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How has Social Media Affected Web Analytics

July 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Last week I was interviewed by Damonic Robertson for a project in his Masters class at Full Sail University. In the interview I was able to give Damonic some insight on the following questions

1 – What are the best web analytics tools available?
2 – Does it matter if you use “Free” or “Fee” based software and tools?
3 – How often should a company look at their web analytics?
4 – What type of analytics reports should a company initially start?
5 – Do companies put too much emphasis and focus on certain elements of analytics like visits, bounce rate, etc?
6 – Do companies tend to forget about analytics as compared to website design, social networking, SEM and SEO tasks?
7 – How has social media affected and/or recently changed web analytics?
8 – How has the recent surge in mobile web users affected web analytics?
9 – When should a company call upon a professional analytics consultant or firm?
10 – What is the future of web analytics?


Filed Under: Web Analytics

Keyword Zoom from ClickEquations

July 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment
This is a guest post from Alex Cohen, Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations.

People tend to think of paid search through the lens of keywords: You pick keywords, bid on keywords and figure out which keywords are good and bad.

Searchers, the people you’re trying to reach, don’t type in keywords. They type in search queries. The keywords you purchase and match types you choose, along with your bids and Quality Score, determine how many search queries you get exposed to. The relevance of your text ad determines how many click.


That relationship between search queries, keywords and text ads is one of the truths of paid search. But, analyzing that relationship is actually very cumbersome with most paid search tools. There’s one report for keywords, another for search queries and yet another for text ads. You, the analyst or paid search manager, are left to do the heavy lifting to stitch the pieces together in order to target the right queries with the right message.

Connecting these pieces is a technology problem and one that we at ClickEquations have solved with our latest feature, Keyword Zoom.

Keyword Zoom makes it possible look inside the performance of any keyword and directly manipulate the queries that have driven up cost or lifted revenue and tune the relationship between those queries and specific ad copy.


Keyword Zoom allows you to see:

  • The search queries that the keyword attracted and how each performed
  • The ad copy that was shown to the people who entered these queries
  • Complete performance statistics and metrics for that keyword

You can easily:

  • Turn a search query into a new negative keyword so don’t waste money on irrelevant search queries
  • Add a search query as a new keyword of any match type to attract more searches like that, boosting sales
  • Edit existing ad copy or create new ads or variations to improve the alignment of queries to text ads

“Paid search advertisers bid on keywords but money is actually spent and earned on search queries.” said Craig Danuloff, President. “Keyword management is no longer enough. Only by looking inside the performance of any keyword, and mining search queries to stop ineffective clicks and increase targeting can accounts truly be optimized in today’s competitive and expensive PPC marketplace. Keyword Zoom is the first and only tool that brings keywords, search queries, text ads and detailed analytics data into one screen with editing tools. It’s the best way to target the best prospects with the most relevant message.”

Keyword Zoom is integrated directly into the ClickEquations paid search platform, which enables full reporting, editing, optimization and automation of PPC campaigns.

Watch this video to see Keyword Zoom in action:

Filed Under: paid, Paid Search Strategy, ppc, Search Keywords, SEM

Inspiring an Army of Bloggers at Connected Marketing Week

July 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Day 1 of Connected Marketing Week in San Francisco starts with BlogWorkz including a session called: Inspiring an Army of Bloggers. Here users will learn What it takes to inspire an army of corporate bloggers under the banner of one brand. And how businesses are reaching out to customers and enthusiasts as blogging brand ambassadors. I had a chance to catch up with one of the panelists, Lee Sherman Editor-in-Chief, Personal Finance Group (Intuit) to get his insight on the session.

[Manoj]: How do you see large organizations leveraging blogs in 2010?

[Lee Sherman]: The corporate blog is dead. It’s no longer enough to put up regurgitated press releases and product updates. Customers expect and deserve honest content that engages, informs, and entertains. Consider approaching your blog as an editorial publication. Hire journalists not marketers.

[Manoj]: How do you go about getting buy-in from the top down?

[Lee Sherman]: Don’t do content for content’s sake. Need to tie spend to direct, measurable, business results.

