I love infographics… This one from Marketo give some great info on Content Marketing.  At a quick glance, it gets your brain juices flowing about why you might consider content marketing a viable part of your marketing mix.

Some takeaways:

• 51% of companies interviewed in this study said they use a blog for content marketing. Are you blogging about your business, your products, your services, your customers and your knowledge areas?
• 55% of companies interviewed are providing case studies as part of their marketing content strategy. If you can demonstrate the success of your product, it makes it much easier to buy.
• 43% of companies interviewed are writing white papers and sharing them online as part of their marketing content strategy.  You already know your business, and chances are people are looking for the knowledge you have.  White Papers are a great way to spread some love.  You don’t need to charge for them, your visitors and downloaders will thank you for that by coming back to your site over and over.

Not suprising the biggest challenges most companies face in content marketing:

• They are concerned they are not providing the right type of content or value
• They are concerned they are not producing enough content.

I got a few other interesting nuggets out of it, but have a look for yourself – click on it to view the enlarged version on Marketo’s website.

Click to view the original enlarged version.

A simple concepts, and a bit of review…  Chances are, you’ve placed some content on your web site or blog and made it available for your users to download.  If that is the case, I’m guessing you believe your content to be useful to your audience (and it probably is).

Wouldn’t it be helpful to know exactly how many times your content is, in fact, downloaded?    Here is the simple code to install on your site (assuming you are using Google Analytics) to track the each download event of each file:

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/downloads/_custom‘); ”

This code is placed inside the href tag and after the link file name.   The portion noted in red above ‘custom’ is your way of differentiating between types of content you may offer up on your site for more granular tracking.  (eg. white_papers, case_studies, etc.)

So a completed link might look like this:

<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/downloads/white_paper’); “>

Things to think about if your download counts are low:

• Is the document download link strategically placed on the page or hidden within the content?
• Is the document link labeled appropriately (might consider a call-out)
• Is the actual landing page where the download is offered well structured and search optimized?
• Is the landing page buried several clicks deep on your site?

These are some areas for trial and error to improve visibility of your downloadable content.  Try to modify one of all of the above to improve exposure to your content.

Our web content should serve a purpose for our audience – that being said, we need to know how it’s performing.

In my Internet Marketing and Social Media travels at Cazbah, I’ve been cruising along and trying to come up with new ideas on how to tie together all social media outlets on a Facebook fan page without having to add a whole slew of new tabs that you don’t end up seeing anyway.  How many users actually click on that little arrow to see what other tabs are available?

I also wanted a way to introduce any potential new customers to the company at a quick glance – in other words – where are all the places I can learn more about this customer online?  If a user knows nothing about my customer and their first encounter is via the Facebook fan page, I want to give them instant access to everything so they can quickly become immersed in all that my customer has to offer.

Custom Facebook Fan Page Boxes using Static FBML.

The Static FBML application on Facebook gave me a way to do this.  While this application does have some limitations, I was able to use the functionality of adding a new FBML Box on my customers page to custom craft the list of links I wanted to present.

To make it easily recognizable to the visitor, I added in familiar thumbnail images using embedded image links from Flickr (since you cannot upload photos directly to use in your FBML code).

It’s basic html table code, and I’m told there is a better way to do this (eg CSS) – but this is relatively straightforward to setup.

Since Facebook requires us to work within the confines of their architecture – it’s important that we learn to make the most of the tools and applications made available to us.  I am hopeful that big changes are on the horizon for how business can better use Facebook, but for now, this provides a solution that I am happy with.  (View live example.)

Also see “Adding Vertical Response Opt-In Forms to Facebook Pages” for another way to customize your Facebook fan page.

Google Analytics recently rolled out the new “Intelligence” section of Analytics – adding more features to how we track and manage web conversions.  I thought I’d take a few minutes to show you the basics on how to set them up and why you might want to use them.

The more we know about our web site’s performance, the better we can plan for upcoming drops in traffic (based on past trends), or prepare for increased traffic with successful marketing campaigns.

