Newspaper Industry Finally taking Advantage of Analytics?

A recent article titled: "Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift Coverage" from the NY times caught my interest this past week. The article explains how some of the top online newspaper publishers are starting to use analytics to better understand the performance of content. While I am glad newspapers are starting to look at their online metrics, it's really surprising how VERY basic the data is that they are looking at. With so many of the traditional offline newspaper businesses losing traction, you'd think they'd go a little deeper with the online data they're looking at. I do like the focus of the Washington Post however, they appear to have a greater investment in their performance metrics and have 120 different people looking at the numbers daily. Below is a summary of where some of the players are heading: Editors at The WallStreet Journal, follow the Web traffic metrics closely. The paper?s top editors begin their morning news meetings with a rundown of data points, including the most popular search terms on WSJ.com, which articles are generating the most traffic and what posts are generating buzz on Twitter. At The Washington Post they like to see metrics such as ? the number of unique visitors to washingtonpost.com, how many articles those visitors view and where on the Web those visitors came from. A red or green marker designates each data point, indicating whether the Web site?s goal for the month on that particular metric has been met. About 120 people in The Post?s newsroom get an e-mail each day laying out how the Web site performed in the closely watched metrics.The New York Times does not use Web metrics to determine how articles are presented, but it does use them to make strategic decisions about its online report, said Bill Keller, the executive editor. ?We don?t let metrics dictate our assignments and play,? he said, ?because we believe readers come to us for our judgment, not the judgment of the crowd. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-09-07 04:38:29</div>

Social Networking Doubling in Growth for Boomers and Seniors

Visits to social networks are growing at a blazing pace and the latest eMarketer article describes the growth across various age groups. You may have heard that there are more grandparents on Facebook than teenagers and with the growth of the 'senior' segment, there definitely appears to be some truth to that statement. What does this mean? You better know your target demographic and you should be ready to implement an age specific marketing message to test across all the different age segments. Compared to the same time last year, below are some of the numbers:18-29 up 10% from 76 to 86%30-49 up 13% form 48 to 61%50-64 nearly doubled from 25 to 47%65+ Doubled from 13 to 26% ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-09-06 08:13:32</div>

Twitter: 145 Million Users and 300K Apps

Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, provides some great insight into Twitter in his latest post "The Evolving Eco System." In the article, Evan highlights the top Twitter apps based on usage as well as how users engage with Twitter across platforms. The top Twitter platforms include: Twitter.com, m.Twitter.com, SMS, Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for BlackBerry, Twitpic, TweetDeck, Echofon, Google Friend Connect and UberTwitter.Evan also adds that Twitter is now over 145 million users strong with an app eco system of over 300,000! ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-09-03 06:50:07</div>

comScore Acquires NedStat for $36.7 Million - Who's Next?

This past year has certainly been the year of analytics acquisitions. First went Omniture, next Coremetrics, then Unica and now NedStat. comScore has acquired Dutch web analytics software: NedStat, to unify their digital management platform. Nedstat went at a price tag of over $36 million. This move by comScore further proves the importance of measurement in online strategy, furthermore analytics as a part of of a holistic strategy which should include things like: voice of customer and competitive intelligence. comScore also purchased mobile analytics company: Nexius earlier this year - another complimentary product to web analytics.Part of the Press Release below:"The acquisition of Nedstat is another important step towards fulfilling our vision of making the Unified Digital Measurement platform the global standard for digital measurement," said Dr. Magid Abraham, comScore President & CEO. "In addition, our clients are asking for a new class of business applications to maximize the monetization of their audiences using the UDM data we already collect."We are excited to join forces with comScore, a recognized global leader in digital measurement," said Michael Kinsbergen, CEO of Nedstat. "comScore's 'Unified Digital Measurement' platform presents a compelling vision of the future of digital measurement, and we are eager to play a vital role in helping to make that vision a reality. We believe that Nedstat web analytics can add substantial value for clients when combined with the existing comScore measurement platform."Upon the acquisition, Nedstat became a wholly owned subsidiary of comScore. Mr. Kinsbergen will be helping in the transition and will continue to be involved by joining comScore's advisory board. In addition, Fred Appelman, Nedstat's Chief Technology Officer, and Michiel Berger, Nedstat's co-founder and Chief Innovations Officer, will join comScore in senior strategy and technology roles.comScore believes that the Nedstat acquisition will contribute approximately $4 million of additional revenue for the remainder of 2010. comScore anticipates that due to transaction-related expenses and transaction-related accounting adjustments the transaction will be dilutive to 2010 GAAP and non-GAAP net income, but accretive to quarterly GAAP and non-GAAP net income within the first half of 2011. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-09-02 05:48:07</div>

Top 5 Mobile Apps For Labor Day Weekend

Family reunions and quick getaways have become a Labor Day tradition for most people, but which apps work best for taking holiday trips? Grip?d.com spent several months testing various apps on each platform to see which ones make Gripd.com?s top five travel apps. If you have an iPhone, Blackberry or Android phone, here?s a quick rundown of the best 5 travel apps:Weatherbug ? The simplicity of Apple?s Weather app, but with a few extras for your phone. It?s the largest network of professional weather stations in the US and is the only source for truly live, local weather (as taken from their site).BePut - enables users to share their whereabouts with people they want to find them. Users simply use the application to locate their exact position and with a touch of a button, have the opportunity to send an email or text message to the desired recipient with their exact location. The recipient gets a special FindMe Key which is secure. The only guaranteed way to not get lost.Car Care & Roadside Emergencies - I don?t know about you, but I absolutely hate it when things don?t go according to the plan. You have this important presentation, and you end up with a flat tire in an express way. Or maybe you are trying to get home from a concert, and your car doesn?t start up. These situations happen all the time, and they usually tend to happen when you expect them the least. Now some of us have a knack for breaking and fixing things as far as cars are concerned.Waze - Waze is a social mobile application that enables drivers to build and use real-time road intelligence. The service includes constantly-updated road maps, alerts on traffic and accidents, and data providing users with the fastest route to get to wherever they need to go. Map and traffic updates are automatically collected and generated as users drive with Waze activated, but drivers can also actively report and update other users with what's happening on the road.Shazam ? In the car for hours and can?t figure out the song playing on the radio? When you hear a song and wonder what it is, Shazam is there with the answer. Hold your iPhone to the music and within seconds Shazam will tell you the artist and track name. You can even download the song through iTunes on your iPhone. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-09-01 05:49:57</div>

2010 Demographics / Country Usage for iPad

Guest PostApple's revolutionary tablet computer, the iPad, was announced January 27, 2010. The iPad Wi-Fi version was first released on April 3, 2010. The 3G version was released April 30, 2010. In the first 80 days, 3million units were sold. Projected sales for 2010 will be 10 million units worldwide. The iPad has been breaking sales records in a world wide recession. One can only wonder what sales would have been in better economic times.Apple had to delay international release of the iPad due to overwhelming US demand for it. Apple released the iPad to nine countries on May 28, 2010. Preorders were available May 10, 2010. The nine countries are Germany, Great Britian, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and Australia.On July 23, 2010, Apple released the iPad to Hong Kong, Singapore, Belguim, Netherlands, Mexico, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Austria, and Ireland.For the US and international markets, 60% of sales were made to people aged 30 to 54 years old. One difference between US and international users is the level of interest in technology. US iPad owners are focused more on social media, video, and audio. International users are more interested in the more traditional computer applications such as web research and could computing.Japan has shown special interest in the iPad. 50% of the computer and technology magazines featured iPad cover stories for May and June 2010. One of the most interesting demographic features of the Japanese market is the interest level among the elderly, age 55+. They like the iPad for its simplicity and forgiving nature in regards to mistakes.About the author: James Mowery is a computer geek that writes about technology and related topics. To read more blog posts by him, go to laptop computers. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-31 18:54:20</div>

