MackCollier.com

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What You Can Learn From My Record Blog Traffic Yesterday

I am constantly preaching the need for bloggers to have Google Analytics on their blog during #Blogchat.  A big reason why is so you can track changes in your blog, good and bad, so that you can understand why the change happened.

Yesterday this blog had 2,235 visitors, which is about 90 more than the previous high for one day.  What I want to do is walk you through the stats in Google Analytics to figure out why this happened, and also give you some insights into how you can do the same for your posts.

One thing I do every day is a comparison between the current day’s traffic and the traffic from one week ago.  For example, today I’ll track the current day’s traffic (Thursday) and also compare the hourly traffic against last Thursday’s traffic.  This gives me an easy way to see if traffic is doing better or worse than it was a week ago.  Here’s what that comparison looked like for yesterday compared to a week earlier:

HourlyGAtraffic
 That’s a really strong graph as it shows that traffic for yesterday (blue) was higher than the previous Wednesday during every hour yesterday except for the final one of the day.  This is what you want to see, because it indicates that traffic is growing week to week.

But the traffic last Wednesday was 1,785, whereas yesterday it was 2,235.  That’s a 25% increase, and while I’m thrilled with that jump, I want to figure out why it happened.

So let’s put on our cyber detective hats and dive deeper into the blog’s stats.  The first place I’ll start is by taking the above data (yesterday’s traffic vs the previous Wednesday’s) and segment that traffic into channels.  You can find this in Google Analytics by clicking Acquisition>All Traffic>Channels:

ChannelTraffic1

Three things immediately jump off this graph to me:

1 – Note that there was a BIG jump in search traffic.

2 – While the number of visitors that arrived at the blog from an organic search increased, the percentage of overall traffic that came from search actually went DOWN.

3 – There was a BIG jump in traffic from Social.

 

Now, the big jump in search along with the big jump in social is interesting to me.  It increased by 14% week to week, which is much higher than it normally does.  I want to play a hunch and check out the sources of the Social traffic.  So I click on Social and it will show me which social sites drove traffic to my blog yesterday and a week ago yesterday:

SocialTrafficA-ha! So almost all of the surge in Social traffic yesterday vs a week ago was actually coming from just Twitter.  This is my suspicion: As people were sharing my content yesterday on Twitter, it was leading to more links to my content being seeded higher in search results on Google. So the better my content did on Twitter yesterday, it resulted in it also doing better in search results on Google.  That would explain why search traffic spiked because overall the two traffic sources that accounted for almost all of the overall traffic bump yesterday were Google and Twitter.  Perhaps this is a result of Google indexing tweets into search results?

But I still don’t know if any content in particular was driving the increase in traffic.  That’s what I really want to know.  So back to Google Analytics, I click Behavior>Site Content>All Pages:

PostsGA
Double A-Ha! The 4th and 5th most viewed posts yesterday were both new posts I wrote this week.  And a big chunk of the overall growth in traffic can be tied back to these 2 posts (288 new visitors).

This also gives me important insights into the type of content that resonates with my readers.  And since I’ve already looked at the channel data, I know that most of the increase probably came from Twitter, so really I know that these two topics likely resonate with my followers on Twitter.

And the beauty of this is I can come back tomorrow and do the same analysis on this post, and compare how it does today vs how the above two posts from earlier this week did.  BTW, a big reason why I wanted to write this post is because I have been doing these type of analysis for a while now, and I know that posts that do a deep-dive into actual numbers are popular with readers here.  Another advantage to knowing your blog’s stats!

The point in all this is to invest time in understanding your blog’s stats so you can improve your blogging efforts and efficiency.  If I hadn’t looked at my blog’s stats I would have little idea that yesterday was a record-setting traffic day or more importantly why it was a record-setting traffic day.  Now I know, and that knowledge will help me improve my blogging efforts moving forward.  Just as it will for you if in you invest the time in understanding your blog’s stats.

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Surprise! Facebook Has Changed the Rules Again For Brands

Facebook has once again tweaked its News Feed algorithm and the change will alter how often content from brands appears in News Feeds from people that have Liked that brand’s page.  This post seems to write itself 2-3 times a year, doesn’t it?

The newest changes, which rolled out last month and were announced last November, flip the script on brands.  Previously, brands were told that they needed to add photos to their updates to increase engagement and visibility in Facebook’s News Feed.

Now?  It’s the opposite, content with photos has the lowest reach.

