Digital Alex - Blog by Alex Cohen » Blogging

Most Popular Blog Posts of 2008

DigitalAlex — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:15:05 +0000

‘Tis the season to reflect on the most popular blog posts of 2008. Following in my grand (1 year old) tradition, I scoured my Google Reader for those blog posts that I starred throughout the year as useful and entertaining.

These are the most popular blog posts to me, but I’d also like to know which ones are your favorites. Feel free to comment and share either ones you’ve written on your blog or ones you’ve read on other people’s blogs.

Special thanks to Dennis, Li, Craig, Matt, Manoj, June, Rich, Lu, PPC Hero, Bryan, and Avi.

Digital Alex (most popular blog posts on my site per analytics data)

Web Analytics Blog Posts

Website Testing + Targeting Blog Posts

Blogging

Paid Search Blog Posts

Copywriting Blog Posts

SEO + Social Media Blog Posts

Startup Blog Posts

Web Design + Visual Inspiration Blog Posts

Careers & Salary Blog Posts

General Marketing + Strategy Blog Posts

Presentation Blog Posts

How Should I Format My Deck?

A few of these blog posts aren’t from 2008, but I discovered them in 2008. So, they’re still the most popular blog posts of 2008 to me :-)

101 Great Blogs You Must Subscribe To (and How to Use Them)

DigitalAlex — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:50:30 +0000

Pop quiz: You’re pressed for time and need an answer to your internet marketing problem fast. Where do you turn? Search engines can be imprecise, consultants can be pricey and if your coworkers knew how to do it, you wouldn’t need an answer.

I’m faced with that situation every week. And that leads me to my confession:

I subscribe to a lot of blogs, but I don’t actually read them regularly.

Instead I use them as my own personal search engine. I’ve amassed over a hundred trusted sources in my Google RSS Reader. I’ve tagged them all to categorize them. Then, when I’m faced with a question, all I have to do is search all the blogs or an applicable subset, like this:

I’m much more likely to get relevant and actionable results that way. To get you started, I pasted links to all of the blogs from my reader below. They fall into the following 16 categories:

Web Analytics
Copywriting
Blogging and Social Media
Competitive Intelligence
Conversion Rate
Comparison Shopping Engines
Data Mining
Excel Tips
Industry News
Information Presentation
General Marketing, PR & Strategy
Paid Search
Public Speaking
Search Engine Optimization
Testing – A/B, Multivariate, Taguchi, etc.
Data Visualization

Am I missing any? Please leave a comment.

Web Analytics

Copywriting

Blogging and Social Media

Competitive Intelligence

Conversion Rate

Comparison Shopping Engines

Data Mining

Excel Tips

Industry News

Information Presentation

General Marketing, PR & Strategy

Paid Search

Public Speaking

Search Engine Optimization

Testing – A/B, Multivariate, Taguchi, etc.

Data Visualization

Visuale

For more background on me, check out my internet marketing resume.

101 Great Blogs You Must Subscribe To (and How to Use Them)

I'm the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.

Digital Alex Around The Web

DigitalAlex — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:58:23 +0000

Looking for more marketing optimization tips? Check out 3 recent articles I wrote elsewhere:

I interviewed Dennis Mortenson of IndexTools about SEO, analytics, paid search automation and more!
The Web Analytics Association asked me to write about the Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started in Web Analytics.
If you’re looking for some keyword ideas or just hope to improve your user experience, don’t forget to enable site search analytics.

If you have a popular blog, magazine or email newsletter than needs content, get in touch: alex @ alexlcohen . com

Digital Alex Around The Web

I'm the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.

D’oh! (Campaign tagging article fixed)

DigitalAlex — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 03:43:46 +0000

In my last post about campaign tagging, I forgot the most important part– the “?” character! Hmm… maybe it’s too much late night blogging.

I corrected it, but just for the record: You start the string of parameters with the ?

www.alexlcohen.com/?utm_medium=email

You then use “&” to connect other parameters:

www.alexlcohen.com/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=weekly-032808

Ok, now you should be all set. Sorry about that. Check out the updated article on campaign tagging and tracking with Google Analytics.

D’oh! (Campaign tagging article fixed)

I'm the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.

8 Links Worth Your Time

DigitalAlex — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:23:27 +0000

Link time. I’m curating the best of the blogosphere for your enjoyment. Know a great post? Leave a comment.

