Kindle App to Come Preloaded on Select Android Devices

Amazon’s Kindle app, which allows users to download and read electronic books on a variety of mobile and desktop devices, will now come preloaded on a few Verizon phones running Google’s Android operating system.

The app will come pre-installed on new copies of the recently released Samsung Fascinate, as well as Motorola’s Droid 2 and Droid X smartphones, Amazon and Verizon jointly announced.

Amazon VP of Kindle Dave Limp suggests that the Kindle app will come preloaded on “other [Verizon] devices” in the future, as well; however, there was no mention that it would appear on Verizon’s version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Late last month, RIM announced that Kobo’s e-reading app would come preloaded on its forthcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet device.

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Windows Phone 7 Syncing for Mac Coming Later This Year

 Mac users will get the ability to sync Windows Phone 7 devices with their Mac computer, sometime in 2010.

Microsoft UK’s head of Windows Phone marketing, Oded Ran, first tweeted that WP7/Zune syncing with Mac is coming “soon,” with Microsoft later confirming it’ll happen this year.

“Later in 2010 Microsoft will make a public beta available of a tool that allows Windows Phone 7 to sync select content with Mac computers,” Microsoft’s statement said.

While that doesn’t really sound like a full-fledged Zune client for Mac, it’s still nice to see Microsoft giving some love to Mac users who also happen to be interested in a Windows Phone 7 device.

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How To Market With Blog Comments The Right Way

What’s the most common and simplest marketing advice for attracting traffic to your blog?

Leave comments on other blogs.

Yep, it’s easy, it’s quick, and because of that, nearly everyone does it wrong. However because so many use blog comments to pretty much just leave spam, if you use blog comment marketing the right way, you really stand out from the crowd and can enjoy good results.

Watch the video and I explain how to more effectively use comments to market your blog.

If you enjoy this video, please tweet it, you can share it on Facebook or on your preferred social network. And of course, if you haven’t done so already, please join my email newsletter on this page (enter your name and email at that link to join).

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Why Small Businesses Fail & How You Can Be One Of The Rare Success Stories

In a previous articles I discussed the importance of having a thorough understanding of your customer psychology. Knowing why your customers are motivated to do what they do on an emotional level means you can intimately communicate with them, demonstrating you know their problems better than they do.

In another article I explained the distinction between your grand vision, versus your guiding strategies and your every day tactics.

I taught you that the key word when it comes to understanding your customers and your own process, is “why”. Ask why your customers behave how they do so you can best work to meet their needs and communicate in a language they understand. Ask why you make decisions and take actions so you are clear about how your every day actions relate to your overall strategy and vision.

The final piece of the puzzle, which I will explain to you in this article, is all about execution.

It’s great to conceptually understand these ideas and know the why behind human motivation, but if you fail to execute then you’re not going to get a result. At the end of the day, if you want success, it’s what you do, not what you understand or assume, that will lead you there.

Many people when they start new businesses fail because they don’t have enough knowledge. Knowledge is the first step because knowledge gives you clarity and clarity give you purpose.

At the end of the day, businesses fail because the people behind them stop doing the right actions or continue doing the wrong actions (usually a combination of both). The key to success is to figure out what are the right actions AND determine what is the right order to complete them in.

You need a clarity of purpose and enough motivation to keep working. The human being, or beings behind the business are the most important variables, and if you as the business owner, or your partners, contractors or staff don’t remain motivated, then you’re heading for failure.

I’ve worked with many start-up solo-entrepreneurs, most of whom never realize the success they want. The reason? They give up too soon. They haphazardly do a few of the right things, but always feel slightly lost or confused or impatient or frustrated. They second-guess their actions, get distracted by new ideas, and jump from one project to the next.

The few people who do enjoy success demonstrate something unique – and it’s obvious to the trained eye what it is. These people stand out from the crowd because of their steadfast motivation towards a goal. They still make mistakes, don’t always stick to one path, but they keep moving forward, failing fast and always learning from what they do. It’s the consistency of their execution that leads to the positive outcome.

You can eliminate much of the ambiguity and fear about what you are attempting to do, if you look at your business as a series of processes that must be successfully executed, one after the other, in order to get the result you want.

The fist step is to successfully execute your customer research process. Learn about your customer psychology before doing anything else (go back and read this article if you need reminding what this means: How To Develop A Crystal Clear Understanding Of Your Customer).

The next process is studying what strategies you need to employ, how they fit together and what order they should be executed in.

For example, as a blogger you usually execute a content strategy, followed by a marketing strategy and then a monetization strategy. Although these things overlap, generally you can’t successfully execute a monetization strategy without first completing a marketing and content strategy, as you won’t have any traffic to sell to.