[Manoj]: What’s the best way to shift passionate customers to brand ambassadors?

[Lee Sherman]: Look for emerging stars in the blogosphere and bring them into your tent by getting them to write for you. Help them to build their brand by aligning it with yours.

[Manoj]: What are some of the top metrics businesses should monitor to measure blog success?

[Lee Sherman]: Traffic of course and if you are marketing a product or a service, conversion off that traffic. Other important metrics include social media success; how often your content is republished on other sites, how often you hit the front page of digg, reddit, stumbleupon, etc., how often your content is retweeted.
Filed Under: Blogging

Interview: CNN's Sr. Director Dermot Waters on Real Time Storytelling

July 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment
One session definitely worth attending at next month’s SES in San Francisco is Real-Time Storytelling where panelists will discuss how mainstream media must embrace social media and take on the critical role of curator of the conversation in order to survive. I was able to catch up with Dermot Waters, Senior Director of Product Development, CNN.com, who will be participating on the panel. Read our chat below:

[Manoj]: What is CNN’s approach to real time and how important is it as foundational strategy of spreading the news?

[Dermot Waters]: At its core, CNN was founded on the concept of real-time storytelling. At the time, that mainly centered around spreading the news around the world as soon as it become available. That has of course evolved as the world has become more social. Now in addition to spreading the news, we’re focused on encouraging and curating the conversation to ensure that what is being spread is both personally relevant and compelling for our users.

[Manoj]: What are some ways your team filters out the noise to get to the meat of the conversation?

[Dermot Waters]: CNN is constantly looking for mechanisms to help highlight the most pertinent parts of any conversation. From a newsgathering perspective, we are monitoring trends in the social world and coupling that with our traditional sources of newsgathering to deliver the best story. We use a variety of methods ranging from manually monitoring social feeds to some automated platforms that can identify and analyze trends and viewpoints that are at the heart of what our audience is looking for.

[Manoj]: How has Twitter changed the way CNN does business online?

[Dermot Waters]: Even prior to Twitter, we noticed a trend that people wanted to not just consume the news but be a part of the news. They wanted to offer their opinions and viewpoints, share their stories, pictures, and videos. This participatory style of journalism was the driver behind us creating iReport in 2006 and then launched more broadly in 2008 with iReport.com.

The evolution of user-generated content and social networks, including Twitter, has given CNN more tools and resources for not just broadcasting the story, but sourcing it as well. We use a variety of tools to monitor all the social networks as a compliment to our existing newsgathering practices. CNN’s goal is to get the full story – the real story – that our users care about.

And now with iReport, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social web, we can also reach out to our users for opinions, feedback, and as a source for our stories.

[Manoj]: Isn’t it really difficult to produce quality content at such an incredible pace?

[Dermot Waters]: The entire CNN organization is set up to produce top notch content in a real-time manner, across TV, the web, mobile and any other platforms. It is certainly a challenge, but one we embrace everyday with our newsgathering, iReport, and the use of the social web.

[Manoj]: Where do we go from here – how does the game change from real time?

[Dermot Waters]: From a philosophical standpoint, we are focused on making CNN more social. Part of that is rebuffing terms like “social media”, “new media”, or “traditional media”. To us, it is all media and our goal is to make that media more social, plain and simple. Going forward, social interactions and participatory journalism will continue to play a role in how we deliver news.

Filed Under: real time, Search Engine Strategies, Twitter

12 Steps to a Better Landing Page – Infographic

July 27, 2010 By 2 Comments
Loved the latest YouMoz post on SEOmoz by Oli Gardner (Co-Founder of Unbounce.com) who combines 2 of our favorite topics together: Infographics and Landing Pages. Oli provides a 12 step infographic detailing how to rehab your landing pages. Landing page tips and infographic below:
  1. One Page Per Source
  2. A/B Testing
  3. Ad Message Match
  4. Context of Use
  5. Videos Increase Conversion
  6. Direction Cues
  7. Data vs. Conversion
  8. Edit Ruthlessly
  9. Enable Social Sharing
  10. Trust & Social Proof
  11. One Page – One Purpose
  12. Post Conversion Marketing

