Blog Posts

Social Media Tracking Strategies

7/29/2011

This post originally appeared on BumeBox.com

For those who missed it, Mark Suster wrote a great article last week on how undervalued Twitter is as a source of traffic to your website. He claims that Twitter is driving up to 4x more traffic than your analytics software is telling you. We couldn’t agree more: In an online world that is evolving to represent true offline interactions, social and information networks will become increasingly responsible for driving people to your website.

The problem behind the under reporting of Twitter traffic is Last Mile Attribution. While the product he recommends to fix this, awe.sm, does indeed seem awesome (hah!) there are other easy fixes you can do right now to increase the accuracy of your analytics.

1. Build your links

It’s 2011 and I still see some companies pushing out links that are not built with tracking codes. No tracking codes = no data. No data = no analysis. Use tracking codes.

2. Build your links right

If you do not build your links right you will not be able to properly categorize and track your data, and analysis becomes impossible (and therefore any valuable insight that comes from it). You need to establish a hierarchy and stick with it, and make sure everyone else in your company who might be publishing links understands as well. In Google Analytics, this is the hierarchy I have been using for 4 years with very high accuracy.

My analytics hierarchy

My system works, but the hierarchy you use doesn’t even manatter as long as it is consistent throughout your organization.

3. Don’t auto syndicate

Every online social ecosystem is different so if you want to get serious about tracking and conversion the content you publish needs to be catered to the environment it will exist in. In practical terms, your tweets shouldn’t look like your Facebook updates, this is true for any other publishing platform. Wiring your accounts together to auto tweet a FB post or vice versa might seem appealing but this is fools gold. Your post should be specific to the platform, along with its’ link and tracking code (see above).

4. Segmentation testing

In your analytics package, try segmenting traffic according to the inbound device platforms, i.e. mobile vs. desktop. Also try this for operating systems and browsers. If you notice significant differences in the percentage share of direct traffic between the segments, that’s a good indication you are having some attribution problems.

Any way you spin it, traffic attibution will probably get more complex, not less. Implement these strategies and other now to be sure you are ready for the future.

Constructive Interference

7/9/2011

Basic physics tell us that you can combine two or more waves of close enough frequency to achieve a total maximal amplitude and intensity far higher than the individual sum of the parts. I think the same rule applies in the business world.

Your marketing, pr, sales, and business development strategies have to be congruent and synced to achieve their maximal effect. Without sufficient planning, they are haphazard entities floating in space. Unify them and you will elicit a much higher return.

Deferred Professional Investment

4/27/2011

Too many people defer investment into their own career, pursuing instead non-ideal jobs that somehow magically put them in a better position for the future. I graduated college in 2009 and see a lot of this.

This is an irrational professional investment, especially for beginners, for two reasons
1) There is no way to way know if the career you are working towards is truly what you want to do
2) There is no way to know whether the job you are working will actually get you there

Focus on doing hard and important work that you love to do now. By starting now you are gaining professional and intellectual interest that you would otherwise be missing out on.

Variety Hour

4/27/2011

In the gym, It's hard to improve on the basics, the exercises that were most effective for muscle gain and fat loss 40 years ago are the best we have now, with only a few exceptions. Despite this, I see too many gym-goers needlessly adding extra exercises and "variety" to their routine. Instead, the average gym-goer would benefit most by changing other variables in their workout; load, rest periods, rep range, and volume.

Take powerlifters for example, they have superhuman size and strength by only training "the big 3" lifts with usually a few other accessory exercises. Even look at Crossfit, of which actually has a large exercise library. In each workout they only take you through a few exercises total…and it will kick your ass.

Focus on the most effective exercises and when you want to change your workout, try changing load, rest, rep range, and volume before you add unnecessary exercises.

Is there a bubble?

3/24/2011

Although I've lived here all my life, I'm still a relatively new participant in Silicon Valley - last time there was a bubble it cracked just about the time my voice did.

When the news of your financing generates unprecedented mountains of PR, more than news of people actually using your product (for better or worse) ever has, it tells me something is up. It suggests that the intrinsic value and book value of your company is perhaps misaligned. Hence the news with Color. Not sure if this means there is a bubble or not, but I think we are certainly in a new frontier.

Perception is Negotiable

1/27/2011

I use a couple marketing axioms regularly that I want to share. They are also some of the most important lessons I've learned in my life

Perception is reality

Reality is negotiable

I got the first from my marketing professor in college, Ken Germann. The second is out of The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. Using the transitive property, I propose my own Theorem:

Perception is negotiable

I'm still testing this, but so far it has held up. If anyone can or wants to disprove it please let me know.

You Are Not A Pro

1/27/2011

Raise your hand if you are a professional fitness athlete. I thought so...you are not a pro. Here are some fundamental differences between you and professional fitness athletes.

-you diet is not perfect like theirs
-you are much less experienced in the gym
-your body and muscular system are not as adapted to frequent/heavy lifting
-you are not (effectively) taking serious performance enhancing supplements, some of which are illegal
-your genetics are most likely not as ideal as theirs

You cannot do the workouts of professional fitness athletes because you are not a professional fitness athlete. Rather, you need a program that is closely matched to your body type, experience, and fitness level.

You can't dunk on Kobe or ace Federer so you shouldn't be playing their game. Play the game you can win and advance from there.

Definition of Marketing

11/28/2010

When people ask me what I do I usually give the answer "marketing" if I don't feel like giving a full explanation. But what is marketing exactly?

Marketing is sales at scale

First off, I deeply believe that strong sales skills is at the core of any good marketer. But marketing is isn't just sales. Sales reps are usually only speaking to a finite and small amount of people in the transaction. Marketers, however, communicate with a potentially very large audience with higher relationship complexity.

For that reason marketing can and should have a scale effect. Let's say your marketing efforts and sales efforts are equal in customer acquisition efficiency. In this case, one unit of your output can yield a far higher return in marketing rather than in sales, assuming you are addressing a large enough audience.

In reality, though, marketing strategy is often less efficient than sales strategy, and audiences are always large. The savvy marketer knows how to best define their audience and how to optimize for customer acquisition.

4-Hour Body

11/28/2010

The 4-Hour Body, Tim Ferriss' new book, is coming out December 14th and is available for pre-order now. I haven't seen a copy yet but Tim assured me I will be very pleased.

I'm also in the book and helped make the promo video (see if you can spot me). Check out the official website here. I'm excited to see how the book turns out.

Note to girls

11/28/2010

Dear Girls,
Please stop doing so much cardio and stat hitting some weights. Resistance training can trim and tone much quicker.

I know you are all scared of having too much muscle, but that takes lot's of training and eating. Most of our bodies are biologically designed to shed excess muscle, not stack it on. So trust me on this one and get pumping.

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