Using an analytics tools such as “google analytics” is a great way to understand where your visitors come from and what they do when they visit your site (among other things).  However, I’ve noticed that a lot of folks are obsessed with their analytics, they check it daily or multiple times a day…why?  Analytics is a great way to monitor your site progress and traffic fluctuations but there is just no reason to look at it multiple times a day or even daily, you’re going to drive yourself nuts!

Constant analytics checking can actually be discouraging and disappointing.  Let’s say for example that you took the time to write what you consider to be a great post, you put it up but then notice that nobody is really reading it.  You spent all that time writing a post and nobody cared about it!  Now you are a bit upset and discouraged, well don’t be.

I used to check my analytics all the time and then realized that it was extremely counter productive, I became infatuated with little numbers instead of with the conversations and existing visitors that I already had.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for using analytics and I do think you should check it, but perhaps less frequently.  Try checking your analytics weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly.

Here’s a little trick that I use for myself.  I set up goals for myself in between my analytics checking periods.  For example, I tell myself I won’t check my analytics for 1 month.  During that one month I promise myself that I will be a more active participant on other industry blogs.  Perhaps I promise myself that I will spend more time researching my post topics, writing guest posts, tweaking my tags, changing my site design, etc.  Once I set these goals for myself I don’t check my analytics data until my set time period is up.  So far what I have found is that in that one month period my traffic always goes up.  This is because I spend more time actually improving my blog, instead of freaking about my traffic.

Spending more time focusing on the blog (and the readers) itself, allows me to really concentrate on the things that matter.  I keep my head down and stay in the trenches, every now and then I poke my head out to see how things have changed.  Setting up goals and timeliness have really helped me improve my blog, increase my traffic, and focus more on my community.  I don’t get discouraged anymore, in fact when I see my traffic numbers rise, I get pumped up and excited to keep writing!  For a blogger it can be tough to find motivation to keep writing, especially when you’re traffic isn’t growing, or worse, is declining.

To sum up, using and analytics tool is a great way to monitor your blog and understand where your visitors are coming from and what they are reading.  BUT, give yourself a reason to check your analytics, only check your data when you have spent a good amount of time making improvements.  Use your analytics checking as a reward for the hard work you have done to improve your blog!

how often do you check your analytics?  do you set goals for yourself?

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This morning I recevied yet another “pitch” from a company asking me to write about their new product or service.  My usual response is to either ignore the pitch or (more likely) to wish for a giant shard of bamboo to find it’s way directly through the motherboard of their computer.  I’ve decided to take a more constructive approach by putting together a few guidelines for how to pitch bloggers.  Keep in mind that you may all have your personal preferences so I tried to keep my guidlines rather general.

• First of all do not start your e-mail by saying “Hi Jacob” and then paste your press release.  That is going to arouse the inner demon in me to summon the bamboo gods towards your computer.  Make your message personal and make it relevant

• Try to build somewhat of a relationship with me, pretend it’s out first date.  What are you going to just pick me up and then make your move?  Come on now, get to know me a bit first.  Find out what my interests are, heck I have a blog, read it and tell me why I (or my readers) should care about your pitch.

• Make it easy for me to understand what your pitch is about, chances are I have no idea what your company does or who you are.  Give me a brief intro and then list out some bullet points for what your product/company does and why I should care.  If you send me an e-mail using jargon that I don’t understand then you might as well send me your e-mail in funny shapes and characters.  Also, if your press release looks like an e-mail version of “War and Peace,” I’m not going to read it.

• If you fail the first time try again.  If you pitch a blogger once and he/she doesn’t respond, it doesn’t mean the blogger is ignoring you or thinking of ways to destroy your computer.  Perhaps the blogger didn’t see your e-mail or perhaps it went into the spam folder.  Try again.  If the blogger did receive your e-mail and cursed you for spamming them (yes I may have done this) then the next time you have a press release try again, but this time change the way you pitch them (read this list!)

Lee Odden has a list of 5 ways to pitch bloggers and Darren Rowse from Pro-Blogger has a 21 tips for pitching bloggers (a bit too much in my opinion).  Marketers should respect bloggers but bloggers also need to respect marketers, and quite frankly expecting every marketer to follower 21 steps is a bit extreme.

If you are a blogger what other tips do you have on how to be pitched?  If you are a marketer how can bloggers help you with your pitch?

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If you are an individual or a company looking to get involved in social media then you need to be prepared to receive positive feedback and negative feedback.  In my opinion the negative feedback is more important and in fact I would argue that all the feedback you receive is actually positive.  I call it negative feedback because it is portrayed in a critical light, meaning that instead of someone saying how great and amazing you are, someone will tell you that you suck, but the important thing is to find out why.