Once you know what strategies you are going to execute, focus on the first one and only the first one if possible. For this strategy, pick the best tactics you need to complete in order to execute successfully, based on your strengths and current situation. For example, if you are at the content strategy step of building a blogging based business, and your strength is writing, you should map out a series of blog posts that you will write, which could be put together into a free report once complete (like an A to Z guide on how to do what your customers want to do).

From there, you take action and execute the tactics, monitoring results as you go along. Do this with a single-mindedness, as if your life depended on it, for best results. Don’t do it forever, but do it quickly. Execute, assess results, recalibrate, then execute some more.

At the heart of this process working is clarity of purpose. Your motivation is dependent on your confidence. Your confidence is dependent on your clarity that what you are doing works.

When you are confident that what you do delivers the desired result, you do a better job, hence giving yourself a better chance of success. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy, or as Eben Pagan likes to call it – inevitably thinking. If you believe it is inevitable that what you are striving for you will have, then you increase your chances of it happening. If you believe the opposite, then you weaken your potential.

It makes sense then, that you believe what you want to happen will happen. However belief doesn’t come easy if you have little real world experience to back it up. That’s why quick and focused execution is critical. The quicker you learn what tactics work and what don’t in your given situation, the quicker you will become confident in your own ability to get a result.

Be careful that when you do experiment that you do it at the tactical level. If you keep changing strategies or you’re acting on assumptions about your customers that keep changing, you’re probably feeling more ambiguity than you are confidence.

It’s okay to experiment at the tactical level and as a result you learn new things about your customer psychology, forcing you to change your strategy, but this should only be done in response to real knowledge gained from execution at the tactical level. Make changes based on what you learn about your customers from directly interacting with them, not simply because you “think” it’s the right thing to do.

Once you start getting results, you will become more confident. Confidence in execution leads to more execution and it’s quite possible to reach a point where execution becomes effortless. Once you’ve done things a few times and the result is consistent, it becomes part of your innate abilities. You just know it works and can repeat the process at will without ambiguity.

Imagine what it would be like to have this sort of confidence when it comes to making money online. If you knew that completing a few techniques results in a certain amount of money coming in every time, you’re going to feel pretty relaxed about your ability to run a successful online business long term. This is the place you want to get to.

Execution is about repetition and testing of tactics until strategy is realized. Once a strategy is realized you know it works and you’re one step closer to what you want. Plus, you gain confidence and thus motivation.

If you want to make this process part of your life so you are successful in business, you need to make execution part of your every day activities.

If you execute in confidence, you can’t help but gain more confidence, because the worst result is clarity of what doesn’t work. Clarity is the path to confidence. Once you eliminate enough of what doesn’t work you discover what does.

If you enjoyed this article, please tweet it, share it on Facebook or on your preferred social network. And of course, if you haven’t done so already, please join my email newsletter on this page (enter your name and email at that link to join).

Yaro Starak
Executioner

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New SBA Small-Business Definition Hurts Actual Small Businesses

What is a small business, anyway? How big can it be before it's not a small business anymore? The Small Business Administration has been mulling these questions and now, for the first time in decades, has redefined how large a company can be and still qualify for SBA assistance.

In some industries, small businesses can now be a lot bigger. Which seems like a big step in the wrong direction.

The SBA sets its cutoffs based on either the number of employees or average annual receipts. Previously, $7 million in annual revenue was the cutoff for most industries.

But in the review, the SBA boosted that cutoff to more than $35 million for some business types. The result is that 18,000 more businesses now can seek help from SBA in obtaining federal contracts and loans.

Industries that now have bigger small businesses in the SBA's eyes include hospitality, restaurant and hotel. In particular, new-car dealerships saw their rules change radically, to allow dealers to have up to 200 employees. Translation: About 90 percent of all car dealerships are now small businesses.

Say what? 

The government is having a tough enough time supporting the smaller small businesses. Adding more and bigger businesses to their plate will only further disadvantage the really small businesses the SBA was created to foster -- because small businesses are such an important factor in job creation and driving our economy.

But you can see why SBA made this move. To sum up, it's easier to help bigger, more established businesses. It's also easier to fulfill government quotas for helping small businesses if you include bigger businesses in your definition.

For instance, the federal government continues to struggle to meet its goal for including small businesses in government-contract assignments. In August, the SBA said small businesses got just under 22 percent of the total. The goal was 23 percent.

Now that $35 million-a-year businesses can be counted in this pot, I'd bet it'll be a snap to close that 1 percent gap. I can't wait to see the analysis of federal contract awards a year from now, to see how many of these bigger "small" businesses are now winning contracts, while struggling small businesses are turned away.

Then there's the SBA loan mess. Despite enhanced support from SBA since the downturn, banks have been reticent to loan freely. But put thousands of bigger businesses into the SBA pot, and just watch bank lending to "small business" rise again. 

