WHERE DO YOUR VISITORS COME FROM & WHAT DO THEY DO ON YOUR SITE?

Nicole Simoncrueltobekind.orgtwitter.com/nicolesimonfriendfeed.com/nicolesimon

Housekeeping

Session description

Basic Analytics & Blog Monitoring 101 BlogWorldExpo 2008, Intro To New Media Track - Do you know where your traffic comes

from and how you can use this information to increase traffic? Who is talking about you in the blogosphere? Or how many feed subscribers you have?  In this workshop you learn the basics about blog monitoring and analytics: how to set up a simple blog monitoring (also called Ego or Vanity searches) and how to set up and use Google Analytics, a free yet extremly powerful tool for all your website traffic.  This is also a good session for Podcasters to learn how to increase their listenership / viewers.

What we will cover today

simple DIY strategies to look at your blog / podcast to determine the different visitors

Blog monitoring Google Analytics your toolkit all done from a more personal point of

view but can be easily applied to companies and products

Goal

demonstrate on examples of some services how they work in principle, as later you choosethe ones you like to work with

for you to understand how your goals influencethe choice of tools to use

Collect figures …

even if you do not need them right now, they might provide useful to you later

build a simple spreadsheet (monthly) links in google to your page feed subscribers / mail subscribers technorati numbers friends in social networks build a checklist on what to collect each

month including links

Useful for you to know about me I love spreadsheet, analytics and log files.

You don’t need to but you need to understand the prinicples and mechanisms behind it – and then you can outsource it.

I am blogger and a podcaster and a twitterer and a social media addict. For me there is no either or, but whatever is best used as a tool should be used. Go have a look at what is out there, it might prove useful.

These slides

have more text on them to be useful afterwards

do not have a lot of fancy pictures will be up on crueltobekind.org are simplified in several areas use examples not to promote me but

because I have access to them and can use them

Defining Analytics & Monitoring

What is blog monitoring and analytics? can be

a variety of tools and possible reports the task of doing the reporting acting on the results

better described as “show me where do they come from”, “what do they do on my site”, “who talks about me” and “am I successful?”

should be part of your routine as is producing the actual content

Examples to monitor and look at comments / trackbacks backlinks and entries on bookmarking services amount my name or company was talked

about ranking in search engines for your site /

keywords

also: monitor your competition or leaders in the field

learn from their successes on what works

How is this relevant to podcasters? successful podcasters use their blog as a

mechanism to distribute information and keep readers and listeners more engaged

the blog is not a necessary evil but integral part of your podcast

getting aquainted with how bloggers think will give you an advantage over pure podcasters

nearly all tools work with text, not audio / video

A typical day for me …

Check the Ego searches

go through the subscribed ego searches in my newsreader or email client to see new backlinks to me and my projects

check in on the lifestreams (twitter / friendfeed)

have a look at the statistics (new backlinks or referrers? )

Make a guess about the time used

Showing some of the most common, not all of them, choose your own preferences

Ego / Vanity Searches

What are Ego / Vanity Searches? Who does NOT search themselves?

Really: It’s just being professional about it.

Call it your personal clipping service done by yourself (or somebody else)

Being talked about means being noticable to readers / listeners - and search engines

Technorati

http://technorati.com result: links back to you in the last 180 days only covers blogs it knows about (and

crawls) has become heavily unreliable but is still

considered to be ‘the’ measurement of importance

you can check other blogs there as well bookmark the page or subscribe in your

feedreader

Backlinks on blogworldexpo.com

bookmark / subscribe

Tip: Reverse Ping Technorati if you find a new backlink not yet in

Technorati, ping them about it! use the webform and submit the page hope that it will show up and increase

your ranking http://technorati.com/ping

Google Blogsearch

http://blogsearch.google.com enter term you are interested in (or

more) or site choose settings to your liking bookmark the page or subscribe in your

feedreader

Advancec options

Google Alert

additional to Blogsearch for News and the Web

often more reliable than blogsearch use settings for “as soon as they

appear” or “once a day”

Twitter Search

use http://search.twitter.com to search for your name / term

understands search parameters like OR and “-from:blogworldexpo”

bookmark the page or subscribe in your feedreader

careful – tinyurl problem!

Tips & Tricks

double content will appear, rather than trying to put it through Yahoo Pipes or alike, just ignore it

use all links in one folder in your browser toolbar and open them with one click

make separate folders for each project add events to your calendar on when to

check your data with links in it

How to set up a Project Folder main site backend to the site the feed (ping feedburner) --------------------- Technorati search on the site Google Blogsearch on the site [special pages I want to watch] advantage: all projects are set up the

same!

before we dive into analytics

Not all traffic is equal

Why you need a 360° view

Traffic (amount of pageviews of your website) can be highly misleading as can other metrics

It can be a basis, but needs to be accompanied with other reports to show for example interaction with your site

first you need to understand the types of users

major traffic sources

Type: Subscribers

Subscribed to your content / your feed through an feed reader or an email subscription

do really read / listen to your content are genuinly interested in you / your brand

/ your products / your offerings have a more personal relationship with you more inclined to leave comment and share

/ bookmark / recommend your content ignores everything but the content

Type: Search Engine Visitors came on your site by accident through a

search engine and are interested in finding what they where searching for

could care less about your blog but may be interested in looking around

acts on targeted advertising as this could be a better information than your blog post

Type social bookmarking user comes to your site by discovery in a

social bookmarking service either through random choice or friend

recommendation more interactive than search engine

users as they might reshare your content

Type: Life stream users

Services where I as a user can enter ‘my lifestream’, i.e. add my twitter, my bookmarking, my blog, my pictures all in one place

Friends follow me and if they encounter something interesting go to the link.

Highly interactive, but if it scrolled past me in the timeline, I will not see it

Balance is different

Question: Where do I get the data needed to make better decisions in regard to my blog and my content?

Answer: depends on where you want to go – but let’s start with some simple things everybody can use

Analytics

Feedburner & Feedflare

use feedburner to track numbers (and export)

not perfect but everybody has the same numbers

subscribe to your own feed to check if it comes through

Analytics tools

google analytics / sitemeter are different tools for different purposes – choose the one you like

sometimes paying money is good

Google Analytics

free tool (you pay with your data) easy to install and variety of reports can mail reports to dedicated addresses

Daily Dashboard

Where does it come from

where do users come from

surprisingly …

search engines

browser usage

screen resolution

Referring sites

Harry Potter last year

Add a new profile to Google Analytics

Random stuff if there is still time

Be careful with these tools

“My Alexa number is …” “My comscore data says …” “I am a leader in …” “I was voted best in Little Town of

blogging contest”

Alexa

counts only when toolbar is installed heavily towards american usage only

(how much of your visitors do come from elsewhere?)

only fully available for IE – Firefox and co have up to 50% of the market share

THANKS FOR LISTENINGQUESTIONS?

Nicole Simonhttp://crueltobekind.orghttp:// twitter.com/nicolesimonhttp:// friendfeed.com/nicolesimon