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Posts Tagged ‘analytics’
Friday, June 14th, 2013
Twitter has been trying desperately to figure out a way to make money for two or three years now. Last year they rolled out a new advertising program. Recently, they made public an analytics tool that is wrapped up in their advertising platform. It’s actually pretty useful, though I suspect it’s very incomplete.
So what kind of data does Twitter Analytics offer? Glad you asked. Here is a list of basic features.
- Number of faves per tweet
- Number of retweets per tweet
- Number of replies per tweet
- Number of @mentions per day for the past 30 days
- Number of new followers per day for the past 30 days
- Number of unfollows per day for the past 30 days
- How many times each link has been clicked
In addition, if you have a link that has done exceptionally well, then you’ll get a notice that says something to the effect … “15x NORMAL REACH.”
Personally, I’d like to see a reach stat for each tweet. Maybe that is coming down the pike. I don’t know. But I do like that you can see all of your tweets in a handy list and get a quick visibility of your stats for each tweet.
There is also a tab for getting data on your followers, but I clicked it and got a screen that said “Sorry, there is not enough data to display analytics at this time. Try again later.” I guess that information is on the way.
I fully expect to see Twitter Analytics improving in the coming days and weeks. For now, you can try it yourself at https://ads.twitter.com.
Tags: analytics, Twitter
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 11th, 2013
Analytics is a very important part of doing business. Small businesses, especially, need to consider how they will reach their audiences effectively and track their movements online. A new tool from Google makes that easier. It’s called Google+ Dashboard.
To use Google+ Dashboard, you have to have a Google+ page. You can’t have a Google+ page for your business unless you have a Google+ personal profile.
This is good evidence that the future of your business online depends a lot on Google+. If you don’t establish a Google+ presence for your business, there is a high chance that you will not be visible online. Right now, if you haven’t established a Google+ presence, then you are certainly behind the competition.
So what are the features of the Google+ Dashboard? According to Googler Pavni Diwanji, the Google+ Dashboard performs the following four functions.
- Allows you to update all business information from a single Overview tab on your page. This includes website URLs, business hours, phone numbers, etc. When you update your information, Google+ will make the changes at Maps, Search, and Google+.
- Monitor all of your Google+ notifications, page managers, Hangouts, photos, and videos in one place.
- Access to all your Offers and Google AdWords campaigns.
- And metrics and tracking information on top searches related to your business, locations from which driving directions are requested, and your Google+ post performance data.
I think this could very well become one of your most important analytics tools, especially if you have a presence on Google+ (and you should).
Tags: analytics, google, small business
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | No Comments »
Monday, April 22nd, 2013
Analytics is one of the most important marketing tasks for any organization. If you don’t know how your website is being used and who is it is being used by, then you can’t act on that information. Your marketing will go a lot more smoothly if you have actionable data. That is, whatever you measure can be changed. Whatever you don’t measure can’t be changed.
Real time analytics has its own advantages. It’s just not enough to know that you got 10,000 unique visitors last month. That doesn’t tell you what’s happening on your website right now.
One reason why real time analytics is important is because you can see who is on your website right now, where they are from, which pages they are viewing, and what actions they are taking. With that information, if you need to present specific information to target those real time visitors better, then you can make the necessary changes as you need to.
Another reason real time analytics is important is because you can track visitors and make changes to your marketing on the spot if you need to.
Let’s say you just kicked off a new social media campaign. How will you know it’s working if you can’t monitor real time information? By looking at your metrics in real time, you can see if your social media campaign is getting off to a good start. You can see it working right before your very eyes. If it’s not working, you can tweak it at the very moment you realize it isn’t working and keep on going.
Tags: analytics, metrics, real time analytics, Social Media
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | No Comments »
Thursday, March 28th, 2013
More and more, search marketers are seeing “(not provided)” in their Google analytics associated with keywords they are tracking. This is frustrating for most of us, but it doesn’t have to be the end of your keyword tracking. There are other ways to mine the data that is important to you.
One way you can measure traffic by keyword – though admittedly it isn’t perfect – is to track the traffic for your landing pages instead.
Measuring Landing Page Traffic
If you’ve done a good job of optimizing your website’s landing pages, then each page should be optimized for one or two keywords. But no more than that. So how can you use those landing pages to measure traffic for your keywords?