In essence, the redefinition creates a PR victory, without the government's having to make any real headway in helping small businesses grow. 

Soon, the government will be able to trumpet its success getting "small businesses" the capital they need. Meanwhile, the same small businesses that have been struggling all along may keep right on floundering. It's just that now, the statistics will mask the problem.

What do you think? Should SBA funding only go to very small businesses, or should these more medium-sized businesses receive assistance, too? Leave a comment and let us know your view.

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How the New Twitter Can Help You

Twitter has announced that it will start rolling out a new interface in the coming days. The updated version will include photo and video sharing capabilities integrated directly into users' streams. Though the facelift does give the 160 million-member micro-blogging site a more sophisticated look, not much is likely to really change for many users.

Twitter.com is actually far behind loads of other Twitter developers who have been creating multimedia-sharing Twitter apps for a quite a while. The only difference now is that many of those third-party apps, like TwitPic, Twitgoo and TwitVid, will now be accessible directly through Twitter.com--making the site feel a bit more like Facebook.

So, how will the new Twitter affect the way you connect with your customers on online? You won't have to worry about downloading so many extras to do the things your follower-base has likely already come to expect. The new features essentially may make other Twitter desktop clients--such as TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop 2--irrelevant. 

It will likely be easier to engage and interact with your customer base on Twitter with so many more information-sharing options available at your finger tips.

Also, multimedia really can be crucial these days when developing brand awareness through social media. So Twitter's new partnerships with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube may also help you to attract and retain more followers. 

What do you think about the changes to Twitter? How do you think they'll affect your business? 

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Is the Small-Business Recession Worse Than You Think?

It's always difficult to get an accurate read on how small businesses are faring. Most small businesses are privately held and not very forthcoming in sharing details about their operations. Ask an entrepreneur "How's business?" these days and you could be in danger of getting smacked.

But datahouse Sageworks, which specializes in small-business intelligence, has been tracking small-company employment through the downturn. Their assessment: That recession in the mirror may be larger than it appears.  Looking at revenue data from more than 25 million small businesses, Sageworks CEO Brian Hamilton finds that over the past two years, sales were down about 5 percent for the small-business sector -- and then down another 5 percent the following year, on top of that first decline.

To sum up: "It's bad," Hamilton says.

There are some bright-spot sectors in the mess, Hamilton says: healthcare and education, particularly technical and trade schools. We're apparently drinking a lot -- beer, wine, and liquor stores are doing well. 

Strangely, child care centers are still doing well, even though you'd think there are fewer people needing child care since more are unemployed. That one's a puzzle to me.

Ecommerce is strong, as we've noted in this space recently. But of some 1,200 industries Sageworks tracks, Hamilton says perhaps 40 categories are doing well.
Low points are fairly obvious -- anything real-estate related, basically.

When you go down 5 percent and 5 percent again -- as anyone who knows the magic of compound interest will tell you -- that's more than a 10 percent decline. That level of revenue shrink can have a fearsome effect on the bottom line. "De-leveraging assets" is the technical term the big retailers use, which translated means "I'm stuck with the same fixed costs but have less income with which to pay them." Anyone with a store and rent to pay is in deep trouble with this kind of revenue decline.

On the stock-trading Web site Mr. Swing, blogger TraderMark has his theory about what's choking small-business growth -- the bloated healthcare and government sectors.

What do you think? Has Washington downplayed how bad it is out there for entrepreneurs? If so, what's to blame? Leave a comment and let us know how you're weathering the recession.

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Are You a Happy CEO? Twitter's Co-Founder Wasn't

The blogosphere is buzzing this week with the news that Twitter CEO Evan Williams -- a co-founder of the red-hot social-media company -- is stepping down to "focus on product strategy." Company chief operating officer Dick Costolo moves up to the top slot.

Holy fail whale! What does it mean for the company's future? Why would he give up his chief executive role, just when the company is really taking off? 

I've got a theory.

Often, company founders are idea people. They love inventing things, discovering things, the exitement of building something from the ground up.

Time rolls on, and the company grows. It becomes more successful -- and it becomes more complicated. The CEO's role gets bigger and bigger. They need to know about hiring, people-management, marketing, sales. If they like to create, they wake up and realize they're not getting to create anything anymore. And they're bummed.

That seems to be exactly what's happened here. Williams wrote on his blog, "Building things is my passion." He wants to get back to that. 

He'll probably take a lot of criticism for doing it. People will say he couldn't take the pressure. Or that he was forced out by investors who think the company could be better run. (About that fail whale...we do see a lot of it.)

