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What if you could cut the amount of time you spend on analytics reports in half? Or even less?

I’m going to show you how to spend much less time on your reports than you do now. Here’s the best part: not only will you be spending your time more efficiently, you’ll be gaining insights that will actually help your business.

Better results with less time? That sounds like a win-win to me.

But to pull this off, we need to avoid the Google Analytics data swamp.

What’s the data swamp?

It’s the endless mangrove that attempts to drown you every time you log in and distracts you with all the data that WON’T help you grow your business. So instead of gaining insights about your customers, you end up wasting countless hours wading through the data swamp.

To save time and get better insights, all you have to do is follow these 3 steps:

1. Define the metrics that matter to your business
2. Force Google Analytics to track what you want
3. Ignore everything else in Google Analytics

Step 1: Define the Metrics that Matter to Your Business.

Instead of focusing on metrics that Google Analytics throws at you from the start, take some time to figure out what really matters to you.

Pick metrics that instantly tell you how your business is doing. If the metric improves by 200%, you should have an impulse to grab the champagne bottle. And if it tanks, you should grab your phone to send the bat signal. With a single glance, you should be able to see how you’re progressing.

Here are some examples broken down by business model.

SaaS

Trial/Free Account Sign Ups – By offering a free/trial account, you’re giving people a no-risk opportunity to try your product. The more people that try it out, the more chances you’ll have to sell. This is definitely a critical metric.

Activation – Not only do you need to get people to sign up, you need to get them to actually use your product. Each product will define activation differently. For example, Facebook defines activation as getting 10 friends. Once a new person hits that number, Facebook starts to have real value and new people stick around. Why does this matter? If people aren’t using your product, you’ll have an exceptionally hard time selling to them.

Upgrades to Paid Accounts – This is where people pay you. Since people give you money at this point, definitely track it.

Ecommerce

Total Revenue – Yes, this is an obvious one. What isn’t obvious is how often you should check your total revenue. Unless you have a massive ecommerce site that moves product by the truckload, I would avoid checking total revenue on a daily basis. Different days of the week, random events, and promotions can inject a ton of variability into your daily numbers. One day, your revenue is up by 200%, woohoo! The next, it’s down to only 20% of normal and you turn into a grump. But when you look at the weekly or monthly totals, everything’s right on track. Watch your total revenue closely but don’t go overboard.

Average Order Value – One of the key ways you can increase your revenue is by convincing each customer to buy more merchandise with every order. You’ll grow your business without having to spend more money on marketing trying to find new customers. So use average order value to track how you’re doing. It can also be used as a red flag. If average order value starts to steadily drop month-to-month, it’s a warning sign that your business is headed for trouble.

Checkout Funnel – Customers have to go through several steps to purchase something from you. They have to go to their cart, enter checkout, fill out their contact information, give you their payment details, and confirm the purchase. Track each step so you know where people are getting stuck. Once you know where people are having trouble, you can work to make it easier to complete the process (and increase you revenue).

Marketing

Leads – For many businesses, leads are the lifeblood of the sales cycle. No new leads means no new customers which will inevitably stall business growth. Definitely not good. So start tracking your leads. You might define leads as an email newsletter signup, a PDF download, or a form submission depending on your business model.

Customer Traffic Sources – This is completely different from normal traffic sources (a vanity metric). Remember, we don’t care where our traffic comes from. But we REALLY care where our customers come from. So keep a close eye on which traffic sources are bringing home the bacon.

ROI of Campaigns – If you’re spending money on marketing, you need to make sure you get it back. The goal of every marketing campaign is to get customers. And each campaign should give you enough customers to turn a profit. Make sure you can track different campaigns and figure out which ones are actually driving customers to you.

Are these the only options?

Nah. They’re just examples. Mix and match them (and use metrics I haven’t mentioned) to get the best fit for your business.

But make sure the metrics you choose are actionable, clear, and track critical elements of your business.

Limit Yourself to 5

When you’re just starting, limit these key metrics to no more than 5. This keeps you focused on only the essentials so you can quickly see how you’re doing. Once you get comfortable, feel free to start tracking up to 10. But if you go higher than this, you’ll quickly find yourself covered in data swamp muck again.

Now that we know what to track, we need to find a way to get that data from Google Analytics.

Step 2: Force Google Analytics to Track What You Want

Sometimes, this is easy. Other times, not so much.

For each of the metrics we already covered above, here are some quick notes on what you’ll need to track them:

SaaS

Tracking SaaS products with Google Analytics can get a little tricky. In Google Analytics, we can’t track people. So we don’t have a reliable way to measure how many people start a free trial, activate your product, and upgrade to a paid plan.

Instead, we’ll need to use a combination of events, goals, and ecommerce tracking to get a rough idea of how many people move through each step.

First, track your free trials with a Google Analytics goal. This will tell you how many people are creating accounts and where they’re coming from.

Then track your activations using events. The Google Analytics Event Tracking Guide will give you all the gritty details. You won’t know who is doing the activating but you will get a rough idea of how we’ll you’re encouraging people to use the product.

Finally, use ecommerce tracking to track your upgrades to paid plans. You can also use a goal and assign a goal value if you prefer (it’s easier to set up but you won’t have as much data).

Ecommerce

This batch is pretty straightforward. Go ahead and set up ecommerce tracking which imports all sorts of amazing data right into your reports. This will give you total revenue and average order value.

For your checkout funnel, you’ll need to define a goal (use your purchase confirmation page), and tell Google Analytics which pages people have to go through during each step of your checkout. Then Google Analytics will build a fancy funnel for you that’ll look like this:

Marketing

First, use goals to track your leads. Once it’s set up, just check your goal reports to see how well you’re bringing in leads.

Make sure you’re using ecommerce tracking if customers can make a purchase directly from your site. Then you’ll be able to apply revenue data to most of your reports (like your traffic sources and keyword reports).

To see which traffic sources bring you new customers:

1. Go to your Google Analytics profile
2. In the sidebar, click on “Traffic Sources”
3. Then click on “Sources”
4. Select “All Traffic”

From your All Traffic report, click on goal set or ecommerce to see which traffic sources bring revenue and customers:

To track your marketing campaigns, you’ll need to add UTM parameters to each of your links. As long as you can control the link of the marketing campaign, Google Analytics will tell you how much revenue that traffic produced. And if you’re using goals, it’ll also tell you how many people completed them.

If you’re using AdWords, definitely connect your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts so that they’ll share data with each other. This is one of the 8 must-have features of Google Analytics (follow the link to learn how to do it).

Step 3: Ignore Everything Else in Google Analytics

From now on, go straight to the good stuff when you log in. If social media reports aren’t critical to the metrics you already picked, skip them. Ditch pages/visit, time on site, and everything else.

By focusing on what matters, you’ll avoid vanity metrics.

A vanity metric makes you feel good when it goes up but it doesn’t help you get your business to the next level. They are distractions that prevent us from focusing on the metrics that really matter.

Unfortunately, Google Analytics is FULL of vanity metrics.

Every piece of data in this screenshot is a vanity metric:

They include things like:

• Pageviews
• Visits
• Time on site
• Pages/Visit
• Bounce Rate
• Exit Rate

Now, some of these numbers can be valuable when you’re trying to answer specific questions.

Let’s say that you’re assessing your SEO campaigns and you want to figure out how your landing pages are doing with organic Google traffic. You already know how valuable each keyword is to you (you tied your keywords to revenue using ecommerce tracking) but you want to see how your landing pages are doing.

Pull up a report with the landing pages that you’ve optimized for search, then start looking at bounce rates. In just a few minutes, you’ll be able to spot pages that turn away more traffic than others.

But you still want to compare your bounce rates with a metric that matters like total revenue from each keyword. If a landing page has a high bounce rate but only drives a little revenue, it’s probably not worth the effort.

