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18 Mar This post is from from my other blog here Google Analytics might be one of the best things that Google Robin Hooded to website owners large and small. The analytics package provides incredible functionality and does so for not a dime. That combination of functionality and free have lead to massive market share for Analytics. One estimate last year put Google Analytics at a whopping 80%, while another fell slightly shorter, but still impressive at 74%. It’s been a win-win for Google and for the sites that use the tool to measure their efforts, but a post on the Google Analytics blog today should have some eyebrows raising. The post is short, titled: More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way Maybe Google realizes they need to earn back some “do no evil” sentiment from the population at large. Maybe there’s a clever reason why it’s best that you not know what happens with the traffic on your site. Maybe, gulp, they really are just doing the right thing. It’s hard to tell. The blog post, almost short enough to have been slipped out of Mountain View in a tweet, is served point-blank. In it’s entirety: As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks. So, it’s coming soon, and it’s pretty clear that the solution would allow people to completely opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Depending on how the option is presented and received to the end-user, it could have an unnoticeable effect, or it could eventually impact quite a lot of what you know about your website traffic. ‘Free’ may just become very expensive in the long run. Thoughts? Related posts:
23 Feb This post is from from my other blog here There’s a lot of love about online marketing from a strategic standpoint. Possibly the biggest differentiator between online marketing and other marketing methods is the degree to which it can be tracked. After launching a website, social media presence, or campaign, the next logical step is to understand and optimize the performance you’re receiving. While marketers often rely on industry best practices, past performance, and trends to optimize performance, one method of optimization seems to often get swept under the rug: A/B and/or multivariate testing. A/B and multi-what? Let’s start with what Wikipedia says and bring it down a notch: A/B Testing A/B testing, split testing, or bucket testing is a method of marketing testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response rates. In layman’s terms, two (or several) different versions of an ad, email, or web page are tested and measured to see which one performs best. Pretty straightforward. The two promotional banners below could be tested to see which encouraged more sales.
Multivariate Testing This method is different than multivariate testing which applies statistical modeling which allows a tester to try multiple variables within the samples distributed. Again, in (hopefully more) simple English, multivariate testing allows you to identify several items on a page, for example, that for each, you wish to test different one or several different options. An example would be an email where you want to test three different headlines, two alternate images, as well as three variations of the call-to-action to see which combination is the most successful. Sounds great. Nah, I’m not interested The goal of these testing methods is to serve the best possible option to the end-user and in doing so to optimize performance. So, why doesn’t everyone run tests like this? Here are three common reasons that A/B Multivariate testing isn’t done:
What you don’t know can cost you money To put it as bluntly as possible, if you don’t test something you simply won’t know if it could have performed better. Yes, you can run tests and find that other options offer marginable, offer only negligible gains, or offer even worse results. But, you may also find out that there’s an option that performs significantly better, sometimes by a long shot, pushing the impact of your marketing dollars far further. If your budget allows for it, I’d recommend testing when it makes sense. Some final advice First of all, you certainly don’t need to test everything. That tagline that the new guy brought up in the marketing meeting that clearly sucked will still suck no matter how many ways you test it. A great way to get started is to test something that will effect the return on your marketing investment. Possibly an email that is going out that has a call-to-action to redeem an offer or sign up for a seminar, or a landing page on your website where you drive paid marketing traffic and hope for a conversion. To find a great candidate for testing, identify something that has created some uncertainty internally. Are you struggling with two subject lines that both state the same thing, just with a different tone? Are you considering changing the placement or styling of a form? Wondering if you might capture more leads if less information were required of the visitor? Each of these situations would create a great testing opportunity. A few A/B/Multivariate testing resources that might help you:
Good luck! Related posts:
17 Feb This post is from from my other blog here This is a great video from TED2010 that shows off the latest Microsoft has to offer on the mapping front including live video being overlaid at the street-view level in Bing Maps. Blaise Aguera y Arcas, who brought us Seadragon/Photosynth, lead the team that made this a reality. The whole video is worth a watch, but if you want to skip to the clip that shows the live video integration forward to the four minute mark. With all the video cameras monitoring intersections, parking lots and buildings it makes you wonder what the future of mapping will be like. Will we be ‘walking’ through real-time virtually online? Related posts:
15 Feb This post is from from my other blog here I was doing some searches today to see if anything was new and exciting with how Google was handling Social Search results and saw something in the Sponsored Links results that’s new to me. I searched for Terralever (the online marketing company I work at) and one of the AdSense results was for another local company, bluemedia. I haven’t seen Google Ads like this before. These aren’t geotargeted Ads triggered by the keyword “Terralever.” These ads are different.
