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How can you get the most out of your CMS plus stay on top of the opportunities to engage prospects on social networks? Well one tool I really recommend — Hootsuite — is busily combining all the major social networks on one dashboard, plus blogging on WordPress.com.  This collision creates a mashup that points to where we’re headed in the next five years, I think.  If you’re still asking, “is social media a business tool,” you’re missing the train. And our CMS of choice, WordPress, has added even more great Content Management features in version 3.0, due out in a couple of wees, so we’ll take a look at those.

Social Media Tip: Now, use Google to find out what people are chatting about in your city. Go there and type in “location *portland” (substitute your city). On the left choose “Discussions”, then “past week.” Note that you can also choose “blogs.” You can also choose further search refinements at left. Click here to see what I found.

A Social Suite to the Max

Hootsuite is taking the word “suite” seriously.  In the last few months they’ve added up and coming social network FourSquare, the ability to reach Fan Pages on Facebook (standard Facebook was already built in), LinkedIN, plus greatly extended the networks you can reach by adding Ping.FM, itself a network aggregator that reaches another 30 or so second tier media sites.  They’ve created an iPhone application.  They’ve beefed up team collaboration features — great for corporate MarCom departments.  Kudos to Hootsuite.

From one dashboard, I can now handle all the essental social media tasks — and automate a number of them.  In order to stay on top of all of this for our clients, I am attending “Hootsuite University” — several hours of training and testing on using Hootsuite, and best practices at the major social networks.  I’ll report on that in upcoming posts.  Contact us for Social Media training and campaign options.

Above, you see the tool to add a Social Network in HootSuite, with Ping.fm showing.  TIP:  Ping.fm is a stealth tool that extends your reach greatly via 30 networks, mobile messaging, chat, and a growing number of 3rd party applications. It seems like a lot to come up on, but with our help you can set it all up once, automate 80% of the work, and greatly increase visibility for your strategic Marketing Communication.

WordPress 3.0 adds Great CMS Features

Here are some top new features to be thinking about using in the forthcoming update of WordPress to version 3.0:

• Control of Menus: Called “Menu Management” in WP 3.0, this new feature gives you a simple drag and drop interface to add links to categories, posts, external sites… plus package “custom menus” as sidebar widgets where your theme allows.  Wow — Kudos to the WordPress core team.  Note that WebFadds builds custom themes for CMS solutions with 13 widget-ready areas, and these menus could be available in any of them.
  Above – the new Menu Manager in WordPress 3.0 is powerful, but easy to use.
• Custom Post Types:  Right now you may only choose between a post and a page, but in WordPress 3.0, you can define your own post types and select attributes.  Think Directory.  For example, you could set-up a business directory, a set of photo galleries or portfolio pages, a set for case studies, etc.  Then you can assign special tags and categories just for this post type.  Then, modify your theme design so the user interface helps your visitors navigate through your new sections.
• Multiple Customized Blogs: We have been using customized categories to set up more than one blog for larger clients.  This works ok because each category has its own RSS feed in WordPress, and its index page may be styled uniquely.  But now, the WordPress team has combined “WordPress MU” (Multi-user), formerly a separate project and download, into the core WordPress program.  So, you may now host a collection of separate blogs, each with their own custom theme, from one hosting plan and WordPress administration area.  This should be great for universities, companies with satellite offices, news organizations — any group with the need for “departments” with their own identity.

Your themes will require modifications to accommodate these new features — contact us for details.

Have you spent time in Google Analytics, enjoying the reports, but scratching your head as to what they mean?  What action can you take based on the information you’ve reviewed?

The answer depends on learning what visitor behavior you should watch, based on what business goals you have for visitors to your site. Do you have goals for what you want visitors to do?  Are they tied to dollar values in terms of ROI?  We always advise clients to begin a site design or upgrade by determining “conversion” goals for when visitors “convert” to prospects, leads, and customers.  There’s a debate right now among managers and business owners asking, ‘is Social Media good for ROI’?  You can answer that question, plus gain other actionable insights from your metrics when you set goals for business outcomes, and then use Analytics to determine ways to guide visitors to those outcomes.

Three Google Analytics rules, and five filter strategies to guide you

Three rules of Metric Analysis:

1. Metrics are Secondary, Action is Primary: Use Analytics to gauge Visitor movements toward or away from defined Business Outcomes, and Conversion goals at your site.
   CHALLENGE QUESTION:  What are the three top Business Outcomes you want at your site, and what is a good ROI dollar value for each?
   
   Above (click to enlarge) one way to gauge visitor behavior, leading to a business outcome is through a “funnel analysis” — but this requires that you first identify and set-up dollar value goals
2. Custom Configured Dashboards Reveal Your Next Tactics: Always custom configure your dashboard overview, and never rely on the simple “top 10″ reports.
   CHALLENGE QUESTION:  What actionable Analytics may not be found on standard reports, and further, what important Analytics are three or more clicks deep into your standard reports?
   
   Above is a a customized Google Analytics “Dashboard” — note three important customizations:  Conversions are shown at top under overview, overview shows a specific segment of visitors (returning visitors), and behavior is compared for two different periods (blue and orange lines)
3. Always be Reviewing Visitor Segments.  Always: Every visitor at your site arrives with different intentions and is in search of different goals.  Use “Advanced Segments” to learn how to serve them.
   CHALLENGE QUESTION: What visitor segment bounces away from the same page that other segments continue through to a conversion, and what can you do about that?
   
   Above -  we have filtered the metrics to view the behavior of three custom visitor segments, to see how they relate to key phrases people used to find this client’s site.  The three segments (click to enlarge) are Returning Visitors, Search Engine, and Non-Bounce Visitors.  Below, I’ll recommend five filtering strategies.

Five Filter Strategies: You can create permanent custom filters — I call them globals, and also filter report results on the fly as you review your metrics.

• Well Converting Keywords: Keywords/phrases visitors clicked to arrive at your site, with a per vision goal value of .XX cents or higher.  You’ll then focus on them in future blog posts and articles using SEO-savvy copy writing techniques.
• Make Social Media Prove its Value: Filter to check ROI value for Social Media.  One approach is to filter data from “referring sites”, to see how Social sites like Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIN send visitors with good ROI value.
• Who’s not Bouncing?: Study keywords that have a low bounce rate (less than 30%) and that referred at least 2 visitors (the higher the better).
• Follow the Path: Use Path Analysis to determine where your visitors are coming from, and then what pages in sequence they visit at your site.  Then the 46 thousand dollar question… at what page do they leave and how can you prevent that?
• View, Sort, and Filter for Conversions: You can filter just about any report to see if your visitors converted… and why they didn’t.

WebFadds will be applying methods like these in our “Analytics-MAX, Site Goal Service” in 2010, and thanks to recent upgrades to Google Analytics including advanced Segmentation and Filtering, we look forward to a surge this year.  Please contact us today, and we’ll be pleased to return a prompt estimate for your Actionable Analytics needs.