Let’s say you have four landing pages optimized around five different keywords, like this:
- Landing page 1 is optimized for keywords A and B
- Landing page 2 is optimized for keyword C
- Landing page 3 is optimized for keywords D and E
- Landing page 4 is optimized for keywords C and E
Your task is to find out how much traffic you are getting for each of your keywords based on the traffic you are getting for the landing pages. So how do you do that?
Let’s say each of the landing pages received this much traffic last month: Landing page 1 = 1,000 visitors; landing page 2 = 1,500 visitors; landing page 3 = 500 visitors; landing page 4 = 2,500 visitors.
One way to break down your visitor count per keyword is to split the traffic count evenly for each keyword associated with a single landing page. So, on landing page 4, each keyword would receive half the traffic count – 1,250 visitors. You could then ascertain that keyword C received approximately 2,750 visits last month (1,500 + 1,250).
That’s probably not very accurate, but it could be close. The problem is, the more traffic you receive for each landing page, the less accurate this measurement is going to be.
Historical Keyword Traffic Measurements
Another way is to go back through your history. If you have access to historical records, then you could take a look at the last known traffic numbers for each keyword you are tracking. If you know, for instance, that keyword A had 800 visitors at last count and keyword B had 400 at last count, then the ratio is 2:1 in favor of keyword A. You could assume the same ratio holds and you could split the traffic numbers for landing page 1 accordingly.
Again, this likely isn’t an accurate measurement, but it can give you some idea as to how much traffic you could be getting for each of your keywords. It sure beats flying in the dark.
Tags: analytics, keywords, landing pages, SEO, traffic
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | No Comments »
Friday, March 15th, 2013
There’s a company in Palo Alto, California that is calling itself “Google Analytics for the real world.” The company’s name is Euclid. I think this is a sublime idea.
Euclid collects data for retail businesses using smartphone technology to track consumer movement. Here’s how it works, in a nutshell:
Euclid installs sensors in retailers’ locations that can measure how many people walked by a store, how many walked in and for how long they stayed based on when their smartphones emit a kind of radar searching for wireless Internet signals.
The incredible thing about that is it allows retail store owners an opportunity to use actionable data that, before now, they haven’t had access to. If you know how many people pass by your store without entering, then you can work on ways to draw those people into your store – and track your results. An increase in store traffic after a few merchandising or promotional efforts and you’ll know your marketing campaign is working.
You can do the same thing with in-store traffic. Are people browsing and leaving without purchasing? Maybe you need to run a few store specials to encourage more buying. You can track your results to see if it is working.
This is powerful retail technology and a very clever use of smartphones for tracking purposes. Brick and mortar retail businesses now have access to some of the same tracking technology that online businesses have enjoyed for years.
Tags: analytics, retail, tracking
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 12th, 2013
Pinterest has introduced analytics so that businesses can see who are pinning images on their websites and which images are being pinned. The catch is that you have to be using Pinterest as a business.
The first step to using Pinterest Analytics is to switch to the new look. Yes, Pinterest now has a new look. It’s not a lot different than the old look, but it is a little sleeker. Secondly, you have to verify your website. That’s pretty simple. You download a file and upload it to your server. As an alternative, you can copy a line of code and add it to your index page as a meta tag.
Among the metrics you can track using Pinterest Analytics include:
- How many people have pinned your website
- How many people have seen the pins that originated on your site
- How many people have visited your website from Pinterest
I believe this is just a start. I expect Pinterest to improve upon its analytics platform over time. But one thing is clear. Businesses have been wanting to see this information for some time. So, kudos to Pinterest for answering the queries of businesses that use its service.
If you own and operate a business online and you use Pinterest, then enjoy the new Pinterest Analytics. Social media just got better.
Tags: analytics, Pinterest, Social Media
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | No Comments »
Thursday, February 21st, 2013
Whether you are a big business executive, middle manager, or a small business owner, you’d be hard pressed to succeed at SEO (or any Internet marketing) without the use of analytics. You could say that analytics are the eyes and ears of the marketing department.
You may have heard something along the lines of, “You can’t change what you don’t measure.” It’s an old marketing truth that is still relevant.
Analytics measures results. When you start a new marketing campaign – whether it be search engine optimization, social media marketing, paid advertising, or something else – analytics helps you determine whether your marketing efforts are delivering results. You can measure success. Sometimes that success is realized as an ROI and sometimes it’s simply seen in light of meeting or exceeding the intended non-monetary goal.
