Bookmarking Websites

One of the key components to reaching your desired audience is research. With information updating in realtime, now is the best time to take advantage of social bookmarking.

How do I do that?

Most social bookmarking sites have a simple sign up process. You can share links that you like, make tags for specific topics, and follow other people and their tags. This is one of the best ways to get information you want in an organized way. Now you don’t have to waste time filtering and scanning through search engine results.

Popular social bookmarking sites…

include: diigodeliciousPintrest, and NewsvineWendy Boswell gives a good summary of some of these and others. I recommend these in particular because they tend to focus towards professions and other social bookmarking sites can be tailored more towards humor or entertainment. Either way, find what works for your audience based on your analytics data and research the latest news. Once you catch on to what trends are most popular, you can creatively deviate. Then, it’s time to collaborate with your advertising and public relations teams to get ideas flowing about how to create a trends and catch your target audience’s attention.

RSS

These feeds are a great way to confine your bookmarks as well. All can be accessed in one spot through a cloud server. RSS and social bookmarking websites allow you to obtain your saved bookmarks or searches from any computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Compare notes

I recommend having at least one other person give input on trends and topics to search and bookmark. This will keep the diversity flowing and keep you from potentially falling into a narrow focus (tunnel vision).

Also, be sure to keep track of information you have pulled and used that was effective. Compare old and new analytics charts. Create plans to expand your audience. Analyze potential audiences that you could reach that you have not specifically targeted before. People like to be targeted specifically. That way, you’re not wasting their time with information that does not pertain to them. Keep it clean. Keep it simple. Keep it creative.

Get more web traffic

Lastly, social bookmarking can be a way to increase awareness from users. Try to increase your followers on a social bookmarking site and bookmark your latest stories. BUT. . . do not over do it. Increasing your Google rank with positive information is important. You do not want your company to be related with spam or other negative web categories. Here is a good video to give you an idea of what I am talking about. Good luck!

Any questions? Please comment below.

Data Analytics for Small Business

I started doing some research on free analytic softwares because I am working with a smaller company in Austin, TX. Myself and a few others in my social media class at SEU are working together to help the new owner expand the company’s brand, improve scheduling and web traffic, and learn how to analyze his business’ data and customers. With my assignment being the later, I researched some free web analytics software. I came across a Tech Media Network article written by Nicholas Dragon.

Based on the owner’s request, I came across 5 potential analytics software.

Here they are: 

1. Google Analytics: A 3-step sign up process that allows you to see data tracking within hours. It’s free. I really like that you can upgrade to a premium option if you have long-term expansion goals for your company.

Go to my previous post to learn more about Google Analytics.

2. Site Trail: Allows you to analyze social media and technology news of your website. The owner can add the website to your RSS feed and track the domain name of the company’s website. The weakness to this option of web analytics is that it limits to online information. If your company’s main function is providing tangible service, such as bus rides, t-shirt printing, or retail…you may want to use a different analytics software. HOWEVER, if you want to analyze or get started with a simple website analytics program, this is a good way to go. The analytics reports are favorable to the visual person as well.

3.Click Tale: A great option to increase website design and customer satisfactory with your business’ website. Thousands of companies use it, such as Domino’s, TMobile, and Walmart. It measures website users’ behaviors by using heat maps and form analytics reports. Both are great for the visual business owner and new/small businesses.

4. StatCounter: A free website user analysis. It’s main benefit is providing real-time data monitoring. Here is a visual demo.

5. Woopra: With the free version, you can track web users in real time, run analytics reports, and build labels for important customer segments. The small business version allows you to build scheduled tasks, notifications, retention reports, and more. Go to the website to learn more.

Those with the ambition of vast company expansion: 

Adobe Marketing Cloud is another option with good reviews to increase your marketing communications and strategies. It includes analytics, campaign, experience manager, media optimizer, social, and target tools. Long-term, you may want to switch to this type of analytics or Google Analytics Premium. 

I appreciate your feedback.