Easy Multivariate Testing with Visual Website Optimizer

Testing is an essential part of online strategies and Visual Website Optimizer is an ideal tool to help you get up and running with AB/Multivariate testing very quickly. I had a chance to chat with Founder, Paras Chopra to get his insight into Visual Website Optimizer.Manoj:Give us the 'elevator pitch' on your technology.Paras Chopra: Visual Website Optimizer is the world's easiest A/B and multivariate testing tool. Meant for marketers who want to take charge of conversion rate optimization for their business, the tool eliminating involvement of IT resources by removing all HTML code and integration hassles. Using the tool, a marketer can rapidly test headlines, images, buttons, forms, styling, layout etc. to find out the best converting version of the landing page and/or website. Till now 2000+ enterprises, small businesses and agencies have used the tool to increase sales and conversion rates by as much as 90%.Manoj:Can you please highlight some of the features which provide the most value?Paras Chopra: There are three main features in Visual Website Optimizer that provide most value. The first one is the tagless integration where you we require a user to upload a small snippet of code into his/her website only once and after that s/he can create unlimited number of (different kinds of) tests without needing to touch code ever again. So, we don't require the user to add separate code for separate sections of test or for different conversion goals. The single code snippet works any kind of test that a marketer might want to do. This saves a lot of time, that would have otherwise be spend in integrating every new test into the website.The second valuable feature is the WYSIWYG editor which lets a marketer create variations using a familiar, MS-Word like interface. S/he is not required to know HTML or JavaScript while creating a test. This really speeds up the tests. So for an example, if you want to do a simple test involving button and headline change. You can select those sections in the visual test designer and then simply change the button and headline in WYSIWYG editor. That's it and you are done. No HTML; no technical complexities. Here is a screenshot:Clickmaps and heatmaps is another feature that our customers love. In addition to quantitative conversion rate report, in our tool you also get access to a heatmap which shows visually which parts of your page (or test variation) gets mosts clicks. Our users love this report because it complements the...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-30 06:29:08</div>

Ultimate Multivariate & AB Testing Guide - WhichMVT.com

If you're looking for a multivariate/landing page testing solution then I highly recommend you take a look at http://www.whichmvt.com/ (developed by the Conversion Rate Experts). WhichMVT is a complete guide to the most popular multivariate testing platforms available and provides information on each vendors such as: Price, Technology, Features, Support, and Reviews. Here is quick summary on what you can find on a few of the vendors:Accenture: Setup costs around $33K a year, provides AB/MVT Testing, it can be self hosted, and can be used on email campaigns.ION Interactive has a monthly price of $995, provides taguchi MVT, can segment traffic and has a platform for making web pages.OnDialog costs 7.5K/year, doesn't have the ability set mulitple goals, and customer support by phone available. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-27 06:22:14</div>

Google Acquisitions 2001-2010

Scores.org has put together an excellent infographic which details all of Google's acquisitions since 2001. From Picasa to Keyhole to MeasureMap to YouTube to Aardvark - they're all there. To say Google's has been busy is an understatement.Research by Scores.org ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-26 06:22:57</div>

Almost 50% of Marketers Don't Measure Social Media Campaigns

King Fish Media has released the results of their social media survey in which they captured the thoughts of over 450 respondents to get their take on Social Media usage and measureability. Their 23 page report is a very quick read and is packed full of useful information. Some highlights from the report below:Spending on social media will be increasing over the next year as three quarterThe responsibility for creating and maintaining social media falls mainly on the marketing departmentOnly a small minority of companies are outsourcing their social media efforts2/3 of the companies surveyed focus their social media efforts on their company as a wholeLinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are the most commonly used social media sites MySpace has very little usage or interest among respondents 85% are using a Twitter account and over two thirds have a Facebook fan page for their company, while roughly half have created a LinkedIn group or blog Only 30% of respondents have conducted ad campaigns on social media sites Nearly half of all companies have not measured the ROI of their social media campaigns Almost 2/3 of marketers are using video content on their web sites and more than half have deployed video on sharing sites such as YouTube Sample Data:What metrics are you tracking in Social Media campaigns? How do you rate the ROI of your social media campaigns? ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-25 06:27:12</div>

Social Network Ad Spending $4+ Billion in 2011

Great article from eMarketer yesterday which discusses the concept of how social marketing is growing across the globe and not just in the United States. eMarketer uses the following stats to back up their point:Facebook is popular with 500 million users, but QQ in China is larger with over 550 million usersThe social network/blog category reached 86% of active internet users in Brazil (Nielsen) In New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada and Singapore Facebook was the No. 1 website (not Google)In Poland, Nasza Klasa reached 58% of internet users as of spring 2010, making it the No. 3 website.Netlog (out of Belgium), has increased its user base to 68 million members as of July 2010Social Network ad spending will grow to over $4 Billion in 2011 ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-24 06:25:24</div>

Top Online Testing Platforms 2010 - Forrester Wave Report

Forrester recently published their latest wave report on the topic of online testing platforms. In the report, Joseph Stanhope reviewed the top 9 players in the online testing space: Adobe Test & Target, Amadesa Customer Experience Suite, Autonomy Optimost, Google Website Optmizer, Maxymiser Content MVT, SiteSpect, Vertster Conversion Optmization Suite, and Webtrends Optimize.Although the space is full of strong performers, Adobe Test & Target (formerly Omniture) and Autonmoy Optimost were placed as the leaders: Adobe excels in overall application usability, customer satisfaction, and content support. Autonomy stands out in administration, deployment options, and breadth of testing techniques. Both vendors demonstrate strong integration options with the Web marketing ecosystem, enabling marketers to plug online testing into a broader application framework. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-23 06:47:59</div>

Get 5 top Web Apps for $25 - App Sumo

AppSumo is at it again, this time offering a deal for us online specialists. The deal includes 5 of the best web optimization technologies for an incredible price of just $25 (regularly priced at over $500). The technologies include: Performable, Clicky, Visual Website optimizer, User Testing and Crazy Egg. Go here to get your package of online apps.Here is a brief description of the 5 web apps:Clicky: Clicky is a real time web analytics service. This means that when you login and view your stats, you are seeing up to the minute data on the traffic to your web site. Most services don't let you see what's happening "today" until the day after.Visual Website Optimizer: Visual Website Optimizer, with its dead-simple test designer, step-by-step wizards and a super-sexy interface will make you fall in love with A/B split testing. No matter if you are new to A/B testing or have years of testing experience, you are definitely going to love our innovative approach to optimization.User Testing: UserTesting.com is a "crowdsourcing" service that provides fast and cheap usability testing. Get access to a large panel of users, on-demand. You get to "look over the shoulder" of these users while they perform common tasks on your website, to see and hear where they get confused and frustrated. This dramatically decreases the cost and hassle of usability testing.Performable: Optimizing your landing pages (or any web page) has never been as fast or easy as it is with Performable. The Performable software platform gives you a powerful way to quickly create and test your landing pages to optimize your visitor traffic.Crazy Egg: Crazy Egg lets you visualize every click your visitors make. Discover exactly how visitors are using your website-- then optimize it to increase your conversion rate. Heatmaps let you visualize your website's analytics. You'll see exactly where your visitors are clicking, so you can quickly discover the areas that are most important to them. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-19 19:00:03</div>

Inside Klout: Measuring Your Online Influence

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Earlier this week I sat down with Klout's Megan Berry to get some of her insight into Klout's technology.Give us the 'elevator pitch' on your technology.Klout measures online influence. We believe everyone who creates content online has influence and our goal is to understand and measure it.Klout measure influence based on the ability to drive action. How many followers you have does not give a good picture of how many people actually listen or engage with you. Instead, we measure social gestures such as retweets, @mentions, and lists to better understand how much engagement you have as well as who those people are (is your engaged network influential or not, etc.).Can you please highlight some of the features which provide the most value?Klout Score as a filter (in various applications it is useful to filter by Klout Score when monitoring mentions, in search etc), topical influence, klout class (determines your influence style)What is your competitive advantage over similar technology? We offer the most in-depth analysis out there.Who is your intended target market?We have multiple markets. Anyone who creates content online could be interested in understanding and measuring their influence. Brands and marketers are, of course, very interested in understanding who the influential people are. Also, we have over 600 applications using our API to integrate Klout Scores into their applications.Tell us about new features/integrations/improvements that are on your product road map? We will be integrating new services soon -- with Facebook being the next one of the way. We will also be surfacing our topical data more so people can use Klout to understand who are the key influencers on specific topics such as mobile or fashion.Screenshots below: ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-19 07:49:51</div>

