Branding Rant

The Benefits of Tracking Wordpress Comments & RSS in Analytics

Robert Kingston — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:01:22 +0000

Ever since installing WordPress RSS & comment tracking for Analytics on my blog, I haven’t looked back since. It allows me to discover the posts, traffic sources and visitors who are most likely to result in a desired goal on my blog. By showing me what works, I can re-create those same posts. Checkout some of the stats I have recieved over the past month. If this doesn’t convince you to setup goal tracking - I’m not sure what will.

Now, after checking out those stats, don’t you think it would be useful to install goal tracking on your blog? For your convenience, I have written a comprehensive tutorial about how to setup tracking for comments and RSS for your blog.

Hope that helps.

Google Semantic Search: FAIL!

Robert Kingston — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:29:32 +0000

Update: This is no longer the case. Google now reports our capital as being Canberra - which is right.

It looks like Google is sticking semantic data into SERPs. You can ask it questions like “(What is the) capital of Britain?”, “(What is the) Language in China?”.

One question that Google doesn’t know: “(What is the) capital of Australia?”

According to Google, our capital is: “+1hr, begins last Sunday in October; ends last Sunday in March”.

Check it out by searching “capital of Australia” for yourself.

Describe Social Media Marketing: A Contest I Entered

Robert Kingston — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:49:31 +0000

I just entered Eben Pagan’s contest to describe social media marketing. There are some brilliant responses and I added my two cents which you can find here: http://ebenpagan.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/best-way-to-market-with-social-media/#comment-263

I’d love to win, as I have a lot of respect for what Eben does and I know he delivers value. If you want, give it a shot, too. Otherwise, if you’re curious about marketing using social media, you’ll definitely get something out of reading the responses. You can find the article here: http://ebenpagan.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/best-way-to-market-with-social-media/

Enjoy!

Facebook Crowdsourcing Translation: Predictable Results?

Robert Kingston — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 05:18:32 +0000

I’ve been a bit of a fan of crowdsourcing as a source of innovation and improvement. Facebook has taken it on board, in a democratic approach as well - Good on them for trying. It’ll definitely be a worthwhile experiment. Anyway, have a look at some of these results.

Note in particular:

The day after fuckin’ sunday

Mast Londay

The day before last Tuesday

Not that it worries me, but shouldn’t they be moderating these or filtering words like “fuck” out of translations?

I guess they’ll be able to work out a proper system in time.

How To Track WordPress Comments & RSS In Google Analytics

Robert Kingston — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 06:37:39 +0000

In order to track comments and RSS SubScriptions in Google Analytics you first need to have the new code installed on the site - the ga.js which looks like this:

I won’t go into detail with how to install Google Analytics on your blog but you can find information on to do that here.

If your page load times are pretty long, you might like to stick your Analytics code just below the tag at the top of the page.

Next, you need to sign into Google Analytics and click the ‘Edit‘ link next to the website you want to add tracking to while you’re in the dashboard.

Then you can click on any one of the ‘Edit‘ links beside the Goals named, G1, G2 etc.

Goal Tracking for Comments

Once you’re in, you need to:

1. Activate the goal by setting it to ‘On‘

2. Select ‘Head Match‘ from the Drop-down list

3. Set the Goal URL to ‘/goal/comment.html‘

4. Name the Goal ‘Comment Submission‘

5. Then click ‘Save Changes‘ at the bottom of the page

6. Navigate to your WordPress Theme editor in your WP dashboard and open your ‘comments.php‘ file

7. Find the following code (or something resembling that code):

8. Add the following piece of code inside that tag:

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/goal/comment.html’);”

It should look something like this, assuming you use a similar theme:

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/goal/comment.html’);” name=”submit” type=”submit” id=”submit” tabindex=”5″ value=”Submit Comment” />

9. Click ‘Update File‘ and you’re good to go!

Goal Tracking for RSS Subscriptions

This is basically the same process as above but for those of you who need to see, here it is over again:

1. Activate the goal by setting it to ‘On‘

2. Select ‘Head Match‘ from the Drop-down list

3. Set the Goal URL to ‘/goal/rss.html‘

4. Name the Goal ‘RSS Subscription‘

5. Then click ‘Save Changes‘ at the bottom of the page

6. Edit Your ‘sidebar.php‘ (or where ever else you might display your RSS feed)

7. Find your RSS Link. e.g:

8. Paste the following code inside the RSS link code.

onclick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/goal/rss.html’);”

It should resemble this:

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/goal/rss.html’);” href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/EnergyRant” title=”Subscribe to my feed” rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”>

9. Click ‘Update File‘ to save it live.

There. You should now have goal tracking enabled and setup.

WordPress Themes that Support Analytics Goal Tracking

These themes come with all the coding done for you.

Coffee Bear’s Vector 2 theme

If you know of others, please post a link in the comments and I will add it.

Having Trouble?

Try these steps:

Be sure to use the right quotation marks in the code on the site - copying it directly from my site might use different quote marks that aren’t recognised in code.
Make sure your Tracking code is placed higher than where you are recording the action in the site’s HTML code - only necessary if your page takes ages to load.
Website stats in analytics can take up to 48 hours to show stats, if it doesn’t work then give it some time.
If you’ve been waiting for stats and you’re certain the code works, search your content pages in Analytics - the regular expression or term that you enter that returns the right result, will be the string you need to enter in the goal settings.
Read Google Analytics’ Help.