Yeah.  This is a big reason why I am always telling you to first plant seeds in the gardens you own.  Invest in your website and blog first, not social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.  Because those sites can change the rules on you whenever they want, and Facebook is the worst offender here.  What irks me most about this latest change is that it flies in the face of the advice that companies are hearing about social media.  Companies have been taught for years that pictures drive engagement.  That adding a relevant image to your content will enhance its value and the engagement around it.  Now, Facebook is saying that pictures are penalized, if anything.  This becomes a big problem for the companies that focus most of their social media efforts on Facebook because they will be learning what Facebook wants them to know about improving engagement on Facebook versus about what actually drives the engagement of social media content.

Facebook can be a wonderful complement to your existing online marketing efforts.  Unfortunately, many companies use its Facebook page as a replacement for having a blog or even a website.  And if they later decide to launch a blog or website, they can take the bad lessons learned on Facebook, and apply it to their blog.  Like writing posts without images.  Or only publishing ‘cute’ videos of kids falling in the snow and wondering why that’s not driving engagement on the company blog for an industrial lubricant supplier.

In a perfect world, Facebook’s goals would be aligned with your company’s goals.  Facebook would want to show and teach you how to create content that is more engaging and valuable to your customers.  But Facebook is now a publicly-traded company.  Facebook’s goals are increasing revenue and profits.  That’s likely a big reason why it’s moving toward putting more value on videos.  Because watching videos means you stay on Facebook even longer.  And as time spent on site goes up, Facebook can report that to shareholders as a sign of growth and to advertisers as leverage to raise ad rates.

Facebook’s goals are to make Facebook better for Facebook, not for your company.  Your company is on its own, so plan accordingly.

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Google is Now Indexing Tweets in Search Results, What it Means For You

Google’s love affair with Twitter is back on.  Previously, Google had indexed tweets from Twitter in its search results, but that deal ended in 2011.  Here’s a post I wrote back in 2011 that examined how this process worked.  Earlier this month it was reported that Google would begin adding tweets back to search results sometime in the first half of 2015, but it looks like it’s already underway.

Here’s a screenshot from a google search I did for the name of my marketing podcast.  Note the 6th and 7th results on the first page are tweets I left:

FanDamnTweetsGoogleThis means that content you create on Twitter (tweets) is now being indexed into search results alongside posts that appear on your blog or white papers on your website.

It also means that you now have another channel to seed your content into Google search results.  One of the issues that many blogging businesses face is a difficulty in getting content to rank high in Google results.  It typically can take years to build a business blog to the point where content ranks well in search results.

But if you have a large following on Twitter, that could mean that your tweets rank higher in search results than blog posts you write on the same topics.  You can leverage your following on Twitter to help build your audience for your blog.

Another way to use Twitter to help your blog (and this has nothing to do with Google indexing tweets) is to leverage your business discussions on Twitter as potential topics for your business blog.  I am constantly doing this, I will use Twitter as sort of a ‘sounding board’ to see which topics are important and interesting to others.  Participating and even lurking in Twitter chats is a great way to do this.  By following a Twitter chat that’s focused on topics that are relevant to your blog, you can get a better sense for which topics interest potential readers of your blog.  Which can lead to more content ideas for your blog, which will make it easier to hit your content creation goals.

Have you noticed that tweets are showing up in Google results?  Has it impacted any search terms your blog has ranked for in the past?

 

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 15: Sometimes the Customer is Wrong

Hey y’all!  Welcome to the 15th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show! In this episode we will delve into the idea that ‘The Customer is Always Right’, and look at two examples when this might not be the case.    If you enjoy this episode then please subscribe on iTunes!

Show Notes:

1:00 – Why we say ‘The Customer is Always Right’

1:45 – There are certain cases where the individual customer can be wrong

2:05 – Sometimes a customer may demand a free product or service and threatens to complain online if you don’t give them what they are asking for

3:00 – How to handle this situation correctly

6:30 – Your fans view themselves as owners of your company and brand

7:15 – Some fans demand that you not only listen to them but act on their suggestions, even if they aren’t feasible or possible

10:00 – How to respond to fans that believe you have to do what they are suggesting, ‘my way or the highway’

 

Here’s where you can download this episode directly.

 

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The Best Marketing Isn’t Focused on Your Product, its Focused on My Passions

Did you notice something about the commercials for this year’s Super Bowl?  Besides the fact that this was a pretty weak crop of ads, the few that did stand out had something in common.  These spots weren’t really about a product as much as they were about passions and beliefs.

Self-image, especially among young girls.

Online bullying.

Caring and loving others.

Think about your passions.  The things, ideas, people and beliefs that you care about. These are the things that move you, that don’t just hold, but arrest your attention.

