most small businesses, the blogging team is a team of one. That’s fine, just be sure to document what’s working and what’s not so when the time comes, you can get your blogging team mate up to speed quickly. Since blogger’s block (like writer’s block) can really dampen a good thing for a small business blog, go ahead and keep a good number of posts in draft mode. Add to them as you get new ideas and inspiration. Or facts and examples. That way, you’ll have a steady stream of blog posts ready to publish in advance. In fact, you can schedule blog posts in advance using WordPress. 7. Make it easy to share. Blogging in a vaccum is inevitable blogging death. It’s essential that you solicit comments in your posts, respond to comments quickly, create and enforce a commenting policy. Being responsive is an essential part of attracting subscribers . Don’t covet the comments either. Visit other blogs in your industry and write useful comments. Those bloggers may notice you and it can become something more, like an invite for a guest post, collaboration or simply a new online friend. Make it easy for readers of your blog to save and share your content with sharing buttons or widgets. It pays to create accounts on the more popular services and develop social networks there. Your contacts on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and similar services will watch for your next post and vote for the good stuff, which can drive your content to be exposed on more popular areas of those web sites. More exposure can mean more traffic. The social bookmarks tool is handy for adding such functionality to any web page and Thomas offered several new blog promotion tips last week. 8. Get your social on . RSS feeds come with blogs and it’s worth taking the time to make sure the RSS feed is readily available and obvious for people to subscribe. Submit your blog and RSS feed to our HUGE list of blog and RSS directories . Set up social profiles on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as appropriate and automate the sharing of links from your blog posts to those services. In other words, you could use a service like TwitterFeed to publish your latest blog post to Twitter and Facebook automatically. Be sure to publish your blog URL everywhere you publish your web site address. 9. Make static. If you’re using the blog as a CMS for a small business web site, then make your static web pages such as those for About our Company, Product/Service pages, Contact Forms, etc. The blog can be customized to have a home page like any other web site as well. That way, visitors arriving on your site can see what they expect from a company selling products/services. At the same time, blogging creates a rich and frequent source of useful content that’s syndicated via RSS, promoted automatically to relevant social channels and leaves the door open for interaction via comments. 10. Measure. Test – Test. Measure. It’s important that you set goals for the blog, a plan to execute tactics and most of all, measure progress. Most web site measurement is focused on web analytics and metrics specific to different types of marketing such as with email, SEO or PPC. Standard web analytics software such as Google Analytics will address the vast majority of your needs. I would also recommend social media monitoring and analytics. Monitoring can be as simple as the RSS feed from search.twitter.com combined with the RSS feed from the results of a search on Google’s blog search. You could also use services like socialmention.com , trackur.com or more robust social media monitoring tools such as Techrigy SM2, ScoutLabs or Radian6. Social monitoring tools will help you understand what your customers are saying about you on the social web as well as uncover new interaction opportiunities with influentials. Real time search means real time marketing and social monitoring can facilitate that. One example would be if a competitor Tweets a deal on a product. Your Twitter search on that competitor or product would create an alert. You could then decide to offer a deal at a lower price or some other counter offer. Another example is if a customer complains about your company. Before others jump on the bandwagon, your social monitoring tools would alert you and you can then qualify and address the situation quickly. As web analytics and social media monitoring tools become increasingly intertwined, you’ll be able to identify many other key metrics for the effect of your social participation on bottom line business goals. There you go. Ten tips for starting a small business blog. This was a long post and yet, it’s nowhere near a comprehensive guide to create a small business blog. Even though there is plenty of free blog software and advice available online, many companies would benefit from having professional help with a business blog. The funny thing is, my friend will look at this post and say, “This is the SHORT list?”. Blogging can be simple to start, but no one said it wasn’t hard work. If you’ve created a blog for your small business, what has your experience been? Did you do it yourself? Do you get expert help? Have you set up a small business web site using blog software? we’d love to hear about your experiences, challenges and successes.