What’s making these ads show up? The “Related to…” leads me to believe this is likely based on social ties between our two companies. I can think of a few ways that Google could conclude that Terralever is related bluemedia: Our two companies follow each other on Twitter, individuals from each company link to one other on LinkedIn, each company is a Fan of the other’s Facebook Page, and so on. Just one more reason to buy AdWords ads? Either way, this example is pretty innocent. We don’t compete for business with bluemedia. We do, however, communicate and (occasionally) collaborate with competitors in our local community and beyond. If this is a sign of a new trigger for Google displaying AdWords ads, should we tighten down our social ties, or jump in and advertise, too? My guess, assuming this experiment goes live permanently, is that Google hopes we just buck up and buy some ads ourselves. Related posts:
10 Feb This post is from from my other blog here Bank of America has a presence on both Facebook and Twitter. The brand perception that one walks away from after visiting each one couldn’t be more different. In a presentation I recently did I used the contrast between the two as a way to illustrate success, and failure, during the strategic planning process. A Few Common Strategic Planning Pitfalls During the planning process for a social media presence some commonly overlooked questions include:
There’s plenty more pitfalls, but we’ll focus on those above in reviewing Bank of America’s Facebook and Twitter presences. Bank of America Example #1: Facebook Group (the failure) If you go looking for Bank of America on Facebook, you’ll find a few different Groups and Pages. From the get-go, not all of what came back looks great. For Groups there’s “Bank of America Are Crooks!”, “Please BOYCOTT Bank of America”, and no shortage of “Bank of America Sucks!” Groups. This is a bit beyond the context we’re talking about (these Groups were created by non-Bank of America personnel), so I headed over to the Group that I guessed was the official Bank of America Facebook presence as it was listed first and had the most members (over three-thousand). It’s simply called “Bank of America”. Here’s a screen capture below of what you see on arrival: Fairly innocuous. Clicking on the “Wall” tab reveals the conversation being had here, and it’s quickly clear that things aren’t sunshine and rainbows. The Group has become a soapbox for anyone and everyone who is unhappy with Bank of America, and Bank of America is nowhere to be found to stand up for itself. Considering the social media strategic planning pitfalls above, see how the Bank of America Group fares: Do we have the right goal? Of course I have no way of knowing what the creator’s actual goal was, but we do have a publicly stated goal under the Information heading: “Help build the biggest BOA Facebook group.” Well, they succeeded at that goal. This is the biggest Bank of America Facebook Group. Unfortunately its now clearly an anti-Bank of America Group. How do we define success? If being the biggest was success the metric being used this would then be considered a success. I’m fairly certain this isn’t what the creator was hoping for. And, a little more poking around shows that this Group wasn’t intended to be for the general public. In the Description it says the Group is open to “Bank of America employees and alumni.” Who will be the brand owner of the social effort? What should our tone/voice be? For Bank of America, this is where the plot thickens. This Group, which appears to be an official Bank of America Group, was created by an employee – a teller at Bank of America. His role of Bank of America Teller is listed as a previous job he held, so it’s safe to assume he’s no longer with the bank. So, although this looks and feels at first glance (before you read the Wall content) as its likely an official Bank of America Group, it’s something a teller created hoping to create a gathering place for past and present Bank of America employees, not a ‘formal’ effort Bank of America corporate undertook. How will we handle negative interaction? Are we prepared for the depth of commitment required for this to be successful? Things get a bit more complicated here. How is negative interaction being handled? Hear no evil, see no evil, respond to no evil. To which one might say “you just said that Bank of America didn’t officially create this Group.” My response is that while they didn’t create it, they certainly don’t need to be ignorant of it. It’s not beneficial when your most popular presence on the largest social media site in the world sets up a regular association between your brand name and the word “sucks.” This Group uses their trademarked name, and was created by someone who is easy enough to track down. There are plenty of options that Bank of America could explore to be a part of this conversation and help shape perception. As it stand now, the inmates are running the asylum. Bank of America Example #2: BofA_Help on Twitter (the success) Here’s something completely different. Bank of America created a presence on Twitter where you might think they’d be at even more risk to get eaten alive by negative criticism. Unlike Facebook, Twitter welcomes profiles that don’t require the real person behind them be readily apparent. In situations like this, getting beaten up verbally can go haywire as people can hide behind an ambiguous profile name and complain to their heart’s content. The interactions on Twitter, however, are far different from those on the Facebook Group page above. Do we have the right goal? I’m paraphrasing from what I’ve read about BofA Help on Twitter. In the broadest of strokes the purpose of this social presence is to “provide timely customer service to Bank of America customers.” That’s a good goal. Social media is well suited to customer service. It’s also a goal that Bank of America could (and likely does) apply real metrics to so their progress can be measured. How do we define success? For this question I’m at a loss for an answer. I haven’t spoken to anyone at Bank of America (although I’ve tried), but from an outsider’s view I’d have to assume that their efforts are