The vast majority of the marketing in this country is aimed at promoting products.  But the small percentage of marketing that breaks through the clutter and grabs your attention typically has one common trait:  The best marketing isn’t focused on a product, it’s focused on the passions of its customers.

Watch this Red Bull commercial and ask yourself “What product is Red Bull selling here?”

I would argue that this spot isn’t designed to sell Red Bull’s energy drink.  It’s designed to sell what happens after you drink it.  Freedom.  Individual accomplishment.  Pushing your personal boundaries and reaching goals that you thought were out of reach.

These are themes that many of us are passionate about.  Very few of us are passionate about an energy drink, and Red Bull knows that.  So instead, the company focuses its marketing on the ideas, themes and beliefs that its customers are passionate about.

And in turn, that helps Red Bull’s customers become more passionate about Red Bull.  The key to successful marketing isn’t to promote your product, the key to successful marketing is to promote the passions and beliefs of your customers that your product fits into.

Patagonia is another company that markets its passions moreso than its products.  In 2011, Patagonia launched a ‘Don’t Buy This’ campaign encouraging customers to think twice about whether or not they really needed a new coat or jacket.  Or if they decided to buy one, buy used versus new.  The campaign from Patagonia was at attempt to combat materialism and consumerism.

And it didn’t work.  Patagonia’s sales spiked 30% as a result.  Why did this happen?  Because customers felt that Patagonia’s beliefs and passions were in line with their own, and as a result they felt that Patagonia was trustworthy, so they bought from the brand.  Patagonia’s marketing resonates with customers because it’s clearly focused on the company’s beliefs, not the company’s products.  Customers that share those beliefs, are drawn to the company’s marketing as a result.

If you want to grab my attention, stop focusing on marketing your products and instead focus on my beliefs.  More specifically, craft your marketing messages so that you explain to me how your products relates to the ideas, beliefs and themes that I am already passionate about.

Do that, and you’ll win my business.

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My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results For January

Hey y’all!  So last month I mentioned that I had set specific monthly goals for growing both my traffic here, and the number of downloads to my podcast.  What I’m going to do is every month this year I will give you an update letting you know if I hit my goals for the previous month, and also letting you know what my goals are for the current month.  I’ll also share with you the most important lessons I learned over the past month. I want to do this to hold myself accountable to the goals I’ve set, but to also give you a way to learn from I’m doing.  So many people and companies want to know how to grow its blog readership, and podcast audience.  This year we’ll look at my efforts to do both.

First, here were my goals for January:

Blog – Traffic of at least 50,000 visitors.

Podcast – At least 750 downloads.

 

Breakdown of My Blog Traffic

My blog traffic for January was 53,783!  So I comfortably hit my blogging goal for January!  Pretty excited about that.

Posts written – 12 (At least 2 every week, which was my goal)

Most popular post written in January (based on views) – The Most Boring Answer to the ‘How Do I Build More Traffic to My Blog?’ Question

Detailed Analysis of Traffic Sources

Here’s where my traffic came from in January:

Organic Search – 83.46%

Direct – 9.15%

Referral – 4.19%

Social – 2.93%

Email – 0.19%

Other – 0.08%

Two things jump out to me from these numbers:  For me, organic search is way too high, and social is way too low.  I would like to see search fall to around 70% and Social rise to 10-15%.  I just worry when my traffic is that dependent on one source.

Something else that’s interesting, check out the numbers for time spent on site:

Average time a visitor spends on this blog – 47 seconds

Average time a visitor coming from search spends on this blog – 41 seconds

Average time a visitor coming from social spends on this blog – 71 seconds

Average time a visitor coming from Twitter spends on this blog – 74 seconds

Average time a visitor coming from Facebook spends on this blog – 73 seconds

Interesting, huh?  A visitor coming from a social media site spends about 80% more time on the site versus a visitor coming from search.  This suggests that the search visitor is just coming to get something and leave, while the social visitor is more likely to look around a bit.

Also, I’m noticing that the engagement numbers I am seeing on Twitter are surprisingly low.  According to Twitter, even though I have over 50,000 followers, most of my tweets are seen by less than 1,000 people.  Yikes!  I’ll probably be spending a bit more time on Google Plus to see if I can raise social traffic and engagement there, since I have a much larger network there versus Facebook or LinkedIn.

Now my goal for February is to hit 54,000 visitors.  This looks like it should be easy since I almost did that in January, but don’t forget that this month only has 28 days.  In fact I am currently on pace to only hit 50,000 visitors for the month.  So even if I miss my goal for this month I’m not too worried due to it being a short month.  However,  I am going to try to get back to writing 3 posts a week starting next week.  Just in case!

