Author Archive
Get Things Done VS Twitter
I’ve been thinking about the subject of this post for a while because, well, I’m almost “addicted” to Twitter. It is getting more and more mainstream every day, more people are starting to tweet and more content is made available every second. This is definitely great; however, it could become overwhelming – especially if you follow more than 200 talkative Twitterers (which was my case not so long ago…).
The big question: How can you manage your time while utilizing Twitter?
Twitter gets updated all the time. It is very difficult to resist checking it when you know something is there, waiting to be discovered.
Additionally, Twitter is being used as a general chatting application. Because there is no push notification, you “have to” instinctively look at it, making sure you’re not missing any messages from any friends.
The solution: Get Things Done VS Twitter
#1 Filter your list. If you follow someone who has their own blog, you will be better following his blog RSS feed. Unless you are getting some special content from his Twitter account, most of the information will also be published on his blog in a more condensed and informative way.
#2 Be sure your followings are worth your time. Try the following test: for a week, calculate the number of meaningful tweets a following produced. If less than 80% of its content is useful, you should remove it from your list. For example, I was following an excellent SEO professional but I had to dig in his tweets because only 1 out of 5 messages was related to SEO. When I saw “There is a girl in my batcave”, that was it, he was gone.
#3 Time management. Don’t put any Twitter or Twitter feed applications on your homepage (Ex: your iGoogle home page). Define periods of time when you should look at it and stick to these rules. I personally use my lunch break and just before I go to bed.
#4 The new Twitter feature “Twitter list” should be used. Classify your followings into categories such as “Best eMarketing heros”, “must read every day” , “job” or “just for killing time”. During your Twitter periods, browse by priority and stop when the time is up. It’s not really important if you didn’t have enough time to read the latest tweets from your favorite rock star.
eMaketing Strategist
Tags: Get things done, Social Media, time management, Twitter
Market segmentation with Google Analytics
If you have your own website or blog, you are probably using Google Analytics to analyse your traffic statistics, perhaps because it’s free, easy to use and very reliable. Google recently launched the “Advanced Segment” feature which allows you to create subcategories of users. If you’re asking yourself “Why would I do that?”, I might have an answer…
Different segment of users have different habits, look for different content, or are using different features. For example, Seth Godin found on his blog that while only 25% of his readers were using Firefox, they produced twice as much content as Internet Explorer users. In this case, it would make sense, for example, to focus on Firefox optimisation when working on new features to add content.
Another example: you are running an Adwords campaign and want to optimize your landing page for a specific targeted group of visitors. Just create a segment for the traffic coming from Adwords and watch what actions they take. Do they all click on a specific image, link? On what page do they exit? Then modify your content accordingly, wait for new data to accumulate in Analytics, and finally rinse and repeat until you have reached your goals.
Here is how to do it. In Analytics, on the left menu, go to Advanced Segment. Create a new segment and just drag and drop your criteria. Save it and go back to Analytics.
Now, when viewing a specific page, you can specify the segment you want to isolate and use all the regular Analytics features, while comparing your different segments.
eMaketing Strategist
Tags: actionable web analytics, advanced segmentation, analyzing website outcomes, brand segmentation, Google Analytics, market segmentation, web metrics analysis