Annotations can be an effective tool in placing reminders right into your analytical data that you can refer back to when pulling historical data.  A couple of examples of where you might do this:

• Large/Sudden drop in traffic due to perhaps a power outage – note the power outage so a year from now when you look at historical date you remember that.
• A jump in traffic could be due to an email campaign, press release, blog post, new product intro – note the specific event in your Google analytics account.
• When you are working with tools like Google AdWords you often make budget changes, create new Ad Groups, pause Ad Groups.  Creating an annotation is a good idea to track these events.
• Perhaps you launch a full site redesign that includes all new content that will need to be re-indexed by the search engines.  Create an annotation.

There are many reasons to create annotations in Google Analytics as they are quick ‘at-a-glance’ checkpoint when looking at your data.  Below is a quick snap-shot of annotations and how to create them.

The above image shows the same data point and how to view/create annotations.  Here’s the breakdown:

Image A shows the data point (date) where there was a jump in traffic.  Notice in the image the little thought bubble at the bottom. This is the indicator that lets you know there is an Annotation associated with that date.

Image B shows what you will see if you mouse-over the annotation bubble.  It shows you the date, how many site visits on that date, and how many annotations have been created for that date.  (If you have clicked on that, you’ll see your annotations just below this graph).

Image C is what you see when you click on the annotation bubble – this is where you get the option to “Create New Annotation.”

Once you’ve clicked on “Create New Annotation” you have the option to insert text associated with the event you want to track for that date.  (See image below)  It’s pretty straight forward – just put in a very brief description of the event you are tracking.  “BLOG POST:  Creating Google Annotations” would be the description I would create if I created one for this post.   Save it, and your done!

Creating Annotations in Google Analytics

I am finding Google Analytics Annotations to be a good tool to use when doing specific tasks related to Social Media tasks.  I know we use monitoring and tracking tools for Social Media, and Google Analytics was not built specifically for that, but often times customers want that quick ‘at-a-glance” view of how things are going, how a Facebook change may have been successful or generated new fans, if a blog post drove traffic to your site, etc.

I hope this was helpful.

Having spent the time today at Cazbah teaching myself how to add an email opt-in form to a Facebook page from Vertical Response – I found myself getting a little frustrated.  Now that I’ve got it figured out – I’m going to save you tons of time in digging for the info (it’s not altogether straight forward for the basic user).

Assuming you have a business page on Facebook – AND – you are using Vertical Response for email marketing and list segmentation, you can create a tab on your Facebook page that will invite your page fans and visitors to sign up for (or opt-in to) emails from your company, group, etc…  My assumption is that other email marketing tools will work too, but I have only tested VR at this point.

So to start out – head on over to Vertical Response and create your new list.  I recommend creating a list that will store only the opt-ins from Facebook.   After all, we want to know what conversions (if any) are coming from our Facebook pages.

To add a new list – follow the steps under Lists and then “Add New List” in your Vertical Response account.  You then need to create an opt-in form just for that list.  Follow the instructions to create your opt-in form and copy and past that form script into a text editor like notepad – we’ll need that when we get our Facebook page tab ready to go.

Note: When creating that new list and opt-in form, I do recommend using a custom thank you page that can be added to your Google Analytics Goals.

Now here’s where I got hung up – you need to add a customizable tab to your Facebook page, so before you can do that, you have to install the Static FBML application to your Facebook Account.  (I am now a fan of this application since I know how to use it

To find Static FBML, click on the “Edit Page” link in your Facebook page and scroll down to Browse More Applications.  Click on the Static FBML link (shown at right here).

This will take you to the application page on Facebook.  You will need to add it to your Facebook page before you proceed.

The nice thing is, if you manage multiple Facebook pages you can add it to all of them at once.  Scroll through the list and select the page(s) you want to add it to and we’ll continue on.

Once you’ve done that, head back to your Facebook page and click on “Edit Page” – don’t worry we are almost done!  Once you are in your Edit screen you should scroll down and see the Static FBML link you’ll want to click on Edit.

