Tracking Blog (or Website) Leads with Google Analytics in 1-2-3

People generally tend to blog because a) they're passionate about something, b) it's their job to blog about something, or c) both. In either case, it's important to understand whether your blog posts are hitting the mark with your community. Tracking your blog with website analytics software such as Google Analytics is a great way to gauge your blog's performance. Today, we'll walk through the steps necessary to track blog and website lead requests through your website's contact form. Before we get into the step-by-step, a few things:

• I track my blog leads/emails with Google Analytics but it doesn't mean you have to. There are many other great web analytics choices - for example, I am starting to web-analytics-cheat on Google Analytics with super cool and super cheap Clicky Web Analyticsb which also supports goal funnels and starts at around $5/month.
• Although Big Picture Web is Powered by Squarespace - our blog/website publishing platform of choice - you should be able to use this guide to track your blog/website leads if you're on a different platform, too.
• To best demonstrate the process, I'm going to invite you to take a peak under the hood of Big Picture Web today. And while in doing so you'll see that my humble blog and content strategy hasn't quite peaked yet, I felt full disclosure was necessary to best illustrate the potential value in tracking what happens on your blog.

Step 1#: Defining Your Blog/Website Lead "Goal Funnel"

The first step in tracking blog leads/contacts is to define the Google Analytics "goal funnel." A goal funnel is the unique progression of URL addresses a visitor views as they perform a desired action on the website, such as going to the Contact Us form, filling it out, then hitting the "Submit" button. Go through the process on your own site and take note of the exact URLs you see along the way.

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Step #2: Creating Your Goal Funnel in Google Analytics

Once you have your URLs, you can add a new goal funnel by editing your Google Analytics Profile Settings, then adding a new Goal:

Name and activate your goal. Be sure to select a "URL Destination" goal type. 

Paste the URL that corresponds to your contact/lead form's confirmation page as the "Goal URL" and be sure to select a match type of "Exact."

Advanced Tip: If you have an average lead value, you can enter it as the goal value to help you better understand the ROI of all your web efforts. I don't have a sense of what that is for Big Picture Web yet, so I just put in $5 to get a relative gauge of what's working on the blog/site. (Sidenote: An important part of web analytics is having a relatively decent idea for the size of the grain of salt required to be taken with a particular data source, based on it's level of imprecision.)

Enter any additional URLs that occur throughout the goal funnel, such as the Contact Us page itself.

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Step #3: Viewing Your Goal Reports in Google Analytics

Once you've done all the necessary work to track your blog in Google Analytics, it's time to look at the reports. A great place to start is the funnel visualization report, which will tell you where potential leads are coming from and where they're bailing throughout the process. Google Analytics experts can even customize their reports to show which fields on the Contact Us form itself are causing people to abandon the process.

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Moving past the goal funnel itself, you can then use the rest of Google Analytics tricks to analyze your website leads even further. See which blog posts are driving contacts. Which traffic sources are good for new business? Where should you focus your limited blogging time and resources to maximize your contribution to your community?

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So there you have it. How do you use tracking tools like Google Analytics or Clicky Analytics to measure the leads your blog or website generates? What insights have they provided? Have you shifted the direction of your blog based on leads you've received on certain posts? Do you comment more frequently on certain websites because they drive the most people to contact you? Leave a comment below to share your insights with the Big Picture Web community.

The Importance and Benefits of a Blog, Illustrated by Google Analytics

(Google Trends search on the term "blog" - Click to enlarge)More and more evidence is showing the importance of investing in tools like blogs and social media as a vital part of your online marketing strategy.  Benefits of a blog include building an ever-growing source of lower-than-average cost leads and standing out as an expert in your industry.  This week's post centers on some recent industry blog stats supported by some Google Analytics and Google Trends parlor tricks to highlight the growing importance having a blog.

Blogging has been around for quite a few years now but it's just now starting to really take off for companies, according to some recent articles by eMarketer.  Companies increased blog participation from 16% to 22% between 2008 and 2009. And bolstered by a lower-than-average cost-per-lead, companies are "spiraling" their spending towards blogs and social media as they realize the growing importance of the blog.

Benefits of a blog include promoting yourself in a friendly way by educating and entertaining the people researching your topic of expertise.  The goal of each post is to help solve a problem or answer a question, not to shill your product or service. Don't be afraid to point out the occasional chuckle, epiphany or brain-teaser in your industry. Ultimately, bringing your niche together on your website to have a conversation about something interesting also means potentially creating a lot of traffic on your blog.

Successful blog posts pull in tons of traffic from search engines, and other blogs/websites.  They can also provide huge spikes in traffic when they "go viral," which occurs when many people quickly spread a link to an Internet destination through social networks like Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.  That traffic can then be routed through your company's online goal funnels to seriously move the revenue needle.  Just look at how easy Twin Cities Online Marketing firm Top Rank makes it look in their recent case study on a client's online revenue cycle.

