media seo analytics | push2digital

Read a great post this morning which I’ll reference in a moment that speaks to the reason data-rich companies are still not flourishing with this information.  It [data] is available in many tempting flavors – free, paid, borrowed, mobile, real-time, visualized, raw, aggregated, curated and so on.  But why then is not magically ringing the cash register?

How do I know if all that data is even making a difference? In other words, what are the metrics for my metrics?

“Huh?” you say.

To put it more clearly, how do I measure my analytics efforts themselves. What signs do I look for that my data-driven strategy is making an impact?

What does success look like?

Well, I’d say the golden Holy Grail conversion goal is … are you ready for it … here it comes … “action.”

Action -- could come in different shapes and forms and may not register on a monthly report but it’s prompted by insights, information from data analysis [notice I didn’t say data gathering]. And you must recognize it in all its forms so you can strive for it and then celebrate it when it occurs.

And it could look like any of these:

1.       You discover all your site pages are not tagged properly in comScore and correct it

2.       You discover a competitor is increasing market share in a new vertical, and greenlight a beta test in that same vertical

3.       You discover the bios page on your site generates 22% of your visits and expand, promote and elevate that section at the expense of under-performing content

4.       You discover more people are entering your site from your story level page than your home page and start A/B testing to reduce the bounce rate of your story level pages.

5.       You discover 20% of labor resources are spent on a site section that generates 10% of your visits but no revenue, no conversions, no repeat visits and simply kill it.

6.       You discover that your peak audience arrives between 10a-2p and shift the schedules of your web staff to produce more from 7a-10a.

7.       You discover that users to your home and garden section click on ads 3x more often than any other section of your site and notify sales.

8.       You discover referral visits from Google spend twice as much time on site as visitors from Drudge and Twitter and review/rewrite all the page titles on site to increase search referrals.

9.       You discover referrals from a related site convert at a higher rate than any other visit and set up a meeting to partner with that site.

10.   Or, you gather your execs, stakeholders, clients into a single room and ask, “What is the one most important action a visitor to our site can perform and how does it drive our business?” and you don’t leave the room until you agree on it. That’s your No.1 priority … and that’s where you measure intently … analyze relentlessly … and act boldly.

Now back to that post, Bryan Eisenberg’s “Data Rich, Optimization Poor” drives home the same thought – data, and even analysis without action – is lip service.

“There's no profit from having a web analytics report; you make money from making changes and experimenting based on the insights available from the data. In order to do web analytics correctly, it needs to generate a to-do list for you.” 

Amen, brother. Action is where it’s at.

Apart from your job, name one thing you spend more than 34 hours a week doing? … No seriously, a real answer, more than 34 hours.

[queue Family Feud music]

“Let’s check the board, you say ‘watch broadcast TV’? Survey says …”

"No. 1 answer." (bell rings, family claps)

That’s right Compete cites that Americans watched 1% more TV last year than they did the previous year. So where is the internet-fed bloodbath of TV viewership we’ve been awaiting?

The fact is internet usage is the proving to be the pretzels that let you eat more ice cream. Lean-back TV programming combined with the lean-forward web surfing are the ying-and-yang of multi-tasked downtime.

“Simultaneous use of the Internet while watching TV reached 3.5 hours a month, up 35% from the previous year,” according to Nielsen’s 3-Screen Report. But dig a little deeper there and find the real jewel.

Of Nielsen's wired TV viewers, about 3% also were on the web. But look at Nielsen's wired internet users, and you'll see 34% of them had the tube on at the same time.

If I'm a TV news director or a promotions manager -- I'm looking long and hard at my website to integrate some cross-platform coverage to encourage those 34% to flip on my news product while they're surfing. They're sitting, laptop and iPad in hand [yes both], just waiting for an incentive to flip. It could be as simple as a tweet or a Facebook post that arrives just as the Celebrity Apprentice limo is rolling down Central Park West.

Credit: Etan J. Tal / Wikipedia

After reading an outstanding, well-crafted think piece on what makes great content, I asked, “What wise old sage wrote this thesis?” Although it was posted to an SEO blog, it should be required reading for any creator looking to get their head around content in the digital age.

His name is Ed Fry. He’s 17. You could learn a lot from him.

Caption: Cohorts Frank Carnevale, self, John Wise of OneGreatSeason at ProMediaCorp's HQ.

I'm much smarter after Day 2 of the SMX East conference. I've learned that staking out a seat with a desk is worth the effort; eating the day's third brownie is not. In regards to the sessions here are the quotes, stats and thoughts that stood out.

"Voice Your Updates" -- COO Geoff Donaker talked about Yelp's 38M monthly uniques and desire to go public in the morning's keynote, but their R&D around voice recognition was super interesting. Imagine the impact of speaking your mobile updates rather than typing. Closer to home, he said, "There isn't that much local content out there -- there's less than 1 review for every business in the U.S." Really good, really local content is a commodity.  