Even in this case, we’re not using a vanity metric on its own. We always want to compare trends in vanity metrics with other data that directly reflects our business goals. Otherwise, we end up increasing traffic but lowering our revenue.

Vanity metrics can help only if you have a VERY specific question you’re trying to answer. By themselves, vanity metrics don’t tell you anything important about your business. Use vanity metrics to help you answer specific questions but don’t track them on a regular basis.

Since the majority of Google Analytics consists of vanity metrics, we can safely ignore a huge portion of it. Go straight to the metrics that matter by flying over the data swamp of vanity metrics.

Bottom Line: How To Find The Treasure Within Your Business

Google Analytics wasn’t built to track your business. It was built to track traffic. But traffic doesn’t always help you get your business to the next level. This is why you need to dodge the bogus, vanity-metric-laden paths and focus on the few key metrics that do tell you how your business is doing.

To find the location of your business treasure quickly, follow theses 3 steps:

1. Define the important metrics for you (no more than 5)
2. Force Google Analytics to track them (when possible)
3. Avoid all other data (unless answering a very specific question)

When you follow these steps, you’ll save yourself plenty of time by staying out of the Google Analytics data swamp. And you’ll always know how your business is doing.

Once you start focusing, you’ll easily reduce the time you spend on your reports down to half of what it currently takes you. And you’ll get better insights on how to improve your business.

What are your key metrics? Tell us in the comments!

About the Author: Lars Lofgren is the KISSmetrics Marketing Analyst and has his Google Analytics Individual Qualification (he’s certified). Learn how to grow your business at his marketing blog or follow him on Twitter @larslofgren.

The Mercedes 300SL Gullwing. An instant classic for 58 years and running.

Back in 2008 we shared some of our workplace experiments including the four day work week (still in effect May – Oct), funding people’s passions (we’re still doing this, too), and discretionary spending accounts (everyone still gets a company Amex they can use for anything work related).

This June we’re trying something new.

This June will be a full month of free time to think, explore, mock up, prototype, whatever. People can go solo or put together a team – it’s entirely up to them. This is a month to unwind and create without the external pressures of other ongoing projects or expectations. We’re effectively taking a month off from non-essential scheduled/assigned work to see what we can do with no schedule/assignments whatsoever.

Some companies are famous for their 20% time where employees get 1/5th of their time to work on their own projects. In spirit I like this idea, but usually it’s executed by carving out a day here or a day there – or every Friday, for example – to work on your own projects.

But all time isn’t equal. I’d take 5 days in a row over 5 days spread out over 5 weeks. So our theory is that we’ll see better results when people have a long stretch of uninterrupted time. A month includes time to think, not just time to squeeze in some personal work around the edges.

The culmination of this month of free work time is Pitchday – the first Thursday in July. That’s when everyone will get a chance to pitch their idea, mockup, prototype, or proof of concept to the whole company. The better the pitch, the more likely the project will happen.

Some people have already paired up and recruited others to work on an idea together. Some are going solo. And some are taking the time to work on a combination of smaller things they’ve been meaning to work on for a while.

I’m really excited to see what people come up with (and share what I’ve come up with, too – David and I are working on something together). Hopefully our customers will see the results of some of these pitches over the coming months.

We’ll report back if we have anything interesting to share.

Facebook Insights is a pretty powerful tool for those wanting to track user interaction on their Facebook Fan Page. Facebook Insights can be seen by all the admins of your page and it can help you track the number of active users to better understand page performance.

By using Facebook Insights you’ll be able to determine the best time of day to post, the best day of the week to post and what type of content is most popular. It is important to note that the Facebook Insights tool is constantly updated to reflect your page’s developments and any patterns that may form. So you’ll need to keep checking back to keep in the loop.

Here are some useful steps for individuals new to Facebook Insights:

1. How to Access Facebook Insight

Click on the gear wheel on your Facebook Fan Page and select ‘View Insights’. You’ll see a graph like the one below.

This is the main Insights dashboard and here you’ll see the total number of likes (and whether this is increasing or decreasing), the number of friends of fans available (this is the potential number of people you can reach!), how many people are actively talking about your page as well as your total weekly reach.

2. Virality of Posts

Below the graph you’ll see your latest posts and learn about their virality. This is especially useful if you would like to see which posts were the most successful.

You can sort posts by the following types:

• all post types
• posts
• photos
• links
• videos
• platform posts
• questions

This is useful if you want to know the success of a certain post (i.e. a video you posted recently). So instead of sifting through all the posts, you can simply sort by videos.

You’ll be able to see the date the post was made, the title of the post, its reach, how many users engaged with that particular post, how many spread the word about it, as well as its virality in a percentage form.

Takeaway: Knowing the virality of the post gives you the knowledge to create more content that your fans like, which will then increase your branding, reach and hopefully traffic.

3. Likes

If you click ‘Likes’ you’ll be able to see the demographics as well as the locations of your fans. You’ll also be able to see their age groups. In this case, our Cheap Flights South Africa fan page has a much larger female fan base than a male fan base. We are also able to see that most users are situated in Cape Town, South Africa and hence we can customize our posts accordingly.

Below you’ll see another graph that looks like this:

Now you can search by new likes and even by unlikes. For example, on the above graph you can see that our fan page had some unlikes. Dammit! It would be useful to go back to your page and see what posts you wrote on those days. Your previous posts may be able to give you an indication as to what went wrong that day. Weren’t you entertaining enough? Or were you just too much? Perhaps you posted too many articles and not enough images? It is crucial that you do this step otherwise the stats are pretty much just stats.

Takeaway: Having demographic information about your fans allows you to build personas of your target audience. This can be very beneficial when creating landing pages, home page copy and overall marketing messages.

4. Reach

It’s all very good and well that you have a Facebook fan page, but how much of your content is actually reaching your fans? Who is talking about your page? Are any of your fans referring your page to others or sharing your images with their friends?

This section helps you see your page views and unique visitor views (those who searched for you as opposed to clicking on the Facebook ad). You’ll also be able to see your reach in terms of organic searches, paid and viral searches.

Takeaway: The important part of the Reach area is that you will be able to see what channels (organic searches, paid and viral) are the most effective. Most likely, you’ll want to increase the viral segment as much as possible.

5. Talking About This

As you can see below, our Cheap Flights South Africa Facebook page didn’t have that much interaction before the 14^th of March when we implemented our Facebook advertisements. Our page went from roughly 5 people talking about it per day to 537 at its peak!

The Talking About This section can also provide valuable data about who is talking about your page – this includes demographics and percentages of people in different age groups.

Takeaway: The important thing to learn from this data is to understand how your content trends over time. You may find that it takes some time for your content to “lift” and reach many people. This can be very helpful when planning promotions and other time sensitive initiatives.

6. Check-Ins

This section is not really relevant for our page since Cheap Flights South Africa is internet-based. However, check-ins can be really useful for companies that have a physical location. Fans that ‘check-in’ when they arrive at your business show their loyalty to you in doing so.

Under the check-in section you’ll be able to see the number of people who have checked in, where they live, whether they are male or female etc.

Takeaway: Check-in data is extremely valuable for businesses with a physical presence. From being able to measure the social media impact on sales, to monitoring your busiest days – definitely dig into this info!

7. Want More Detailed Data?

Export your data using the top right button on the Insights page. This little block will pop up:

Select Page Level Data and the MS Excel format option. You can choose a date range for the data.

Once you’ve downloaded the insights you’ll see never-ending columns of data which may at first seem overwhelming. At the bottom, you’ll also see various data sheets containing information such as key metrics, daily like sources, daily viral reach etc.