successful (if you work for Bank of America specifically with their social media efforts feel free to contact me!). The interactions seem to be reasonably prompt, and people aren’t attacking Bank of America, they’re looking for issue resolution, and it would appear that Bank of America is using Twitter as a place to intercept complaints and concerns, and to then move the conversation to a medium where issues can be resolved. There’s also plenty of “thank you” tweets commending B of A’s representatives for a job well done. Who will be the brand owner of the social effort? What should our tone/voice be? BofA_Help is manned by six representatives. Looking over the interactions they each have with the customers that come with problems, they’re all representing their brand well. Each representative smartly signs their tweets with their initials (good thinking) and communication is professional; empathetic even. All the representatives respond and interact in lock step with a calm, helpful approach. I did see some representative Tweets that look as though they are canned responses. I’m assuming this is an aid to the volume of inquiries they receive. How will we handle negative interaction? Are we prepared for the depth of commitment required for this to be successful? This is all about customer service and issue resolution. The nature of the beast is that the interaction starts out with negative overtones. From where it goes form there everything seems to be handled very professionally and with the (serious) commitment required. Bank of America’s goal on Twitter isn’t to create something to point at and say “Look how great our customers think we are!” Their goal is to provide better service for their customers. By focusing on that goal, however, they’re achieving the other in the form of the feedback their customers are providing in return. Related posts:
09 Feb This post is from from my other blog here Following several clunky forays into social media, today Google has unveiled Google Buzz. From the Official Google Blog: Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google’s experience in organizing information can help solve. We’ve recently launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz. So what’s your take? Will Google Buzz make it in the mainstream, or have the front-runners Facebook and Twitter built up too much momentum? Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.Back it up with comments! Related posts:
01 Feb This post is from from my other blog here Last week I did an internal presentation at Terralever talking about how search engines like Google and social networking sites alike were likely both attacking the idea of extending their understanding of both information and the social graph. Today I tripped over an example of Google Social Search and recollected on the presentation. In broad strokes: Facebook and its data Facebook’s value lies in the data it has regarding individuals and how the relate to one another. As it stands now, Facebook has incredibly deep information regarding how people connect to one another, what their individual and common interests are, and to a far lesser degree, how they connect to information on the larger Internet. Google and its data Google has a set of information which is in many ways the antithesis of what Facebook has. Google has spent years perfecting the task of providing users of their search engine with the most relevant possible search results based on an incredibly complex algorithm that gauges the latent value of content which heavily relies on how that content is regarded from elsewhere on the web. Facebook, people and information Where Facebook is headed toward they don’t need to be so concerned about understanding people-to-people connections (as they’ve got that one covered), but instead they are being more conscious about how individuals relate to information. Facebook’s goal was recently stated by Ethan Beard, Director Facebook Developer Network, in his Le Web ‘09 Keynote speech: (‘We’ refers to Facebook in this context) “Platform started in 2007, and this platform is our future. We don’t aspire to only be a website. We aspire to be a technology people use to connect with the things they care about, wherever they are.” Google and a more social search Google understands that their relationship with users and information is far more personal than it was at its inception. Larry Page, co-founder of Google, says the following about the perfect search engine: “The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” As social has rapidly made advances towards providing users more qualitative information through the gauging its relative importance, Google has followed suit, and one of the ways in which it has changed was unveiled in October last year. Called Google Social Search, it was a baby-step towards providing more socially-relevant content based upon what Google knew about the person searching. A Google Social Search example Today, I tripped across a new flavor of Social Search when showing a colleague an example from that presentation about social and search that I made last week. Here’s the example: I searched on “Facebook Connect,” a technology which allows developers to leverage some of Facebook’s potential on other web sites. The results I got, for the most part, were what I’d come to expect. However, at the bottom of the page, there was a new section called “Results from people in your social media circle for facebook connect” (followed by the obligatory Google “BETA” designation). The two results that are listed beneath that heading are from friends whom I’m connected through on Twitter, and each piece of information that was supplied is an individual Tweet regarding Facebook Connect. How’d Google provide those results? I do Google searches at least a few times a day to see if anything has changed, and this is the first time I’ve seen this type of social result. I did find an article published on the Official Google Blog that was posted last week that mentions new changes, just not this specific instance. By clicking on the “My social circle” and “My social content” links beside the BETA results, I learned that Google gathered this information for