"Lovers, Haters of High-end Analytics" -- as someone interested in analytics, I heard from both camps on high-end products like Omniture, Core Metrics. Two major media types said they like and get good info from the products. Another speaker said he's prepared to ditch his for Google Analytics. The difference?  Both media types had teams of 3 to 5 people to implement and manage the product. The speaker did not, and said he could get 90% of what he needed from GA.

"10 Percent" -- the amount of CNN's site traffic driven by search.

"8 seconds to 4.8 seconds" -- The amount that MySpace decreased their average page load time. Great news for users of course, but Tony Adam, MySpace's director of online marketing, said the real benefit was it more than doubled the number of pages indexed by Google.

"Semantic Linking" -- we all need to be doing this, automated internal linking of terms that synch with topic/content pages that all already on your site.

"One URL or Multiples" -- architecture expert Brian Piepgrass advocated for one URL in most cases. You should have a very good reason for splitting your site authority and links.

Also see takeaways from SMX East Day 1.

Great post from SEOmoz -- of course it's impressive that Expedia increased sales by $18M just by adding the "e-mail me if the price changes" option, but think of the opportunity for media clients if there were an "e-mail me if this story updates" option. Probably not $18M but surely repeat visits and your registered users for opt-in messaging would get a significant boost. It's what you're good at -- updating news -- use it to build a closer relationship with your user.

"Using the "email me" option, Expedia increased their sales by $18,000,000 in three months. $18million! "Email me if..." gives you PERMISSION TO EMAIL your customers! It’s a marketer's dream. If you come away from this blog post with no other takeaway, take this with you:   Ask yourself this: How can I finish this sentence? "email me if..." Then use it on your site to increase conversion rates even a few percent."

Ray Kinsella never built a Web site.  And if he did, it wouldn’t rank in Google.

“Build it and they will come” may work for metaphysically-powered baseball fields in the heart of Iowa, but it comes up short when growing a web audience.

 
The nice hockey-stick growth chart was not driven by content, but by one man's mission
to take it directly to the people, who would care most about it.

Recently, I had two conversations with people looking to grow their niche web audiences. And both discussions centered on the fact that … building a better web site alone isn’t good enough anymore. We add original, aggregated or UG content, develop web tools, stream live and archived video and then some. We do so in hopes this will make us the envy of other media properties and the destination of choice for users.

The problem is, “the era of destination sites is over,” according to Dina Kaplan, co-founder of blip.tv. “The future of content … is that it needs to be distributed and distributed everywhere.”

What she’s saying is you need to target the audience that cares about your content, and then stick it right under their nose in all the places they congregate. Adding it to your site reaches the people who already know about you. Your future though, is dependent on the people who would love your content, but haven’t heard about it yet.

Reaching them, will likely require some combination of SEO, RSS, embeds, widgets, social networking or subscription newsletters. For more on this, see my Speed Dating Series: 7 Users You Should Meet.

Part 1 -- Ms. Cut-to-the-Chase, The Informer

Part II -- Mr. I. Need-Validation, Wally Joiner

Part III -- Mrs. Old School, Lady Go Go, Client No. 7

But for one man, it was something even simpler than that.

Meet Alan Jacobsen, founder of TweenTribune.com, a site that provides teachers with compelling tween-appropriate content  that can be used for interactive reading and writing assignments. Jacobsen’s idea seems like a pretty good one, but for the first six months it went nowhere. He tried to convince print and broadcast media partners to help promote and distribute his content. The polite response was, it didn’t exactly fit their target market.

So what did he do? He took it straight to the consumer and started e-mailing teachers one at a time.

That’s when he started to gain traction. Teachers who registered liked the site, and more importantly, so did their students.  “My kids are really excited about it,” wrote one science teacher, “their vacation started today and I've already received 10 e-mails from kids who signed up … on a day off.”

They recommended it to other teachers, who gave testimonials, which Jacobsen used to convince more teachers to try it. And now he’s had his first taste of success with week-over-week traffic growth for 12 consecutive weeks (see chart above).

The lesson Jacobsen learned -- one we can all benefit from -- is that we can’t expect users to find our great content just by adding it to our site. We can’t expect other properties to promote and distribute our content without a documented traffic- or revenue-based incentive.

But we can make it easier to find our content offsite, in the gathering places where our most likely users come together. And when we find them, suggest and encourage them to recommend it to their friends and colleagues.

Because nowadays, the “most trusted source in news” isn't CNN, Fox News or even Yahoo.  It’s your neighbor, your friend, your sister, your co-worker. These are the people whose invites stop you in your tracks to say, “Hey, what did [insert name] send me?”

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