Each column in the key metrics sheet provides you will different information. For example, if you scroll to the Lifetime Total Likes column you’ll be able to see how many likes your page received over the dates you specified. Total Daily Reach is useful as well and here you’ll be able to see the number of people your posts may have reached (even from friends of your fans).

Takeaway: Sometimes looking at the tabulated data can give you more insights than graphs. If you’re proficient with Excel, you can slice and dice your data to find out more about your Fans and social media impact. Our recommendation: Don’t be afraid to dive in and see what’s inside!

If you want to explore this PDF export a little more, here’s a video to guide you.

Facebook Insights gives you a plethora of useful information about your Facebook page. However, the key is to take the data and create something meaningful with it. Using the data to track the performance of your page and find emerging patterns is crucial.

About the Author: Elizabeth Joss is the main contributor of Xcellent Media, a media and marketing company based in Cape Town, South Africa. She covers topics like social media, SEO, web marketing and technology. Follow Xcellent Media on Facebook and Twitter or visit their blog.

We’ve written before a little bit about how we use Statsd, which was popularized by Etsy about a year ago. It forms the backbone of much of our reporting, monitoring, and analytics, and we process thousands of measurements per second with it.

Today we’re making available our implementation of Statsd for anyone who would like to try it out. You can also read a little more about why we aren’t using Graphite and Etsy’s original implementation.

There's something about the culture of business that tends toward excess — in financial markets, to be sure, but also in the "market" for new ideas and management techniques. The dynamic is always the same, whether the idea in question is reengineering, six-sigma quality, or lean production systems: A genuinely original strategy is born in one company or industry, consultants discover the practice and turn it into a marketable commodity, executives in all sorts of other companies race to "buy" the product — and then they wonder why the technique didn't work nearly as well in their organization as it did in the place that created it in the first place.

I fear that very dynamic is unfolding today with respect to a piece of language and a leadership aspiration that has become the Holy Grail for business thinkers like me.

That piece of language, that aspiration, is innovation.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, which did not get nearly the attention it deserved, made the case that the word "innovation" has outlived its usefulness. "Companies are touting chief innovation officers, innovation teams, innovations strategies, and even innovation days," the hard-hitting piece noted. "But that doesn't mean the companies are actually doing any innovating. Instead they are using the word to convey monumental change when the progress they're describing is quite ordinary."

Ouch, that's gonna leave a mark! But I have to admit, as someone who spends a huge amount of time thinking, writing, and lecturing about new ways to build and lead organizations, the Journal's no-nonsense pushback deserves serious consideration. Maybe it's time we all stopped "innovating" and set our sights on something more meaningful and real.

Now, I'm all for leaders who want to ramp up the energy of their colleagues to take more chances and challenge conventional wisdom. But what strikes me about the organizations I've encountered that are genuinely innovative is that they rarely use the language of innovation to describe what they do or why they do it. As they unleash new products and services, find exciting new ways to do the stuff they've always done, or identify new markets in which to do business, these companies simply do what makes sense and what comes naturally. They change what needs to change, because it's the only way they can achieve what they want to achieve.

Southwest Airlines never said, "We want to be the country's most innovative airline." Its leadership said, "We want to 'democratize the skies' and give rank-and-file Americans the freedom to fly." They perfected a new way to be an airline by virtue of what they wanted to achieve as an airline. They did what made sense to them, even if their strategies made no sense to the legacy carriers.

Tony Hsieh and his colleagues at Zappos never said, "We want to introduce innovations to e-commerce and do a better job of selling shoes over the Internet." They said, "We wanted to build the greatest customer-service brand in the world, a company whose mission is not simply to deliver products but to deliver happiness." Thus Zappos created a special culture, a unique way of doing business, and an almost mythic status among its customers, who have given the company permission to sell all sorts of products above and beyond shoes.

Cirque du Soleil did not set out to make a few tweaks to the traditional three-ring circus, or market-test a few new acts as a way to offer innovations vis-a-vis Ringling Brothers. Rather, an immensely talented group of street performers set out to define a whole new category of live entertainment, a creative leap that made perfect sense to the artists who dreamed it up, but made no sense to circus veterans or to audiences who had never seen such shows before.

In other word, the moment that "innovation" becomes just another leadership program, yet another consultant-driven management technique, one more piece of language in what my friend Polly LaBarre calls the "jargon monoxide" that defines so much of business life, it ceases to be a positive force for change.

In the latest issue of Wired, Tim O'Reilly, the brilliant technology thinker and book publisher, offered his corrective on innovation, in this case with respect to entrepreneurs: "The myth of innovation is that it starts with entrepreneurs, but it really starts with people having fun. The Wright brothers weren't trying to build an airline, they were saying, 'Holy shit, do you think we could fly?' The first kids who made snowboards, they just glued skis together and said, 'Let's try this!' With the web, none of us thought there was money in it. People said, 'This document came from halfway around the world. How awesome is that!'"

So what if we all stopped trying to "innovate" — and started trying to have fun and really do something new? And what if we set ourselves a more basic (and more authentic) set of challenges as we look to the future:

What difference are we trying to make in our field? What do we care about?

How can we reimagine the sense of what's possible in our field? What can we do that no one else in our business can do?

How can we deliver what we've always delivered, but in entirely new ways?

How can we apply what we've always been great at to markets or customer segments we've never worked with?

Remember, if you try to innovate the same way everyone else tries to innovate, it's hard to imagine you'll be very, well, innovative.

But doesn’t the simple strategy we’ve chosen at 37signals leave money on the table? Why turn down someone who wants to pay you thousands of dollars a month? Good questions. We’re probably leaving money on the table. But we’re also leaving complexity on the table. And complexity is like a leak in your roof. It starts small. But over time, it does real damage. And once that damage has begun, it’s hard to stop. Best not to let it in in the first place.

Temkin Group has just released the 2012
We introduced the Temkin Web Experience Ratings last year. The 2012 Web Experience Ratings include 159 companies from 18 industries and is based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Congratulations to the top firms in this year’s ratings: Amazon, credit unions, USAA, PNC, Southwest Airlines, eBay, Sam’s Club, ShopRite, JCPenney, and ING Direct. Of course, not every company has earned good web experience, especially the companies at the bottom of the 2012 ratings:  Charter Communications, Humana, Qwest, Cigna, Time Warner Cable, Anthem, Road Runner, Medicare, Blue Shield of CA, and TracFone.

We also  examined industry averages and found that banks and investment firms have earned the highest Temkin Web Experience Ratings followed by hotel chains and retailers. But consumers gave very low ratings to Internet service providers, health plans, and TV service providers.

The research also examines how individual companies are rated relative to their industry peers. The following 11 firms outscored their industry average Temkin Web Experience Ratings by 10 percentage points or more: Kaiser Permanente, Amazon, ShopRite, Southwest Airlines, USAA, Starbucks, H.E.B., Publix, credit unions, Marriott, and Apple.

The following 15 companies fell 10 percentage points or more below their industry averages: Wells Fargo Advisors, AAA, Charter Communications, Delta Airlines, Citibank, Bank of America, Humana, TracFone, Qwest, Old Navy, U.S. Airways, Rite Aid, Kohl’s, Kmart, and Charter Communications.

Temkin Group also analyzed changes from the 2011 Temkin Web Experience Ratings. Led by TV service providers and insurance carriers 11 of the 12 industries that were in both the 2011 and 2012 ratings improved since last year.

Seventy-two percent of companies that were in the 2011 and 2012 Temkin Web Experience Ratings showed improvement. Led by Comcast (Internet and TV service), Allstate, AOL, Charter Communications, Toshiba, and Sam’s Club, 20 companies improved by 10 percentage points or more between 2011 and 2012. Only three companies­— Kohl’s, TracFone, and Rite Aid—declined by 10 percentage points or more during that timeframe.