Note:  Have your text editor open where you’ve saved your form code so you can copy it to Facebook.

Change your title and then simply copy in your form script and then add any additional content.  Note that FBML does not like <html> <body> and <head> tags, so you can format tables, paragraphs, etc – but avoid those few tags.

UPDATE (2-19-2010): Due to Facebook updates – you’ll need to add a “&” to the end of your FORM METHOD String to enable this feature to work.  I had to go back to the Vertical Response Lounge to get this resolved (which by the way is a great resource).

<form method=”post” action=”http://oi.vresp.com?fid=26230b1027&” target=…..>

In the completed example below I have included a basic table format with some additional content to let users know what they’ll be receiving once they opt-in:

There you go!  You have just learned (much quicker than I did), how to add email opt-in forms to your Facebook pages.   (See the live example of Cazbah customer Turnbull Manufacturing.)  This Static FBML application can do much more than just adding email opt-in forms.  My next experiment will be with promotional content and coupons – but the possibilities are limitless (within the confines of the application) as to how to utilize this application.

Here’s a quick an easy “how to” on adding Google Analytics tracking code to your blogger site.

First – if you have  a main web site for your business that your blog is supporting – hopefully you already have an Analytics account set up for tracking your site traffic.

Assuming that’s the case you will be adding a new profile to your already existing Analytics account so we can track your blog traffic.   We covered how to add profiles in our post about applying IP Filters to our analytical data (which you’ll want to do for your blog also).

Got your profile added?  Now grab your analytics tracking code from Google Analytics (copy it into Notepad or some text editor) – and run on over to Blogger.   Under “Layout” in your Blogger account select the Page Elements option (which should like the image shown below)

See that “Add A Gadget” field along the bottom of the image?  That represents your blog footer and is where you’ll want to input your Google Analytics Tracking Code.

Click on that “Add A Gadget” link and select “Html/JavaScript” (shown here)

Clicking on the blue “+” will open a window.  DO NOT enter a title in the Title field.  Simply copy your tracking code from NotePad and paste into this Content field of this pop-up window.  Click SAVE and then it should take you back to your layout screen and show now show an HTML/JavaScript item in your blog footer.

For good measure SAVE your changes on this screen as well and then go back to Analytics.  Lets verify that your tracking code is installed properly.  Click on “Edit” in your Google Analytics profile.  When the profile edit screen opens, look to the top right for a link that says “Check Status”  - once you click on that – Google Analytics will check the tracking code you just installed on your blog and will either deliver an error message, or tell you that your tracking code has been installed properly.

Those are the basics.  If you need help with setting up your blog in general, or are not quite sure how to get your Google Analytics Tracking Code – drop me an email.  I can answer any questions you may have about installing your tracking code, setting up your IP filters and so on.

Good luck and happy blogging!

Read more on IP Filtering through Google Analytics.

Title grab you did it?  That’s a common thing I am hearing from my customers coming off the holiday shopping season.  Well maybe not in those exact words, but here is what I am hearing starting off this new year…

“My traffic is way down on my site, what is going on?”  or “You are not doing what you said you’d do in marketing my web site.”

First of all… acknowledging that site traffic is down in December is only part of the picture.  The common misconception in using Google Analytics that I encounter with my clients is that they look at small snapshots of data without any reference to past trends and make major assumptions about their website’s overall performance.  In some circumstances that may be correct, however people tend to panic when perhaps they see a drop in traffic without looking at the big picture.

To many, this topic is seemingly adolescent – this being basic knowledge of using Analytics – but I write this for the small business guy who gets worried at the slightest change in traffic who maybe has a bit of tunnel vision.

So when you say to me – you suck – I say to you – chill out and consider this.

