Tracking Facebook Ads in Google Analytics

Posted by Steinar on Jun 9, 2010 in Blog, Marketing | 0 comments

Facebook Ads are a great channel to market your product or service to a targeted set of Facebook users.  The cost is very reasonable and with the right hook, your ads can drive significant traffic.  To learn more, check out http://www.facebook.com/ads.

Statistics for Facebook Ads have improved recently, but it’s useful to know what happens with visits once they visit your site.  Tracking Facebook Ads in Google Anaytics is a great way to do just that.  Did visitors purchase?  Did they browse around? Did they complete the intended action?

Steps to Track Facebook Ads in Google Anaytics

1. When designing your Facebook Ad, include a reference parameter at the end of the Destination URL, such as http://www.myurl.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=test

You can generate this URL at the Google Analytics URL Builder.

2. In Google Analytics set up an Advanced Segment

3. Create a new advanced segment

4. Customize the segment info

5. Select your Segment from the Dashboard to only see traffic stats from Facebook Ad traffic

What do you think?  Will this help you get more insight into Facebook Ad performance?

Google PageRank Checker – Check Google Page Rank of any Web Page

Posted by Steinar on Apr 5, 2010 in Blog, Marketing | 0 comments

Google PageRank is a factor that many consider important to search engine optimization and how your site ranks in Google search results.  Here’s a site that lets you quickly check:

Google PageRank Checker – Check Google page rank of any web pages.

How to increase your PageRank?  Well, that’s one of the great mysteries.  Here’s how Google explains it:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

4 ways to use Google Reader to track your industry, engage your market and monitor your brand

Posted by Steinar on Feb 25, 2010 in Blog, Marketing | 0 comments

As many know, Google Reader is one of my favorite tools to help establish yourself as a market leader online.  In this audio post I discuss the 4 ways Google Reader can help you track your industry, engage your market and monitor your brand.

Listen or Download

Four advantages of Google Reader

1. Ability to track your industry by subscribing to popular blogs or RSS feeds that contain the latest news, trends and product information
2. Ability to share information with your social network via share button, shared custom Google Reader RSS feed or email link
3. Ability to save searches from Twitter to easily identify opportunity to engage with people asking for help on topics you understand
4. Ability to track mentions of you, your company, your brand or your products and service so you can jump in the conversation early and often.

How do you use Google Reader?  What other online tools do you use to accomplish these or similar tasks?

Mobile Phones Will Serve as the Online Content Consumption Platform of Choice by 2013

Posted by Steinar on Jan 14, 2010 in Blog, Marketing | 0 comments

More evidence today from Gartner that mobile phones will serve as the online content consumption platform of choice by 2013.  Is your company preparing for the shift?  It’s happening now, so get on-board.

By 2013, mobile phones could easily surpass PCs as the way most people hop onto the Web. Gartner’s statistics show that the total number of PCs will reach 1.78 billion in three years, while the number of smartphones and Web-enabled phones will shoot past 1.82 billion units and continue to climb after that. This trend will force more Web sites to revamp their pages to make them easier to surf on a mobile gadget.

via Smartphones to dominate PCs in Gartner forecast | Business Tech – CNET News.

Consider the following tactics to make your site mobile friendly:

• Create a mobile version of your website or if you’re using WordPress, install a mobile theme such as WP-Touch.
• Use mobile friendly video, not flash.  YouTube is a great choice and now supports high-definition.  Some services, such as Vimeo, don’t play nice on many devices, including the iPhone.
• Understand the bandwidth and screen size limitations (and opportunities) of mobile devices.  Large images, files and other on-page elements create a barrier for users.
• Consider more new media – audio and video – instead of just text.  Text is difficult to read in some cases if not properly formatted, whereas optimized audio and video can potentially get your message across faster and with greater impact.
• Use a website statistics analysis tool, such as Google Analytics to track visitor devices and navigation.  You can learn a great deal about their behavior and tweak your content appropriately.

What are your plans to meet the needs of mobile users?  What’s working for you?

Facebook is More Like Google and Why Your Business Needs a FaceBook Page

Posted by Steinar on Jan 12, 2010 in Blog, Marketing | 0 comments

In December, Facebook traffic reached 132 million unique visitors and continues to grow.  Surprisingly, most small businesses claim “our customers don’t use Facebook!”  Oh really?

Traditionally, we’ve compared Facebook to Twitter and MySpace, but with its mammoth size, Facebook looks more like Google …

… any comparison between Facebook and Twitter is meaningless and Facebook should actually be compared with Google.

via Facebook’s U.S. Traffic Reaches 132 Million Visitors.

If you have a business how are you leveraging Facebook?  Do you have a Facebook Page, Application, or Ads?  How’s that working?