Do you want to see the data? Go to the Temkin Ratings website where you can sort through all of the results for free. You can even purchase the underlying data if you want to get more access.

The bottom line: Web experience is not good enough for how important it is

There’s no question about the value of getting more tweets to get more exposure for you and your site…but now there is evidence that tweets (including retweets) actually impact your rankings.

The results of this recent study by branded3 suggested that URLs that were shared on Twitter got a boost in rankings. For example:

• 50 tweets or less – From 1 to 50 tweets, URLs received ranking improvement. After 50, the benefits of tweets declined.
• 5,000 tweets – For URLs that receive an average of 5,000 tweets, the ranking improves dramatically.
• 7,500 tweets – These URLs were guaranteed to show up in the top five SERPs on Google.

Here’s a quick snapshot of ranking positions based upon tweets:

To give you an idea of what kind of URLs get that kind of action…and why…I did an informal study on my site to see which of my posts got 1,000 tweets or more. My goal was to dig up my findings and share them with you.

I looked over the last six months of posts, and the typical tweet range is between 5,000 and 150 tweets…with 1,000 being pretty average.

Keep in mind that most of these posts with 1,000-plus tweets are usually surrounded by posts that are all over the map in regards to tweets…from 200 to 700…meaning I think that these 1,000-plus ones did something tweet worthy, so most of the following lessons will be on the 1,000-plus posts, so let’s get started.

And for most of these posts I rank on the first page for that particular keyword…in other words, getting more tweets does work.

Let’s go over some posts that did well and discuss which ingredients were used to get them to rank high!

Create Detailed Lists of Practical Advice

The post 9 Hard-Hitting Content Strategies for Small Business Blogging is a lengthy step-by-step guide to helping small businesses build powerful blogs.

This post also consists of lots of images that help you digest the dense material. In some places it gets very complicated, so images become very useful.

There are also a number of tools introduced in this post that are probably new to readers, and I end with a good piece of advice…backed up with research…about blogging consistently.

I think another reason that this post is doing so well is that it is about blogging…which is always a favorite topic to share on Twitter.

This is also true for my blog post The 3-Step Secret to More Quality Links in Less Time.

Ever since we learned that link authority is a huge factor in the Google search algo, link building has been a hot topic…so discussing it and then sharing it on Twitter makes sense (in that it’s a topic that is primed to get retweets).

It’s a pretty simple post in comparison to the last one in that there are only three steps, which can make it appealing to readers. But I also mentioned how these three steps can save time…which is a huge benefit for people who are super busy!

Create an Ultimate Marketing Guide

Another great content idea is to create an ultimate guide like The Marketer’s Guide to Pinterest that has gotten over 1,200 tweets since I posted it back in early February.

“Ultimate Guides” are a great way to drive traffic to your site and get people to spread them…especially if you can create one on a topic before anyone else.

There is a great post on Creating Ultimate Guides and Using Them to Build Your Marketing List right here on the KISSmetrics blog.

Write About Social Media

Because Twitter is part of the social media world, it makes sense that if you write about a topic in social media that it will do well, like the post 10 Ways to Get More Traffic, Attention and Higher Rankings Through Social Sharing.

This post also did well because it was a “top ten” post that gave you three very specific benefits: more traffic, greater attention and high rankings.

Another good example is from my How to Create a Jaw-Dropping Social Media Strategy in 5 Steps. This gave you great information about creating a killer social media strategy in a step-by-step format.

When you make information easy to digest…readers will love you!

In addition, the words “Jaw Dropping” add a startling element to the headline that people enjoy showing off in their Twitter streams.

Create a Post About Twitter—Using Research

This tactic makes the last one more specific…instead of writing about social media in general…write about Twitter specifically…

And what a better way to do this than writing a post about 10 Ways to Get More Retweets to generate a whole bunch of retweets!

I share lots of research, which always gives the information more credibility…and if it is new, cutting-edge research…then your chances of getting your content ranked – goes even higher.

Create Ultimate Marketing Guides Specifically for Twitter

The sort of ultimate way to get tweets on your content is to do something that is not only about Twitter…but is a one-stop location for a huge amount of resources that will make someone a Twitter rock star…which is what I did with my 100 Ways to Become a Twitter Power User.

There have been a lot of ultimate guides on Twitter published, so you’ll have to get creative. And more importantly, you’ll have to out-do all the rest to get the necessary attention. As you do your research look for gaps and missing topics on Twitter…and then try to fill it.

And don’t forget to give a compelling benefit to the reader!

Give Unconventional Advice

If you can offer original advice that swims against the grain of popular thinking, then you can probably create a piece of content that will get a huge amount of tweets on Twitter.

For example, Bnnon Tennant’s post on The Shocking Truth About How Web Graphics Affect Conversions went against the grain and went viral the first day it was published.

My 6 Branding Approaches They Forgot to Teach You in Business School pokes fun at MBAs, which stirs up the classic controversy between business school types vs. the street smart business person.

Write Useful Posts on Current News

When you write a post about a current event…and then twist it into “lessons learned”…you can ride the wave of popularity on that particular news trend.

How do you find out what is trending? One way is to browse all of the popular blogs every day. Another way is to use Google Trends.

It really comes down to paying attention to what people are talking about. When I started hearing the co-founder of DropBox Drew Houston’s name being mentioned everywhere I knew it was time to write the 6 Business Lessons You Can Learn from the Rise of Dropbox.

You can also do this with popular topics like the presidential race or some scandal that is breaking out. Just pay attention to what is being published.

Well-Designed Blog Post

Sometimes it’s just a matter of sharing really great web designs like Chuck Longanecker did in his guest post on QuickSprout called Design Is Marketing.

But the post really worked because each point that Chuck made was positioned as a benefit for the reader…meaning he showed you how great design can get you more clicks, sign ups, followers and sales.

Blog for the Right Audience

There are two ways of looking at this…size and quality.

What I mean by size is that you can get a web page ranking if you write it for a huge audience. If you don’t have a huge audience that could generate 5,000 tweets, then this means you need to guest post somewhere.

That’s why the strategy of what your guest post topic is about is just as important as where it’s published. For example, even though you might be writing for another blogger and getting that page ranked high, this will still bring you exposure since you are the author of that article.

If this big blog combines the tricks with Google Authorship Markup, then you are in business with high rankings and high conversion rates!

Now let’s talk about the quality of that audience.

Mashable has an audience of readers that are primed to share stuff on Twitter. Not so with larger publications like CNN or Popular Mechanics, for example.

For example, here is a screenshot of the most popular posts shared on Twitter:

All of those were posted within 24 hours…showing you the size of their reach.

So if you write a guest post for Mashable, you are bound to get a ton of tweets because the audience likes to share stuff on Twitter. So makes sure you write on a topic you want to get ranked for…because if what you write combines any of the tactics I shared above…it will likely blow up on you!

Conclusion

I didn’t share a section that said here are the topics that you should avoid…because I believe that the reason those pages didn’t get as many tweets is not that they weren’t any good…but that they were geared to a specific audience…like posts about specific SEO tactics or email newsletter autoresponder marketing strategies…something that may not interest a general audience.

My recommendation to you is not to give up on those posts that don’t generate huge amounts of tweets…because they are just as important in your content marketing strategy since they provide technical information that people will want to see.

Are there any other ways to creating content that will get 1,000 plus tweet? Please share them in the comments below!

About the Author: Neil Patel is the VP of Marketing of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.

Since the all new Basecamp’s API launch, our Developerland site was feeling a bit dated without GitHub’s wonderful styling and syntax highlighting. Spring is a time for cleaning, and that includes API documentation!

Our API docs are now hosted on GitHub. If you’re looking to get started with our APIs, you can head to 37signals/api and check out our authentication guide or our brand guidelines.

