Er. Where’d the posts about Mac’s and online marketing go?

February 4, 2008 at 12:53 pm · Filed under Online Marketing

Since the middle of last year, all posts about the Mac/Apple have been published directly on my new(er) Macintosh-specific blog, On a Mac.

I also recently started a new online marketing blog - Online Marketing Performance.

These blogs were started as they held two of the main themes on this blog which were intertwined with a lot of posts of a fairly random nature.  I’ll continue to post to this blog, but both of the aforementioned blogs will likely bet getting more and more attention as time goes on.

Share This

Comments (1)

How to promote a blog for free

September 11, 2007 at 1:17 am · Filed under Content, Analytics, Online Marketing, Social Networking

When a friend or colleague sets up a blog, I am often curious to see what they do to promote it. Unfortunately, they often don’t do some basic things that can give their blogs the opportunity to take off. If you’re committed to writing good content, it often takes no money at all to get the ball rolling.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, a quick caveat: We’re beyond the “How do I blog?”, “Why would I blog?” and the dreaded “What is a blog?” phase here. If you’re at that stage, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m assuming you already know why you are blogging, and what it can offer you or your organization. You just might not know what you can do to give it a nudge so people can find it.
OK. So you’ve set yourself up a blog, and you want to be sure your efforts bear fruit. Here are some easy, basic, and FREE techniques to promote your blog:

Tags and Categories - Cost: $0.00

• Internet and blog search engines use the keyword/keyword phrases in tags and categories to file your postings so they’re ready can be served back to Internet searchers. Use them thoughtfully and creatively!
• If you use both tags and categories, your categories should be broad; your tags should be specific.

Submit Your Blog to Search Engines - Cost: $0.00

• Submit your blog to credible, qualified directories (Google, Yahoo, Live, ASK, DMOZ.org)
• For some sites (such as the Yahoo directory) you do have to pay. However, you can submit your site to Yahoo without submitting to their paid directory.
• If there are any niche RSS syndication services for your content, see if there are fees associated with adding your feed to their service. Often, aggregation and syndication services don’t charge a thing.

FeedBurner - Cost: $0.00

• FeedBurner allows reporting on the number of subscribers to your blog as well as some high-level web site traffic reporting. It is also useful to promote your blog.
• After doing the basic FeedBurner setup, enable the ‘PRO’ settings. The ‘PRO’ features previously cost money; they are now complimentary (thanks for buying FeedBurner Google!),
• Finally, go through each tab in FeedBurner and read the options that are available. Scores of additional options exist from pinging other aggregation/syndication sources when you post an entry to placing ads in your feed to monetize your syndication.

Technorati - Cost: $0.00

• Technorati is the Google of blogs and a great source of traffic.
• There’s no excuse to not sign-up with the basic information Technorati needs.
• Don’t stop at the bare minimum. Go ‘Favorite’ blogs you enjoy. Don’t forget to ‘Favorite’ your friends’ blogs; maybe they’ll stop by and ‘Favorite’ you too. Add a ‘Favorite on Technorati’ badge or link on your blog.
• Add a post to the Where’s the Fire (WTF) every now and again. Make sure they’re good posts. Even if you don’t get a lot of votes, you do get people coming by to see what your blog has to offer.

Google Analytics - Cost: $0.00

• Google Analytics allows you to get more detailed web site usage reporting than FeedBurner can supply. Free or not it’s a great tool.
• Figure out which reports help you the most. You can gauge affinity for your content based on how often articles are viewed, how long visitors stay on your site when they arrive at a specific individual article (etc.). Sky’s the limit. Get to know Google Analytics.
• Learn and adapt. Viewing reports on usage of your blog isn’t blog promotion. How you interpret and apply what you learn will provide a strong foundation for your future blogging and blog promotion efforts.

Link to your Blog - Cost: $0.00

• If you send out any regular communication (online or off) provide a link to your blog.
• If your email program allows it, place a link to your blog in your signature.
• When you comment on other people’s blogs, be sure to provide your blog’s URL if you are prompted.
• If you keep a LinkedIn or Facebook profile, be sure to add a link to your blog. Facebook also lets you import your blog’s RSS feed as “Notes” so they display on your Profile page.

