June 8th, 2010 — Online Business
It is no revelation that content plays the major part on the Internet. Whether that is video, text or images content is what the end user goes online to get.
With a good content strategy any company stands a fair chance of competing for the top spots in the Search Engines in their chosen speciality. This in turn will result in visits to the website, but what happens then?
The “what” is pretty easy to answer, if I ask for a show of hands of how many of you are using an analytics tool such as Google Analytics to capture information on your website visitors, I would expect the majority of you to raise your hand. For many this is as far as it goes, viewing standard reports for Unique Visitors, Pageviews, Conversion and Bounce Rates.
Some may take that extra step and start segmenting their data, looking at how visitors from particular sources behave or at visitors that perform a particular action. This is great stuff and combining this with marketing costs from different channels you can easily track Return on Investment from each channel. But this still only tells you what someone did, what they clicked on, what they typed in search, what page they left the website on, what path they followed and so on. And that’s enough “Whats” for anyone!
Why they did, what they did, on your website is the critical question. Someone that views 20 pages before leaving your site could have been enthralled by your content, it could just as easily mean they were lost and couldn’t find what they were looking for or that your navigation isn’t very usable. The same could be said of visitors that have a higher than average “Time on Site”. Similarly, just because someone left your site after viewing one page doesn’t mean your site isn’t engaging (although I would be concerned if the percentage of people doing this was high), it could just mean they found exactly what they were looking for straight away!
Getting actionable insight from your data is the key to data driven marketing and a competitor beating website. So it is no surprise that research by Econsultancy and Lynchpin shows that companies are spending more money on staff to analyse web data than they are on the analytics tools themselves.
Now that’s okay for big brands but “Lack of budget and resources is the most significant barrier to an effective online measurement strategy, according to 57% of companies surveyed” the report also says. So for the rest of us it’s time to roll up our sleeves and dust down the calculators, or grab a copy of Avinash Kaushik’s latest book Web Analytics 2.0.
June 1st, 2010 — Online Business
The iPad is now available in the UK, another gloriously designed object of desire from Apple. As with all products of this type nobody actually “needs” one. But then again the lure of the latest piece of “kit” is as irresistible to a Web Geek as a shiny object is to a magpie.
So how do you convince your boss that the iPad is a must buy? After all it wasn’t that long ago you persuaded him to allow you to trade in the Blackberry for an iPhone!
Here are my top 5 reasons:
- Time efficiency – The iPads instant on means a potential of over 11 hours extra work per year based on a PC start-up of around 3 minutes.
- I can work anywhere – Portability means I can carry my iPad easily wherever I go, I can work when commuting or away on holiday.
- I can work for longer – With it’s extended battery life I would not be limited to the 2-3 hours the battery on my laptop lasts when out of the office.
- Energy saving – Due to the longer battery life I would not use as much electricity charging the iPad compared with a laptop.
- Testing – As the iPad is going to be so popular we need one to test our websites display as expected for our customers.
What valid business arguments do you have for buying an iPad?
May 17th, 2010 — Social Media
There is a lot of discussion over Facebook and privacy currently and how they may not be doing enough to notify it’s users of what is or isn’t being made public.
As an Internet professional where do you stand? As you know, to be able to do your job effectively you will have to use Social Media as part of your work. As such you need to include some personal revelations to ensure you come across as human.
Even if you specialise in Email Marketing or SEO you will still need to integrate Social Media for maximum effect. But how much are you willing to give up? Is your success dependant on this? How can you advise clients or colleagues to do what you’re not willing to?
And really is your privacy at that much risk or is the same fallacy that we faced when e-commerce became popular and the scare stories around rogue companies using your credit card details or not supplying goods. When in reality most credit card details that are used illegally are obtained off-line. Yes, they may end up being used on-line for fraudulent transactions but the acquisition happened in the off-line world. Personal privacy isn’t that different, if you don’t shred important documents, check that your post hasn’t been tampered with or even vary your daily schedule and route to work!
Personally, I accept that giving up part of my privacy is required by my career choice, in some ways like a celebrity expecting to be photographed when out shopping or on holiday. I rarely mention family, but you’ll find my whereabouts on Foursquare from time to time. You’ll know how often and how far I run in a week if you follow my MapMyRun updates and you’ll also notice my love for chess in from my Twitter lists and occasional Tweets.
But if you didn’t see this part of me then all the ReTweets of Internet related articles, mentions of new beers or wine, company events and other work related stuff would be out of context. I give up some of my privacy not because I want to sell product or my company but because I want to express what I care about and because all of this is the real, Sean Clark.
May 13th, 2010 — Search Engine Optimisation
A lot of importance is put on being number 1, coming first, being better than the rest. But does it really matter?