Each 37signals product now has its own API documentation repo:

• Basecamp API
• Basecamp Classic API
• Highrise API
• Campfire API
• Backpack API

My favorite new feature of the API documentation is that each endpoint now has its own permalink. For example, here’s Highrise’s Get deal endpoint.

Found a typo or have a clarification for the API documentation? Feel free to open a pull request on any of the repos. If you spot a bug or have a question for us, opening a support ticket will be the fastest way you can get an answer.

The “cloud” is a popular topic in IT circles. So we decided to examine how much it will affect companies and how prepared technology vendors are to satisfy those changing customer demands. During January 2012, we asked 800 IT professionals from companies with at least $500 million in annual revenues two questions about cloud computing:

• Cloud importance: To what degree will the shift to cloud computing influence your company’s IT strategy over the next three years? (Note: 79% of IT professionals say it will have a significant influence)
• Cloud capabilities: Given your company’s plans for cloud computing, how would you rate the cloud computing capabilities of the IT vendors that you interact with compared with where they need to be?

To fully understand how prepared tech vendors are to meet their client’s changing IT needs for cloud computing, Temkin Group created the Cloud Readiness Index (CRI), a measure of where vendors are in their cloud capabilities compared with the needs of their customers. The CRI takes the cloud importance results and divides it by the cloud capability results as follows:

Here is the Cloud Readiness Index data for 60 tech vendors. Google, Microsoft’s business applications, and ACS are on top of 15 tech vendors in the “leading” category. At the other end of the spectrum, Autodesk, Check Point, and CGI are on the bottom of 25 tech vendors in the “lagging” category.
You can download the data from this post in an Excel spreadsheet for $195. The file includes detailed data for the Cloud Readiness Index as well as details for Cloud Importance and Cloud Capabilities. The spreadsheet includes the data for the 60 tech vendors listed in this post as well as for 28 other tech vendors with smaller sample sizes.

 The bottom line: Tech vendors need to meet their client’s cloud needs

Ever since I came across Jürg Lehni’s essay on typographic technology and digital fonts, Typeface As Programme, I’ve been fascinated with the story of Donald E. Knuth and his unexpected contributions to typography.

You see, Knuth is a professor and computer scientist well known to programmers as the author of The Art of Computer Programming, widely regarded as the definitive treatise on the subject. The first of the four current volumes was published in 1968 and Knuth continues to work on it to this day. Truly his life’s work.

Where this story gets interesting for designers like me is what happened in 1977. Knuth was obsessed with making The Art of Computer Programming perfect in every way right down to the print and type.

We didn’t want our papers just to be there, we wanted them to be beautiful. I wouldn’t have wanted to write The Art of Computer Programming if it was going to look ugly.

The first three volumes were stunning. It wasn’t until a new edition of Volume 2 was to be reset with primitive digital type instead of the traditional metal type of the earlier editions that there was a problem. Horrified by the inferior results, Knuth took it upon himself to improve things. After all, digital type was software, right? Determined to develop a solution, Knuth stopped work on his books and devoted himself to typography for the next 10 years. The result: The TeX typesetting system and the Metafont font description language. The combination of the two offered powerful typographic control that hasn’t been matched (even today), especially for complex typesetting like mathematical formulas.

What’s interesting about Metafont is its unique approach to digital fonts. Most fonts are described programmatically as a series of outlines and then filled with a solid color. This allows for perfectly precise and accurate representation but Metafont takes a more fundamental approach. Knuth discovered what every student of typography eventually learns, that the roots of type are in handwriting. Before the invention of printing, documents were written and copied by scribes using a broad nib pen. These flat metal tips, held at an angle resulted in the thick and thin strokes we associate with calligraphy. The typefaces used in the first printed books were meant to mimic the familiar handwritten books they replaced and even today many typefaces owe their thick and thin lines to the tradition of hand drawn letterforms.

Calligraphy in a Latin Bible of AD 1407 compared to Bembo, a modern typeface with roots in hand written lettering.

While fonts in other systems consist of outlined letterforms Metafont “draws” each letter, simulating the broad nib pen and the actual strokes you’d use to write them by hand. The resulting fonts are not only beautiful but their construction allows for greater control and variation. Rather than simply scaling to different sizes, fonts in this system can be further optimized for things like contrast, stroke, and x-height – essentially redrawn at each size like earlier metal type.

Compare glyphs rendered with Metafont (left) and Postscript.

Knuth created TeX and Metafont because he wanted to extend the care he took in his writing to the design and printing of the physical books. He shared them with the rest of the academic community by putting them into the public domain and they’re still popular today, especially in the publication of mathematic and scientific journals.

I’m impressed by Knuth’s refusal to accept the status quo. When it didn’t meet his standards, he simply made something better. But even more I’m inspired by the focused dedication to his life’s work that led him to put down the familiar and immerse himself in a completely different field for an entire decade in order to realize his art.

Earlier this week, I tapped into a recent research report—Data Snapshot: Communications and Media Benchmark— to write posts about Facebook usage by age, gender, and ethnicity. Well, my Facebook analysis continues…

There has been some concern raised about Facebook’s revenue projections because of the growth of mobile, which does not provide Facebook with the same revenue streams. Given the hubbub, I decided to look at the mobile usage of Facebook.

It turns out that a large percentage of daily Facebook users, who are mostly younger consumers, are reading Facebook on their phones.

The bottom line: Mobile drives daily Facebook usage

When you go on Facebook, you may commonly see the same people always get on the top of your news feed. You may think, “Why is this? Are they just lucky? Is it because they have more friends than everybody else?”

You may also wonder, “Why are so many people asking me to Like or comment on their post?”

Similar to how Google has an algorithm to determine the best content for the top positions of search results, Facebook also has an algorithm to get popular posts to the top of your news feed. It’s called Edgerank.

Introduced in 2010, Edgerank is what helps get relevant content to the top of your news feed. It’s led many companies to “news feed optimize” their posts to make sure they get their posts to the top of news feeds, which ensures it gets in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

So what can you as a business owner do? What is the formula to help get you to the top of people’s news feed? In this post but I will explore what you need to know so you can understand the keys to news feed optimization.

Background on Edgerank

Facebook had a problem: the average Facebook user has 245 friends and about 15% of users update their status every day. Combine this with the updates received from “Liked” pages and the user can be overwhelmed with content on Facebook.

In response to this problem, Facebook developed an algorithm they’ve called Edgerank. Edgerank ensures that a user doesn’t see a 5 day old, uncommented, unliked status update at the top of their News Feed.

Here’s the breakdown on how Edgerank works:

Every item in your news feed (status update, poll, photo, etc.) is considered an object.

An object gets an edge when a user interacts with an object. This can be via commenting, Liking, tagging, etc.

Here’s the three main parts to Edgerank:

1. Affinity Score: Affinity is your relation to a friend. The more you interact with a friend, the “higher” your affinity becomes with them. The same goes for business pages. The more you like, comment, share or view an object of theirs, the stronger your affinity is with the brand. Note that this is only from you. How much your friend interacts with you doesn’t impact the affinity score you have with them.
2. Weight: Some “objects” “weigh” more than others. In other words, some have more meaning. For example, if you post a photo to your status, this will “weigh” more than a simple status update.
3. Time: Just like it sounds, time measures how old your status or post is. Facebook wants to make sure their users see fresh content on their news feed, so the status update you posted 3 years ago (or even 2 days ago) will not appear on top of anyone’s news feed.

These factors determine what gets to the top of your news feed. It helps make sure that you have relevant and recent content.

It appears that Facebook puts a lot of weight on pictures. Go to Facebook right now and you’ll see photos at or near the top of your news feed. The Next Web speculates that the hierarchy of weights is: photo/video, links, status updates.

