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What % of my visits should come from Facebook, social?

I've always had a good feel for this answer in relation to search referrals, but the same question in relation to social and Facebook has been a little tougher to pinpoint based on the sites I've worked with. But in researching this question, I cr......

10 Steps to Controlling Social Snippets, Social Analytics

A deep but strong visual description from SEOMoz of how smart publishers are controlling their social snippets on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus and capturing social analytics that Google Analytics and others miss....

SEO, Analytics Tips For Local Media via E-mail

Who's monitoring the developments across analytics and SEO with an eye for its impact on local media sites. Funny you should ask, I am. Would you find tips like these helpful? What % of my visits should come from Facebook? 5 questions a successful......

 

What % of my visits should come from Facebook, social?

September 19, 2012 in Uncategorized

I’ve always had a good feel for this answer in relation to search referrals, but the same question in relation to social and Facebook has been a little tougher to pinpoint based on the sites I’ve worked with. But in researching this question, I crossed this post from SearchEngineLand that does a nice job of outlining what they see.

I’ve seen social referrals as low as 1%-2% of total visits depending on the effort and strategy behind the digital efforts and as high as 12%, but this chart sets a good target at between 6% and 8% for all your social referrals.

 

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10 Steps to Controlling Social Snippets, Social Analytics

September 19, 2012 in Uncategorized

Structured Social Sharing Formula - 10 Steps

A deep but strong visual description from SEOMoz of how smart publishers are controlling their social snippets on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus and capturing social analytics that Google Analytics and others miss.

 

 

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SEO, Analytics Tips For Local Media via E-mail

August 31, 2012 in Uncategorized

Who’s monitoring the developments across analytics and SEO with an eye for its impact on local media sites. Funny you should ask, I am. 

Would you find tips like these helpful?

If yes, why not get these tips delivered to you for free. They’re one click away and available via e-mail or RSS.

– Jim Thompson, Push2Digital.com

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Blaming Fastfood News Consumers Only Part of Problem

March 20, 2012 in Uncategorized

Fastfood_news

Ignorance [is now] created through the consumption of information, rather than the lack of it.

That's what Clay Johnson believes. If you have 15 minutes, watch Clay's presentation on the future of news information. He's the author of "The Information Diet" and pimps his book a half-dozen times, but offers intriguing thoughts about how we should think about news and information.

Tidbits include: 

  • "Ignorance [is now] created through the consumption of information, rather than the lack of it."
  • "People consume 11 hours of information per day — most of which is fastfood quality."
  • "Content is not a commodity, but data is."
He goes on to urge that information consumers go on a diet and only consume high-quality information that provokes thought over validation. Here I only partially agree, because it puts the full responsibility on consumers to simply ignore fastfood news and only consume PBS for the sake of humanity. 

IMO that's not realistic — but what is, is sharing that responsibility with media creators to do a better job of making high quality journalism more attractive, entertaining, shareable and visual. Blaming people for not investing 20 min. in Politico vs. Yahoo, is missing the point. In this age of new media, the thoughtful presentation of high quality news should equal the quality of the content itself. Instead of relying solely on a pledge to not eat Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, we should focus on making the superior alternative more appealing. We have better tools, sources, access, data than ever before — the product must bear part of the responsibility for America's weakness for fastfood news. 

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5 Questions Successful Website Owners Must Answer

February 22, 2012 in Uncategorized

If I could have dinner with one person — the coolest, most interesting, funny, insightful human — I've often wavered between Avinash Kaushik  [@avinash] and Seth Godin [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/]. One is a tactical genius, the other a big thinker — but both immeasurably inspiring. Avinash is pulling ahead though, because his insights are so dead simple and most importantly — usable — like the 5 questions you must answer about your website.

It's not new, but the list and post are the best 15 minutes you could invest in your site.  

#1. Why does the site exist?

#2. What parts of the website should you focus on first?
#3. How smart is your digital marketing strategy?
#4. How well are you doing in context of your competition?

#5. What is the fastest possible way you can have a impact on the business?

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/biggest-web-analysts-mistake-how-to-avoid/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OccamsRazorByAvinash+%28Occam%27s+Razor+by+Avinash+Kaushik%29

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Are Your News Stories Too Short to Rank?

February 4, 2012 in Uncategorized

Short-stories

Digital newsrooms have grown in their appreciation for the need-it-now demands for developing news — and have logically adopted a stance of publish what you know, when you know it.

This often results in a brief that may stand for sometime while the news gatherers flesh out new details. The problem is that search engines may be ignoring that early version because it is too brief.

Google's Panda update, designed to weed out content farms that manufactured pageviews with a minimum of original content, has made Google keenly aware of donut pages that contain as little as 5 to 10 percent of original content. (See 5 Deadly Content Sins). Therefore a news story that features a few paragraphs of developing information could easily be ignored.