Sometimes it just takes the right tweet to generate a large spike in traffic to your site.

Not every topic is going to be worthy of a conversation, though. That's why it's important to use a web analytics platform like Google Analytics to see which posts are creating the most results.  Over time, you'll see how consistently creating new blogs posts pulls in more and more traffic to your site. Think of it as planting seeds throughout the internet, growing into nice little streams of traffic, new leads and business. The brief little video that follows, courtesy of the Motion Charts feature of Google Analytic's Top Content reports, illustrates this effect by looking at some of Big Picture Web's recent traffic.

Big Picture Web's Blog Post Pageviews Per Day, 12/5/09 - 3/7/10 (via Google Analytics Motion Charts):

As you watch the video, you'll see the number of pageviews each article received over time. As I added more posts to Big Picture Web, I slowly built my overall website traffic. Posts like my short review of Squarespace (the yellow bar on the chart) delivered a steady trickle of pageviews by consistently ranking in search engines for searches like "squarespace review." On the other hand, you can also see when Twitter delivered a spike of traffic to my blog when Avinash Kaushik (a Web Metrics Ninja) tweeted a link to my post on using Google Analytics to track comments on your blog (the orange bar on the chart).

In the end, blogs help build the most important aspect of any relationship, trust.  It may be days or months after someone reads your how-to article until they decide they want to call in the pro's.  But when it finally comes time for them to make a purchase, they're remember that you were the expert that helped them. You demonstrated your skills through all your helpful blog posts and have overcome a major hurdle to new business just by consistently sharing your thoughts. And therein lies the importance and benefits of a blog.

What tips could you share about your industry through a blog to help to your community? And how are you using your web analytics platform to gauge your success? Leave a comment below to continue the conversation.

A Blog Measurement Guide: Learn to Track Blog Comments

If you're a blogger, you know the feeling of joy when someone comes along and leaves a comment on one of your posts. You helped someone or started a conversation that was compelling enough to warrant a response. Your post mattered to someone. But beyond the happiness comments provide bloggers, is there a larger message your comments are trying to tell you? That's where blog measurement comes in.  Using web analytics tools, today we'll learn how to track blog comments on your blog or website.

We use Google Analytics here on Big Picture Web (along with Quantcast, 4Q and Get Satisfaction) to measure things that happen on our blog. You may be using a different tool.  That's fine.  Just be sure you're using something to measure and track your site. You can track pretty much everything that matters on your site... for free. Ok, I'm done with my measurement rant. Moving on.

In order to track blog comments, you must first set them up as a goal in Google Analytics. Once you've logged in, access your Analytics Settings, then your Profile Settings.  You'll then see a section on goals. You can set up to 20 goals for each Google Analytics profile. Some goals can be specific events such as submitting a contact form. These goals are reached when a visitor arrives at a very specific URL on your site. Some goals can measure broader engagement metrics, such as the number of page views each visit yields. We're going to set up a goal that will allow us to track blog comments.

This next part promises to get just a bit technical but it's worth it to continue on. There are three basic steps to setting up a new goal in Google Analytics to track your blog comments:

1. Goal Information
2. Goal Details
3. Goal Funnel

Goal Information

The first step in setting up a new goal is to define it. Provide a name and select the type of goal you're going to measure. Provide a name, control whether your goal is active and select the positioning of your goal in Google Analytics' reports. To track blog comments, select a URL Destination goal type.

Goal Details

Now it's time to define the point at which a visitor has reached a goal and identify the corresponding URL. For example, when someone posts a comment on your blog, they'll land on a distinct web page immediately after hitting the "Submit" button. That's the URL you're after. Select a Match Type (a whole other topic, but see here and here for help) and Goal URL. Then enter a Goal Value. Enter a specific dollar amount if one exists for your goal. Otherwise, you may be able to estimate an approximate value.

Goal Funnel

The last step is to define the goal funnel. A goal funnel represents the multiple paths people can take to complete your goal. For example, your visitors can most likely "Add a Comment" to a blog post from either the post itself or the home page if that post is featured there. Goal funnels are optional to set up but can provide some really neat blog measurement insights so it's usually best to define your funnel.

The really gratifying part comes when you look at your goal funnels in Google Analytics reports. From your dashboard, you can select Goals, then Funnel Visualization to see your goal funnel. For example, you can see that 45 folks reached my blog post for the time frame I selected. Two of them went on to fill out the comment form. Both of them ended up submitting the comments they created. I know that 4.4% of my blog readers end up leaving comments.

That wasn't so hard, right? Just a few minutes' worth of work and you just learned the basics of blog measurement and how to track blog comments. But now it's your turn. What are you trying to measure? Feel free to connect with me on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. I'd be happy to help you with any specific questions you have about measuring your blog or website. Or you can simply leave a comment below and make my day.