Top 17 Emerging Tech Companies in India

India is a growing economy with $50B market in IT but the product area has not enjoyed such growth. According to reports, all Indian Products were a mere $1.6 B, which is less than the figure one year ago.But in such a pessimistic environment, an encouraging event (Tech Sparks 2010) was organized by Yourstory.in in association with CNBC TV 18, and sponsored by Microsoft and Cannan Partners.The event was successful to gather 17 emerging top technology companies defining the new product companies in India. The target of these new companies was Global Markets and hot areas like Social Media, Analytics and Cloud Computing.Here is the profile of the presenters and their companies.In Rev Systems: InRev Systems owns Buzzom, which is Social Media Brand Management Application. Buzzom caters to general social media users and enterprises and businesses to manage their online social profile.Buzzom enjoys a user base of 1.5 million among which 550 are paid. InRev has done remarkable job in 18 months of their existence, and got good coverage in international media like Forbes, PC World, SmartCompany, SoftwareCritics, SiliconIndia and CIO MagIazine.Pellucid Networks: Pellucid Networks develops intelligent applications with the aim of redefining the global Tele-Imaging arena. PellucidNetworks aims to build the world?s largest and most efficient Healthcare network connecting Doctors, Radiologists, Pathologist, Dermatologist, Ophthalmologist, to referring Hospitals, Clinics and practices across countries or continents.Deltecs: Deltecs owns a product branded as Drona which is a Mobile Learning platform. The company believes on the opportunity of this growing market where soon multiple players are going to arrive.I Web Technology: iWEB ENTERPRISE SUITE? is built around a unique framework created and enhanced with our Business Process Management Tool called AgileWiz? . It provides an industry-leading Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based Business Process Management System(BPMS) in-built with its own Rules Engine that enables enterprises to design and continually optimize their business processes.The web-based architecture enables iWEB ENTERPRISE SUITE? to be offered on a global delivery model popularized by IT industry leaders.Icreate: iCreate?s Biz$core is the result of a deep understanding of the ground realities of the Core Banking and other Source Systems and an abiding commitment to enabling business improvement. This product integrates seamlessly with your...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-18 04:37:40</div>

Our New iPad App for Kids: Josh and Emma Go to the Beach

With the arrival of my baby girl a couple of months ago, I've been looking for good educational apps for kids in the iPad app store. There actually isn't a whole lot compared to the amount of games and business applications so a group of friends and I decided to build one for ourselves. It's called Josh and Emma Go to the Beach (priced at $1.99) and it just hit the app store, so get it while it's hot!Here's a brief description of the iPad app:They are brother and sister and love to go on adventures with their mom and dad. Tag along with Josh & Emma as they discover the world around them.Josh & Emma Go to the Beach is the first in the series of Josh & Emma educational apps for iPad. There are many more to come.Each app is designed to help children ages 2 to 6 learn their numbers, colours and the proper names of objects. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-17 05:30:55</div>

Inside Look at PostRank Analytics

PostRank is a leading provider of content engagement and real-time data analysis solutions. I was able to catch up PostRank's Community Manager, Melanie Baker, who gave me a great walk through of PostRank Analytics. Check out our chat below, if you're interested in test driving PostRank Analytics use the special coupon code, "WAWblog" (no quotation marks) you'll receive three free months instead of one. https://analytics.postrank.com/registerGive us the 'elevator pitch' on your technology.Over 80% of the engagement with a publisher's content now happens off the originating website, typically on social networks like Twitter or Facebook, and social hubs like Digg or Delicious. PostRank Analytics enables publishers to discover and track that off-site audience and engagement in real-time and learn when, where, and how people are engaging with their content.Can you please highlight some of the features which provide the most value?Activity stream provides a real-time, aggregated view of all the engagement activity related to a publisher's content. Variable graphing over time displays trending to help track what content performs best and on which networks and hubs. Optimize functionality analyzes all of the activity around a publisher's content on some of the most popular networks (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Reddit ? more coming soon!), identifies your fans and influencers on each hub. The same view displays how each network ranks publishers' content, and how to optimize for each to grow audience and reach. Google Analytics integration enables publishers to pull information from their Google Analytics account into PostRank Analytics, creating a 360 degree on-site/off-site view of content's performance. ROI Measurement enables publishers to see how their content is performing by using an ?earned value?, which is based on the total engagement accumulated by the post. It enables tracking of ROI for on-site and off-site engagement all in one place. What is your competitive advantage over similar technology?PostRank monitors over 25 social engagement sources and tracks millions of engagement activities each day, providing the most comprehensive set of social web analytics available. Keyword-based monitoring, for example, turns up massive amounts of spam and other garbage, and sifting through that is a monumental task. We avoid that entirely.Who is your intended target market?Content publishers, which ranges from individual bloggers who've moved beyond the...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-16 06:26:54</div>

Twitter Penetration by Country

According to Comscore's latest report, Indonesia and Brazil have the greatest Twitter penetration whereas India, New Zealand and Malaysia all have Twitter penetrations of 8% and lower. Latin America overall has had over a 300% growth in visitors to Twitter since the same period in 2009.Top 20 Markets by Twitter PenetrationJune 2010Total Audience, Age 15+ - Home & Work Locations*Source: comScore Media Metrix Location % Reach Worldwide 7.4 Indonesia 20.8 Brazil 20.5 Venezuela 19.0 Netherlands 17.7 Japan 16.8 Philippines 14.8 Canada 13.5 Mexico 13.4 Singapore 13.3 Chile 13.2 United States 11.9 Turkey 11.0 United Kingdom 10.9 Argentina 10.5 Colombia 9.6 South Korea 9.3 Ireland 8.4 India 8.0 Malaysia 7.7 New Zealand 7.5 ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-13 06:08:25</div>

Twitalyzer: Analytics Meets Twitter

Analytics meets Twitter via Twitalyzer and since I love both technologies, I had to get some more detail on Twitalyzer via co-founder, Jeff Katz. Check out our chat below.Give us the 'elevator pitch' on your technology.Twitalyzer is social media?s most complete application for measuring impact, engagement and influence on Twitter.Can you please highlight some of the features which provide the most value? While we have been very diligent about only adding functionally that will bring immediate value to our end-users, there are a few features that folks really like.Activity by Day is our trending report. It is, in my opinion, the most powerful report in Twitalyzer. You can view all the Twitalyzer metrics and measures in one report and quickly switch between the measures and various time ranges. You can also set time-based annotations within the report so if something noteworthy, like a campaign kick-off or industry event took place, you can indicate that and see if that effected the overall trends. The Goals report allows organizations to set benchmarks based on several key metrics. Since our roots are in web analytics and digital measurement, we believe it is important for companies, large and small, to set achievable benchmarks to work against. You can also visually seeing how close you are to meeting those goals in the Activity by Day report We recently introduced two new network-related reports that users really love. The Network Activity report allows you to see the hours of the day that your followers are most active. This gives businesses insight into what time of day is best to tweet and when not to. The Network Explorer is a powerful (and addictive!) visualization tool of your network. You can see not only your immediate network, but then drill-down to your network?s network. Find New is essentially a discovery tool to find Twitter users based on different Twitalyzer criteria. Once you find the segment of users, you can follow them in Twitter as well as create lists in Twitalyzer and Twitter. Once you create a list in Twitalyzer, it is saved in the Lists report where you can see how is the most impactful in that particular group. What is your competitive advantage over similar technology? I would say our biggest completive advantage is our team?s combined experience enmeshed in the digital measurement space. We have lived and breathed analytics for so many years now, it runs in our veins. From a practical point-of-view, Twitalyzer has been in...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-12 06:14:10</div>

