Successful Blog

Don’t Sweat the Page Views

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By Michelle Rebecca

Yes, today’s online business leaders have it hard. There’s a ton of competition and a lot of complexity involved in dealing with certain kinds of market realities. It’s hard to monetize a web project the way that businesses monetize other kinds of investments and campaigns.

However, some of those who are promoting a business and its products or services online can get too wrapped up in various kinds of technical fixes for these issues, and may tend to disregard the bigger picture. Meanwhile, big companies like Google are trying to promote big-picture thinking that adds to the general quality of the Internet.

Effective Online Management and User Interest

Even though online business owners know that Google has made a raft of changes to its algorithms, punishing content mills and other generic SEO sites, many of those managing web projects are still obsessed with the idea that they can manipulate page rankings through metrics like keyword placement metadata and back linking.

Busy managers who want results without coordination simply plug page view analytics into automated job managers that they think will force outsourced marketing or content people to spit out the magic formula for growth. What these businesses are neglecting is the idea that natural interest is derived naturally from creating actual benefits for Web viewers.

Preserving Traditional Practices… and Branching Out

It’s not that businesses need to disregard all of their analytics or drop all of the market research. Targeted content and user analysis has its place. But beyond just micro-managing technical results, web project managers who free up content producers to explore new avenues connected to “the meat space” (the off-line world) can see a lot of improvement in their return on investment.

Time and time again, online entrepreneurs who take risks have seen their sites blossom as the consumer audience for a particular industry starts to read more, link more, and share more of what they have to offer. This generates web results in a system with longevity, where yesterday’s linking and page optimizing created quick floods of web traffic that taper off when Web viewers understand they have simply been directed by a search term.

Web project managers who understand all of these new dynamics often source projects differently. Instead of getting a low dollar bid for a few landing pages or some generic high-volume domain SERP optimization, they hire industry professionals and qualified freelance journalists to create actual content that explores the flesh and blood realities of an industry and offers readers material from the real world rather than rehashed phrasing from a Google analytics result.

That can drive a lot more vitality and power into a web campaign than anything dreamed up in an SEO laboratory.

Author’s Bio: Michelle is a blogger and freelancer. She’s written about almost every topic under the sun, and loves constantly learning about new subjects and industries while she’s writing. In her spare time she enjoys spending time outdoors with her dogs. Check out her blog, SocialWeLove, and follow her on Google+.

How to monitor the health of your online business

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by Rosemary O’Neill

These days, everything around us has a built-in indicator to tell us when something’s wrong. My car has been telling me I need “Service A4” for about a month now. Our iPhones have battery life indicators. Even my kids’ school lunch account pings me when it’s low.

But there’s no handy-dandy centralized indicator to tell you when your online business needs maintenance.

Key indicators for your business
Keep an eye on your key indicators

There are so many things to keep an eye on when you’re a small business owner or an entrepreneur.  
 
Industry developments, customer challenges, payroll, legal requirements, and (if you can squeeze it in) planning for the future, all must be monitored. Toss social media tracking and reputation management in the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for stress.

Let’s set up a manageable system that tracks only the most important indicators. Pull out your business plan and/or marketing and sales plan. What are your key milestones for success? What is your “red line” you can’t go below as far as sales pipeline or conversions?

Bearing in mind your goals and critical areas, here are some of the items you might want to add to your weekly checkup. I use simple spreadsheets.

Brand awareness indicators

Set up Google alerts on your company name and your own name, as well as your product name(s).
 
Visit Topsy.com for mentions on the web and on social networks (you can set up alerts or periodically check in). For the spreadsheet, you could track number of mentions over time to see if you’re on an upward trend.
 
Another indicator of increasing awareness is branded searches. In your Google Analytics, click Traffic Sources Overview. The keyword list will show you whether people coming to your site are typing in your brand name to get there. You could tally up the number of branded searches each week and track that trend as well.

Marketing and Sales Indicators

Again in your Google Analytics, track the number of new visitors over time. That’s a good indicator of increasing interest, and possibly marketing success.

Track true conversions over time. You can set up conversion paths within Google Analytics just by telling Google which action on your site represents a “conversion,” for example, subscribing to a newsletter or clicking the “buy” button. Conversions can also be tracked by dividing raw unique visitors by number of sales over a given time frame.
 
If you’re using Hootsuite Pro, you can get reports of activity across all of your connected accounts. This is a good way to keep your finger on the pulse of your social networks. Are your Twitter followers increasing? Is your content getting shared? Your dashboard should include some idea of whether your overall network is increasing.

One other statistic to track is the number of new incoming sales inquiries. Most CRM systems make it easy to keep track of new leads, but it can be as simple as tallying the number of new email inquiries from a form on your website. That’s the top of your sales pipeline, so you want this number to stay healthy.