Selecting Blogging Topics: Fresh Advice on What to Blog About

So you've decided to start a blog but aren't sure what to blog about.  By now you've heard that blogging is a great way to stand out in your market and delivers a platform to reach, help and connect with your community. And, as Twin Cities online marketing expert Lee Odden points out, blogging is an excellent way to build Search Engine Optimization (SEO) traffic.  It's important for new (and seasoned) bloggers to consider a few things when selecting blogging topics.

• Focus on helping people and building a community.  Not every visit will result in a sale.  Blogging allows you to demonstrate your expertise to people over time so that you're on their minds when it's time to make a purchase.  Give today to invest in in relationships for the future.
• Blog about things that will be entertaining and engaging to your visitors but are specific to your market. Don't be afraid to tell a story or make them chuckle.
• What problems could you solve through your blog posts? Where applicable, tell people how to do what you do. You'll help folks out and maybe even get some new customers who don't have the skill or time to do it themselves.
• Resist the urge to deviate from the theme of your site. Many bloggers start sharing cooking tips and vacation stories as soon as they get an audience. Stay the course when selecting blogging topics. Be consistent.

Kaushik's new book. See our book referral policy.Once you've figured out what to blog about, it's important to consider how you're saying it. One of my biggest heroes on the Internet is Avinash Kaushik (blogger, writer and Google's "Analytics Evangelist").  Folks like Kaushik can look at data from web analytics tools like Google Analytics and pull out brilliant insights on how to improve your website to better meet your business goals.

Anyway, Avinash recently posted about web metrics and a neat service called Wordle, which allows you to create a word cloud using the words appearing most prominently on your site.  Think of it as a way to see what overall themes and messages you're sending out through your blog. For example, you can see that Big Picture Web is big on Internet marketing, planning and setting business goals, etc.

After you've been selecting and blogging about topics for a while, use their free tools to put your articles into their word clouds.  What themes stand out?  It's important to take a look at these things to see if your blog is on course to serve your business or if you need to reconsider what to blog about.

And for that matter, this principle applies to your social media interactions as well.  Does your overall presence end up serving your community and your market?  What themes are you sending out through your tweets and updates?

What else should bloggers consider when determining what to blog about? How do you select your blogging topics?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

4 Internet Marketing Books Reviewed in 1 Blog Post

There are many ways to gain new knowledge in the world of Internet marketing.  Blog posts, podcasts and websites all contain how-to's and strategic guides to improving your online presence.  And while the bite-sized nature of today's popular mediums can often appeal to our on-the-go lifestyles, some ideas and concepts require a good solid book's worth of information.  Today on Big Picture Web, I'll share four of my recent favorite Internet marketing books with you.  Each book covers a slightly different area of your overall Internet marketing strategy.  Going out and reading all four would be a sure-fire way to get a crash course education in Internet marketing.

1. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media)

(Thank you! Please read our book referral disclaimer)Inbound Marketing is a wonderful tactical guide for today's Internet marketing techniques.  Authors Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah provide a blueprint for starting up a successful web presence.  They believe that in order to succeed on the web, you must turn your web site from a megaphone to a hub. What does that mean?  Read Inbound Marketing and find out.

2. Don't Make Me Think

(Thank you! Please read our book referral disclaimer)If you could only read one book about creating web sites, this would be the one.  Steve Krug authors this excellent introduction to usability, the art and science of making the functionality of your web site crystal clear to your web site visitors.  You'd be surprised how many people can't buy your products or find out about your services simply because your site is too confusing (Find out for free with 4Q).  Don't Make Me Think will help you make your web site self-evident and avoid turning potential customers away.

3. Web Analytics 2.0

(Thank you! Please read our book referral disclaimer)The cornerstone of business success is return on investment.  Web Analytics 2.0 is a strategic and tactical web analytics guide that helps you measure your online goals and outcomes.  Author Avinash Kaushik describes free and cheap tools that provide major insights.  Where are your customers coming from?  What are they looking for?  What web pages are being viewed the most?  Is anyone buying anything?  The best part about the web marketing channel is its ability to be measured.  Web Analytics 2.0 is your guide to measuring what matters to your business.

4. Letting Go of the Words

(Thank you! Please read our book referral disclaimer)Once you've mastered the tactics, design and measurement, it's time to put the words on the web page.  Letting Go of the Words is your guide to writing content for the web.  Different than print media, web site content is made up of small chunks of skimmable, scannable content.  And nevermind the long-winded marketing message.  Just the basics, please, in a bulleted list if possible.  Letting Go of the Words is a tactical guide for creating the words and layout of your web site.

And there you have it.  Four Internet marketing books, and if read in order, will give you a pretty good idea of how to start a solid web presence.

Do you have any thoughts or questions about this post?  We'd love to hear them.  Leave a comment below to continue the conversation.

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