Has it happened to your content? Well, you can check your Google Webmaster account and see. Visit Diagnostics > Crawl Errors and select the News tab to check for errors. There you'll find URLs that could be described as "Article too short" or "Article disproportionately short".  Typically this means the story's content was inadequate, and from what I've seen, that's less than 100 words.

For content farms, that's a weak effort at creating a story. But for a news team, that could be the first report of a breaking story. So what's a digital news team to do? 

One option is to use a blog-style format that strings updates chronologically with timestamps rather than overwriting previous information. It reveals the iterative reporting process, conveys developing news and encourages visitors to return. Another option is to use a little original elbow grease to add context about the scene, history or similar events. The editor could also include references, links to resources and other media reports. 

With the wealth of resources available online, even when reports are brief, digital producers should strive to frame the info they have with the context they can add. Your visitors and Google will appreciate the effort. 

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What Should Be In Your Top 300 Pixels?

January 27, 2012 in Uncategorized

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Search Driving More Traffic To Your Site

December 13, 2011 in Uncategorized

When evaluating the general health of your site, one of the first areas to review is your acquisition strategy … to understand how people are arriving at your front-door?

I use the term “people” rather than “user”, “customer” or “visitor”, because it’s important to remember these are more than referral stats — they’re warm, breathing humans that choose to visit your site. And they generally fall into three groups:

  • People who know you — (direct traffic)
  • People who were recommended to you or your content — (referral traffic)
  • People who searched for you or your content — (search traffic) 

You could add other categories for people driven by ad campaigns or e-mail marketing — but the above three are the biggies, especially for media sites.

Now, according to a KissMetrics post, which is based on Google Analytics data, of those three acquisition sources, search continues to grow. As the choices and access points for content evolve and expand — search remains the quickest, simplest way to navigate most information inquiries on the web and is your best means to introduce yourself to new “people”.

The 2011 Web Analytics Review infographic also notes an overall drop in Pages per Visit, Time on Site and Referrals from other sites. As people’s attention continues to splinter and referrals from other sources drop, search becomes an even more attractive option to reach folks short on time, but hungry for information.

 

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Why Is The Web Blue? #media #design

December 12, 2011 in Uncategorized

Ever wonder why so many websites are blue? Well, Kissmetrics has a swell infographic that layouts out color preferences that explain "Why the web is blue" as well as men's and women's most hated color. Here's a hint … Univ. of Texas fans would disagree.  

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What Does Local News’ Second Screen Have To Say? #media

December 7, 2011 in Uncategorized

When you hear broadcasters and vendors buzz about the promise of second-screen apps — what exactly are we talking about when it comes to local news?

Take for example TVPlus, it won the “Best New Idea” award at the Social TV Summit. The gist is based on a user a with a connected device who is watching TV. The app (iPad only for now) identifies the show you're watching via audio signals, synchs (yup, I'm watching "Sunday Night Football | Giants-Eagles") and serves up related content via scrolling snippets that include Twitter, Facebook and other content.

Technically it works great — it's impressive in fact, if not slightly creepy, that it can ID the show I'm watching consistently. But what their offering me is less than compelling. The content links to related YouTube clips, Wikipedia definitions, actor/player profiles and facts and information that is basically a duplication of an updated topical Google search. 

The promise and impact of the second-screen is there — but the question is … once I get over the fact that I have an iPad (yeah) and there's an app that sees my TV (neat) — it comes back to the related content. Will it keep me coming back? Once the app's in place, who and how will you execute on the mission to make it worth visiting. 

The answer's in the content.

Lost Remote reported that 10 broadcast groups recently inked a deal with ConnecTV including Gannett, Hearst, Belo, Scripps, Cox, Media General, Meredith, Post-Newsweek, Raycom and Barrington to build second-screen apps for their local news products and … here's the rub … "ConnecTV says it will provide synchronized content and conversation across all programming genres, live or on-demand."

Providing the app and technology is great. Providing content that will be worthy of repeat visits and a business model is a much tougher claim. Second-screen apps for local news programs will not benefit from the motivated entertainment experience that NFL Football and "Glee" enjoy. In addition, it will be promoted on-air to an older less tablet/app savvy audience. 

The hope is that second-screen will pull in younger demos to engage with your news brand, but it will live or die based on the content. 

ConnecTV will be challenged to provide compelling interactive local news-related content for the second screen. To be executed properly that charge must fall to the local news teams. The opportunity is for this second-screen to be part of the on-air display with content that's worthy of standing alone, accepting and responding to viewer questions live during the newscast, adding unique and unduplicated content in the app stream.

Auto-generated content from ConnectTV, even with Twitter, Facebook feeds will not be enough. This is a good start and a step in the right direction, but the plan hinges on the next step, which requires smart digital content creation and web experience management to generate audiences that will in turn generate revenue.

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