Filed Under: landing page optimization

Top B2B Facebook Pages and their Growth

July 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Interesting post from the Social Media B2B blog which provided examples of some of the top Facebook pages in the B2B space along with the growth of the pages’ communities from December 2009. It shows how Facebook is a legitimate strategy for not only B2C organizations but B2B as well. Top B2B Facebook pages below:

Page Dec 2009 July 2010 %Increase
Dell 51,183 183,554 259%
Cisco 24,289 74,400 206%
Salesforce 3,569 8,513 139%
Sodexo 2,069 4,194 103%
Cintas 1,156 2,260 96%
Gartner 2,059 3,943 92%
Hubspot 8,046 14,123 76%
Forrester 2,593 3,726 44%
Ernst & Young 34,478 47,611 38%
Filed Under: Facebook

5 Min with Andrew Chang of LinkedIn – SES San Francisco Preview

July 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Search Engine Strategies is less then a month away and this year it’s taking place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to catch up with Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager at LinkedIn, to get some insight into his session on PPC and SEO best practices—specific to B2B. Read our conversation below:

[Manoj]: Your session at SES is related to SEO/PPC strategies with regards to B2B, how does LinkedIn become part of equation?

[Andrew Chang]: Millions of people visit LinkedIn each day to connect and re-connect with colleagues and business associates. Our members come from all walks of life – accountants, financial advisors, attorneys, web developers – and they are well-connected and active professionals that many B2B marketers are trying to reach. For this reason, we built and launched our own self-service PPC advertising offering called LinkedIn DirectAds (http://www.linkedin.com/directads) that allows anyone with a LinkedIn account to place text ads on prominent pages and target those ads to only people you’re trying to reach.

A quick example of how this works: One of our most successful customers is an e-learning company that’s trying to attract the attention of primary school teachers to sign up for a Master’s degree program in Education. Over 214,000 LinkedIn members have identified themselves (in their LinkedIn profiles) as being in the “Primary/Secondary Education” industry. Within a few minutes, the e-learning company created a text ad and start displaying the ad only to those 214,000 members when they visited LinkedIn. Teachers click on those ads to learn more about the Master’s programs and the e-learning company pays for those clicks.

[Manoj]: How has the game of lead generation changed in 2010?

[Andrew Chang]: Two ways: Social media and mobile. The increased use of social media services like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter is forcing businesses to rethink how they spend their time and budgets. On LinkedIn, thousands of LinkedIn Groups have sprouted up and liked-minded professionals are engaging in conversations that span the buying cycle. Businesses should be thinking about how they might engage with prospective customers within these groups, encouraging their employees to participate in these conversations. Increased mobile internet access worldwide requires that businesses take a second look at how people experience their website, emails, and other marketing assets from mobile devices.

[Manoj]: I’ve always thought that the importance of SEO never weakened over the years, what do you think?

[Andrew Chang]: Even though I work in online advertising, I always recommend to business and website owners that their websites and web content is optimized for both search engines and social media. I’ve noticed that in recent years this has become easier to say but more and more complex to do. Just take a look at the Google’s Webmaster Central Blog and you’ll see that it’s not just about having the right content on your pages and getting high quality websites to point to your content. With YouTube videos, tweets, and other online assets now crawled and indexed in search engines, you need to think about SEO for more than just your website content.

People don’t realize that your presence on LinkedIn can be optimized for search as well. At a personal level, your own LinkedIn profile often appears in search results when people search for you by name. To make a great first impression, you should make sure that your LinkedIn profile is current and complete. Here’s a link to our learning center where you can learn more: http://learn.linkedin.com/profiles/overview/

Companies also can have their own pages on LinkedIn and you may be surprised by how many people click over to your company’s profile after visiting your personal profile. Anyone at at company can edit the company’s profile on LinkedIn. To learn more, check this out: http://learn.linkedin.com/company-pages/

Filed Under: Search Engine Strategies, SES