But likely it's a smart move that ultimately will make Twitter a better company. Product development is everything, really. At the end of the day, in the cutthroat world of social media, you have to innovate and have a great experience, or users stop coming -- just ask MySpace. By freeing Williams from the million other tasks that afflict CEOs, Twitter will have a better shot at staying popular and finding ways to make money off its fast-growing platform.

Also, heading a company like Twitter means living in a fishbowl-bubble. Maybe Williams was ready to take that thing off his head.

Most business founders quit Corporate America and start their own business because they're hoping that will be more personally fulfilling. They're hoping it will be fun. Once the business gets established and starts to grow, if they find it isn't fun, then it's time to tinker with their role at the company.

I think we see the opposite situation to Williams' move too often -- company founder/CEOs who stay in the top spot when they should move themselves back into a creative role instead, and let a bean-counter take the budget meetings. They get hooked on the power trip of saying they're the CEO and won't let go, even if they aren't the best manager for a fast-growing, medium-sized company and could contribute better as a free agent.

Often, at companies that are preparing to go public, the founder/CEO steps down to become chief technology officer or something, and a more experienced CEO is brought in to run things and impress Wall Street that the company has a seasoned team. That could really be what's going on at Twitter, too. Some bloggers report that investors are unhappy that Twitter isn't ramping up revenue fast enough. 

Even if that is the reason why, the change is probably a good thing. Now, we'll see what Williams creates next. 

Are you a happy CEO/founder, or would you rather someone else took that role? Leave a comment and let us know.

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What You Need to Do Before You Pitch Investors

Raising money isn't just about going to venture capitalists or angel investors. In fact, Scott Gerber said during his presentation at the Winning Strategies Conference in Long Beach today that most small businesses don't need as much capital as they think, and some don't need capital at all. Still others simply haven't undergone the proper assessment necessary to determine what they need.

So, how do you get money for your business and how do you know you're ready to get outside capital? Gerber shared three steps small business owners should take prior to pitching investors.

Step No. 1: Rethink Your Operations
Reducing customer payment terms and creating tiered pricing strategies are ways to inject some fluidity into your business's cash flow. Do an assessment of your infrastructure and labor costs. Can you go paperless or make use of internet-based software? Which bills or other remedial tasks can be automated? Try negotiating a lower price or longer payment terms with vendors. Doing an audit of your tax deductions can also help you find money where there was none before.

Step No. 2: Revise Your Spending Practices
Ask yourself what you can eliminate, what you can get for free and what you can borrow. Is there something you can barter with another entrepreneur for? Can your expensive equipment be leased or rented? The basic idea here is to figure out how to get what you need as cheaply as possible.

Step No. 1: Reassess Capital Needs
This is the step where you take a long, hard look at the amount of money you're seeking and assess whether you really need what you're requesting. Once you determine what you really need vs. what you want, break your plan down into steps with associated costs. For each product for which there is a cost, how many different uses can you think of? Gerber recommends finding three alternative uses for each product. Lastly, you'll want to seek out strategic partnerships. This goes back to bartering with other small-business owners. Whom do you know that you can team up with to get what you need?

Once you've gone through these steps, you'll have a better outlook on what you need for your business.

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What's in the Small Business 'Jobs' Bill Besides $30B for Banks

Now that the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010 is finally law, it's time to take a look under the hood and see what-all is in there. Last week, I discussed the $30 billion in funding that goes to community banks -- hopefully to lend to small businesses, but no guarantee there.

Some have noted that calling it a jobs bill is kind of a stretch. There's nothing that explicitly creates a job in here. The hope is that more funding will allow businesses to do more hiring. We'll see how that pans out.

In the meanwhile, here's a look at the rest of the Job Act provisions...some of which offer at least a glimmer of hope of getting more funding into small business owners' hands. Higher SBA loan limits. The maximum size of an SBA-backed 7(a) loan rises from $2 million to $5 million, and 504 loans rise from a maximum of $1.5 million to $5.5 million. Loan fees for these stay gone for the 2010 tax year now, after earlier being eliminated for '09.

These changes were sought by many entrepreneurs' organizations. Clearly, the prime beneficiaries here are bigger small businesses, if you follow me. But those are important to the economy and can be big job creators. 

At lender CapitalSource's small business lending group, managing director George Harrop put out a release proclaiming, "This is a very big deal for small businesses -- and for small-business lenders."

We'll see. Let's hope this isn't another ARC loan situation, where there's funding, but rules and paperwork burdens keep much of the money from reaching businesses.

Funding for state small-business investment programs: State venture funds have been drained in the recession. The bill allocates $2 billion in new funds for established and new state small-business loan programs. This one's a savvy move, as the state funds are public-private partnerships that use their own money to leverage bank guarantees and additional funds. So this $2 billion is expected to help catalyze $20 billion in lending.

