I watched an online presentation this week by Jason Falls - he's founder of Social Media Explorer if you wanted to check him out -  it's relatively basic stuff but he gave some great pointers about the different ways to measure social media and how goal setting is the first key to success. I believe that it's important to put clear goals to any marketing including social media. You will hear some purists talk about "conversations" and social media is all about being "human", I agree 100% with that sentiment and yet not having a clear purpose and measuring progress seems crazy to me. Especially when you consider how can be to persuade senior management to release investment into 'new' areas like social media. The importance of a plan Although some guru's like Guy Kawasaki might disagree with me, my belief is that social media marketing has little impact without a plan…
There are maybe many missing measures in Google Analytics which could be useful, but the one I'm referring to is useful AND is available if you know where to look.

What is the missing measure?

The measure I'm referring to is Second Page Viewed on your site. In this example, I'm looking to see the second page which within the [Visitors:New vs Returning] report. Filtering for New visitors shows me the most important path is visitors going back to the home page. (not set) is the bounces.

How will it help me?

Why would I be interested in that you're thinking - I can see my top entrance or landing pages, that's what really counts. The main reason I find this useful is to do with understanding how site visitors use site-wide navigation. Although you can see a forward path for a page from its navigation summary…
To coincide with the iPad launch on the 28th May in the UK, this is our review of the implications of the iPad for marketing into the future. Although many commentators have criticised the iPad as an "inbetween" product which loses the portability benefits of Smart phones and the power of Netbooks, we believe it will be something of a game changer in the way we consume media and in providing new opportunities for marketing. I coordinated the production of this guide for the cScape Customer Engagement Unit. It includes reviews and recommendations from 3 Smart Insights Expert commentators: Dan Barker, Dave Chaffey and myself.

iPad design techniques

.Net magazine August 2010 has a good tutorial and tips on iPad design. Here are a selection of their recommended links iPad templates from Emily Chang - good for creating mockups, e.g. in Omnigraffle Optimising for iPad - Stephan Spencer discusses how mobile-friendly…
My May 2010 Powerpoint presentation for students taking the IDM Diploma in Digital Marketing. It covers 10 key issues to consider when developing a digital strategy Step 1. Set SMART Goals and setup analytics Step 2. Define strategy Step 3. Review current performance Step 4. Define target markets Step 5. Engaging OVP Step 6. Visibility and traffic Step 7. Digital channel integration Step 8. Improve your site's efficiency and effectiveness Step 9. Customer E-communications Step 10. Channel governance IDM Internet Marketing Strategy View more presentations from Dave Chaffey. …
In a commercial world that understands the power of word-of-mouth it continues to puzzle me at how slowly business are catching on to fully leveraging the web to build their brand online (aka "€œthe fluffy stuff"€). Looking beyond search engine marketing, for example, as a means to drive targeted traffic. This post by sixrevisions.com felt topical and started me thinking about how important community building is for sustainable and defensible traffic building. In my mind, communities are a place for fans (fans of your products, services, ideas, beliefs or brand) to connect. They might be customers, but don't have to be. Commercially, they represent a place where you can interact and earn the right to re-convince fans of your brand"€™s worth. The sixrevisions.com post asks three questions and then lists the answers of five highly experienced community builders. Remember, "€˜community"€™ does not necessarily mean building your own walled garden, community can…
I've recently given three presentations about our passion here at Smart Insights, which is getting the most value from the fantastic customer and market insight available online through tools like Google Analytics and user feedback software. We believe that the majority of managers don't give the right business priority to using analytics for improving performance. Consequently, they're often used for spewing reports which are ignored rather than identifying problems and opportunities for business growth. Our mission, through guidance on this site and consulting work is to help companies get more value from their investments in digital marketing by driving improvements using Google Analytics. Far too much time is wasted exporting, importing and formatting data into dashboards used to run teh business. These presentations suggest some approaches to make analytics more actionable and build them into business processes in a lightweight, integrated way.

Show Me the Money! Driving Commercial Value from Your Analytics

This presentation to…
Twitter is about answering the question "€˜what are you doing"€™ in less than 140 characters. That"€™s about 12 words. In this article I suggest 10 quick wins to get you started in Twitter or to review your current approach. I hope these wins work for you whether you're a business or personal tweeter or both. Before we get to my 10 quick wins, here's a quick refresher of some of the Twitter commands since I find that many small and medium businesses are still picking up on Twitter.

Twitter jargon buster

Tweet "€“ a post, message or update on Twitter @username + message "€“ an open tweet that can be seen by your followers and by @username"€™s followers DM username "€“ a private tweet that can only be seen by username #hashtag - a Twitter keyword. Adding # makes the word searchable. RT "€“ repeating a Tweet, known as a ReTweet

Ten Quick Wins to create a…

Using web video has become one of the fastest growing digital tools available to marketers - up 37% year-on-year in the UK. Of course, when we think web video marketing, we naturally think of YouTube and YouTube are keen for you to advertise within You Tube through new approaches such as Video Targeting and Promoted Videos for You Tube. But the idea behind this post is to look at other options for using video too. In particular, it  has proved to be very effective in raising conversion rates for all types of company. For example, see how eretailers are using video for merchandising. So, In this post, I present a guide of steps towards developing a strategy to using video for marketing.

Step…

We hope you like the look and feel of our new site, updated today! I'm really pleased with it, but it's your view that counts. So please tell us what you think we may have got right or wrong via the Kampyle feedback button or contact us and then we will make more tweaks.

We'd like to thank the hundreds of visitors have given feedback since we soft-launched the site in February - as outlined later in this post we have taken a lot of what  you have said on board. I'd also like to personally thank our expert digital marketing commentators who have contributed some fantastic, most popular, most useful posts on the site. Your efforts in sharing your expertise are really appreciated.

Thanks, Dave Chaffey

What's New? We're moving from a blog to…