So here’s a quick tip for your personal profile: if you want a particular quote to be seen, instead of typing it, find a picture of it and post it to Facebook. This will undoubtedly get more eyeballs than simply posting a text status update.

What Edgerank Means For Businesses

Many businesses are implementing news feed optimization. You’ve noticed them—they’re the ones that are asking for Likes, comments (asking questions in status updates) or less commonly asking you to share their object. They’re doing this and asking you to interact with their object so it will get to the top of other’s news feed.

One big brand that does news feed optimization is Coca-Cola. Go to their Facebook page and you’ll see photos in about every object. As you see, it’s working quite well. Each object gets a significant amount of Likes and comments, all of which help it soar to the top of news feed.

What Edgerank primarily means for businesses is that it can help one of your objects get to the top of news feeds.

Edgerank usually only helps after fans have Liked your page. The only time it can help acquire fans is if your current fans share an object.

From here I’ll cover photos, links and status updates and how your business can capitalize on Edgerank with all of these elements.

Photos

Photos catch the eye of people as they scroll through their news feed. According to an internal Facebook study, “Posts including a photo album or picture can generate 2X more engagement than other post types”

Brands post pictures of their product or something similar to their product. Here’s an example from Hyundai:

Here’s Coors Light showing their appreciation of Earth Day:

They’re not exactly showing off their product, but encouraging their customers to recycle. Nice job of branding with showing the recycle symbol and the Coors Light logo next to each other.

Zappos posts a quote along with an eye catching flower:

Takeaway:

Attach photos to your posts. It will help catch the person’s eye. The picture should be relevant to the post, anything else and it will be spam. For example, don’t post a picture of a model and have a status update totally unrelated to the model. Try a mix of posting product pictures and anything related to your status update.

Note regarding uploading photos:

Note that posting a link to a photo and uploading a photo to Facebook are not the same thing. Uploading a photo has more weight. Thus when you want to post a status update, uploading a photo will mean more than simply adding a link to one.

Links:

Posting links are something brands do a little less of on Facebook. Often brands will post links to press releases or any other company announcements so customers have a place to go for more information. Some also post other people’s content. Here’s one from Discover:

It’s important to understand your user demographic and post stories or articles that will help them.

Here’s Honest Tea:

They know their customers care about organic food and post a story about organic food.

Takeaway:

If your company has an announcement, make a small snippet of it on Facebook then include a link where fans can go if they want more information. You can also post links that point back to your company blog. For example, anytime a new post is on your blog, you may want to add the link to it. If you get mentioned by a news source, you should definitely post the link. Here’s an example from Ford:

Part of social media is about being helpful and a resource to your followers. Post great content that fans will love.

Status Updates

Many brands will ask fans questions or provide a quote.

Here’s Ford who encourages fans to complete a sentence:

By entering a comment, it increases the weight of the object, thus helping bump it to the top.

Honest Tea is one that frequently posts quotes:

Many good inspirational or motivational quotes will naturally get a lot of Likes and/or comments.

Takeaway:

When posting text status updates, keep in mind that most people don’t like to read a lot. Keep it short and if there’s more information needed provide a link.

Examples of Companies Using News Feed Optimization

Some companies run daily contests. A fan has to Like, comment or share a post to enter. Here’s an example from online nutritional supplements retailer Muscle and Strength:

They run this type of contest daily and it always gets a strong response. The shares help spread their brand and likes and comments add weight to the post, helping propel it to the top of news feeds.

Many political organizations will encourage fans to Like a post. Here’s one from the left of center Think Progress:

Here’s one from the right of center Heritage Foundation:

Discover Card doesn’t always ask fans to Like a post, but when they do, it always gets a strong response:

And finally one from REI, asking fans to Like their post if they like sleeping bags:

Takeaway:

You don’t have to be on Facebook for any more than 5 minutes to see a business in your news feed asking for Likes and comments. There’s no way around it, you need likes, comments and/or shares if you want to optimize your post and help it get to one of the first on news feeds’. You’ll want to avoid asking for Likes, comments or shares on every post. Do this and people will tune you out and unlike your page.

It’s important to be aware of Facebook’s contest and promotion guidelines.

Regardless of edgerank, Facebook is a great platform for spreading word about your company and communicating with prospective and current customers. News feed optimizing gives you a great chance to get your brand in front of a lot of people who already “Like” you. Done consistently, this can help enforce your brand into the fan’s mind. Brand reinforcement will help make sure that you’re the first company that comes to mind when they’re looking to buy something in your market.

Being on Facebook is a good thing. But if you want to take your brand to the next level, you should be practicing news feed optimization.

Other Useful Articles On Facebook Marketing

• 8 Tactful Ways to use your Personal Facebook Account as a Marketing Tool
• 6 Tools Social Media Experts Use to Update Facebook Pages
• 28 Things You Need To Know About The New Facebook Pages
• 7 Sneaky Ways to Use Facebook to Spy on Your Competition
• How to Get More Facebook Likes for Your Website and Fan Page
• Facebook Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

Got Any Tips?

Do you currently do news feed optimization? Have you learned any tips or tricks to share with the other readers?

About the Author: Zach Bulygo is a guest blogger for KISSmetrics, you can find him on Twitter here.

Getting Real, our book about a smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application, is now available as a free PDF (it used to cost $19).

We’ve used the Getting Real methods to develop all of our products. Here’s what other people have said about Getting Real.

Head over to the Getting Real site to get your free PDF of Getting Real. We hope you enjoy it.

There are many customer experience events, and several of them are very good. But I want to make the case for joining us at the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA.org) Members Insight Exchange on June 19 & 20 in San Diego at the Del Coronado.

In case you don’t know about the CXPA, it’s a non-profit organization dedicated to the long-term success of customer experience professionals. Here are my top 8 reasons for joining us:

• Learning. Hear best practices from great speakers and during highly interactive sessions.
• Networking. Meet customer experience professionals from different industries and regions.
• Sharing. Let other people know about your successes and challenges, helping to improve the entire profession.
• Experiencing. Participate in an exciting agenda that’s filled with educational sessions, networking events, an “unconference” session and some other surprises.
• Building. Help shape the CXPA’s agenda and make it a powerful asset for you and the entire profession.
• Innovating. Learn about the CXPA’s first annual CX Innovation Award winners and see presentations from a specially selected group of innovative vendors.
• Beaching. Enjoy the beautiful setting of the Del Coronado on the beach in San Diego.
• Belonging. Join your peers in the CXPA who are investing their time to make you and other customer experience professionals successful.

The bottom line: Don’t miss this great event!

Optimizing a website for sales can be complex if you offer software as a service. The sales cycle tends to be longer because prospects may visit your site several times before they contact you or sign up to try your service.

If you use KISSmetrics, you’ve probably came to this conclusion already. Perhaps someone will investigate your product, but right at the moment of signing-up, they leave your site. Or, maybe they’ll sign-up for your free whitepaper and they won’t visit your site again for 6 months.

The main challenge with this process is that it’s easy for people to forget who you are in between those touch-points. The potential customer may just decide to find a way to keep you in their awareness stream without actually contacting you. Maybe they’ll sign up for your newsletter, subscribe to your RSS feed, download your whitepaper, follow your company on twitter, etc.

There are even more things you can do about this though! Here are some ways to keep in touch with your prospects and in turn, increase your conversions and keep your acquisition costs low by not adding extra advertising and marketing expenses.

In this post we will:

• Go over the “how”.
• Show you case studies of how following-up helped two companies.
• Present some tools you can use to make following up easier.

Let’s get started!

Track Potential Prospects

Finding an analytics solution is a great start. To close the loop, you may discover it makes sense to do a little investigative work on your contacts individually so you can stay in touch. These things will work if you don’t get a large number of subscribers or sign-ups daily.