Marketing Optimization & Web Analytics

Over at Web Analytics World, I ignored the right way of doing things and detailed the 5 worst practices in web analytics.

If you’re looking to hire an in-house web analyst, you might want to do a little salary research. Anil put out a survey and Eric has tool to let you dig into his own salary data.

Social Media

If you’re looking to refresh the look of your blog, Smashing Magazine rounds up 100 free WordPress themes.

What happens when you invite customers to create ads for you and they slander the competition? Just ask Quizno’s; they were sued by Subway for the content of user-generated ads.

Search Marketing

In-house SEO’s are probably reviewing their paychecks with word that $100K is the average for those with experience.

49% percent of users don’t trust Google. I’m guess that paid search advertisers are even less trusting…

Your paid search reports are probably wrong. The culprit? Latency.

8 Links Worth Your Time

I'm the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.

You Like Me, You Really Like Me!

DigitalAlex — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:23:00 +0000

Matt and crew over at the SEMMY’s have nominated my review of Compete Search Analytics for best analytics post of the year.

Vanessa Fox and Brad Geddes are going to narrow the list to 3-4 finalists before public voting begins.

Cliché though it may sound, the nomination is pretty cool. That post took me hours to write, so the recognition is definitely nice. Plus, the company is pretty flattering too.

You Like Me, You Really Like Me!

I'm the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.

Great Blog Posts From 2007

DigitalAlex — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:37:11 +0000

Before 2008 gets too frantic, it’s time to look back at the year that was and pick out some great blogging from around the net.

This list is entirely subjective, so if I missed something great, please leave a comment with a link.

Marketing Optimization and Web Analytics

Innovative and Free Web Analytics Tools

3 Greatest Survey Questions Ever

Introducing Sitescan (EpikOne’s now free tool to verify pages are tagged with Google Analytics).

101 Things to do with Google Website Optimizer

Revenge of the Pixels: The Battle for Screen Real Estate

Building Bridges: 7 Ways to Get Marketing & IT to Play Nice

Rethink Web Analytics: Introducing Web Analytics 2.0

Web Analytics 2.0? I’m More Worried About 3.0!

Data Visualization and Presentation

A Simple and Insightful Web Analysis (good chart)

The Chart Explorer from Juice Analytics

Choosing a Good Chart

Persuasive Presentations

Web Marketing and Analytics: Process, Talent & Tools

General Marketing

DIY PR (via Guy Kawasaki & Redfin’s CEO; Steve Rubel responds here).

Tailgate – Fully Transactional Web 2.0 Banners

The Geek Marketer

Copy

10 Tips for Writing the Ultimate Landing Page

Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines and Social Media

Warning: Use These 5 Surefire Headline Formulas at Your Own Risk

Blogging/Social Media

How to Become an Authority Blogger

McKinsey Measures Social Media Participation

Tips on Your Google Reader Subscriber Numbers

31 Places to Monitor Your Reputation Online

Running a Technology Company

How to Hire the Best People You’ve Ever Worked With (by Marc Andreesen)

How to Have a Happy CTO & CEO Marriage

Search

Design Your Website for Search Marketing

How to Find Good Search Marketers

Ultimate Local Search Optimization Resources

Positive and Negative Quality Ranking Factors from Google’s Blog Search

All Others

Get an Invite to any Private Beta

The Implicit Web

40 Excellent Free Fonts for Professional Design

Top Posts from Digital Alex

Most Viewed – Starting a Blog: Succeed at Blogging by Being Nice

For the Analysts – Google Analytics, Yahoo Paid Search and utm_term

The One Clients Should Read – PPC Analytics: Transitioning Data from One Agency to Another

Most Useful to College Students/Aspiring Nerds – Want a Web Analytics Job? Write a Good Web Analytics Resume

Recommendations from the Yahoo Web Analytics Forum

Predicting Their Next Move

El día en que la Analítica Web se nos quede pequeña (Spanish)

Event Tracking Pt 1: Overview & Data Model

Sample Chapter – Search analytics and metadata

Eyetracking vs. Mouse Tracking

5 Rules for Quality Landing Page Design

Decision Making: The Death of Intuition?

Great Blog Posts From 2007

I'm the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.