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats for example came 3rd in the UK General Election, and look at the power they’re are now wielding, or Susan Boyle from Britain’s Got Talent 2009 who is certainly not complaining. But when in the world of “Search” coming second is a different matter!
I’ve just been going through Googles Webmaster tools, a mine of information about your site, which supplements Google Analytics. Specifically what you can now see in Webmaster Tools is the quantity of impressions your keywords or phrases get in the Google search results and the number of clicks they produce. You can also drill down to see how many clicks you get dependant on your position in the search results.
Clicks by position - click for larger view
What you can see from the results is a stark contrast between appearing first or appearing second in Google. If you click on the image for a larger view you’ll see that in both first and second position for this search term my result appeared 590 times. For position one I got 320 clicks but when my result appeared second I only got 73 clicks.
Now lets put that into perspective, say I sold products and that the site had a conversion rate of 2%, click to sale, with an average spend of £50.
- Position 1 becomes worth £320
- Position 2 becomes worth £73
Therefore, being first in the search results can be worth over 4 times as much in terms of revenue with the right keywords or phrases.
May 7th, 2010 — Social Media
As UK politicians look to agree a way forward this weekend we find that this election wasn’t really driven by the Internet as many of us thought it might be. What the Internet did do is allow for the issues to ripple through the electorate rapidly. There were many calls of #fail as late voters were locked out of polling stations and YouTube made prime time election coverage as mobile users beat local TV crews to the scoop.
There was more awareness of the election amongst younger voters leading to record turn outs in some areas. Facebook Groups sprung to life, although a bit late in the day, as status updates announced friends issues with government and policy. Twitter hash tags were fighting for popularity as updates of the nights events were encapsulated, 140 characters at a time.
So the Internet, or indeed Social Media, didn’t topple any government. But it’s immediate nature did allow for the speed of communication many Digital Natives have come to expect. We know the effects Social Media has had on business, we can see the interest it can drum up in once unpopular subject matter. As this method of communication infiltrates the workplace, what will be the expectation of tomorrows managers in terms of communication?
May 6th, 2010 — Online Business
Watching the London Marathon really inspired me this year. All the money raising stories and reasons for people running brought me out in goose bumps, but it wasn’t this that gave me inspiration. It was the winning male athlete Tsegaye Kebede.
Tsegaye is from Ethopia, born in 1987 one of 13 children, 4 years ago he was collecting fire wood and earning less than £0.20 ($0.30) per day. He enjoyed running as a youngster but as you can imagine wasn’t fortunate enough to benefit from professional training. That was until 2006 when he entered the Addis Ababa half marathon and was spotted by a professional athletics coach who invited him to train with them. Winning the Abebe Bikila International Marathon in Addis Ababa later that year.
In 4 years an unknown Ethopian raised himself from poverty to an international athlectics star. Like many Internet start-ups rising from nothing to make a mark on the business world.
But behind Tsegaye, as well as these start-ups, is a huge amount of talent and a great amount of passion. For every Marathon winner and start-up success there are thousands of failures. Other than passion and talent they all have another feature in common, their route to success took time.
Success = Passion x Talent x Time
So why is it that with such an obvious formula, many small businesses expect their online presence to return instant rewards? Why do they expect to be number one in the search engines, have thousands of followers on Facebook & Twitter? Did they hire the best people, did they put their heart into it and did they dedicate enough resource to make it happen?
Most of the time the honest answer is no and the formula fails.
Anyway, the inspiration that drove me to write this post wasn’t quite finished with me, my entry for the 2011 London Marathon has been submitted. I will be using ALL of the components of my formula to ensure I reach my version of success.
April 19th, 2010 — Social Media
Mother Nature has a great way of keeping us in line. Regardless of what we throw at it, nature will always find away to fight back.
This week we have seen an extreme example of natures control over our modern lives. After being warned for years of our excessive CO2 emissions nature has come up with it’s own answer to suppress us, even if it is temporarily. Whilst flights are banned over a large part of Europe, even taking into account the erupting volcano, we are emitting 206,405 tonnes less CO2 per day!
Now I am not suggesting this is part of some spiritual master plan, but the force of nature has been demonstrated in an extreme fashion. Social Media is driven by much the same forces.
The reason Social Media works so well is that it relies on our natural instinct to network, share and collaborate. The minute you start to act unnaturally your behaviour will become disjointed, your discussions forced and you will find it difficult to connect with others in the network.
As a business, brand or individual, trying to be something you are not in any field is bad practise, in Social Media it can be fatal. Act naturally, take part for the benefit of others and your network will flourish. Remember, Nature is the only true Social Media Guru.
