Google Analytics

I came across a neat Google Analytics widget app called "Polaris" (see screen shots above). Its cross platform and sits on your desktop. Easy install with the free version giving you access to one profile. If you have multiple profiles, you need to pay $15/year which is cheap if you have more than one website or blog. Just for the convenience alone, its worth installing. Check out the features:

• Overview of total visits, pageviews and other useful metrics.
• Switch between different date ranges.
• The visits reports gives you a day by day view on a nice chart.
• 8 different report modes.
• Google Maps report capability.
• Referring sites report provides a list with the top 25 referring sites.
• Which pages perform best with the top content report.
• Keywords report shows you which keywords are used mostly on organic searches.
• If you have one or more goals defined, this reports shows you a quick overview on how they are performing.

It literally takes about 5 minutes to install. This is a perfect example of how a simple little desktop widget comes in handy when your boss is on the phone asking you for quick metric data.

Posted by Jack Peterson at 10:16 AM

Is There a Scarcity of Good Marketing Today?

I'm beginning to think so. Bottom line: Good marketing = convert the leads into sales.The only marketing that has moved me in the last couple of years is Social Media optimization. Look for Social Media to infiltrate CRM applications. The CRM industry is just beginning to leverage the OpenSocial APIs. Look for it soon. Get on the bus people.

Posted by Jack Peterson at 7:31 PM

How Not To Ruin Your Brand On Twitter

Don't........

1. Twitter about how drunk you were last night. You will ruin your brand name. Bottom line = don’t get to personal. Think of Twitter more like a blog.
2. Don't Twit your everyday micro actions. No one cares if you just went to the bathroom or thinking about a dream you had last night.
3. If you can’t Twit your thoughts in 140 characters.....create a blog!
4. Don't get to "into" Twitter i.e., it consumes your life and you never leave the house.
5. Don't use profanity in your Tweets. Never.

This is just a very short list. I'm beginning to see these trends among professionals that I'm following. If it’s a complete distraction I just "unfollow" them and their off my radar. Just be a Pro. Own you brand online and don't get distracted. Don't push your business and SPAM at every opportunity. Post quality sound bites and interesting links. Use tinyurl.com for those long URL's. Also, don’t ask for more followers. If you tweet quality content, follows shall come!

Posted by Jack Peterson at 4:36 PM

Drive Your Traffic Home with Content

My best advice for new website owners: Just write!

It doesn’t matter how much content. Just write good, quality, sticky content each day. Whether it’s a short paragraph or a 500 word article. Content is king, especially when first starting out. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the SEO tricks and page optimization guidelines. Just write. New, fresh content increases search engine rankings (SERPs) and traffic as well as getting quality links from other sites. If there’s not enough relevant content for your brand or business, it pretty much defeats the purpose of having a website in the first place.

Posted by Jack Peterson at 8:28 PM

"Buy a Good Blender, Save Your Life"

Should have been the title of a great article I read today online regarding buying a real quality "sturdy" blender that could stand up to crushing vegetables, ice, fruits, time and time again. The article was centered on the subject of "plant-based" diets and how you could make green smoothies filled with all these ingredients like spinach, wheat grass, blueberries, etc., taste great. The conclusion was that these "smoothies" would save your life by lowering blood pressure, cholesterol, as well as diabetes. Pretty logical conclusion if you researched this a bit and cut out red meat.

The problem I had with this article was the subject title. The subject title was "plant-base diets" = BORING. If your going to catch and bring in the "eyeballs" online, you need to grab (online marketing 101) the reader by the balls and reel them in (this is also true with search engine optimization). If I were searching for ways to lower my cholesterol, I want an article to jump out at me. "Plant-based diet" doesn't do it. I need something NOW. Something urgent. I need an article title that is catchy, curious, creative to lure me in. The click conversion result could be quadrupled compared with a boring, generic title. I ended up emailing the author of the article 4 weeks ago and gave him my input. Great article! Boring title. We went back and forth and eventually he changed it to "Buy a Good Blender, Save Your Life" and guess what? The article views went up ten-fold. He thanked me as his payment for the article is based on monthly views/clicks. A simple change to an article or blog title can mean a difference between 10 veiws and 100 views.

Posted by Jack Peterson at 8:13 PM