Blog Strategy – Answer These 6 Questions

DigitalAlex — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:34:10 +0000

If a blog is in your past or future, there’s nothing like the new year to make you ask: What is my blog strategy?

In this post, I’m going to talk about crafting your own blog plan using Digital Alex as an examples and talk about the 6 key questions to help guide your blog:

Why should I blog?
What is the point to this blog?
What do I want to talk about?
What kind of readers am I targeting?
Who do I want to talk with?
Which of the 8 types of bloggers do I want to be?

Write Your Blog Strategy with 6 key Questions

I’m going to start with a little reminiscing (I promise to keep it brief).

In the summer of 2007, web analytics blogger and Commerce360 adviser Avinash Kaushik swung by our offices for a day of guru style enlightenment.

Among the many things he recommended was to start blogging to learn more about interactive marketing. Seeing as how it landed him a job at Google, who was I to argue?

About 5 months and 72 posts later, the experience has proven to be very educational. In thinking about goals for 2008 (because I am a dork like that), I decided to keep the blog going and see if I can make a run of it.

However, anything worth doing is worth doing well. Thus, it was time to write a proper blog strategy for Digital Alex.

While thinking about the best way to maximize the return on my time, I came up with 6 key questions to plan out a blog.

#1 – Why should I blog?

Effort without direction is just wasted energy. Blogging well takes a lot of time and, in some niches, it can be a slow rise to the top. Creating a vision for your blog makes it easier to stay the course.

Everyone’s vision will be different. For some, it’s another channel for business or part of their site’s marketing (SEO, etc.). For others, it’s self-promotion. For still others, it’s about personal expression or a cause.

I think a good vision statement is simple and short (2-3 sentences). It should set direction and lend itself to more specific and measurable goals.

The vision for Digital Alex is that:

My blog will become a well regarded resource for information on marketing optimization and interactive marketing strategy read by interactive marketers at the manager, director and VP level.

Digital Alex will serve as an extension of my personal brand and raise my profile in the interactive marketing community, particularly in NY and SF, in order to establish me as an authority and worthwhile writer and speaker.

I wrote my vision to combine the value I want to deliver, who I want to reach and the return for me. That’s a great goal in general, but what does that mean in numbers?

#2 – What is the point to this blog?

Vision statements are great motivation, but isn’t that a bit too nebulous to measure? One of the best ways to achieve a longer term goal is to break it down into smaller, more achievable milestones and quantify the goal.

Translate your vision into short, mid and long-term goals. Motivating goals have 3 qualities in common:

They’re specific – Be detailed and break out goals with multiple parts
They’re measurable – You must be able to gauge your progress
They have a deadline – A ticking clock helps you prioritize and determine whether you’re generating results fast enough.

My mid-term (2008) goals are:

Subscribers - 1000+ subscribers by 12/1/08
Inbound Links – Get 100 new, quality blog links by 12/1/08
Keywords – Rank in the top 10 for at least 5 targeted keywords
Non-analytics targets
- Land one major writing gig by Q1 08
- Build relationships with 3 key interactive marketers in 2008

Each of these goals is trackable either with some tool (Google Analytics, Feedburner) or simply as a yes/no as to whether I accomplished it (e.g. writing gig).

Getting to my vision will take a good amount of time. These blog goals give me something more achievable to aim for.

Plus, I can measure how likely I am to reach each target based on my monthly progress. For example, if I only get 2 quality links in January means I probably have to step it up in February and future months.

Of course, I actually have to write something if I want to reach these goals…

#3 – What do I want to talk about?

Your blog is your personal playground. If you want people to read, however, something has to be in it for them. Time is the most finite of resources for many readers–how will you continually earn theirs?

As I mentioned in my first post about starting a blog, you can distinguish yourself in any number of ways, but it usually boils down to 2 things: having something unique to say or having a unique way of saying it.

First you have to first explore the blogosphere to see how people are talking about what interests you.

Do you love food? Maybe a lot of people are writing about TV chefs and creating recipes, but no one is posting about earth friendly family dinners.

Fascinated by Dancing With The Stars? The web is awash in show recaps and commentary, but is anyone detailing the steps to recreate the dances? (I have no idea; I don’t watch TV).

These are simple and silly examples, but the point is that the intersection of personal interest and talent with community/market demand is the best place for you to blog.

