Prof T's SEO and Analytics Blog

Hello Class, I have mentioned a couple times on the board, that I personally am losing faith in social as a conversational medium (with the exception of questions and/or complaint resolution) and tend to view social as more of an information distribution channel. This is not absolute, but I think this is especially true in local, where the need is often very momentary. I have had the opportunity now to watch social for more than a dozen years and there has been a definite shift. I think that machine learning may be accelerating this trend. Even big brands which appear to have conversational threads only do because they have hundreds of thousands or even millions of adherents and there are numerous responses to each post. However, if you read them carefully, most of the “conversations” are actually hundreds of people shouting out their own thoughts. Here is a great article by   John Boitnott   (2016) that discusses that concept of distribution vs. conversation ...

This is just a few of my quick thoughts on an article that appeared in AdWeek on 10-18-18 entitled “Why Social Media Isn’t Working for Your Business, and 6 Things You Can Do About It.” by John Stevens. His six thoughts are all on the money, all are applicable to this week’s discussion, and one is particular is especially relevant to our course. This article is important in that many of us, even those who are fairly familiar with social media, are not sure that we are seeing true engagement and what the analytics we are seeing from the platforms are aiding our ROI or even our brand image. According to Stevens: …only 20 percent of businesses are able to measure the impact of social media on their bottom lines. A whopping 44 percent do not know if social media is working for them. In fact, a particular study provides an even clearer picture: 62 percent of small businesses report that Facebook ads aren’t working for them. (Stevens, 2018). They all tie to the fact tha...

Hello! I hope you enjoy this class.  Not only will I test concepts here, but I will also create links for blog posts from the class so that you can see the impact that has on your traffic and rankings. As you can see, I have not posted to this blog for a little while. I have three blogs, all for different purposes, so I tend to post to this one when we are all working our blogs here in class. Upon occasion, I will post things here that are pertinent to the class, but I generally will also post those same thoughts elsewhere. Please visit here at least once a week. I do like to see that I have visitors. And leave a comment from time to time, not only here but on each other’s blogs as well. Prof. T

Here is an article from Mark Ritson that address something that most of us deal with every day: frenetic activity. One of the things that I had to smile about was the thought that “who needs strategy when you have a machine down the basement learning as we speak?” The article is here . Photo courtesy of: https://gratisography.com/ But many times, just taking an uninterrupted hour per week can make all the difference. As he states: “You have to close all that down and, well, think. Switch off your phone, open up your Moleskine. Take a long, deliberate breath and think.” (Ritson, 2018). The article should take less than 5 minutes of your time but may cause you to approach your week a bit differently after you have spent those 5 minutes. Reference: Ritson, M. (2018, January 9). Mark Ritson: Ignore all the waffle and set time aside for strategic thinking. Retrieved from: https://www.marketingweek.com/2018/01/09/mark-ritson-strategic-thinking/

Here is an article from Adobe Analytics that provides some insight into the value of Web Analytics. Granted, Adobe has a stake in this game, but their thoughts here (in this grief article) are worth reading. I think one insight here that is key is that Web Analytics can often lead to further lines of inquiry. This makes sense, because web analytics, by itself, cannot tell the whole story. I would appreciate your thoughts: http://www.adobe.com/experience-cloud/articles/web-analytics.html (Graphic owned by Bruce Clay, Inc. and found at: https://www.bruceclay.com/analytics/google-analytics.htm )