Podcast Numbers and Overview 

If you listened to this week’s episode of #FanDamnShow you know I already did a breakdown of how the podcast did in Jan, and my key takeaways.  Please check out that episode if the podcast stuff is what you are interested in.

Goal for January – At least 750 downloads

Actual number of downloads for January – 737

I missed my goal by 13 freaking downloads!  Ugh!  But still very close and my goals for the podcast growth was really aggressive.  For reference, the podcast had 133 downloads for all of December, and 737 in January.  Still, a massive jump.

Here’s daily downloads for August 1st, 2014 through January 31st, 2015:

PodcastTraffic

As you can see, very low daily downloads, typically less than 10 a day, until the end of December and through January on the right.  That’s when I started putting out new episodes on a weekly basis.  From August 1st through December 29th, I put out 3 new episodes of the podcast.  From December 30th through January 31st, I put out five new episodes of the podcast, one every week.  If you are wanting to build an audience for your podcast, consistency is key.  Putting up a new episode on a regular schedule is vital to your show’s success, as this graph proves.

Two important lessons I learned from doing the podcast in January:

1 – It’s very important to script out the flow of each episode before recording it.  I didn’t do this for the first couple of episodes in January, and I noticed my thoughts were kinda all over the map.  When I started writing down a script, just the key points I wanted to talk about and in the order I wanted to talk about them, it really helped the flow of the episodes, and it made it much easier for me to keep my thoughts organized.

2 – It’s very important to thank the people that are promoting your show.  What I noticed was that each week people were promoting the show for me, especially on Twitter and Facebook.  So I made a point of doing a shoutout to them on each show, then I let them know I did so after the episode went up.  Just a small way to say ‘Thank You’, but everyone loves to be appreciated, right?

So that’s how my January went, and what I learned.  Again my goals for February are:

Blog – At least 54,000 visitors.

Podcast – At least 850 downloads.

I’ll be back here in a month to let you know how I did!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 14: Segmenting Your Fans to Better Engage Them

Welcome to the 14th episode of #FanDamnShow! Today’s episode is how to stabilize or build your social media engagement by segmenting your fans online to better engage with them. If you enjoy this episode then please subscribe on iTunes!

Show Notes

0:50 How engagement around social media content seems to be falling

3:00 Our behavior has shifted from engaging with content to simply creating and sharing content

3:50 If your engagement is falling, then most engagement will come from the people that know you and have an existing relationship with you

6:00 How to segment your fans and easily stay engaged with them on Twitter and Google Plus

12:45 Results of my January goal for total downloads and whether I hit that number

14:05 The two things I learned from doing #FanDamnShow in January

 

Here’s where you can download this episode directly.

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An Update on My Speaking Schedule for 2015

First, some housekeeping.  As I talked about at the start of the month, this year I have set monthly goals for growing this blog’s readership as well as the audience for my #FanDamnShow podcast.  I will update everyone on if I hit my goals for January in a post next week.  Right now it’s looking good for the blog’s numbers, but it’s still very close with the podcast.  I would appreciate it if you could check out #FanDamnShow, this week’s episode was very popular.

For 2015, I decided to completely alter my strategy toward speaking engagements by limiting my appearances to just 8 events for the year, and only 1 per month.  The reason was simple: By accepting fewer speaking engagements, that would allow me to devote more time to connecting with the attendees at each.  This would improve the quality of the presentations as I could incorporate feedback from attendees into the presentation before it was delivered.  Additionally, it allows me to become an invested promotional partner for each event I speak at.  Instead of booking a speaker that shows up 15 mins before they speak then leaves as soon as their session ends, I will work with you months in advance to help you promote your event and make it better for attendees.  We both have the same goal: To make your event a rousing success!

I have tentatively booked the first slot for 2015, so there are 7 slots left.  I am awaiting final confirmation for an event in May.  So if you have an event in 2015 that I can speak at,  I would love to talk to you.  You can learn more about my speaking in 2015 here on my speaking page.  For every event I speak at in 2015,  I will be at the event a minimum of the entire day in which I speak.  No arriving, speaking then leaving the stage to get on a plane home.  I will be invested in helping you see that your event is a success by helping you promote it beforehand and staying after I speak to help your attendees with all their questions and ideas.  This was one of the reasons why I wanted to do less speaking in 2015, because I wanted to ensure that I could spend more time on-site and interacting with attendees at each event.

If you have an event in April, June, July or August, please contact me ASAP since these months are normally the busiest for conferences, and I will only speak at one event in each month.