Yes – for sure your traffic was down in December of 2009 from November of 2009 – BUT your traffic is up 30% in December 2009 compared to your traffic in December of 2008.  Additionally, your site may have less traffic than last month, but of that less traffic, you converted more of it than you did last year.  Are you following me?   Here are a few graphs to demonstrate:

Comparing Traffic Trends Year Over Year

The green line above is showing site visits in 2008, and the blue shows site traffic in 2009.  This specific business typically has cycles of higher traffic and the traffic trends for the two years compared are almost identical, the only difference:  the average increase for each month compared to the previous year is up an average of 30%.  So while the traffic was down in December of 2009, it was still up from this time last year.

Next – take a look at your goal conversions:

Goal Conversion Comparison Year Over Year

Again – green is 2008 – so for this period of time, there was clearly an increase in site traffic conversions (completed goals) over the previous year.  This is a great measure of success for a site if the goals are meaningful and can be associated with revenue.

You can check the year over year comparisons (or even month over month) on a variety of data points using Google Analytics like Bounce Rate, Exit Rate, Page Views and more.  Simply select the “Compare to Past” option (shown here) when selecting your date range.  By default it will prefill the past date range to the previous period of time just before the current date range selected (so if I’ve selected a 30 day period it will default to the previous 30 days).

Usually by this time, the customer has calmed down and understands that their site has common trends when you compare specific time ranges over previous years.  Furthermore, when they see the increase in conversions they feel better.  One would think they’d be more aware of the conversions and revenue generated by their website – but in reality – many small business are a ‘one man shop’ and their method of tracking revenue is generally somewhat antiquated.

So I encourage you – the small business owner to have all the information before making any assumptions, and if you have a dedicated Internet Marketing Strategist – be sure to ask the right questions.

BTW if you are not yet using Google Analytics on your website – you should be.  There is so much to learn if you only listen to what your web site has to say.

A1-Webmarks…. if you are like me, you’ve never heard of it before and just think – jeesh!  another site to have to worry about. So let’s check it out.

At first glance I see that it was very recently added to Add-This (mid-late October of 2009).   They define as “Webmark” as follows:

A webmark marks a location on the web, just like a bookmark marks a location in a book. It’s a web page, whose address you want to remember for some reason. Webmarks are often called bookmarks or favorites, especially when the webmark itself is stored offline on your PC.

Furthermore… A1 stands for:  Anywhere, 1 Click Away. If that’s true, then in theory I already like this service because I feel I’ve got bookmarks on sites all over the darn place.  Here’s what they tell me they claim they offer:

• Hierarchical tagging of webmarks to assign them to a topic
• Instant access to your most often used webmarks (your favorites)
• Alphabetic indexing of your webmarks
• Personal evaluation of webmarks
• Private webmarks and private comments, visible only to you
• Webmarks to password-protected areas or to your local intranet or files
• Webmark search
• Periodic checks of your webmarks to let you know, which pages are no longer accessible
• Import and export of webmarks

And the social aspect of what they say they offer:

• Sophisticated evaluation of the community’s webmark evaluations to show you “more webmarks like that” for all of your topics
• Most popular webmarks amongst all A1-Webmarks users, separated by language
• Most popular tags and their corresponding most popular webmarks
• Access to the public webmarks and public comments of other A1-Webmarks users
• Publishing lists of interesting webmarks on some specific topic
• Rating of lists and list entries
• Making proposals for new list entries

At first glance it appears to be much like the other Social Bookmarking sites out there, but not as “pretty” or dolled-up.  The interface loads quickly, but it also includes banner ads.

I see the advantages of this site with the ratings and evaluations of links, rather than just ranking based on number of bookmarks.  I see the advantage of some of the organization and tagging methods behind the ‘webmarks’ and such.  It looks like it’s a good service that may be up-and-coming.

I have to say personally for me.  I probably, at most, will be a very basic user of A1-Webmarks for the time being – only because of the time factor, and the number of sites I already need to manage.  I may down the road decide to import and organize my bookmarks fully into this service, but for today I will pass.

As it rates/ranks and allows you to vote on webmarks and lists, it gives no point of reference on how those approval rating are calculated, the number of “members” or people voting.  So until I learn more – I have added a few basic ‘webmarks’ that will create incoming links to my favorite sites, and we’ll leave it that.

