Google Analytics for Bloggers Part 1: Why use analytics?
Jan 13, 2009 Digital Marketing & Metrics, Web Analytics
Why do you blog?
Most bloggers will answer that they want to share their knowledge, thoughts, and experiences with others. Whether you write a personal blog, a career blog, or a business blog it is important to know about your visitors. Without visitors you could just simply be talking to yourself, and if that is the case – you might as well write a journal and keep it by your bedside table.
Most of us, don’t blog for ourselves – we blog for our visitors – so knowing about them helps us create content that they will come back for!
Why Analytics?
Using an Analytics package you can find out:
- Where your visitors come from
- How they came to find your blog
- How many pages they visited (what content interested them!)
- How long they stayed and perused your blog
- How many folks return
Pretty valuable stuff. But each on its own isn’t necessarily meaningful. You need to look at the data as a whole to find the the story, and determine what it means to your blog.
As Mack Collier says on The Viral Garden: “Studying the raw numbers really isn’t that important, understanding that those numbers are REAL PEOPLE, and then understanding what’s motivating them to read your blog is what matters.”
What do you do with this information?
- Discover what topics are the most popular to your visitors – the new and the return visitors.
Keep this in mind when you are writing new posts – will your visitors enjoy this content? Is this what they are coming back for? Or has a change in topics caused a shift in your visitors? - Find out the best ways to promote your blog or learn how successful a new link back is:
Did you “pimp” your post in a special way – post it on Facebook, Twitter, send an e-mail blast to friends? Did you gain traffic by commenting on other blogs? Did someone link to you? Can where they came from tell you anything about the people visiting? - Find out what keywords are driving traffic to your blog
They can be strange. But some will tell a story for example: trends and topics of interest. Use the keywords that are central to your blog and that drive valuable traffic to your site in your content. - If you post downloads such as PDFs, or link to internal or external pages you can track downloads and exit pages. This is just one way you can use analytics to measure your success over time.
Using analytics you can focus on the content that is resonating with your visitors – and in doing so encourage new visitors. If you are using analytics what are you looking for? What have you learned and how has it helped you as a blogger? If you aren’t using analytics, why not?
Watch for the next post in this series:
Google Analytics for Bloggers Part 2: Set-up
Popularity: 16% [?]
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Tags: blogging, google analytics, measurement, roi, tools, Web Analytics
The Best Twitter Tools
Jan 9, 2009 Digital Marketing & Metrics, Microblogging, Social Media, Web Tools & Applications, social networks
I have written a few times about Twitter, just take a look in my Microblogging Category or search “Twitter” in the search function on my blog. I am a fan. Want to know what Twitter is? The Do’s and Don’ts of Corporate Tweeting? Just to point you to two of my previous posts on the subject.
I have been on Twitter for nearly a year and a half now. Since that time there have been many introductions of new tools to use to follow, search, and Tweet. Here are my current favourites:
For almost everything on Twitter
Tweetdeck: This is a desktop application that allows you to follow, tweet, search, group your friends, keep a list of “favourite” tweets, and even see what the hot topics are on Twitter.
- Tweetdeck Screen Shot
Let me run you left to right to show you what this program can do!
Note: this is how I have my columns currently set up, you can have them in any order you like, by using the arrows at the bottom of the column, or by simply opening them up in the order you prefer.
1st Column: This is the running feed for the people I follow. In real time it changes as your Tweeps send out their Tweets! If you minimize the Tweetdeck an alert, and a small box will pop up letting you know of Tweets and Replies.
2nd Column: I have a search running currently in this column. If you are Tweeting for work, searching for information on a particular topic, or interested in following a particular #hashtag you can use the search function on Tweetdeck. It will pull, again in real time, the tweets containing your search term.
3rd Column: These are my @replies. If someone on Twitter wants to contact you directly they can do so in two ways – by Direct Message (private) or by an @reply (can be seen by everyone). These @replies can be sorted to the reply column.
4th Column: This is Twitscoop a tag cloud including the trending terms on Twitter “right now”. Must be a game on since two of the biggest words are Panthers and Giants!
The other things I love about Tweetdeck:
In this upper dashboard you can type your Tweet, add columns (All, Replies, Favorites, Search, Group, DMs and Twitscoop), and shorten URLs which is a necessity in Twitter since you only have 140 charactors. Once shortened it automatically adds the URL to your Tweet. The Group function is nice if you follow a lot of people and want to occassionally focus on some key people at a given time.
If you run your mouse over the image of the people you follow this box will appear with four icons. These icons let you reply (automatically puts @twittername in your tweet box), direct message (automatically puts D twittername in tweet box), retweet (which means you are tweeting someone elses message to your followers) or “favorite” the tweet. Just a neat little time saver, for the busy tweeter.
For Searching and Alerts
Tweetscan/Twitter Search: If you don’t have acces to TweetDeck, or if you aren’t interested in searching in “real time” you can use one of these two browser based sites. You can of course watch and refresh, or you can subscribe via RSS to the search. This makes it possible to never miss a tweet on your favorite topic!
For Following Conversations
Tweetree: Have you ever found it difficult to follow a conversation between people you follow? Tweetree makes it easy to see the replies and back and forth of a conversation without visiting multiple profiles. It also shows linked URLs right on the page, without you having to link elsewhere. Here is a quick screen shot of Tweetree:
At the top you can see an indented tweet – that is a reply. At the bottom you will see a inserted URL. (Seriously, why can’t I do a Twitter screen shot without Scoble in the picture!)
Tweettree
For Mobile:
Twitterberry: For the Twitterer on the go, there is Twitterberry. Never leave your obsession for long…get your friends timeline, @replies, and of course tweet from ANYWHERE.
Finding Tweeps
Yes, I dislike the word “tweeps” too, but look I have used it twice already. Woot! (other disliked word I hear too often on Twitter!)
TwitterLocal:
Check out Twitter Local to find people in your area. I used this and have connected with some very nice individuals, who also write some great blogs on digital marketing (Direct Approach; Digital Socialite) politics (Jeejeebhoy) and shopping (Bargainista).
Other Good Stuff
Tweetburner:
When I tweet a URL I use Tweetburner (on Tweetdeck “Twurl” is in the drop down menu by the shorten URL field), this allows me to “track” the clicks on the URL. Tweetburner also tracks it over time and will give you your “Top Twurls” and a weekly and bi-weekly archive of your twurls, and the clicks on the Twurls!
PeopleBrowsr:
This is a new site I have played around with. Similar to Tweetdeck you can have multiple columns, create searches and groups etc. It is however browser based and so if you are working from a work computer where you are unable to download applications it might be ideal (although, then again it could be blocked by a firewall!) The other great thing about PeopleBrowsr is that it allows you to watch a news feed for FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and more. If only Facebook wasn’t such a “closed garden” – then perhaps I could have my Facebook feed there as well….oh well wishful thinking.
Do you have a favourite Twitter Tool?
And, connect to MEGOAgain through Google Friend Connect (right hand side of page!)
Popularity: 20% [?]
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Tags: peoplebrowsr, tools, tweetdeck, tweetree, tweetscan, twitter, twitter search, twitterlocal