In any case, you can’t perform an online marketing task without measuring your efforts, and that means results.
So what do you measure? That is another topic of discussion. Many social media marketers are stuck on measuring Likes, tweets, and shares, but is that what you really should be measuring? How about the number of links you’ve acquired, or the number of unique visitors?
Most of the time, you want to keep your analytics focused on end result data. That may or may not be ROI-related data.
For instance, if you are engaging in a new SEO campaign, maybe you want to move a particular keyword up from page 3 of the SERPs to page 1. That might or might not result in an increase in ROI, but if you move up far enough in the search results, then you should see an increase in traffic to your website. If not, then maybe it isn’t a profitable keyword.
Analytics are important for any marketing. If you can’t measure your results, then you don’t know if your successful or not.
Tags: analytics, online marketing, roi, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | No Comments »
Monday, January 28th, 2013
Topsy is still in beta, but it’s still a cool tool.
What makes Topsy such a great tool are two things: It’s simplicity, and it’s practical diversity.
The home page shows a search box that allows you to conduct a search for any topic using two social networks – Google+ and Twitter. You can also search for information by specific vertical: Links, Tweets, Photos, Videos, Experts, and Trending. But that’s not the best part.
After your search results page has loaded, you can narrow your search by time (past 30 days, past 7 days, past day, past 2 hours, past 1 hour).
Click over to the Social Analytics tab and you can compare search data on three specific search terms. That’s a powerful tool. And you can do that for the past day, week, two weeks, and 30 days.
If you want to see what the competition is up to, you can do that too. That makes the Topsy social analytics tool very valuable for businesses. Right now, you can get started with a free trail.
I don’t endorse all social media tools, but if I see one that looks useful, practical, and simple enough for anyone to use, then I don’t mind recommending it. Topsy looks like a great tool to use no matter what industry you are in.
Tags: analytics, social analytics, Social Media, social media tool
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »
Friday, December 28th, 2012
For the longest time Google Analytics was the only free open source analytics program. At the very least, it was the best of breed so to use any other was virtual suicide. Many online marketers opted to use a paid analytics program so they could keep their information private and away from Google’s eyes, or they had other reasons. But there is a new alternative to Google Analytics that is free and open source and is picking up speed.
It’s called Piwik.
Piwik has some pretty awesome features that should make any online marketer jump at the chance to demo the software. Features include:
- Full ownership of your data
- Ability to generate e-mail reports in HTML and PDF formats
- Unlimited users, unlimited websites
- Custom login panel
- Delete old data you don’t use
- URL and IP blocking
- First party and third party cookies available
- Export your data in a variety of formats, including Excel, PHP, Json, and XML
- Compatible with a variety of servers, including Windows, Apache, Linux, IIS, MacOS, Solaris, and more
Piwik is so flexible you can install it on your own server or host it on Piwik’s servers. They also have a Developer Zone and a community forum, so you can get technical help when you need it.
Am I saying Piwik is the solution you need? No. I am saying it’s a useful alternative to Google Analytics, if you are in the market for one.
Tags: analytics, google analytics, website analytics
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | 8 Comments »
Friday, July 20th, 2012
Facebook recently made a couple of relatively quiet announcements regarding its analytics product Insights and how Reach is measured on brand pages.
- The first change has to do with how Reach is measured. Facebook said that Reach going forward will be determined by a page visitor who scrolls down and actually loads a news item. In other words, it wasn’t measured this way before so it could mean that Reach for most pages will down as a result of this change.
- However, the other change may increase your Reach considerably. Facebook Insights will now also measure mobile views of your page. And that just makes you wonder why mobile views wasn’t measured before, but they weren’t. Suffice it to say that they weren’t. And your Insights analytics will likely reflect that going forward.
These are major announcements. You’d think they would have got a lot more attention. But they passed relatively quietly. So what do they mean?
First, they mean that Facebook needs to be more open about its analytics policy. A lot of marketers are relying on accurate information to make decisions regarding their Facebook marketing. They need to ensure the information is as accurate as possible.
The second thing it means is that your historical analytics data isn’t accurate. Don’t try to rely on it.
After that, I hope you’re getting a lot of positive engagement on your Facebook page.
Tags: analytics, facebook, Facebook Insights, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments »
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