Tax breaks: Once again, I think these help more medium-sized than really small businesses. There's a 100 percent exclusion from capital gains tax for angel and venture-capital investors on small business investments. This is intended to get more investors putting money into companies again. The Administration says over 1 million small businesses may benefit, receiving investments that won't bring the investors any capital-gains tax as long as they stay invested in a company for five years.

The deal where you can take any credits your business has and apply them against any of the previous five years lives on in this bill, as does Section 179 (depreciation) expensing of up to $500,000 in the year of purchasing business equipment. The "bonus depreciation" of another 50 percent of the equipment cost also got renewed.

Two for the smaller fry: A write-off of up to $10,000 of startup expenses for new businesses, and a new deduction for health-insurance costs for the self-employed.

The dark side:The jobs bill isn't all sweetness and light for small business owners, either. One of the provisions many were hoping to see struck that survived is the new requirement that small businesses fill out 1099 tax forms for all their substantial contractors. This paperwork-making pain remains.

What do you think of the jobs bill? Is there something in it that might help you hire more workers? Leave a comment and let us know your reaction.

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So You Call Yourself an Analyst? Part 1: Asking the Right Questions

Today I am going to talk about something that plagues companies and consultants everywhere--half baked analysis. It's something we've all done at some point, and something a lot of us still do on a regular basis. It's unfortunate because as online marketers we all understand the power of good data mining, but time and time again we revert to generic inquiry, at best, and default report templates.

Disclaimer: Origionally I attempted to write about the five steps I follow for solid data analysis in one post, but as I approached my 6th page of content, I realized it may be best to break up into a series.

Alas, this will be the first of three posts, tackling a five-step process toward good data analysis. The three topics are:

Asking the Right QuestionsIdentifying What is Going WrongTurning Data Into Action

Yup that's right...cancel that afternoon meeting because you my friend are going to be stoked about data analysis in 3...2..1...

Rethinking the Questions

A few weeks ago at our SEOmoz PRO Seminar I spoke on "Analyzing What Matters & Ignoring the Rest" and I challenged the attendees to rethink the questions that guide their data research. Too often we get caught up in asking questions that simply put-- don't really matter. Let me explain. It will always be important to know things like "How much has traffic increased" and "What referrers are performing better this month," but this sort of inquiry does not qualify as marketing analysis.

Sure it's valuable to report that to your clients or boss, but as an analyst you are tasked with much more. You are tasked with finding things others can't. You are expected to dive into the data head first and find issues before they become huge problems. You are also responsible for finding opportunities a.k.a. the "game changer" for your company...that is your job. If you don't like the way that sounds, please stop calling yourself an analyst. You are stressing me out.

So what questions should you be asking? Bigger ones to start.

 

I know they sound uber-top level, but don't roll your eyes just yet. I challenge each of you to write these out and really think about the answers. I think you'll be surprised with what you come (or can't come) up with.  I'm going to apply this to SEOmoz as an example.

An outsider would look at our site and say we are -

Trying to sell PRO membershipsAn increase or decrease in completed goals would show us if we are being successfulLosing traffic to our sign-up page, and a lower traffic count would be detrimental to our success

Well that is great, but honestly SEOmoz can't succeed solely on increasing PRO memberships. The truth is, there is a lot more to it than that. We have a recognized brand with expectations on it, and a community of over 200,000 people that come to us for the latest SEO information on the web. We can't afford to lose ground on either of those two. These are defining qualities of SEOmoz, and strong advantages over our competitors. So my three questions would leave me more complex answers, something like this:

Increase organic traffic on "Learn SEO" type queries, increase branded term searches, increase YOUmoz member engagement, and increase signupsMore referrals from links to our resources, more traffic from people researching SEO, more YOUmoz submissions, more comments, improved engagement metrics on site, higher sign up attempts, higher signup completions, etc.Decline in branded term searches, decline in organic traffic to resource pages, decline in time on site for YOUmoz members, etc.

So now what? You are left with a handful of metrics to investigate. Those metrics should be the base of your analysis efforts. I urge all of you to revisit the reasons why you analyze what you analyze, you'll be surprised to learn that you don't really have a good reason most of the time. After you have your new questions nailed down and you know what metrics you want to analyze,  it's time to jump in the data.

Start Macro and Go Micro

This is when I highly suggest you fill your coffee cup, or grab another Red Bull. I also support locking your office door, or putting up a "Do Not Disturb, I am Data Mining You Silly Non-Analyst" sign up on your cubicle. Okay anyway...so the main roadmap to solid analysis includes five steps and they are:

*Please note that Analyze, Value, and Action will be covered in upcoming posts in this series.

What Do We Mean by Macro Analysis?