Positive feedback is easy to give.  Let’s say you release a new widget, next thing you know people are praising you saying your widget is the greatest thing since sliced bread…ya…so?  Sure positive feedback is great, it let’s you know that you are onto something, that you are doing something right.  The positive feedback you get is a good indication that your product or service is satisfying customer needs or wants.  However, you are never going to get 100% positive feedback.  Some of (if not a lot of) the feedback you receive is actually going to be negative, what matters is how you deal with the negative feedback.  Make your negative feedback actionable and turn it into something positive.

Negative feedback is actually positive feedback, stay with me on this one.  Let’s say you create a widget and release it, now instead of praise, people are making voodoo dolls out of you and telling you that your product sucks (ok if they are making voodoo dolls then you probably have a serious problem).  Instead of going into defensive mode, listen to what your users are telling you and make the changes they are requesting.  Look at negative feedback as constructive criticism because that is what it is (minus the voodoo doll).  If people tell you they don’t like something about your product then you know what you need to fix.  If someone tells you that your product or service is buggy, doesn’t work, looks bad, etc. then you know what you need to improve upon, this information is priceless as it shapes your product or service into what it is.    Collectively, your feedback is a giant focus group comprised of users who want to tell you what they think about your product (or you, your brand, your company).  No focus groups is always going to have 100% of the people say they liked the product.

The reason I wanted to address this is because a lot of people are scared to use social media because of the negative feedback they may receive.  I’ll share a little story with you about some negative feedback I received when I first started writing.  During the first month of my blogging I was chastised by a reader who called me out for not editing my posts for grammatical errors.  The criticisms were rather harsh and at first I felt a little upset and defensive, but then I realized that the reader just told me what I needed to fix.  I thanked the reader for his comments and have since tried to be more vigilant of my grammar.  This is just one of the many ways to take a seemingly negative piece of feedback and turn into positive feedback.  I receive comments and emails from readers all the time critiquing my posts or asking me to remove certain aesthetic things, and guess what, I listen and respond to all of them.  Every piece of feedback I receive I consider positive.  The fact that someone is taking the time to interact with me and share their opinion is humbling and I am grateful for every comment or e-mail I get.

How do you respond to the feedback you get?  How have you been able to take a seemingly negative piece of feedback and turn into something positive?

Thanks for reading

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An article by the “Technology Evangelist” states:

“You don’t need to have a 2-way conversation to build a large following on Twitter. Publishing content people interesting, such a software updates, headlines, or humor are valuable whether or not you engage your followers.”

Oh Really?  You mean I’ve been wasting my time communicating with my twitter followers this whole time!?  DAMN!!

The examples that “Ed Kohler” (the writer of the article) uses are:

• wordpress (wordpress)
• Barack Obama (BarackObama)
• macrumors (macrumors)
• Stephen Colbert (StephenColbert)
• Henry Rollins (HenryRollins)

The biggest flaw with Ed’s assumption “that you don’t need a 2-way communication on twitter” is that the examples he uses are already big name brands, companies, or individuals.  I can say for a fact that one of the biggest factors that helped me get all of my followers, was interaction and communication.  I think there needs to be a separation between established and non-established names.  If you are running for president such as, oh…I don’t know, Barack Obama, then millions of people already know who you are and what you are trying to do, no kidding you’re going to have thousands of twitter followers.  But if your name is Jacob Morgan and you’re not running for president, how the heck do you think you are going to get 30,000 + twitter followers?  By spamming them and pushing out content to them?  Put down the crack pipe my friend.

The second flaw with Ed’s assumption is that the goal of twitter is to “build a large following on twitter,” seriously?  Do you actually think the goal that individuals and companies are going after is quantity of twitter followers? (I hope not).  Twitter is used as a communication platform between people, it’s not the quantity of the people you have following but the quality.  If you have 100,000 twitter followers and no 2 way interaction then what’s the point?  That’s like using SEO to get your page ranked number 1 on google while your conversion rate stays at 0, let’s wise up here shall we?

What do you think?  Do you need 2-way communication on twitter?

Thanks for reading

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Apparently Kevin Rose has some insider information on when the new ipods are coming and what they are going to look like, check it out:

According to an article my Gizmodo we can expect:

- Revamp of entire iPod line.
- Small cosmetic changes to Touch, Nano to see significant redesign (see pic below).
- iPods to see fairly large price drops to distance itself from the $199 iPhone.
- iPod touch 2.1 software, iPhone to get update very soon after.
- iTunes 8.0 (”it’s a big update w/new features”).
- All of this coming in the next 2-3 weeks.

Of course, this is not substantiated yet, by Kevin also seems to have a photo of the new ipod.

A more in depth article can also be found on “the iphone blog.”

what do you think, fact or fiction?

thanks for reading

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