Measuring Mobile, Interview of Eric Peterson

Eric Peterson has released a new whitepaper (sponsored by OpinionLab), titled The Mobile Measurement Framework: Making Sense of Your Mobile Efforts in the Context of Your Business. The result of the whitepaper is a rich set of key performance indicators focused on user experience, interaction, engagement, and costs that can be applied to mobile sites, mobile applications, and traditional web sites easily, effectively, and inexpensively. I had a chance to catch up with Eric to get his insight on his Mobile Framework.[Manoj]: Give us a holistic view of the whitepaper.[Eric Peterson]: Our Mobile Framework white paper provides guidance to marketers and business managers tasked with developing, deploying, and evaluating customer-facing efforts in emerging channels. The goal of the paper was to provide a reasonably deployed set of metrics that can be used to tie fixed Internet, mobile Internet, mobile applications, and other emerging channels together.A nice aside is that this framework and our use of Interaction, Engagement, and Positive Feedback can be applied not only to channels but also to individual technology efforts within the business. For example, one Web Analytics Demystified client is exploring how this framework can be applied to their investment into video. Another is deploying these metrics into their Social Media efforts.[Manoj]: How is capturing voice of customer different in mobile vs. the traditional web?[Eric Peterson]: The challenge is that "capturing voice of customer" is pretty diverse on the traditional web, which speaks to our observation that Voice of Customer is really many different efforts (satisfaction scoring, feedback gathering, polls, etc.) Some of these strategies require asking lots of questions which works great on big screens but not so great on smaller screens. On small screens, and especially in mobile applications, the "ease-of-collection" bar is higher and so the response user experience is even more important.This is one of the reasons we were excited to work with OpinionLab on the paper --- we think their approach is very sound and provides the easiest gateway to quantified and actionable information. Have a look at how Expedia.com has implemented their technology by way of example; you click "Feedback", provide a numerical assessment, provide direct feedback, and you're done.[Manoj]: Do you think user experience is even more important in mobile?[Eric Peterson]: I'm not sure I think it is "more important" in mobile. I...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-11 02:29:30</div>

Webtrends Buys Transpond, Rebrands it Webtrends Apps

According to sources Webtrends has purchased Transpond, an application publishing tool for Facebook, iPhone and Android Apps, as well as mobile-friendly web pages. They have rebranded Transpond as Webtrends Aps, a suite of products which includes Analytics, Visitor Profiling, Social Media Monitoring, and Landing Page Optimization.David Kaplan of PaidContent.org says: Transpond?s platform is marketed as an easy way for non-programmers to create, publish, manage and track ?experiences? across social and mobile sites. For Portland, Oregon-based Webtrends, it represents an extension of its measurement and management of Facebook. I actually think this might be smart move on the part of Webtrends because their latest services such as Facebook Analytics, fit quite nicely into Transpond's services. Webtrends is essentially going to be able to offer their entire ecosystem of online products to their Webtrends Apps customers - thus making new business for themselves. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-10 07:53:28</div>

Measuring the Performance of Landing Pages in Google Analytics

In their weekly back to the basics tip, the Google Analytics blog highlights how to measure landing page effectiveness across multiple keywords using the built in pivot-table feature.Go to the Keywords report under Traffic Sources. Look over to the right above the table and you?ll see Views: followed by a set of buttons. Click the Pivot view. Now, look to the left, above the table, and you?ll see a Pivot by dropdown menu. Select Landing Page from this menu. The keywords will be listed down the side and landing pages will be listed across the top. You can now see how many visits you received for each keyword/landing page combination. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-09 07:50:37</div>

MyHomePage Looks to Compete with iGoogle & Yahoo

The personalized homepage and password manager markets are becoming crowded scenes. Services like iGoogle, My Yahoo and RoboForm may be popular but there are a number of newcomers vying to topple the bigger names. I caught up with one recently to talk about their product and why they might be different from the competition.Please could you give a brief introduction to what myhomepage is and its background?Myhomepage is a one stop shop to start browsing the internet. It was founded by two young, tech-entrepreneurs Max Aengevelt and Massimo Agostinelli who came up with the idea last year. It offers a bookmarking service to save all your favorites online. Bookmarks are displayed in a visual way, with thumbnails of your links. It also offers a personalized homepage where you can organize your bookmarks with intuitive drag and drop features. Myhomepage also offers an online password manager through two different features: the Password Vault and Auto Logins. With the Password Vault you can save username and password details for every site you bookmark. Auto Logins allow you to automatically log into a supported website. This means you can increase your online security by having very complex and difficult passwords and not have to worry about forgetting them. Furthermore, a lot of people use the same password for multiple sites which also undermines online security. Because you can always find your password details, users of myhomepage can easily use different passwords for different sites.How is it different from your competitors?Myhomepage has two distinct advantageous over other competitors. Firstly, it is completely online. You do not need to download or install anything on to your computer. You can go anywhere and from any computer at any time still be able to access your bookmarks and password details. It works across numerous browsers and you can also import bookmarks from the following browsers: IE8, Firefox 3.0, Chrome, Opera and Safari.Secondly, myhomepage groups many useful tools in one easy to use website. Whereas before you might need to download a password manager, sign up for a personalized homepage and then also save your bookmarks to your browser, myhomepage offers all of these services, plus auto login, for free and online.Can you explain the auto login in greater detail?We are very proud of the auto login feature. The patent pending technology works by splitting your password information into two separate encryptions. One is stored locally in a...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-06 04:45:10</div>

Landing Pages, Testing & Lead Capture Made Easy with Unbounce

Before the release of our new eBook, I new it was very important for me to find a solution that would allow me to capture leads and do it with some finesse. Enter Unbounce - a do it yourself landing page solution which I got up and running in about 30 minutes. Below I highlight 5 reasons worth checking Unbounce out for your next lead generation project.I love their landing page editor, it's extremely slick and the ability to configure page elements / content is quite intuitive.If you would like to capture leads, Unbouce can help you design a custom web form which collects the leads via a CSV file. The leads can also be emailed to you or posted to a custom URL.It has a built in A/B testing framework whereby you can add and compare variants to your main landing page. The framework also helps select the 'winner' of the test.Unbounce collects visits, page views and conversions. Conversions can be defined as form submissions or even link clicks. *Something I still can't figure out is how I can see a report on individual conversions vs. total conversions (so if you're reading this Unbounce team please let me know).There's a free version which allows you test your landing page against 200 visitors.Below is a screenshot of my landing page results. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-05 06:53:45</div>

Feedbackify Enters the Voice of Customer Space at $19/month

The voice of customer space is slowly getting very competitive with numerous players applying their own spin to a 'feedback' focused solution. The newest solution to join the likes of GetSatisfaction, OpinionLab, Kampyle, and UserVoice is Feedbackify! (love that name).Feedbackify offers a very simple solution which takes minutes to get setup. Really there is only 5 steps to get going: Customize your questions, create categories, apply your branding, choose your "Feedback" tab, install your code and you're off to the races.I was quite surprised with their lack of pricing options. They offer one unlimited package priced at only $19/month. Many of the above solutions can cost thousands of dollars a month/year. I hope they don't sell themselves short right out of the gate. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-04 07:18:58</div>

5 Tips for New Web Analysts / Strategists

I often receive emails from new web analysts/strategists who are fresh out of University or a year into their careers asking what they can do enhance their career and how they can fine-tune their skills. Below are 5 tips definitely worth looking into:Use iGoogle: Using iGoogle will allow you to stay on top of industry trends/tips all in one central place - and the interface rocks! It's a great way to read what thought leaders have to say across multiple industries. I personally make sure I stay on top of what the following blogs have to say: Search Engine Land, SEO Moz, Search Engine Journal, Marketing Pilgrim, Search Engine Watch and for fun: Tech Crunch, Engadget, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb and Scobelizer.Learn complimentary skills: Go beyond analytics because it will allow you to have a more complete understanding of your clients' online strategies. Knowledge in areas which compliment web analytics quite nicely include: SEO/PPC, Software Development, User Experience, Social Media and Mobile Apps/Web.Participate in the Community: Join the Web Analytics Association, be active on groups in Facebook/LinkedIn, attend eMetrics, provide feedback on prominent blogs and even offer to guest blog (PS we're always looking for good bloggers).Love Technology: I have been very grateful to have used dozens of different types of online technology in my career because it now allows me to quickly provide recommendations on what solutions will provide my clients with the most value (and at what price tag).Experience the Industry: It's very useful to have different experiences such as: at an agency, in-house at a large corporation or as a consultant. A colleague of mine put it in words that really made sense to me: One of the main reasons senior strategists (or even senior management) make the big bucks is because of their experiences, they have a multitude of real-life scenarios they call pull inspiration/strategy from and this is a key separator from their junior/intermediate counterparts. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-03 05:37:33</div>