Macro analysis means you have a solid understanding of the different sections of your site, the different user types that navigate it, and the top-level metrics. You should know these like the back of your hand. In addition to knowing these actual numbers you should know their rate of change (how often does that data point change), the depth of change (how extreme are those changes--big jumps? small steps?), and the way they interact (is there a consistent relationship between two metrics--one goes up/down, the other will too). If this sounds like a lot to continuously track, you are right. Good analysis is a lot of work. Thankfully SEOmoz pays me in cupcakes, and Champagne Wednesdays, I highly suggest negotiating for these perks ;)

At SEOmoz we track our top sections by week, so we can easily identify shifts in the data, and it looks something like this:

 

(A portion of our weekly analysis for full site stats)

You can see we aren't just looking at our homepage, we are looking at our subdomains, our highest trafficked sections. We also are going beyond visitors, we are pulling top-level stats like pages/visit, time on site, bounce rates, etc. This graph goes around to the entire company once a week. This macro level view helps all of us understand the momentum of our site's growth. It helps us easily isolate problem areas so we can address them before they grow into huge "Oh sh*t" moments. Trust me when I say, if you aren't tracking your data at this macro level, you should start today.

What Do We Mean by Micro Analysis?
This part of the puzzle is the one that most people skip over. Micro analysis means you don't just have a sense how your blog's traffic is doing you know how many comments you get on it, how long they spend on it, how deep they go into your site after reading a post, and how many of your blog visitors end up converting for you. In short, micro analysis means you look at all those secondary data points that you can actually manipulate.

While it's great to go into work on a Monday and say I want to increase traffic to my blog by 20%, it is a big feat to accomplish. Not only will it take a lot of time conceptualizing, writing and sharing that content, it will also, most likely, be less lucrative than if you took the existing traffic and increased its conversion rate by 5%. That sort of move is done by honing in on data at a micro analysis level.

Specifically this is where things like event tracking in Google Analytics and deeper dives into your preferred analytics package come in handy. Everyone has their own approach for micro analysis, but I think a good place to start is see where successful events (downloads, subscriptions, sign-ups, conversions, etc.) are taking place and see if you can come up with common demoninators. If you see that successful pages all have one or more thing in common, you can start testing these on other sections to increase conversions across your whole site. Here is an example of what we pull for SEOmoz:

 

(A portion of our micro tool usage analysis report)

We can see which tools are performing the best, and analyze those pages to see if we can isolate out page tweaks to roll out across all tool pages. It seems simple, but way too often analysts look into analytics to see how they are doing, and fail to put in the time required to uncover what they could be doing for increased success. You should know, for every single section and user type on your site, what makes it "successful." You need to be tracking these "successes" as closely as you would your visitor count.

Well this post got a little long, but I really wanted to give you guys some real examples on how I approach data analysis both at the macro and micro level. Hopefully, you can take some of this and apply it right away. I know we all have our own unique approach to analysis, and I'd love to hear yours in the comments below!

Next post I will be talking about the "analyze" step of a solid analysis strategy. That post will hone in on quick ways to figure out what is going wrong. I will talk about some GA features that you can use to make your analysis more effective and less time consuming. So stay tuned!

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What You Need to Know About the #NewTwitter

Well yesterday was a big day on Twitter, wasn't it? I don't know about you but I was glued to the live stream of the not-so top secret Twitter press conference at exactly 3:30 pm and watched closely for an hour and a half while @Ev and @Biz told us all about the new "bigger and better" Twitter.com.  The founders outlined many of the recent achievements they have seen with the growth of their community and announced the release of a brand new interface for Twitter.com, which will be rolling out to all users over the new few weeks (it's important to note that currently only 1% of users have access to the redesign, that decision was not so well received.)

The new  interface has a renewed focus on the user experience with in stream multi-media expansions, more search capabilities, and an all around sexier more fluid feeling. I went crazy yesterday playing with the new interface and wanted to share way too many screenshots and my thoughts on the new layout. I am excited to hear what you guys think all of these changes mean, so let's do this, shall we? What are the big changes to our beloved Twitter.com?

1. Redirect users back to THEIR WEBSITE – Whoa!

I have to admit I got a little fiesty yesterday when I saw my stream fill up with tweets that said things like "that is it?!" and "its just a new interface, what's the big deal?!" Twitter has over 160 million users, but as we all know many of those users use second party Twitter clients rather than the web interface itself. Ev noted yesterday at the conference that Twitter mobile users are up 250% year over year, which was the motivation for them to release their own mobile apps earlier this year. While this mobile surge has meant huge growth for the community it hasn't done as much for their on-site value. The announcement yesterday was important because it was their first real attempt to redirect those millions of users to a more compelling on-site experience. Whatever the long term goal is for Twitter.com the website, yesterday's announcement was a huge step toward a more united community of users. This.is.a.big.deal.folks.