Revenue, of course, must be on your dashboard as well. Be detailed enough that you can see which lines of business are doing well and which might be struggling. That might mean breaking out products vs services.
 

Planning for the future

Just as you get periodic checkups from your doctor, you should re-evaluate your plan and dashboard indicators routinely.

Weekly updates on the spreadsheets plus a quarterly plan review will keep you on track and allow time for course correction if necessary.

What are your key indicators for the health of your business?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Do You Rely on Analytics to Tell the Whole Story?

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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The Tools Only Get You Halfway There

Many tools offer to help you analyze your customer community, so that you can capture the elusive “ROI.” These tools evaluate a multitude of data points, including number of followers, likes, blog comments, retweets, etc., to come up with the success equation. Small businesses can be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of starting from zero in all of these social categories.

However, I propose that numbers only get you halfway there. The other half is composed of humanity. Information like, “dog’s name,” “has 3 kids,” “is insanely into photography.” The reason that is often left out in the cold is because it’s hard to automate that kind of connection. That type of information is only really gleaned from a steady stream of interactions over a long period of time. And many of us don’t invest the time to build up that data.

There’s an old-school sales trick that says when you walk into someone’s office, you look around and take note of the family pictures, fishing trophies, or other personal items on the desk. Those can be used to start conversations and begin building a connection…”hey, I went to UVa too!” If you want to build up your humanity data, you need to do the digital version of that; i.e., take note of the human information that is available online.

I’m not suggesting cyberstalking in a creepy way, but if your customer is sharing his/her interests publicly, it’s fairly easy to build on that. Here are some concrete ideas:

  • Build a web of connections, via Twitter, LinkedIn, or other networks
  • Promote your customers’ projects and content
  • Work on expanding the ways you connect—if it’s all digital, try the phone. If you’ve always emailed, try finding them elsewhere.
  • When you respond, try to read-up first. If your customer is reaching out to you on your FB page, why not show them you know them. Same with Twitter followbacks.
  • Find ways to allow your customers to be “whole people” in your community, include an area for off-topic socializing. And allow your reps to be human too.

The bonus is that, by including human data, you also build in “delight,” as people recognize that they’re being noticed. And that’s priceless.

—-
Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work on the Internet. Check out their blog. You can find her on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Thank you, Rosemary! People like you are easy to remember and fun to do business with! 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Cool Tool Review: Bit.ly

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Bit.ly
A Review by Todd Hoskins

If you’ve been cryogenically frozen for the past two years, the discovery of URL shorteners would be confusing. Why are there all these nonsensical domains appearing on Twitter, Facebook, and even in email?

Prompted by the 140 character limit, the early URL shorteners (we’re talking 2008) served an important purpose – freeing space for you to get more words and letters into a tweet. You want to share Lady Gaga’s controversial Alejandro video, for example, but simply sending the link is not enough. You want to offer your endorsement, commentary, or related questions (and for this video, there are many). Shortening the URL gives you the chance to do this. Otherwise, the link itself will take up half of your tweet characters.

So, thank you SnipURL, urlBorg, Cligs, is.gd, Su.pr, TinyURL, Ow.ly, and all the others for allowing me to add my two cents.

There is also a business utility to URL shortening, and Bit.ly remains the leader. Bit.ly and it’s companion service J.mp (which I use) shorten nearly 5 billion links per month. Why are so many people using Bit.ly? First, it has been Twitter’s default shortener. But also, Bit.ly offers analytics on your links that can be endlessly fascinating and valuable to your business.

When advising clients on their microblogging efforts I start with two main focal points:

1) Accessibility of your voice (warmth, personality, interactivity, humor)
2) Relevancy of your content

Bit.ly analytics can give you real-time and cumulative feedback on the relevancy of content. Are people sharing what you have shared? Are they clicking on the link? What types of content do your readers find compelling? What conversations take place around these links?

Once you have an account and shorten a URL, either with the Bit.ly sidebar or at their domain (also Tweetdeck has Bit.ly integrated), you can track and manage the links to see when and how often people have clicked through, as well as the ratio of the traffic you are driving compared to the rest of traffic monitored through Bit.ly.

bitly

You also get posts and tweets that have used your shortened URL, so you can see who else is distributing the content and in what context. It’s a great way to discover influencers and fans. Don’t fall into the trap of measuring your online presence based on click-throughs, but it is a fast way to learn and adjust for the content your company is creating or distributing.

One more note . . . I will also use URL shorteners within emails sent to clients. If you send an email to five colleagues, for example, and want to see not only how many people are reading what you have highlighted as important, but how often that email has been forwarded, Bit.ly provides an easy way to see whether the article you recommend is being digested.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 5/5 – Dashboard and branded short links with Bit.ly Pro

Entrepreneur Value: 4/5 – Improve your content. Inform your voice. Analytics help.

Personal Value: 3/5 – Effective replacement for bookmarking (Like a site? Article? Shorten it and it will be archived.)