I struggled the most with this part of my blog strategy. You can tell when you look back at my blog posts in 2007 that I sort of floated about from topic to topic as they intrigued me. I’m a generalist who is interested in a lot of things–marketing strategy, web analytics, conversion, multivariate testing, user experience and more.

After much toying, I settled on a core theme inspired by eMetrics (thanks Jim!):
Marketing Optimization – Plan, act, measure, improve.

I love to edit and improve in my job and elsewhere. This central focus will let me weave in marketing strategy, web analytics, testing, search marketing and more as appropriate.

There are plenty of very smart people writing on this topic. I’m relying on 2 things to distinguish Digital Alex:

My plain and approachable style
Detail oriented posts (hence this one)

I’m hoping that my holistic approach and simple style will prove useful to even more people in 2008 and beyond. Time will tell…

The ultimate judge are the readers, which begs the next question:

#4 – What kind of readers am I targeting?

You should love what you write. If you’re aiming for more specific goal beyond self-expression, your readers also need to love what you write.

Just like picking a blog topic, setting a target set of readers also helps you focus your content. If you’re writing a blog about Earth-friendly family dinners, then you probably won’t write too many articles about foie gras appetizers for 8, right?

Knowing your readers is key to being able to answer the question: How does everything I’m writing help the people I want to reach?

Picking the right set of readers also helps with your goals and promotion. If you say you want 100K readers, but you’re targeting CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, you need to realize the universe of people your could possibly reach isn’t even that big.

Simultaneously, if your goals depend on the right people reading your blog, then you need to make sure you’re speaking to them appropriately and promoting your blog where your target audience is likely to find it.

I broke my target audience into primary and secondary groups based on my vision and goals:

Primary:
- Interactive marketers at the manager, director and VP level
Secondary:
- Members of the media that serve the interactive marketing audience
- Influential bloggers read by interactive marketers
- Organizers of conferences
- NY/SF bloggers

I still have to do more work to find out more about these people, their interests and good ways to reach them. With a more defined set of target readers, hopefully it’ll be easier and more rewarding then writing and hoping to get noticed.

#5 – Who do I want to talk with?

One of the things I didn’t realize right away is that it’s called social media for a reason. No matter how obscure the niche, there is a community of people talking about what interests you (and your readers). You need to join that community.

Being social works in your favor for a lot of reasons.

First, it’s fun. Blogging friendships lead to sharing and collaboration that let you achieve more than you could by yourself. June and I developed a mutual admiration of each other’s writing naturally and regularly exchange links and sometimes blog on similar topics.

Second, being social helps raise your exposure and extend your online reach. Li invited me to be a staff writer for her blog. Manoj gave me an opportunity through his Facebook group and has extended an open invitation to guest blog (more are coming soon Manoj!)

It’s also important to keep on top of the relevant news and discussions about your topic. Writing about hot trends or expressing your view in a particular debate is likely to be timely to your audience and possibly get you links. You can’t write well if you don’t read other good blogging.

There are tons of people writing on the various components of marketing optimization. I follow a lot of analytics-centric bloggers like Justin, Ian, Gary, Avinash, Eric. I also read bloggers with a broader focus like web strategist Jeremiah, persuasion architect Bryan, SEO Aaron, multi-channel folk like Kevin and general marketers like Seth Godin.

#6 – Which of the 8 types of bloggers do I want to be?

What to write, how often to write, what tone to use–these are all your choices.

As I outlined in my Start a Blog in 5 Steps white paper, jumping into social media isn’t particularly hard. Doing it well, however, is.

Having read 100′s of blog articles, I’ve noticed 8 types of bloggers. Some types you aspire to, others you should avoid.

#1 – The Tour Guide

The Tour Guide doesn’t produce much original content. Instead, he culls the best of the web on a particular topic and puts it in one place.

Smashing Magazine has built an entire presence on this very strategy. Admittedly, I have a weakness for graphic design.

#2 – The Guru

The guru is an expert level author on his or her topic of interest.

People flock to this blog when they’re new to the area, if they have a detailed and tough question or just to keep up on the latest developments in a field.

Avinash and Eric fit the bill in the world of analytics.

#3 – The PR Puppet

Have you ever read a blog where the write-up of a particular product, website or service were just too carefully worded? The PR puppet strikes again!