Ping when you Post - Cost: $0.00

• If your blog doesn’t automatically do it for you, ping Technorati and other services when your blog is updated
• If you’re not sure if your blog platform pings aggregators and syndicators when you post, check your documentation (most good blog platforms do this automatically, such as WordPress and Blogger).
• FeedBurner also has a ping service. Be sure it is activated, and take advantage of their offer to let you specify more sources to ping.

Participate in the Greater Blog Community - Cost: $0.00

• You want people to interact with your blog, be sure to do the same yourself!
• When you provide meaningful commentary on others’ blogs, you will benefit from visitors and/or the author stopping by your blog to learn more about you.

Finally Write Good Content - Cost: $0.00

• This is the big one. Without good content, you’re toast.
• Write provoking titles that speak to your audience. If the title is good, you have a much better chance of drawing viewers to your content.
• Be sure to post regularly! Post as regularly as you can. Search engines (and your readers!) like to see stability and frequency in the amount of content that comes from your site.

I hope these tips help. They are all free, and they will promote your blog. If you write compelling content and use the methods above, you will get traffic. How much blogging and promotion of your blog you commit to will determine how popular your blog becomes.

Share This

Comments (5)

Microsoft’s Analytics Offering (Gatineau) Goes Beta

August 31, 2007 at 2:43 pm · Filed under Web Applications, Analytics, Beta

Joshua Allen blogged on the MIX07 web site this morning about Gatineau, Microsoft’s web analytics offering, going beta. Microsoft is touting its ability to apply its own demographic information to your web traffic data. From Josh’s post:

In addition to all of the standard analytics features, Gatineau can correlate your web traffic data with our massive database of demographic information. This allows you to slice your logs based on gender, age and other characteristics of your visitors. The service is free.

Read the whole post on the Visit Mix web site, or go directly to the Gatineau beta sign up.

Share This

Comments

How-to: WordPress 404 errors with Google Analytics

August 13, 2007 at 11:57 pm · Filed under Analytics, Programming

Google Analytics is a great tool, and not just because it is free. But, there are always little things I run into that Google Analytics doesn’t do that I wish it would. One example: tracking 404 requests in WordPress.Currently, when WordPress 404’s, it doesn’t redirect to a 404 page proper, but displays WordPress’ 404 page content at the request location that was originally requested. The way that this is interpreted by Google Analytics is as a successful page request. If you were to request http://smcandrew.com/some-nonexistent-page, I just get an entry in my Google Analytics for that page, which, unless I review my statistics at a granular level, I will miss. What I want to know is what page requests are 404ing in the event that there are pages that I haven’t 301 redirected correctly, or, that another site has linked to intadvertently.Luckily there is a way to report 404’s by customizing the Google Analytics JavaScript for these situations.I keep my Google Analytics code in my footer.php page, but this should work regardless of which PHP file has the Google Analytics script.How to track WordPress 404 requests in Google Analytics: Here is the stock Google Analytics JavaScript code snippit:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">	_uacct = “##-#######-#”;urchinTracker();</script>

Here is a modified JavaScript snippit which logs the request as to a 404 page:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">	_uacct = “##-#######-#”;urchinTracker(”/404?page=” + _udl.pathname + _udl.search);</script>

So, if we can just determine when a 404 request is made, we can have WordPress insert the right javascript code. Luckily, WordPress makes that easy to do. Here’s the final code, which I’ve inserted into my footer.php file, just above the tag:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">_uacct = "UA-1449530-1";<?php if ( is_404() ) { // custom 404 code for Google Analytics ?>urchinTracker("/404?page=" + _udl.pathname + _udl.search);<?php } else { // Google Analytics for all other pages ?>urchinTracker();<?php } ?></script>

Now all requests which 404 will be logged as a request to ‘404′ and will also indicate what specifically was requested. For example, in the earlier scenario (the request for a non-existent page at ‘http://smcandrew.com/some-nonexistent-page’), my Google Analytics would report the following in my Content > Top Content report:/404?page=/some-nonexistent-pageHope this is of help to other WordPress users out there!

Share This

Comments