Free Web Intelligence eBook - Tips & Tricks in Online Strategy

The concept of community has always been huge in the online marketing and especially analytics space. From Eric Peterson?s Yahoo group to the creation of the web analytics association by Jim Sterne, there has always been a place you could go and learn/discuss strategies with other professionals.Community played a large part in my decision to create this eBook. I could have very easily come up with numerous tips & tricks from my own experience, however by extending the offer to other professionals I thought readers could gain insight from a broader range of experiences/backgrounds. Download eBook Here.In this eBook you will find strategies form a plethora of different topics including: Customer Satisfaction Search Engine Marketing Conversion Optimization Social Media Web Analytics Tools Site Search Implementation Mobile This is the inaugural release of this book and I am hoping we can publish later versions at least twice a year. So if you?re interested in participating or have any feedback, please send me an email to manoj.jasra@gmail.com. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-02 06:03:29</div>

How has Social Media Affected Web Analytics

Last week I was interviewed by Damonic Robertson for a project in his Masters class at Full Sail University. In the interview I was able to give Damonic some insight on the following questions1 ? What are the best web analytics tools available?2 ? Does it matter if you use ?Free? or ?Fee? based software and tools?3 ? How often should a company look at their web analytics?4 ? What type of analytics reports should a company initially start?5 ? Do companies put too much emphasis and focus on certain elements of analytics like visits, bounce rate, etc?6 ? Do companies tend to forget about analytics as compared to website design, social networking, SEM and SEO tasks?7 ? How has social media affected and/or recently changed web analytics?8 ? How has the recent surge in mobile web users affected web analytics?9 ? When should a company call upon a professional analytics consultant or firm?10 ? What is the future of web analytics? [Link to media]...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-01 03:06:06</div>

Keyword Zoom from ClickEquations

This is a guest post from Alex Cohen, Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations.People tend to think of paid search through the lens of keywords: You pick keywords, bid on keywords and figure out which keywords are good and bad.Searchers, the people you?re trying to reach, don?t type in keywords. They type in search queries. The keywords you purchase and match types you choose, along with your bids and Quality Score, determine how many search queries you get exposed to. The relevance of your text ad determines how many click.That relationship between search queries, keywords and text ads is one of the truths of paid search. But, analyzing that relationship is actually very cumbersome with most paid search tools. There?s one report for keywords, another for search queries and yet another for text ads. You, the analyst or paid search manager, are left to do the heavy lifting to stitch the pieces together in order to target the right queries with the right message.Connecting these pieces is a technology problem and one that we at ClickEquations have solved with our latest feature, Keyword Zoom.Keyword Zoom makes it possible look inside the performance of any keyword and directly manipulate the queries that have driven up cost or lifted revenue and tune the relationship between those queries and specific ad copy.Keyword Zoom allows you to see:The search queries that the keyword attracted and how each performedThe ad copy that was shown to the people who entered these queriesComplete performance statistics and metrics for that keywordYou can easily:Turn a search query into a new negative keyword so don?t waste money on irrelevant search queriesAdd a search query as a new keyword of any match type to attract more searches like that, boosting salesEdit existing ad copy or create new ads or variations to improve the alignment of queries to text ads?Paid search advertisers bid on keywords but money is actually spent and earned on search queries.? said Craig Danuloff, President. ?Keyword management is no longer enough. Only by looking inside the performance of any keyword, and mining search queries to stop ineffective clicks and increase targeting can accounts truly be optimized in today?s competitive and expensive PPC marketplace. Keyword Zoom is the first and only tool that brings keywords, search queries, text ads and detailed analytics data into one screen with editing tools. It?s the best way to target the best prospects with the most relevant message.?Keyword...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-30 06:18:48</div>

Inspiring an Army of Bloggers at Connected Marketing Week

Day 1 of Connected Marketing Week in San Francisco starts with BlogWorkz including a session called: Inspiring an Army of Bloggers. Here users will learn What it takes to inspire an army of corporate bloggers under the banner of one brand. And how businesses are reaching out to customers and enthusiasts as blogging brand ambassadors. I had a chance to catch up with one of the panelists, Lee Sherman Editor-in-Chief, Personal Finance Group (Intuit) to get his insight on the session.[Manoj]: How do you see large organizations leveraging blogs in 2010?[Lee Sherman]: The corporate blog is dead. It's no longer enough to put up regurgitated press releases and product updates. Customers expect and deserve honest content that engages, informs, and entertains. Consider approaching your blog as an editorial publication. Hire journalists not marketers.[Manoj]: How do you go about getting buy-in from the top down?[Lee Sherman]: Don't do content for content's sake. Need to tie spend to direct, measurable, business results.[Manoj]: What's the best way to shift passionate customers to brand ambassadors?[Lee Sherman]: Look for emerging stars in the blogosphere and bring them into your tent by getting them to write for you. Help them to build their brand by aligning it with yours.[Manoj]: What are some of the top metrics businesses should monitor to measure blog success? [Lee Sherman]: Traffic of course and if you are marketing a product or a service, conversion off that traffic. Other important metrics include social media success; how often your content is republished on other sites, how often you hit the front page of digg, reddit, stumbleupon, etc., how often your content is retweeted. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-29 04:21:59</div>

Interview: CNN's Sr. Director Dermot Waters on Real Time Storytelling

One session definitely worth attending at next month's SES in San Francisco is Real-Time Storytelling where panelists will discuss how mainstream media must embrace social media and take on the critical role of curator of the conversation in order to survive. I was able to catch up with Dermot Waters, Senior Director of Product Development, CNN.com, who will be participating on the panel. Read our chat below:[Manoj]: What is CNN's approach to real time and how important is it as foundational strategy of spreading the news?[Dermot Waters]: At its core, CNN was founded on the concept of real-time storytelling. At the time, that mainly centered around spreading the news around the world as soon as it become available. That has of course evolved as the world has become more social. Now in addition to spreading the news, we're focused on encouraging and curating the conversation to ensure that what is being spread is both personally relevant and compelling for our users.[Manoj]: What are some ways your team filters out the noise to get to the meat of the conversation?[Dermot Waters]: CNN is constantly looking for mechanisms to help highlight the most pertinent parts of any conversation. From a newsgathering perspective, we are monitoring trends in the social world and coupling that with our traditional sources of newsgathering to deliver the best story. We use a variety of methods ranging from manually monitoring social feeds to some automated platforms that can identify and analyze trends and viewpoints that are at the heart of what our audience is looking for.[Manoj]: How has Twitter changed the way CNN does business online?[Dermot Waters]: Even prior to Twitter, we noticed a trend that people wanted to not just consume the news but be a part of the news. They wanted to offer their opinions and viewpoints, share their stories, pictures, and videos. This participatory style of journalism was the driver behind us creating iReport in 2006 and then launched more broadly in 2008 with iReport.com.The evolution of user-generated content and social networks, including Twitter, has given CNN more tools and resources for not just broadcasting the story, but sourcing it as well. We use a variety of tools to monitor all the social networks as a compliment to our existing newsgathering practices. CNN's goal is to get the full story - the real story - that our users care about.And now with iReport, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social web, we can also reach out to...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-28 06:54:36</div>

12 Steps to a Better Landing Page - Infographic

Loved the latest YouMoz post on SEOmoz by Oli Gardner (Co-Founder of Unbounce.com) who combines 2 of our favorite topics together: Infographics and Landing Pages. Oli provides a 12 step infographic detailing how to rehab your landing pages. Landing page tips and infographic below:One Page Per SourceA/B TestingAd Message MatchContext of UseVideos Increase ConversionDirection CuesData vs. ConversionEdit RuthlesslyEnable Social SharingTrust & Social ProofOne Page - One PurposePost Conversion Marketing ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-27 05:50:50</div>

Top B2B Facebook Pages and their Growth

Interesting post from the Social Media B2B blog which provided examples of some of the top Facebook pages in the B2B space along with the growth of the pages' communities from December 2009. It shows how Facebook is a legitimate strategy for not only B2C organizations but B2B as well. Top B2B Facebook pages below:PageDec 2009July 2010%IncreaseDell51,183183,554259%Cisco24,28974,400206%Salesforce3,5698,513139%Sodexo2,0694,194103%Cintas1,1562,26096%Gartner2,0593,94392%Hubspot8,04614,12376%Forrester2,5933,72644%Ernst & Young34,47847,61138% ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-26 06:46:05</div>

