Marketing, Facebook and Analytics, Oh My!
Published September 4, 2010 | 
So I promised a post that would summarize the past few months of marketing strategy, Facebook pages and analytics. This is that post; it will give an overview and link to the other posts. As usual, if you want help with any of this stuff, just contact us – we work in small, reasonable chunks of consulting and development.
Web Marketing Strategy
The point of the few posts on this are to devise a relatively high-level strategy to get folks started on good marketing. The point of good marketing is communicating clearly and effectively. That’s it. Good marketing isn’t to trick people into anything, its to help them understand what you offer. So, here’s what you should make clear:
- What problem you solve
- How you solve it
- What is special about the way your solve it
You also want to make sure that you understand your audience and what appeals to them. In many cases this means designing your website to speak specifically to types of people or market segments. For more information, stay tuned, and check out the posts tagged as Web Marketing.
Analytics & Tracking
The really key thing for analytics and tracking is to make sure that you are running a package that tells you:
- Who referred people to your site.
- How many of them came.
- What they did on your site.
From those 3 things you can tell what interests people have, what sites and phrases are bringing them to your site, and what they are trying to find when they are there. Google analytics does this perfectly – for more information check out the posts tagged Web Analytics.
Facebook Pages and Social Media
You can (and should) set up a Facebook Page for your business to keep it separate from your personal profile. You should be conscientious about what you put in the public arena (you are what you publish) – you wouldn’t expect to run around naked in public without consequences, and you shouldn’t run around the web that way either. For more information about setting up a Facebook page and connecting a blog toFacebook and Twitter, or on social media strategy. Check out those posts tagged Social Media.
Ok so there’s the over-view. We will get back into using analytics, technical tricks, great open-source packages and more in the future.
A Hoax? Well, you are still what you publish…
Published August 26, 2010 | So the girl “Jenny” quitting her job was a hoax. Check out http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/11/elyse-porterfield/
How interesting. What I find most interesting is that this still illustrates my point. In this case actress Elyse Porterfield has become that HOPA actress who did the hilarious skit on Chive. She has over a million Facebook friends and has probably created career opportunities for herself as an actress – so long as she’s willing to leverage this image. She didn’t know what the stills were for when she took them.
Illustrates the point. In this day and age, you are what you publish on-line. If anyone out there has publications that haunt them, I would like to hear from you. I want to start a consulting service to help clients clean up past publications that cause them troubles – and good service starts with understanding the problem well. Give us a call or an email.
Say it Again: You are what you publish.
Published August 10, 2010 | I am going to reiterate this idea from a post last month because of something my wife just showed me.
In the modern age of social media, we are what we publish. If you apply for a job, its common practice to research you on the ‘net. So, I give you the case of a girl, Jenny, who quit her job yesterday morning by emailing a series of photos to everyone in her company.
http://thechive.com/2010/08/10/girl-quits-her-job-on-dry-erase-board-emails-entire-office-33-photos/
Over 30k people know how Jenny quit her job, more to come, and when bloggers find out her last name, these series of photos could easily come up connected with her on a Google search. So, when Jenny applies to her next job, this is what could easily come up when the HR manager checks her out on Google before bringing her in for an interview.
Not that Jenny is in the wrong. Sexual harassment is a serious HR issue, and if she had a boss who yelled at her and made inappropriate remarks, she needed to deal with that, or quit. The problem here isn’t that Jenny was wrong to quit; the issue is how she quit. Granted its funny, but lets look at the impact on her career opportunities.
If you owned a firm and had somebody like this fellow Spencer managing it for you, would you want to know from an employee about their concerns directly? Or would you rather read it on Facebook? As an HR manager, would you rather present a candidate who has a quiet, professional history to a hiring manager, or a HoPA who reacted bitterly and quit without notice in public forum? Would you rather have a quiet level-headed broker working for you, or someone who reacts unprofessionally to unprofessional situations?
Here’s another note to think about; when you post something that someone else did online, you wield a great and terrible power over their life. Jenny sent this to her office, which wasn’t well thought through, however, somebody in her office posted it online for her, which was simply cruel and may have affected Jenny’s career for years and years to come.
Remember that Star Wars Kid video? Funny, yes. In interviews that kid said the video haunted him for years and ruined his adolescent life…and somebody else posted that for him.
Again; with great power, comes great responsibility. Having the power to post to the Internet and get the immediate attention of millions is great power. If you use it irresponsibly, then, eventually, that is how you may be known…if you use it responsibly, it can have great impact on your life.
Next up, we will do a summary review of analytics, Facebook pages and marketing strategy, going over the posts for the past few months to put them in context before moving on to building traffic.