 

 (The new Twitter.com... ohhh pretty!)

2. A whole lot more space for .... uhmmmm advertisements?

So now that we have refocused our attention and time back to Twitter.com what will they do with it? Well sell us things obviously. As you can see below there sure is a lot more space for Twitter to fill. You will notice the "Sponsored Tweets" and the "Who to Follow" elements are more prominent. In addition to that you will see some open areas (that look a lot like traditional ad space units) laced throughout the platform. In general I think its pretty clear that they used this UI redesign to give themselves more options for the up and coming advertising platform we keep hearing about.

 

(Notice all that space they get to play with!)

3. Focus on other tweets, searches…you know uhmmm NOT your tweet

During the press conference Ev mentioned specifically that Twitter is a unique community of users in that not everyone actually tweets. He noted plenty of people use it just to listen or research...very "search enginey" if you ask me (yes I just made that word up). The new design certainly focuses less on my actual tweet and more on the experience I am having as a Twitter user. You will see the "search box" was moved to top right, and has much more functionality than previously. I can see tweets with my searched word(s), "tweets with links" & that word, "tweets near me" with that word, and see profiles or people that include that searched word. This is a far better experience all around if you ask me, again compelling users to stay on Twitter.com rather than leave and search elsewhere. Smart move people, smart move.

 

(New search experience...man I love Pumpkin Spice lattes from Starbucks)

4. Media, media, media oh my!

This is probably the change you are hearing most about. The new platform has the ability to view pictures and video in stream, by expanding from the left column (your tweet stream) to the right column (now used more as an expanded view). In addition to seeing whatever multi media you clicked on you will also see people mentioned in the tweet you expanded, a brief history of that user's tweets, and the latest tweet that tweet may have been in response too. Uhmmm sound confusing? Basically the expanded view of any tweet is now much more of a comprehensive story of that tweet. No longer on the web client will you be clicking from profile to profile to read a full conversation and get context. This new layout has put the story of a tweet together for you in one place. It's smooth, trust me...you will like it!

 

(The new platform when you expand an image... Hi Matt!)

 

(The new platform with expanded video...ohhh puppy!)

5. All sorts of other little things

You are not losing your backgrounds (phew!). Atleast right now we still have them. Also you might want to revisit your right column profile color--it's bigger now.Direct messages are up in your navigation (quite seperate from the other functionality actually) and are much more streamlined in my opinion. You now click in and see the number of DM exchanges, and can expand to see them all clearly. I was happy to see this. However you no longer see a "number" which was the only way us web client users knew if we had a new DM (unless we got an email notification) so be careful not to miss those new DMs!The new platform still does not support multiple users, sorry folks!Retweets. I still don't really like them, so don't hate me when I say that I am stoked they made the ability to shut off retweets from someone so much easier! It's in there next to the option to get a user's tweets on your cell. Both options are right there and a simple click to change. Easy smeasy for sure.The new platform makes replying to multiple people challenging. No longer can you hit reply and aggregate user handles in one tweet, each "reply" click pulls up an individual tweet box. Ugh, yuck. I hope they change this soon.

(When you hit reply a box pops-up...still a bit buggy right now)
"Trends" have some serious face time. I think we will find a lot more focus as marketers on getting our topics on the "trend" list (organically or not maybe eventually purchased) as I can imagine this will be much like scoring first page Digg time...similar atleast. You can see they are now top right, whoa in your face!They are calling this a "preview" on the interface, and when you get it you will have a notification box where you must manually click into it. You can also (atleast right now, I guess its going away in a few weeks) chose to "leave the preview" and return to your old interface. I don't think you will want to, but to each their own ;)

That about sums up the big changes I am seeing. As for what it all means? I think this is a renewed focus on Twitter.com - the site not Twitter -  the company. Both Evan and Biz alluded to lots of changes coming down the pipeline, and there is a clear energy of excitement in the stream. I don't know about you but I am certainly going to playing around more on the web interface both as a user and a marketer. I think we will have some interesting opportunities coming our way...uhmmm both as users and as marketers ;)

Looking for other insights?
Checked out @ev's stream from yesterday, he gave a play for play
Read the official blog post about it
Watch a video and learn more about it from Twitter

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Does It Pay to Cut Prices?

With everybody from Starbucks to Apple cutting prices during the recession, it's little wonder that small businesses are feeling pricing pressure, too.

But, if your business needs a pick-me-up, does it really make sense to cut prices or offer discounts at a time when your customers may not be in the mood to buy? Before you pull the trigger on your pricing gun, step back and ask yourself these questions:

• Do you know how much money you make on every sale?