5 Min with Andrew Chang of LinkedIn - SES San Francisco Preview

Search Engine Strategies is less then a month away and this year it's taking place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to catch up with Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager at LinkedIn, to get some insight into his session on PPC and SEO best practices?specific to B2B. Read our conversation below:[Manoj]: Your session at SES is related to SEO/PPC strategies with regards to B2B, how does LinkedIn become part of equation?[Andrew Chang]: Millions of people visit LinkedIn each day to connect and re-connect with colleagues and business associates. Our members come from all walks of life - accountants, financial advisors, attorneys, web developers - and they are well-connected and active professionals that many B2B marketers are trying to reach. For this reason, we built and launched our own self-service PPC advertising offering called LinkedIn DirectAds (http://www.linkedin.com/directads) that allows anyone with a LinkedIn account to place text ads on prominent pages and target those ads to only people you?re trying to reach.A quick example of how this works: One of our most successful customers is an e-learning company that?s trying to attract the attention of primary school teachers to sign up for a Master?s degree program in Education. Over 214,000 LinkedIn members have identified themselves (in their LinkedIn profiles) as being in the ?Primary/Secondary Education? industry. Within a few minutes, the e-learning company created a text ad and start displaying the ad only to those 214,000 members when they visited LinkedIn. Teachers click on those ads to learn more about the Master?s programs and the e-learning company pays for those clicks.[Manoj]: How has the game of lead generation changed in 2010?[Andrew Chang]: Two ways: Social media and mobile. The increased use of social media services like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter is forcing businesses to rethink how they spend their time and budgets. On LinkedIn, thousands of LinkedIn Groups have sprouted up and liked-minded professionals are engaging in conversations that span the buying cycle. Businesses should be thinking about how they might engage with prospective customers within these groups, encouraging their employees to participate in these conversations. Increased mobile internet access worldwide requires that businesses take a second look at how people experience their website, emails, and other marketing assets from mobile devices.[Manoj]: I've always thought...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-23 03:20:56</div>

How Social Media Mashups Will Give You an Edge in both Engagement and Monetization

Guest Post: Marat Galperin - Co-Founder, www.ucubd.com As bloggers we are constantly looking for ways to make our blogs more interesting. It goes without saying that it?s important to write well and to know our audience and focus on topics relevant to it. However, these days it may not be enough to simply write good blog posts and assume that our readers will be sufficiently entertained. So what more can we do? I have found that creating new multimedia experiences for our readers by mashing together various social media content is an effective way to increase audience engagement and drive more traffic.We?ve all heard the saying ?A picture is worth a thousand words? it then would logically follow that a video has to be worth a lot more. Of course I?m not telling you anything new by suggesting that you should use video embeds in your blogs to pique your readers? interest. We already know that embedding multimedia content such as web video, flash games and other widgets is an effective way to get your audience actively involved.What I?m proposing is a different approach. Why not get more value out of your embeds by embedding more than one thing at a time? For instance you could enhance that YouTube video you were planning on embedding by combining it with a related Twitter feed. Thus, your YouTube video will come equipped with its own reader ?comments?. Your readers will not only get the opportunity to enjoy the video but they?ll be able to see what the Twitter community thinks about it as well. As a result your audience will likely be more engaged by consuming this YouTube & Twitter combination than by the ?commentless? YouTube video alone.You can also consider the multimedia mashup as a blog post contained within itself. It is sometimes a challenge to consistently come up with compelling content for our blogs. Why not use the creative energy of millions of YouTube and Twitter users to help us put together blog posts on current hot topics without investing a ton of time? You can write a short intro and supplement it with the YouTube/Twitter mashup. Your audience can enjoy the video and stay engaged by reading the endless flow of tweets.What if you don?t have a YouTube video handy? No problem. Just think of a topic and we?ll do the work of finding the relevant YouTube videos and Twitter feed and mashing them together. Can?t think of a current hot topic? Not to worry, just use Twitter?s trending topics and create a compelling YouTube & Twitter mashup...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-22 05:07:44</div>

6 Quick & Simple HTML Form Builders

Recently I was in the market for web-form automation widgets/software, basically a service that would allow me to create a custom web-form, collect data and have it hosted. After a little bit of research I was quickly able to find 6 solutions which all fit my need. Here is a summary of th 6 Webform automation services:Form Experts - Full service website form services which include dozens of features including: Free Templates, Submission to Email/Excel/Database, Email Auto-Responder, Usage Statistics and much more starting at $7/month.Coffee Cup - In a WYSIWYG interface you are able to design custom forms and choose where your results re sent - all for $39 (one time).Frevvo - They say they make 'forms easy'. All features and capabilities are available in the Online version including business rules, complex validation, XML document processing, automatic form generation from XML schema etc.Form Stack - The drag and drop functionality allows you to quickly build your custom form. Formstack excels in helping you collect, manage, route, and leverage your form's data via a secure online form. Starter package: $14/month.pForm - 3 Steps: Choose your color scheme, design your form and download your html. Validation can also be implemented fairly quickly.Wufoo - When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy. Starting at $14.95/month. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-21 07:02:41</div>

Facebook Flops; Google Drops

By: Larry FreedSo you may have seen by now that the big ACSI (hashtag #ACSI) report on e-business was released today with a bang.On any given year, there is big news in one of the measured categories, but this year, we have big news in all three!Social Media: This is the first year the ACSI has measured social media sites, and the results are surprisingly terrible. With an average score of 70, social media has the lowest industry aggregate score of any of online industries measured by the ACSI. Wikipedia leads the social media industry with a score of 77, and YouTube comes in at 73. Industry darling Facebook registers a score of 64, only one point above MySpace (63). Facebook and MySpace have scores so low, the only other companies measured by the ACSI with such low scores are airlines and cable companies.News and Information Sites: The big news in this industry is the debut of FoxNews.com at the top of the heap with a score of 82, which is five points above nearest competitor USAToday.com (77) and well ahead of other cable news providers MSNBC (74) and CNN.com (73). NYTimes comes in at 76. FoxNews registers the highest score ever received by any news organization in the ACSI. If I were Fox, I?d be using this in my media kit, because high satisfaction leads to high return visits and loyalty, which means more eyeballs for ads on FoxNews.com.Portals and Search Engines: Customer satisfaction with portals and search engines dives 7% to 77 this year and is driven largely by a 7% decline for Google (down six points to 80). Bing was measured for the first time this year, and it makes a strong first showing with a score of 77, second only to Google. What do you think, can Bing actually compete with Google?You can download the free report here: http://www.foreseeresults.com/research-white-papers/ACSI-e-business-report-2010.shtml or catch me on Twitter (@larryfreed) with any questions about the findings. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-20 14:18:10</div>

7 Steps to Publishing / Selling Online Magazines with MagCloud

Companies like Time, Wired, and BMW have invested in publishing magazines on the iPad ever since it came out but now with help of HP's Magcloud, literally anyone can begin publishing magazines of their own. Magcloud suggests that using their 7 step process (and about 2 weeks in time, you can setup and begin selling online magazines. Below is an out line of their 7 step process: Create: The publisher creates a magazine in a design program Upload: The publisher uploads the PDF to MagCloud, fills out the description, and orders a proof Proof: MagCloud prints, binds, and mails the proof to the publisher Publish: The publisher reviews the proof. If changes are needed, the publisher can upload a new PDF and order another proof Buy & Sell: When the issue is published, people can buy it on the MagCloud website Print & Mail: When someone buys an issue, MagCloud prints, binds, and mails it to the buyerPublishers Get Paid: Publishers can check their sales online at any time ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-19 07:54:14</div>

The Social Network (Facebook) Movie Trailer

Justin Timberlake posted a trailer to the new Facebook movie (The Social Network) on his blog in which he plays Napster?s founder Sean Parker. In the "Social Network" Parker gives advice to the young entrepreneur, Mark Zuckerberg - played by Jesse Eisenberg. The release movie is set for October 1, 2010. [Link to media]...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-16 05:09:31</div>

