Author Archive
What If…Only 100 People Can Visit Your E-Commerce Website Per Day?
Here’s the scenario. You own an online sports equipment store and you are able to sell products online. However, from now on, your website can only allow 100 visitors per day to enter the website. Your company’s revenue will depend solely on these 100 visitors per day so you better make sure the people who visit your website are people who are ready to purchase something.
How would this affect how you do business?
Scarcity is something all businesses have to deal with. This scenario is actually not far from reality depending on how you look at it. For example:
- Your PPC budget is exhausted after 100 website visits per day (or click-throughs)
- You only have enough time to reach out to 100 people on Twitter and Facebook
- The QR code campaign budget can only print 100 posters
When creating a digital strategy, it is important to allocate resources where there is highest potential for achieving the strategy’s objectives.
In the scenario above, the objective is to maximize revenue.
- If you are bidding on a PPC campaign, you’d likely want to bid on more targeted keywords which suggest users are further down the sales funnel. For example, you would rather bid for “buy hockey equipment” over just “hockey”.
- If you are investing time on Twitter and Facebook, you’d likely want to reach out to 100 sport related key influencers rather than 100 spam bot accounts.
- If you are distributing QR codes, you’d likely want to place posters around athletic facilities rather than general locations like a coffee shop or bus stop.
Scarcity > Decisions > Strategy
Victor
Digital Strategist
Photo Credit: albertogp123
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What If …. Series.
What If…Your Twitter and Facebook Posts Were Deleted After 24 Hours?
What If…There Was a 2-Tweet Per Day Limit?
Tags: choice, decisions, digital strategy, scarcity, strategy, what if
What If…Your Twitter and Facebook Posts Were Deleted After 24 Hours?
What if … a new feature was introduced where Facebook Wall posts and Twitter tweets were automatically removed after 24 hours?
If you did not post anything new in a 24-hour period, your Facebook Wall and Twitter profile would be empty, showing just a blank page. If you’re managing a Facebook Page or a Twitter account for your company or client this would be a big deal. It’s equivalent to having a company website with no content.
Would this give you more incentive to publish content more frequently?
This hypothetical scenario isn’t very far from reality, considering the effective lifespan of the average Facebook post is 22 hours and the lifespan of the average Twitter tweet is 1 hour.
It’s a balancing act. Publish too infrequently and you’ll gain minimal benefit from your social media profile. Publish too frequently and you risk annoying your followers.
Keep this in mind the next time you are developing a digital strategy. Is your publishing frequency maximizing your impact online?
Victor
Digital Strategist
Photo Credit: JanetR3
Tags: facebook, lifespan, strategy, Twitter
What If…There Was a 2-Tweet Per Day Limit?
Have You Ever Wondered “What if…?”
I believe innovation, inspiration and imagination begins with someone asking “What if…?”. Sometimes, when we’re in the midst of creating a digital strategy, implementing a marketing tactic or developing creative content, we conform to familiar ideas, paths and practices. But, what if we took a step back and challenged the current norms and limits in today’s online environment? Maybe, just maybe, we can create a spark that will set ablaze the next big success in digital strategy.
I will begin a series tackling the idea of “What if…?” I hope you will come along.
What if…Twitter allowed users to publish only 2 tweets per day.
For some users, publishing 2 tweets per day is already a lot to manage. For other users, it’s a huge restriction. This 2-tweet per day limit will likely affect the serial tweeters and the notorious spam bots the most.
Twitter is filled with a lot of noise. Some people try to manage it by only following back a small number of users, using hashtags to organize tweets or by using the search function to find desired information. Others simply give up on using Twitter.
But if Twitter introduced a 2-tweet limit per day, the noise would be drastically reduced. Here’s why:
- The quality of tweets by legitimate users should increase because they will have to think carefully about what they tweet. For example, “Do I really want to use up my quota and talk about what I ate for breakfast? Or should I save my last tweet of the day in case Google announces they are taking over the World?”
- Spam bots that plague Twitter will also be limited to the amount of spam they can generate in a day.
Limits, when used effectively in an appropriate context can help shape people’s behaviour. By creating scarcity, tweets become that much more valuable.
What do you think about a 2-tweet per day limit on Twitter?
Victor
Digital Strategist
Tags: noise, strategy, tweet, Twitter, what if
3 Awesome New Google Analytics Features
The new version of Google Analytics (version 5) was made available to all users on April 20, 2011. If you are using the old version of Google Analytics, you can easily switch to the new version by clicking on the “New Version” link located at the top of your Google Analytics account.
Since its public beta launch, Google has been steadily adding new features that are only accessible on the new version. Here are a few features worthy of your attention.
1. Social Plugin
Google Analytics now allows users to track and analyze how website visitors engage with sharing buttons such as Google +1, Twitter and Facebook. Google +1 integration is part of the default configuration. Additional programming is require to integrate the other social sharing buttons. Here’s a link to more information about the Social Plugin Analytics.
2. Multi-Channel Funnels
One of the most insightful features on the new version of GA is the multi-channel funnel. Website conversion tracking used to only identify the last place a visitor was before completing a goal. However, online conversions are not always a direct process. Users can visit a website multiple times from different sources before converting. The new multi-channel funnel feature now identifies the actual path a visitor took before converting. See this video for more information.
3. Linking Multiple Adwords Accounts
This feature is handy for those using multiple Adwords accounts. Google Analytics originally only allowed one Adwords account to be linked to one Google Analytics account. Linking is necessary to track Adwords performance via Google Analytics. Google just released a new feature that allows users to link multiple Adwords accounts to a Google Analytics account. See this Google Analytics Blog post for instructions on how to set it up.
You might need a bit of time to get used to the new Google Analytics layout, but if Google continues to innovate with new features and functions, it will be worth the effort.
Have you tried the new version of Google Analytics? What are your thoughts about it?
Victor
Tags: Google Analytics
Impact of Google +1 Button on Search Results
There is an ongoing conversation about the impact of the Google +1 button on search engine results. With Google’s +1 button push and integration in Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, it is inevitable that the +1 button will influence Google’s search engine algorithm, and ultimately a website’s rank in search engine results.
The level of impact, however, is still unknown and will likely change overtime as Google tweaks the formula.
Here are three possible scenarios illustrating how the +1 button will influence search results.
+1 Clicks Reign Supreme
The first scenario is the simplest, where the more +1 clicks a page receives, the higher it will rank in search engine results. This scenario, although the easiest to conceptualize, is the most unlikely because it will be too easy for spammers to “game” the system. There are already people selling +1 clicks.
+1 Limited to Your Network
The second scenario involves social integration and personalized search results, where the more +1 clicks a page receives from people in your network, the higher it ranks in your search results. This means the absolute number of +1 clicks for the page do not matter, but only the clicks from your network. This scenario is much more likely as more users begin to use the Google+ network. This scenario also makes it difficult to “game” the system.
+1 Complexity
The most likely scenario is Google will develop a formula that will involve multiple factors that include the first two scenarios. Other factors that may determine the impact of the Google +1 button in search results include:
- the number of +1 clicks over time (a continuous number of clicks over time is better than a single spike)
- the most recent +1 click (more recent the better)
- the number of +1 clicks by users in your city (the more clicks by users in your area the better)
How do you think the Google +1 button will impact search results?
Victor
Tags: +1, google, plus 1, search engine, SEM