This kind of blogger feeds the blog content beast by lifting large sections of press releases without adding much analysis.

#4 – The Contender

The contender is a new blogger. She might be just new to the blogosphere or new to her topic in particular.

Unproven but determined, the Contender has to earn her way to the top and keep her eyes on the prize.

The biggest risk to the contender is that she loses focus or gives up before people catch on to what she has to offer.

#5 – The Repeater

The blogosphere is often characterized as an “echo chamber”–a place where little is created and much is just repeated.

The Repeater’s blog has a lot of echos–content or commentary that originated from other blogs, news or hot trends without any synthesis or value added.

#6 – The Anti-Socialite

Some bloggers are just stingy with the links. Others don’t understand that commenting and interacting with the community is enriching and productive.

The Anti-Socialite exists (or pretends to exist) in a silo. She doesn’t care who’s reading or commenting. She’s not appreciative of her place in the blogosphere. She might also have a bad reality show.

#7 – The Reviewer

The Reviewer loves to express his opinion. Whether it’s a new product or website, he loves to pick it apart and weigh in.

He’s also likely to give his opinion about the hot topics of the day in his community. Something controversial? Something innovative? You can be the Reviewer has something to say.

TechCrunch writes a lot of posts in this vein.

#8 – The Navel Gazer

The Navel Gazer is all about one thing: herself. Readers be damned, this is her blog and she’s going to write about whatever is interesting to her.

You’ve stumbled upon a Navel Gazer if you read the blog and you don’t get anything from it. “I”, “me” and “my” are more common than “you” and “your”.

Sometimes Navel Gazers are entertaining, but it’s usually short lived fascination.

—

Personally, I’m hoping to be a bit of a Tour Guide and a bit of a Contender. I want to produce enough original content and collect enough in one place to be a regularly used resource.

Conclusion

A little thought goes a long way toward focusing your blog and your goals. I personally feel like I have more direction and a clearer sense of what I hope to achieve.

I plan to measure and report along the way as I learn again what works and doesn’t work. Your additions and comments are definitely welcome right on the blog or at alex @ alexlcohen . com.

If you like this post, please consider submitting a review to StumbleUpon or adding it to other social media sites. You might also enjoy my white paper about starting a blog.

Blog Strategy – Answer These 6 Questions

I'm the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.

Link Round Up

DigitalAlex — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:30:22 +0000

Here is a collection of good reads out in the blogosphere:

Social media consumption by country from Marshall Sponder

Web Analytics Careers: 4 Great Resources from June, who kindly included my article about web analytics resumes on her list.

Email delivers by Jim Novo talks about the continued evolution of email marketing from a post office box approach to a hand written and delivered note approach.

Eric reminds us to take the Web Analytics Association survey.

Stephane highlights the Web Intelligence Certificate Program.

The folks at Juice Analytics released their nifty chart chooser.

Ian is recruiting for people to work on Microsoft’s Google Analytics competitor, Project Gatineau.

Sebastian points us to Donna’s round-up of 5 heatmap tools. I’ve used CrazyEgg and it’s a nice extension of the site overlay feature. It’s a shame that these heatmaps don’t capture more than just clicks.

The folks at Future Now highlight the perils of the double underlined link. These are in-text advertisements. I didn’t even realize these existed! Hopefully it’s a passing fad…

Scott Hurff of Channel Advisor rounds up some stats from comScore about Cyber Monday. $9.3 billion spent online from November 1 through 23, a record and 17 percent higher than the $8.1 billion spent online last year.

Matthew Hurst tips us off to Pete Blackshaw’s new social media book.

Guy Kawasaki suggests a great gift for Christmas – micro-loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, courtesy of Kiva.

Craig helps you think about social marketing in 3 easy slogans.

Link Round Up

I'm the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.

Digital Alex - Blog by Alex Cohen » Blogging

Most Popular Blog Posts of 2008

Related Posts:

101 Great Blogs You Must Subscribe To (and How to Use Them)

Related Posts:

Digital Alex Around The Web

Related Posts:

D’oh! (Campaign tagging article fixed)

Related Posts:

8 Links Worth Your Time

Related Posts:

You Like Me, You Really Like Me!

Related Posts:

Great Blog Posts From 2007

Related Posts:

Blog Strategy – Answer These 6 Questions

Related Posts:

Link Round Up

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