BAO for iPhone: Compare US Neighborhood LifeStyle on your Phone

ReadWriteWeb reports that BAO for iPhone pinpoints the user's location and shows key demographic data about that area. According to the application, within a mile of your house are just over 15,000 people, with an average age of 35 and an average income of over $100,000. The app also tells you what percent have a college education, are homeless, are home owners, and how much is spent on retail shopping in my area. [Link to media]...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-15 10:59:02</div>

Google Drops 1.1% June 2010 - comScore Search Market Share

comScore: Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in June with 62.6 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! (up 0.6 percentage points to 18.9 percent), and Microsoft (up 0.6 percentage points to 12.7 percent). Both Yahoo! and Microsoft have experienced gains due in part to contextual search approaches that tie content and related search results together.comScore Core Search Report*June 2010 vs. May 2010 Total U.S. ? Home/Work/University LocationsSource: comScore qSearch Core Search Entity Share of Searches (%) May-10 Jun-10 Point Change Jun-10 vs. May-10 Total Core Search 100.0% 100.0% N/A Google Sites 63.7% 62.6% -1.1 Yahoo! Sites 18.3% 18.9% 0.6 Microsoft Sites 12.1% 12.7% 0.6 Ask Network 3.6% 3.6% 0.0 AOL LLC Network 2.3% 2.2% -0.1 ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-14 07:13:56</div>

Google Analytics Alerts using Custom Segmentations

With the introduction of Google Analytics' intelligence engine came the ability to setup alerts for a variety of different metrics. Google extends alerts by allowing you to create them on top of custom segmentations - see video below for an example. [Link to media]...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-13 07:02:36</div>

Invent Google Android Apps without Coding Experience

According to the NY Times, Google has released a "Do-it-yourself" platform for Android, called App Inventor, whereby anyone can create an Android app without knowing how to program.The free software, called Google App Inventor for Android (http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/), has been under development for a year. User testing has been done mainly inschools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students and university undergraduates who are not computer science majors. [Link to media]...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-12 07:48:40</div>

Bing Up 7% From May, Google Down 1%

Hitwise announced today that Google accounted for 71.65 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending June 26, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask received 14.37 percent, 9.85 percent and 2.19 percent, respectively. The remaining 70 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.94 percent of U.S. searches.Percentage of U.S. searches among leading search engine providersDomainMay 2010June 2010Month-over-month percentage changewww.google.com72.17%71.65%-1%search.yahoo.com14.43%14.37%-0%www.bing.com*9.23%9.85%7%www.ask.com2.14%2.19%2%Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending May 29, 2010 and June 26, 2010) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Figures are for Web searches only.*This includes executed searches on Bing.com but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.Source: Experian Hitwise ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-09 06:42:20</div>

Facebook Serves 1 Billion 'Likes' in 24 Hours

Over at the SeeWhy blog, Charles Nicholls discusses how well Facebook's social plugins have caught on in recent weeks. SeeWhy also ran a poll in which they surveyed over 450 marketers in regards to their plans with the new Facebook plugins. Read the entire post here, highlights below:Within 24 hours Facebook had served 1 billion ?Likes.? After only six weeks, more than 100,000 sites had implemented Facebook LikeWeb users spend more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Microsoft/Bing, Wikipedia and Amazon combined7 out of 10 of the emarketers surveyed have already implemented Facebook Like or plan to implement itFifteen percent of emarketers surveyed had already implemented Facebook Login ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-08 06:40:20</div>

Growths and Declines with Top Social Media Sites

It's been a while since we looked at the growth of some of the largest social media players, so I plugged their sites into Compete.com to see what the traffic looked like over the last year. At a high level it appears Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon all appear to be growing quite nicely, whereas MySpace, Bebo and Digg have noticed significant declines. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-07 07:33:34</div>

Top 20 Branded Facebook Pages

Great post from the Ignite Social Media blog which published a list of the top 50 branded Facebook pages as of June 10, 2010. The top 20 have at least 2.4 million fans, with the top 5 having well over 5 million fans. Social Media heavyweight, StarBucks, leads the way with 10+ million fans. Below are the top 20 branded Facebook Pages:Rank Jun 10BrandFans [June 28/10] 1Facebook:10,414,7952Starbucks:8,410,1753Coca Cola:6,041,3404YouTube: 5,726,3795Skittles:5,349,1986Oreo:5,087,7957Red Bull: 4,670,5148Live Messenger: 4,201,5059Victoria's Secret: 4,022,95910iTunes: 3,908,59011Disney: 3,707,61812Converse All Stars3,494,26613Pringles: 3,475,11014adidas Originals: 3,137,07215Zara: 2,998,55516Converse2,825,42417Victoria's Secret Pink: 2,810,03218Big Prize Giveaways: 2,744,93319Ferrero Rocher: 2,727,67020McDonalds: 2,456,372 ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-06 06:14:59</div>

36% of Recruiters will Spend Less on Job Boards in 2010

Jobvite recently released the results of their Social Recruiting Survey 2010 in which they surveyed over 600 human resource and recruiting professionals. Below are some of the highlights of the survey.46% of respondents plan to spend more on social recruiting in 2010 than 2009 36% will spend less on job boards 38% will spend less on third party recruiters and search firms 92% of those hiring in 2010 currently use or plan to recruit via social networks Of this group, 86% use LinkedIn, 60% use Facebook and 50% use Twitter for recruiting For candidate quality, respondents rated social networks significantly higher than job boards who landed in last place, just above search engine optimization ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-05 07:08:15</div>

SEO and Analytics 101

The video below was developed by Ian Lurie of the Conversation Marketing blog. The video gives an overview of four basic SEO metrics, what they mean, and how to track them in Google Analytics.SEO analytics 101 from ian lurie on Vimeo. [Link to media]...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-02 07:28:20</div>

Comparing Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools

Web Analytics TV with Nick & Avinash continues with episode #10. This time the hosts discuss:Tracking un-subscriptions with negative values Sources of keywords outside of Paid Search to help site optimization Tracking form validation with Google Analytics Why Exit Rate is 0% in the Google Analytics navigation summary report Comparing Google Analytics and Webmaster tools Best practices for tracking PDF downloads Getting the full referring URL in Google Analytics Sharing custom reports with advanced segments Best way to find keywords from mobile traffic [Link to media]...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-30 07:31:12</div>

How to Receive Top Rankings for Facebook Pages in Search Results

Facebook pages are popping up as quickly as websites and blogs, in fact I am often seeing organizations push users to their Facebook page due to the built-in social interactivity of Facebook pages. With the majority of our online experiences still starting with search, whether it be on Google, Bing or Facebook, there are many factors that will help boost a given Facebook page to the top of the results. Below are some of my speculations:Total Number of Followers: You can consider this the same as back links, the more 'votes' your page receives, the more authority it gains.Content Posted: The fresher the content, with regards to wall posts/pictures/comments, the greater likelihood of search spiders continuously crawling the content.Relevancy of Content: Does all the content that is posted within the page help improve its overall theme?Big Brands: Large organizations will receive a bump just because they are top of mind to users and therefore they receive precedence in search resultsURL: Does your Facebook page's URL contain relevant keywords related to search queries?Number of 'Shares': Is the Facebook Page so compelling that people absolutely have to pass it along to their friends?Age of Page: This one is pure speculation, but could there be benefits of having an older Facebook Page vs. a brand new one? ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-29 08:06:54</div>

Facebook Climbing Around the World

With Facebook growing to well over 400 million users, their rise is happening all around the world. For instance, outside of China, Iran, Japan and Russia, Facebook has reached the top 20 ranked sites across many of the top online nations. Google is basically #1 across the board with Twitter climbing on many fronts as well. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-28 06:58:05</div>

144.1 million viewers watched 14.6 billion videos on YouTube.com - May 2010

comScore recently released their monthly numbers in regards to online video usage and rankings for the month of May. Below are some highlights from the release: Google Sites attracted 144.6 million unique viewers during the month (101.2 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 46.0 million viewers (7.3 videos per viewer), and Vevo with 45.6 million viewers (9.4 videos per viewer). The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Joost Video Network (by Adconion Media Group) with 35.2 percent penetration of online video viewers, BrightRoll Video Network with 24.4 percent, and Tremor Media Video Network with 21.2 percent. 84.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. 144.1 million viewers watched 14.6 billion videos on YouTube.com (101.2 videos per viewer). The average Hulu viewer watched 27.0 videos, totaling 2.7 hours of video per viewer.The duration of the average online video was 4.3 minutes. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-25 08:18:36</div>