Here are some basic ways you can do that:

• Google Them: Do you have a name or email address that they’ve shared with you? Google your prospect and see how you can further connect in a natural way. Be careful with this so you don’t come off like a creepy stalker though. It may make sense to just input their data somewhere and keep up to date with their happenings for a while first before introducing yourself.
• Input Them into Your CRM: There are a lot of great CRM systems out there. If you’re looking-up a contact you don’t know, a great solution is a social CRM rather than one where you input all the data manually, as in the past. Social CRM’s pull in data from various social media sources so that you can keep up to date with your contacts without checking in on all of their profiles one-by-one.
• Track More Than Contact Information: Track each time you’ve talked to someone, what you discussed, and what their needs are. If you talk to a lot of people on a daily basis, this is essential so you don’t forget who’s who later on.

As you might guess, any of these methods work well if you sell high-end services, if you can afford to spend the time, and you don’t employ a full-time salesperson. If you have a high number of leads, you’ll likely need to look into something more hands-off and automated.

Look at Your Sales Cycle

When was the last time you looked at your whole sales process? There’s a good chance you’re missing out on opportunities to touch base with potential clients.

The trick is knowing how often to contact prospects without being off-putting and knowing when the right moments to do it are. This takes some time to figure out, which is why it’s a good idea look at each step of your current process to identify where it could be improved.

For example, a typical sales cycle could look something like this:

1. The prospect signs up to listen to your webinar.
2. After the webinar, they decide to try out your 30-day trial.
3. After a week or two, you follow-up to see how they are enjoying their trial and if they have questions.
4. If they’re still undecided, you follow up again when it looks logical to do so.
5. You close the sale and get a new paying customer.

Now, I know this seems fairly straightforward, but I want you to look again at step number 3; following-up. Many people completely skip this step. They assume that people will use the trial and decide to sign-up if they like it, so there’s nothing else to be done.

The problem with this is that many people sign-up for free trials and then never actually try the software. They get busy or distracted and the 30 days runs up.

A good solution here is to contact the potential customer, remind them of the date they signed up and ask them if they’d like to schedule a time to discuss your solution or demo it together. This is a great opportunity to help your prospect see the value in your product.

Now you’re not bugging the prospect, you’re helping them figure out if the solution is right for them. Pretty easy, right?

A secondary benefit to following-up and becoming a trusted advisor is also the likelihood of increasing customer loyalty and thus, the customer lifetime value. How many times have you stayed loyal to a company just because they went out of their way to help you?

If you don’t hear back after following-up two times or so, that probably means they aren’t interested. You don’t have to keep at it forever, but you do have to make sure that the prospect knows you are doing your best to help. Following-up is a good way to do that as long as you appear helpful and respectful of their time.

Case Studies

Here are a few companies that successfully use a follow-up process to get and retain customers.

Visual Website Optimizer

Visual Website Optimizer is a company that provides split/multivariate testing software and stats as a service. As a potential customer of theirs myself, I was impressed with their follow-up service and level of attention. I originally tried their software last year and they re-approached me last month to see if I’d like to see a new demo of their software. How many companies take the time to follow-up a whole year later?

When I asked them about their specific process for getting new sign-ups, CEO Paras Chopra said they have the following process that they’ve implemented using Salesforce and Mailchimp:

• Day 1: signup welcome mail
• Day 3: our sales manager emails every trial user asking if s/he needs help or wants a demo
• Day 23 (7 days before trial gets over): an automated mail telling that trial is about to get over
• Day 37 (7 days after trial gets over): a mail asking for feedback why they didn’t upgrade their plan

As you can see, they have multiple touchpoints with the potential customer, not just one. This has significantly helped their business because people often sign-up for a trial and then get distracted and sometimes they don’t remember that they signed-up at all.

Website: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com

Ignition Deck

Ignition Deck is a crowdfunding software plugin made for WordPress. It allows you to crowdfund directly from your own site rather than using an outside service.

They offer a product that requires extra attention to follow-up and customer service because crowdfunding is still a new concept and they are one of the first companies offering this service. So, they tend to get a lot of inquiries about the nature of the service and how it works.

They’ve decided to take follow-up a step further than automation and contact each new customer personally to say thank you immediately after they buy. This helps solidify their relationship with their customers and also garners them more referrals in the longer-term.

Nathan Hangen, partner of parent company VirtuousGiant said, “We’ve noticed that our post-purchase follow up has led to a lot of word of mouth referrals. In fact, word of mouth is our 2nd highest referral method (search is #1).”

They are also responsive and quick to answer questions through social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. Their immediacy of response and level of attention they provide is very effective at helping people decide to sign-up.

Website: ignitiondeck.com

Tools/Resources

Need a tool to help close the loop? Here are a few we’ve tried that might make your life easier too.

Salesforce:

This is probably the most popular and automated solution if you have larger numbers of leads. It also has social integration features that let you quickly get more information about your prospects.

HighRise:

This is another popular offering from the 37signals team. You can track leads/sales with it and also input basic contact information. One thing that I especially liked about it when we used it is that you can forward emails into it. This is a great way to keep track of where your conversations are and when the last time you followed-up was. It also sends you follow-up reminders, which is handy.

BatchBook:

This is a nice social CRM solution. What I especially liked about this solution is all of the different partner integrations that allow you to tie in your services together. So, if you send invoices from Freshbooks, you can hook that in. You can also have it sync with your Mailchimp list and Google Contacts, which helps reduce manual input and email forwarding time.

Nimble:

Nimble is another easy-to-use social CRM tool. If you like the idea of having everything stream into one inbox, this is a good solution for you. It also allows you to assign tasks with reminders for follow-up.

Gist:

When I first tried Gist, I didn’t like it at all. I thought it provided something akin to information overload. Once I figured out how it worked and got used to it though, I found it to be a nice social CRM tool. My suggestion is just to use it to discover information about contacts, but not get too caught up in the general information stream. And it’s free!

Mailchimp:

Mailchimp offers a free service up to 2,000 subscribers. It’s a great way to start an email marketing plan because they allow you to set up autoresponders and scheduled emails to your new subscribers.

What have you found that helps you keep in touch and close the deal with your prospects?

About the Author: Naomi Niles is an independent consultant that specializes in user experience and interaction design that delivers better client results through a careful balance of data, goals and innovation. You can find her at NaomiNiles.com.

Getting that guest blogging gig is one thing…actually getting subscribers and customers from it is quite another.

For example, if you land an article on a huge site like Lifehacker or Tim Ferriss’ blog, you are likely to create some serious traffic to your site.

The question is…is your site prepared to convert one percent of those visitors? Five percent? Ten percent?

Over the years I’ve seen some terrible landing pages and I’ve seen some really great ones. For those really great ones they always shared some common traits…ten in fact. And for each trait that you use in your landing page plan, you’ll have the opportunity to increase conversions by at least one percent…and perhaps even 10 percent if you use all 10.

Let’s get started.

1. Create an ultra-convincing byline with this 3-sentence formula

Pretend for a moment that you got a guest posting gig over at J.D. Roth’s Get Rich Slowly blog. Your guest post is going to be about how you got out of debt by following his 9 rules to mastering your money.

And let’s also say that this was your first guest post and don’t really know what to do once you’ve finished writing the post…

Well, what you have to do is write a killer byline.

What is a byline? It’s basically a short bio of you…the writer. Here’s what it looks like on Roth’s blog:

To create a compelling byline use the 3-sentence formula. Each sentence answers the following questions:

• Who are you?
• What do you do and for who?
• What’s the call to action?

So in our example above your byline for J.D.’s blog could look like this:

This is a guest post by Your Name, lead blogger at yourblog.com. Your Name helps other people get out of debt.  Grab his free course on getting out of debt today.