April 14th, 2010 — Social Media
Last week I joined 5,000 other people on Twitter whilst watching Members of Parliament discuss the Digital Economy Bill in the House of Commons on BBC iPlayer. A great opportunity, or so I thought, to socialise with like minded individuals and watch our leaders debate the future use of the Internet. Instead I was left feeling like the little boy that didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas.
Now I don’t get involved in politics much, I shout at the TV on Thursday nights with the best of them whilst an MP avoids giving a direct answer on Question Time. But I am not one to join a march or protest. This debate though was about something I hold close to my heart and the thought of the freedom and levelling effect the Internet offers being stripped away stews me up.
One aspect of this Bill was copyright, everyone will have their views on this, but it’s not what concerned me in this debate. My focus was on the threat to our access of the Internet and some of the clauses in this Bill that could see that access taken away. Not even at a personal level though, more from the view of a café, library or other business that offers wireless access as a benefit to it’s customers. The damage to their business that could occur if their Internet access was blocked due to miss-use by a 3rd party. Or even the costs involved for a small business to protect themselves from such an act. Also, the way in which a copyright holder could demand information and issue threatening letters and possibly force disconnection without trial. These seemed draconian methods forced by lobbying.
What then appeared before me was more distressing. Politicians explaining how perpetrators could be tracked, sent letters and disconnected but they had not got a clue what they were talking about. The incomprehension of technical acronyms such as IP address (Internet Protocol) stated as being Intellectual Property address. Using email to track people, no thought of the use of Proxy Servers or other cloaking technology. No idea that not all Peer-to-Peer file sharing is law breaking, it’s a perfectly acceptable way to distribute large files, some even use it for marketing purposes.
There were a few exceptions, Tom Watson MP had done his research and made a stand. Twitter exploded with thousands of Tweets pointing out errors, correcting statements, denouncing British Politics and generally groaning at the farce being played out before them. As the amendments to the Bill were withdrawn and votes inevitably went in favour, many planned the downfall of both major parties and lists appeared of MPs, who had failed to attend or had voted in favour and not contested.
It left me staring dumbly at my PC screen, thinking “what just happened?”. “Did you not here us?”. Of course they didn’t!
The important point being that just because we are on Twitter, and it can be a powerful tool. It will only have affect in that instance if who you are trying to affect can hear what you’re saying. This is applies just as much to MPs in the House of Commons as it does to our prospective customers. You must ensure your target audience can see your message, is using a particular channel or are even interested in what you have to say for it to make a mark.
Otherwise you are left shouting in an empty room.
March 29th, 2010 — Social Media
Why is there such a mixed reaction to Social Media in business? Some of the worlds largest brands have welcomed it with open arms such as Starbucks, using Twitter to generate new ideas. Whilst, smaller companies are totally ignoring the power of this medium, why?
Well it does require some dedication and passion. That’s not to say that companies that do not use Social Media aren’t passionate about what they do, just that they may not communicate that passion well. All companies suffer from communication issues internally to some degree and this often reflects in their outward communication to customers too.
Lack of understanding of the technology. When something is a “web thing”, it often does not get regarded as a serious business tool. Sometimes seen as a fad, Social Media has technophobes running in all directions. In fact what is happening in this space online has been happening off-line in other ways for years. The Internet based tools just aid and speed up the process and in some ways have refined and improved it by allowing better feedback from customers.
Over estimating the resource required. Managing Social Media for your business does not mean you need to spend all day on Twitter or continually posting on Facebook. In fact if you apply the same time management principles you do to your email inbox you should only need to check in a couple of times a day for 10 minutes or so. You can even have multiple people managing the same accounts.
Fear of the unknown has always been a commanding factor when it comes to influencing peoples actions. But it still amazes me that business executives willing to invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in a new offline project find the Internet so difficult to comprehend.
March 19th, 2010 — Social Media
If you’re still trying to figure out how you can use location based Social Media to promote your brand then Foursquare may have the answer. Co-founder Dennis Crowley talking at South by South West suggested ways that they may be able to help.
They are now looking for brands to have their own badges within the Foursquare application. Currently Foursquare users earn badges for performing certain tasks. For example, you get the Gym Rat badge for checking in at 5 places tagged “gym” in the last 30 days. You could reward your customers with your own badge for visiting your shop, restaurant, bar or even for visiting outlets that sell your product.
How’s that for building loyalty and traffic from online to offline. You could reward a customer with a badge for visiting X amount of times in a month and all badge owners could then get a discount from then on to encourage them to continue visiting.
This works for brands of all sizes, as you may suspect Foursquare are talking with bigger brands but they are sure to be open to discuss opportunities with any business currently. You can make suggestions for your badges directly at Foursquare.