66% of Small Businesses Plan to use Behavioral Targeting

Yesterday AWeber Communications announced the results from a survey of more than 2,500 small businesses regarding email marketing and social media marketing efforts. Highlights can be found below:Email marketing continues to bring significant value to businesses with more than 82 percent of respondents planning to increase their email marketing efforts over the next year. The more social media grows in popularity among consumers, the more attention it will receive from marketers. Almost 70 percent of small business marketers are employing some sort of social media tactics and a majority (77 percent) indicate that integrating email marketing and social media is either ?very important? or ?moderately important.? The most popular tactics at the moment involve spreading content onto additional mediums such as sharing email newsletters on Twitter (36 percent) and delivering blog posts via email (35 percent). Nearly 50 percent of respondents indicated that behavioral targeting increases their conversion rates either significantly or moderately. More than 66 percent of respondents indicate they intend to use behavioral targeting as well as sales tracking in their campaigns over the next 12 months. 54 percent of respondents indicate they intend to use Facebook as a tool to help build their email lists Nearly 20 percent of respondents indicate that integrating email marketing and social media increased customer loyalty Almost 12 times as many respondents said that email marketing ROI is more easily measured than social media ROI (61.46 percent versus 5.28 percent) ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-24 07:36:42</div>

85% of All Brand Purchases are Made by Women - Says Unicast Report

Earlier this week Unicast released its "What Women Want From the Web Report" Summer 2010 revealing the preferences, intentions and activities of women online this summer. The report discusses Unicast?s recent national online survey of 516 women, and provides detailed analysis and demographic breakdowns. Below are some of the highlights:The most popular online activities for women this summer: 76% plan to connect withfriends and family, 67% will keep up with the news, 64% plan to shop for sales/compare prices, 59% intend to entertain themselves (play games, listen to music or watch TV/movies), and 48% will research travel/vacations. Women age 18-24 are more inclined to use the Internet for most activities, and alsomore receptive to online advertising in various formats, particularly more interested than women overall in localized information, surveys, social media formats and exclusive downloadable content. The most popular ad content is for sales and discount codes ? 46% of women noticethese, followed by creating/submitting an entry to win a prize ? 31%. About one in four women notice an ad with localized information, like area movie listings. Women notice ads for items they?re already interested in ? 56% of women planning tolook up entertainment options this summer have noticed an entertainment ad in the past month and 46% of women planning to research travel have noticed a travel ad. Women with children in the home tend to do more activities online than those without children, including listen to music (62% vs. 42%), watch TV or movies (56% vs. 46%) and look up entertainment options (60% vs. 40%). Women that visit blogs notice online advertising far more than overall respondents, but this is a small group with just 13% of women planning to visit a blog this summer. [Link to media]...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-23 06:45:25</div>

9 Twitter Apps Worth Another Look

Twitter has refined the way of communication where even the limited characters reflect the absolute expression of the people. The real time exchange of information and the potential substance in the ever counting Twitter stream, Twitter has emerged out as the Google of the social media world. As the Twitter fever hits the globe hard, it becomes very important to discover the simplest way of managing your twitter profile and growth in the Twitter ecosystem and a gamut of twitter apps slot in just perfectly to feed your need. All of us probably have our personal favorites when it comes to choosing the perfect Twitter app for ourselves. Hence this time, keeping aside my perspective of the most useful apps, I chose to put down the list of the top Twitter Apps as per audience preferences and polls at the 101bestTwitterapps website. I parsed through the list and the top apps looked quite interesting. Tweetshare Tweetshare as the site says is the Facebook fan page taken to the next level. Certainly it moves beyond Facebook to blogs, YouTube and so on where users can share content and receive feedback on their work by creating Twitter Pages around their content or brand. It works in a very simple way.Tweetshare turns every comment about your content into a tagged Tweet that is shared with the Twitter community, virally promoting your content. Tweetshare thus integrates your content directly into the Twitter stream.ComTweets is like Linkedin in Twitter. More precisely, it is a community for businesses on Twitter where companies and organizations come together under one hood to interact and communicate amongst the coworkers. Sign in with your company email address and soon you will be connected to your co-employees. You may then share messages, comment on other?s posts, also interact with customers and use the tool for marketing your brand or products.TheCadmus Cadmus gives relevance the prime spot in its service model. To elaborate, Cadmus is a real time service that can be used to manage the Twitter stream (also Friendfeed and RSS) by displaying the most relevant content since the last time you logged in to your account. It therefore removes the clutter of the old posts clogging up the streams and also draws out the trending topics that are hot amongst the people you follow keeping you updated all the time eliminating the chances of missing out any conversation.Twaitter One of the most widely used Twitter apps for business is used by companies to promote their...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-21 08:46:20</div>

Who Has the Most Influence on Twitter?

Sysomos released a new social media report today which looks deeper into followers on Twitter and they try to explain how influence is not always measured by the number of people who follow you. Here is a summary of the study:They found that while celebrities have a large number of followers, most of them are low authority users. Social media heavyweights, like @chrisbrogan, @jowyang and @jasonfalls seem to attract fewer but very engaged Twitter users with high authority rankings. They also looked at the countries where these users have their followers.CelebritiesSocial Media Veterans ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-17 07:50:08</div>

Limited Budgets Preventing Small Businesses from Online Success

Lyris and TwitterCon recently released the results from a study in which they surveyed over 160 small businesses about their success with managing online marketing strategies across multiple channels including Twitter. Below are some highlights from the results: 77 percent of marketers said they have had some success at managing an online marketing strategy across departments, including SEO, e-mail, social, mobile and analytics.63 percent of marketers said that limited budget keeps them from being more successful in integrating their programs across online marketing channels.34 percent of marketers said that lack of skills/technology on other channels is what prevents them from being more successful with cross-channel, integrated programs.27 percent of respondents said internal politics kept them from being successful with integrated marketing programs. [Link to media]...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-15 06:41:23</div>

The Fundamentals of Designing Good Infographics

Guest Post by Jennifer HoganI just finished reading "The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics" by Donna Wong. I think it is an essential read for anyone tasked with communicating information and data.The book is straightforward and reads like a style guide, primarily using visual examples over text. Using side by side comparisons of what to do and what not to do, Wong covers everything from collecting data to visual design. She includes the importance of accurately presenting data, how to choose the best chart, and how to use graphics, colours and fonts effectively.The book is positioned towards business professionals, but regardless of who you are and your experience level, you'll learn practical tips to create clear and informative charts. Anyone interested in information design should read and keep this book as a reference.Below are some simple tips that the Dona Wong would like you to consider: Don't set a huge amount of text in bold, then nothing get's emphasizedDon?t use highly stylized fonts or turn the type sideways to save spaceDon?t plot horizontal bars in a random order. The main quality of a horizontal bar chart is the ranking of items by the same attributeIt?s difficult to compare and contrast between many segments. A pie chart shouldn?t have more than five slicesAdhere to the correct chart type for each series, lines for continuous data and bars for discrete quantities ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-14 06:54:17</div>

Ronaldo Tops Search Engine Searches for World Cup Players

Hitwise announced today that U.S. searches on Portugal star soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo accounted for one-fifth of all World Cup player searches last week in the United States. Among a portfolio of all World Cup players, Ronaldo received 19.16 percent of all U.S. searches. Ronaldo also was the top searched-for player in France, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand markets and number four in the United Kingdom.Percentage of U.S. searches among World Cup playersRankSearch termsCountryWeek ending June 5, 2010 1cristiano ronaldoPortugal19.19%2ronaldinhoBrazil5.63%3landon donovanUnited States4.24%4lionel messiArgentina4.19%5carlos velaMexico3.24%6giovani dos santosMexico3.02%7jonathan dos santosMexico3.00%8cesc fabregasSpain2.89%9cuauhtemoc blancoMexico2.49%10wayne rooneyEngland2.33%Note ? based on a search portfolio of 939 World Cup playersSource: Experian Hitwise ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-11 07:46:08</div>

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