Notice how everything is geared toward J.D.’s audience? And it’s that freebie that will be getting people to click that link to your site. It’s all about creating the right offer.

2. Create a landing page specific to that audience

Most people will send traffic directly to the home page. That’s a mistake.

If you want high conversion rates for your traffic, then you need to create a landing page designed specifically for the traffic that will be arriving on your landing page.

In this case you not only want to design a landing page that addresses J.D.’s audience…but you want to make this landing page have the same feel as did your guest post.

That means your landing page needs to be about getting out of debt.

Now of course, your website probably deals with an entirely different subject matter. Obviously you should be guest blogging for sites relevant to your industry. And besides, backlinks from related sites are better for your SEO anyway.

3. Write a truly killer headline with the 4 U’s

Create the right offer and a flood of traffic will hit your landing page. But if you don’t have the right headline…those people will flood right back out of your landing page.

The best method I’ve ever found for writing killer headlines is to use the 4 U’s approach:

• Unique – Your headline needs to be original, so you’ll need to do your homework and find out what competitors are writing. A simple test to determine if your headline is not unique is to imagine someone else using it. If they can use it…then it is not unique.
• Urgent – Next, you need to create a sense that time is scarce and that if the visitor doesn’t act NOW…he’s going to lose out big. You can create urgency by saying something is in limited supply…or a discount is only available for a short period of time…or your competitor is about to have this same secret.
• Ultra-Specific – Next you need to be very precise about your headline. Is it eight steps? Does it take 10 minutes? Will it help you lose 42 pounds? Will it increase sales by 143%? The more precise, the more credible your headline.
• Useful– Finally, your headline should promise the visitor that it can help them accomplish a practical goal that they care about.

Okay headlines will only use one of these elements. Good ones employ two. Great ones will squeeze in three. But killer headlines use all four!

In our example you could write “How the 9 Rules of Mastering Your Money Can Help You Eliminate $37,000 of Debt in Less Than 365 Days.”

Of course whatever you write, you have to be able to prove it.

4. Write killer copy using the PAS formula

While the purpose of the headline is to get people to stop…the purpose of the copy is to get people to do your bidding.

And the best way that I’ve found to do this is to use the PAS formula…or Pain-Agitate-Solve.

Here’s how it works:

• Pain – Identify a real problem that your target audience has. It could be massive amounts of student loan debts…or burnout from trying to get a start up from off the ground. One of the very first lines of copy you write needs to say something like “Do you suffer from…?” That will identify your targeted visitors.
• Agitate – Once you’ve identified the real and most important pain in that prospects’ life, next you need to stir it up. Identifying the pain will help you to relate to your prospect…agitating the pain will help get them to be emotional about it. Point out that if they don’t do anything about their problem that they are going to be poor, lonely, overweight, slow, fired…think in terms of the consequence they could suffer if they don’t act to fix their pain.
• Solve – Once you’ve satisfactorily agitated your prospect…offer your product as the solution.

How much copy you write for each section depends upon the complexity of the problem. Something more complex will take longer both to identify and agitate…

However, if you did a good job with the first two, you won’t need a whole lot of copy to offer the solution. Your visitors should be begging for it!

5. Put call to action above the fold

Really effective landing pages will keep the headline, sub headline and call to action above the fold.

This doesn’t mean that everything needs to be above the fold. You are free to write a two-page post with dozens of bullets that does nothing but continually push home the benefits to the visitor.

Woot! does this superbly…

The call to action is above the fold…but the copy continues below.

Just make sure the CTA is above the fold because most people will make a decision about what to do within the first 4 seconds of being on your landing page.

6. Put a short video on the landing page

I’ve seen conversions skyrocket from a simple video that explains the why and what of the landing page. In fact, Eye View Digital did a study that showed you can increase conversion by 80 percent!

Some of their own case studies even show this:

What this does is puts a human face onto the landing page, builds instant credibility and engages those visitors who are power skimmers.

7. Request only the absolute bare minimum

High conversion rates on your landing page will only come when you make the requirements for subscribing very low. In fact, for every additional piece of information…and every additional field you add…you could be losing conversion points.

In the same vein, make it absolutely clear what you want them to do. And the best way to do that is keep it simple like Dejan SEO did.

Slide Deck, while I love their product, complicates their landing page:

They’ve got four actions you can perform.

Never complicate the conversion by thinking “Hey, since I have their attention I should ask them if they also want to join my podcast, download my free book and register for my upcoming webinar.”

That is a recipe for disaster. You’ll make visitors indecisive and go away.

8. Add social proof

You may have a problem tooting your own horn when it comes to your success because you don’t want to come across as stuck up…but trust me…it will help your conversions!

You can tell visitors of your successes quickly and easily in a variety of ways:

• Subscriber count – Announce how many people already subscribe to your blog or email newsletter list.
• Social media followers – Show people how many people are connected to you via social media.
• Logos – Display the logos of reputable companies who’ve endorsed you.

These simple little additions to your landing page will help push many would-be fence sitters in your direction…thus increasing your conversion rate.

9. Use killer design

There is no doubt about it…a well-designed site will convert better than a poorly designed one. The killer design communicates professionalism, trust and security…

where the poorly designed site does just the opposite…

In the end it’s worth hiring a good designer to design your landing page.

10. Test

The final tip for squeezing every bit of conversion success out of your landing pages is to test what you have. Use the tips above to create a control that you can start testing with (and can use as a baseline against future tests).

Then start testing everything. For example:

• Headlines – Run A/B tests that compare two very different headlines that contrast two very different benefits. Challenge all of your assumptions!
• Color – I’ve seen this in my own personal research…color matters! Don’t take it for granted, but test different color schemes to see which one boosts conversions.
• CTAs – Create multiple calls to actions using different words. For example, “Try” versus “Join.” You’ll be surprised how much difference one little word can make!
• Videos – Don’t just take my word for it…test to see if adding a video will actually increase conversions. You may learn that the audience coming down the pipeline doesn’t like videos.
• Social proof – Perhaps people will respond when they see that large companies have endorsed you…but your conversions don’t budge when you add social media proof.

The truth is that everything can be tested…and that you should get in a habit of testing to learn more about your visitors and prospects. The more you learn the better you will get!

Conclusion

Each one of these tips has in its power to increase your conversion rate by at least one percent…use them all effectively and you could be converting over 10 percent of visitors.

That means if you just get 1,000 visitors from a guest post, you’ll land 100 new subscribers. Five thousand visits and you’ll get 500!

What other guest blogging landing page techniques can you share that will raise conversion rates?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the VP of Marketing of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.

It’s easy to convince yourself that working until your eyes bleed and your fingers cramp is simply what must be done when starting something new.

You can dangle yourself the carrot that it’s just until you get out of the first hole: “Once we’re live, it’ll all calm down and I’ll be able to relax”.

But that’s rarely how it goes. The reality is that you’re never going to be done. There’s always more work. New initiatives, new customers, new competition, new technology, new ideas.

Unless you learn to set healthy boundaries early on, human biology will set in and carve those habits into your psyche. Double so if you enjoy success. You put in all this pain, it worked, and now you can enjoy the pleasure; it’s too tempting for your brain to pass that up as anything but causality.

One pattern to help yourself fight the mad dash for the mirage of being done is to think of a good day’s work. Look at the progress of the day towards the end and ask yourself: “Have I done a good day’s work?”

Answering that question is liberating. Often, if the answer is an easy “yes,” you can leave your desk feeling like you accomplished something important, if not entirely “done”. And should the answer be no, you can treat it as an off-day and explore the 5 why’s.

It feels good to be productive. If yesterday was a good day’s work, chances are you’ll keep the roll. And if you can keep the roll, everything else will probably take care of itself.