Know more about A-1 Webmarks than I do?  Please leave a comment and tell me why you like/dislike it.

Good Morning my internet friends!   It’s time to stop and talk about the importance of growing your website traffic versus the importance of improving your site content to increase conversions (Yet Again).

If you are the proud owner of a new website – and by new I mean less than 18 months old – then I hope you are working on improving your website and listening to what it’s telling you.  This is an area of internet I am very passionate about, and also very frustrated with why people don’t get it!

During the infancy of your new website – you should be watching your top landing pages and their bounce rates.  You should also be looking for ways to grow your conversions. Depending on your website, a conversion may either be an online sale, or an online quote requested, or even just a contact form or survey submission. Every online business varies in what they are trying to accomplish.   While your website is ‘young’ the traffic will be less, so you’ll want to work on converting more… then as your traffic grows – your conversions should increase accordingly.

Google Analytics does a fantastic job of letting know how people are finding you, where they are entering your site and where they are exiting your site. Your bounce rate can tell you a lot about why people are not buying or converting on your web site. If your top performing keyword and it’s related landing pages have a bounce rate or 90% – you have to take action. This means that 90% of the users visiting under that search term are NOT converting!    Why would not want to try to grab a hold of some of that traffic.

I find that people get wrapped around the axle about meta tags and “SEO”.   Let me again reiterate – search engine optimization is only a SMALL part of effectively marketing your website. STOP! Furthermore the common theme I get from customers is “I just need more traffic”. NO! You need to work on improving your site so you convert your existing traffic – as you make these improvements, your traffic will naturally increase.

You can have all the traffic in the world, if it’s not converting and your web site is not an effective sales toolfor your organization – your traffic is useless.

You gotta work your web site people! You have to listen to it, and be willing to constantly improve it. If you do that – you can reach markets that you might have never otherwise enjoyed.

The internet can and will help you grow your business, if you are willing to grow with your website. This post may sound like a rant, and it is. I just want you to get it! Stop focusing on traffic and seo, and start worrying about what matters!

Google Analytics Tip for this week.  Use the filter tools to exclude traffic from certain IP addresses to your Analytics reports to get a better (and more realistic) picture of your web site’s traffic. Here are few key things to remember when doing this, and some basic Google Analytics set up instructions.

Filtering IP addresses can be a useful tool if you are working with a 3rd party web developement or internet marketing firms.  You will want to filter out specific IP address, as chances are your internet vendors/partners may access your site often.  In addition, you may want to filter out your own company’s IP address so you are not tracking internal visits to your site.  If your staff is using your website as a sales tool, or every employee has your website set as their default home page in their web browser, this can skew your web’s traffic and visitors data.

REMEMBER: If you apply a filter to an account, the information that get’s filtered out of your Analytics web reports cannot be retrieved. Filters delete the filtered data.  You will want to create a duplicate profile for your website in Analytics and leave one profile completely unfiltered to maintain all of your web stats in one profile, and then apply filters to additional profiles to segragate your information.

Under the Analytics Settings screen, once you have created your main profile, you can create a duplicate profile to apply your filters by clicking on “Add A Profile” and then entering the same domain setup information.   (Your tracking code should already be installed if you have successfully created your main profile.)    Tip:  When you name the duplicate profile name it something that will help you easily distinguish what you are filtering.  For example a profile with IP filtering might be “Profile Name – Filtered IPs”.

Once you’ve got your duplicate profile set up, you can now apply your filters.  From your Analytics Setting screen, select the profile you want to filter, and click on “Edit”.

Click on “+ Add Filter” (shown below).

On the filter setup screen you’ll name your filter, and select “Exclude all traffic from an IP address” (shown below).  If you need help finding your IP address, use http://iplocation.net.

I hope you find this information helpful.  You might be suprised how much internal traffic is being logged for your site, giving you a false sense of a high traffic web site.  Additionally, this IP filter will give you a much better sense of your top performing site pages, and your page specific bounce rates.

Good luck and happy web analyzing!