Most businesses focus on two metrics--sales and bottom-line profits--to gauge their financial success. By contrast, gross margin--the ratio of gross profit to revenue--measures your company's efficiency in turning raw materials into sales. Think of it like this: For every $1 of sales that your company rings up, how much money do you have left over after buying the materials and other supplies necessary to make your product or provide your service? If the answer is 50 cents, your gross margin is 50 percent. If your prices aren't high enough to allow you to maintain at least a 20 percent gross margin on every sale, it's unlikely that your business is going to be able to clear much of a profit after you subtract rent, payroll, insurance and other fixed expenses.

• Do you have "people costs" you need to cover?

Just because you've got a gross margin of 50 percent doesn't necessarily mean that you're making a healthy profit. That's why your pricing needs to reflect your total cost of doing business (not just your cost of goods sold), which, in many cases, can be much higher. Don't forget to factor in the "people" costs--the admins, sales reps, production staff, contractors, etc. who do the work that makes your company tick. Before you cut your prices, remember that you need to pay these people, too!

• Do you need to pay to bring business in the door?

If you run a restaurant or retail store, customers walk in the door and you don't have to worry about paying for sales leads and referrals. But that isn't true of a manufacturing or service business in which small businesses without their own sales force rely on the Internet or on independent reps or agents to bring them customers and orders. Depending on the industry, these reps can charge commissions as high as 20 percent on every sale. Web traffic isn't cheap, either. That's why, if you need to rely on third parties to help sell your product or service, it's important to build in enough margin to maintain a distribution network and still make a profit.

The bottom line: If you've got a good relationship with your customers and sell a specialized product or service that the market wants and needs, you should try to find a way to hold the line on prices without losing business--and build a solid foundation for your company's future. If not, it may be time to go back to Starbucks for a $2 cup of Joe.

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What You Can Learn About Entrepreneurship From SpongeBob Squarepants

"Mom," my 9-year-old son said to me recently. "What's an entrepreneur?"

"It's someone like mommy, who has their own business," I replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Because SpongeBob is one," he told me.

Turns out there's an episode of SpongeBob Squarepants, "Chocolate With Nuts," that's all about starting a business. Here's the plot, and what real entrepreneurs can learn from it: In the episode, SpongeBob is struck with the idea that he'd like to get rich after receiving a high-end luxury magazine in the mail by mistake. He and his best friend, lovable-but-dim starfish Patrick, hit on the idea of selling chocolate bars door-to-door to make their fortune. They stock up on two types, with and without nuts.

They run into trouble right off. Their first customer seems scary. "CHOCOLATE!" he screams, and begins pursuing them down the street. (Failure to engage potential raving fan and prospective customer, to learn and then meet his needs.) 

Blowing this seeming weirdo off, the pair then fall victim to a series of marketing scams by a bag salesman and end up spending a small fortune for various unneeded bags to hold their chocolate bars. (Overspending on packaging and failing to stick to a budget.)

When SpongeBob finally finds a customer, she loses patience as he tries to unzip all the bags and find the chocolate bar. (Annoying package design leads to loss of customers.)

They try a variety of overaggressive and strange sales techniques that backfire, then finally sell one bar to an old woman on the idea that rubbing it on your skin imparts eternal youth. (Classic deceptive marketing . . . no doubt the lawsuit could be covered in a future cartoon.) This inspires additional outlandish lies, which sell another bar or two, but no bonanza.

Finally, the strange customer who was shouting "CHOCOLATE!" catches up to them. It turns out he would like to buy all their chocolate bars! Instant profit could have been theirs, if only they were listening to their customer in the first place. But better late than never--SpongeBob and Patrick are rich and four-wall a swanky restaurant for an expensive dinner.

Timeless business lessons there. Listen to customers. Don't blow the budget. Don't tell lies. Be authentic with your brand. It's a formula so simple a starfish can get the hang of it . . . yet somehow, so difficult for many entrepreneurs to execute.

Video courtesy of Nickelodeon.

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Outage: Is it Facebook or Me?

If you've tried logging onto Facebook today (Sept. 23, 2010), you may be wondering if there's something wrong with your internet connection or if Facebook is down. Fear not; it's not you! Sadly, it seems many people and their grandparents (yes, your customers' grandparents are likely trying to access Facebook also) are receiving a message similar to this one:

 

According to my source at the world's No. 1 social networking site, Facebook is currently experiencing "site issues" causing the platform to either be slow or unavailable for some members.

Today's outage--the second in as many days--calls into question the viability of depending on Facebook exclusively (or any other third-party communication platform for that matter) for your company's engagement campaigns. As I point out in 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Abandon Your Blog for Facebook, you should view your company blog--assuming you have one--as operation central for your organization's market positioning, communications and online community building initiatives, not Facebook.

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