You can learn more about my speaking here.  If you are hosting a webinar that needs a presenter, I am also accepting a limited number of slots for webinars in 2015, here’s those details, and both links include my fees.

I hope to see you in 2015!

 

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Giving Fans Backstage Access: How Paper.li Is Embracing Its Users

All InAlmost a year ago, my friend Kelly Hungerford contacted me about working with Paper.li to help the company build structures to help it more efficiently connect with its users and create value for them.  Paper.li has a pretty devoted userbase, and a big reason why is because of the personalized customer service (or ‘customer care’ that Kelly calls it) that Paper.li has given its users.

But Paper.li’s team is like many growing companies in that team members are often required to wear many hats.  Which presented a challenge for Paper.li: How do you scale having individual relationships with users when the userbase expands from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand users?

So we started out by asking and answering those two questions that I mentioned in the last episode of #FanDamnShow:

1 – What does Paper.li get from this?

2 – What will Paper.li’s users get from this?

 

We came up with some very specific goals that we were shooting for on each end that I don’t want to get into here.  The bottom line is that Paper.li wanted to create programs and structures that help it better connect with its users, and give those users more value and more input into its marketing, product design, and feedback, moving forward.

Many of Paper.li’s planned projects are still in development, but you’ve already seen one, the #Bizheroes chat on Twitter.  This chat is run primarily by Kelly and Magda.  The topics are chosen based on a simple question: “What business and life skills would be beneficial to Paper.li’s users?”  Paper.li brings in experts each week to discuss and teach about a particular skill.  Kelly, who transitioned from Paper.li to start her own consulting business late last year, is working with Paper.li in an advisory role now with the chat.  It’s a wonderful chat that happens each Tuesday at 1pm Central, in fact the participation numbers are often at or better than #Blogchat’s levels!

Another initiative that Paper.li has just rolled out is called Backstage at Paper.li.  Paper.li believes as I do that your passionate customers hold incredible value for your company as a feedback channel.  From our first discussions, we explored the idea of creating a way to let Paper.li users not only give us feedback on existing features, but also input and opinions on possible future features, products and marketing.

To that end, Belinda Sadouk, Paper.li’s new Marketing and Communications Manager, is spearheading the launch of Backstage at Paper.li.  This is a new place that will not only give those who signup an advance ‘sneak peek’ at new features and products from Paper.li, it will also be a feedback channel to better incorporate the ideas, opinions and expertise of Paper.li’s users into future offerings.  The idea is to create a place where Paper.li can connect with its users in a deeper way, allowing them to be able to get early access to new products, features and initiatives, so that their feedback can be applied throughout the development process.  This will not only improve the quality of the ideas and products that go through Backstage, but the users will become more invested in helping those ideas be successful, since they had more input in their direction.

Paper.li CEO Edouard Lambelet talks about this on Paper.li’s blog this week, but the Paper.li platform has allowed the company to collect massive amount of data, especially around content.  What type of content resonates with users, for example, and this is user-generated data.  So part of the goal of Backstage is to take this data and give it back to the users so it can benefit them as well.  By combining the intelligence created by Paper.li’s data along with input and feedback from users, Paper.li hopes to create products that make a more positive difference in the lives of its users.

If you are a Paper.li user (or just curious!) please signup here to join Backstage at Paper.li.  I will say this: Within the next few weeks members will be given an advance look at a new app that Paper.li will be rolling out that many of you reading this blog will want.  You can find out more information on Paper.li’s blog.

One Final Takeaway

Your most passionate customers, call them fans, advocates or ambassadors, are more than simply ‘volunteer salespeople’.  Yes, fans create cash, but your fans are also a treasure trove of valuable feedback and insights into how to improve your business processes.  It pays to reach out to your most passionate customers and invest in creating stronger connections with them that drive real business growth.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Paper.li has in store for creating deeper connections with its users.

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 13: How to Start a Brand Ambassador Program

Welcome to the 13th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show!  Today’s episode is about the ideal starting point for your brand ambassador program.  If you enjoy the show please consider leaving a review on iTunes, it really helps!

Show Notes:

0:45 – Thank you to Patricia Oliver, Todd Burgess and Jenny Schmitt for listening and promoting #FanDamnShow

1:25 – The starting point for building a brand ambassador program

1:45 – The two questions your company must ask (and answer) before launching a brand ambassador program

3:00 – Why it’s so important to ask and answer these two questions early to help structure your brand ambassador program moving forward, and to help keep it focused

4:55 – An example of how this works for a company

7:15 – The secret to why this works

10:20 – 10 Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program

 

Here’s where you can download this episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.