me as I was logged in to Google with an email address for which I have also created a Google Public Profile. It was that profile provided the breadcrumbs for Google to know of my connections to Jay Baer and Justin Copeland. How Google explains Social Search: Google Social Search is a feature designed to help you discover relevant publicly-accessible content from your social circle, a set of online friends and contacts. The idea is that content from your friends and social contacts is often more relevant to you than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from your best friend can be even better. As things continue to heat up between in the search-and-social landscape it should be interesting to see what both Facebook and Google declare to be the best way to connect people with information and provide it in a way that is useful to the end-user. Who is poised to be the best provider of information in the social age? Facebook, Google, or neither? Related posts:
01 Feb This post is from from my other blog here I recently had the opportunity to sit on a Facebook Deep Dive panel which allowed me to think about Facebook looking forward into 2010. Here’s a few of my Facebook predictions for 2010 that I shared: Facebook will go far beyond Facebook.com Facebook interaction isn’t always on Facebook.com, and that trend will accelerate in 2010. While Facebook would love for you to spend all of your time on their site, they know that they can’t force that agenda, nor do they need to. Content and interactions between real individuals and brands are the bedrock of their value, and while page impressions help with advertising, capturing interaction data and building ubiquity is far more important. Adding “Share” and “Become a Fan” links are a first step, but they are rudimentary. And, of the hundreds of thousands of sites leveraging Facebook Connect, most are merely scratching the surface. Expect to see progressive brands performing much deeper integrations in 2010 that better take advantage of Connect/Open Graph API, and in turn Facebook itself. Facebook’s on-site search will evolve Facebook has dabbled with their on-site search, but they haven’t done anything all that impressive. The promise of a true ‘social search’ where results are catered to the individual user is something that Facebook is uniquely qualified to provide. Facebook’s latest redesign (still not ‘live’ at the time of this posting) is a clear indication that search is something they will be giving heightened importance to. How Facebook handles on-site search results of its own content as well as content from the greater web will evolve throughout 2010, creating both challenges and opportunities for marketers. What Facebook delivers with search on their own site may very well be something completely abstract to how we understand search at present. Facebook will do far more for local businesses Businesses are flocking to Facebook – there are currently more than 700,000 local businesses with Pages. And, these local businesses are important to Facebook. Last year nearly 75% of Facebook’s TOTAL revenue came from local businesses and advertisers ($~229 Million). The rapid uptake in Facebook user mobile usage (currently 65M of their 350M active users) as well as the popularity of sites like Yelp present a further case for Facebook. On search engines local continues to be a hot topic and area of rapid growth. Numbers vary, but depending on what data source you believe somewhere between 20% and 40% of all Internet searches today are local in nature. Expect Facebook to expand its offering and presentation of local businesses in ways that pay dividends to businesses that are active with Facebook’s various interaction points and have Fans that interact in-kind. What predictions do you have for Facebook in 2010? Related posts:
15 Jan This post is from from my other blog here Last night at the Social Media Club Phoenix meeting one quick tip that came up was how you can view statistics on any link created with the URL shortner bit.ly. In the event you’re thinking “Why would I do that?,” go try it on a bit.ly link one of your competitors made with bit.ly, not your own. Got it? Here’s the (incredibly simple) way to do it:
You’ll be directed to a bit.ly page that shows the statistics for that link. Nice. One word of caution: bit.ly does occasionally start offering up the same shortened bit.ly URL when a strong demand for the exact same link comes up. Do click on the “Referrers” link on the bit.ly statistics page and you’ll get a better idea if this is the link you created or one that bit.ly is giving to a lot of others also. Credit goes to Jeff Widman for the tip (@JeffWidman, BrandGlue). Thanks Jeff! No related posts.
26 Dec This post is from from my other blog here Since Google acquired Feedburner back in 2007 there hasn’t been much good to say about the acquisition of the RSS reporting outfit. Under Google’s watch Feedburner fans have seen more pain than benefit. So, when Google announced (a long awaited) integration between Feedburner and Google Analytics many were excited about the news. Unfortunately, the integration wasn’t what most were hoping for. No, you’ll still need to log in to FeedBurner to review the majority of the stats that you’d hope to happily find on your Google Analytics Dashboard. The extent of the integration is merely the ability to recognize FeedBurner as a traffic source the same way you would with URL tagging. That’s it. In fact, this is something that could be done without Google’s “integration” by tagging RSS feed links with Google Analytics’ standard campaign format. If you’re using Google Analytics and FeedBurner, you may already be seeing FeedBurner showing up as a source in Analytics. If you’re not, it’s just a few clicks away if you know where to look. There’s a post on the AdSense for Feeds blog that details the settings you need to make on FeedBurner. It seems pretty straightforward: the ability to get both feed and site analytics in one place is what web site owners want. Why Google is taking baby steps is unknown. Hopefully in 2010 we’ll see a (much) deeper level of integration. Related posts:
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