Let me know if you encounter any provlems in the comments and I’ll help you out where I can.

Don’t Click This!

Robert Kingston — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:44:49 +0000

Have you ever wanted someone to focus less attention on something, but they end up looking at it anyway?

A few years ago, we were looking to buy a house. The agent was trying to sell a property to us and he told us, that there were other houses for sale in the area but they were all too expensive. One in particular that he told us would be bad to buy, was the house that I’m currently living in now. Hmmm…

This is a recurring theme across all industries. Yep, even yours!

Politicians

I read somewhere that the politicians that focus on downplaying the other politicians are likely to help their opposition into power.

Software

Have you ever looked at software and seen a comparison table, then gone out and looked at all the competitng products instead?

If you start trying to hide something - people will catch on that you’re up to something. Then, you will only make what you’re trying to hide more important by spending energy avoiding it. To avoid doing this you need to become…

The Seethrough Salesman

Transparency is an ideology that had become more popular as the new marketing concpet gained traction.

WIlliam Arruda describes that it ”…consists of representing the product as accurately as possible so that a prospect may see if it fits their needs and may perceive for themselves the relative value of the offering to reach their own decision.”

What Are You Trying to Hide?

Figure that out and you can aim to become more transparent. If you’re naturally shady, you may even like to read Brad Blanton’s book, Radical Honesty. While you may not want to be BRUTALLY honest, people will understand your transparency much better.

Google Chrome: Marketshare So Far?

Robert Kingston — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 01:07:14 +0000

Imagine if you had a link to your website from Google’s homepage

How much traffic would you get? Keep in mind that roughly one third of the users on the internet visit Google.com each day.

Yeah, that would be bucket loads! That’s basically What Google Chrome has done. To see how effective it has been, I thought I’d take a look at the market share for Chrome.

Marketshare for Google Chrome

Sure it’s premature and the sites I have in my Analytics account are probably not representative of the population, but I figured it would be interesting to have a look nonetheless. I chose to look at the stats fora number of sites:

3GN Media, an online music community for young Americans.
A national Australian education institution
A brand name clothing store
A childrens goods store

Market share between IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome (click to Enlarge)

While it was skewed slightly by the sheer volume of traffic on 3GN Media, it shows that Google has gained 1.6% of visits. Mind you, this is VERY Rough. It doesn’t take into consideration other browsers like Camino, PSP, Konqueror and the 300 other browsers out there. The sites aren’t representative of the population, they’re English speaking and who knows what else…

It’s still impressive that Google has gained a recognisable share of the market within just a few days. with a bit more promotion (leaving a link on their homepage), I think this could increase to 15-20 percent by the years end.

Are you using Google Chrome?

Tell us your experiences in the comments below (I can see a few of you are). I know I like it so far.

Keeping Up Appearances?

Robert Kingston — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:34:20 +0000

I know a few visitors to this site often drop by to see what I’m up to - thanks, I appreciate that! Sadly, according to my post history, I’ve basically done nothing for nearly 2 months! Not quite. Thanks to some new posts from Andrew Poesaste (who also hasn’t posted for a while), that’s about to change.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Went to Europe
Graduated from my Bachelor of Business degree
Started my Master of Business degree
Created an AdSense site on Green Energy
Revisited the SEO realm for best practices

Being back in Brisbane, working part time and doing uni full time has been interesting but I haven’t had a lot of time for my side projects. To come, I have an article which will show you one thing you need to know before you work with external agencies and freelancers.

PS. For those of you not in the know, get onto Google Chrome - Google’s new web Browser. It’s great.

My Google Lively Pad & Some Marketing / Branding Thoughts

Robert Kingston — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:28:00 +0000

Google Lively launched today. I spent a bit of time getting into it and browsing around. Checkout the pad I’m making in it at the moment. You might find me in there:

I think there are many applications for marketing and branding in this application and I think Google has stumbled onto something very cool indeed. So far here’s what I’ve found:

Play Youtube Videos in Rooms
Link to Websites from Objects
Engage Your Online Community
Support Your Brand with an Immersive Experience
Future: Promote your brand through Ads / Rooms

As time goes on, there will be many many more marketing and branding incentives. For now though, take advantage of the first mover opportunity and get this onto your forums / blogging communities!

Google-Jacking: Pete Laurent Name-Jacking Peter Newsome

Robert Kingston — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:10:29 +0000

Recently over on Peter Laurent’s Best Looking Man Blog, I read a post about him hijacking Peter Newsome’s name on Google.

I bet you could have a bit of fun with that. In fact, back in the day, I remember when I used to outrank Pete Laurent for his name on Google. I was litterally Google’s Authority site about “Peter Laurent”, with my post “An Interview with Peter Laurent“.

For those of you Who don’t know Mr Laurent, he’s a Brisbane search engine marketer and online entrepreneur that enjoys making money and ranking well in Google. He’s currently well ranked for Best Looking Man in Brisbane and there is a serious debate around this topic. He’s frequently seen in the Valley, around Spring Hill and in various other parts of the Queensland University of Technology campus - whether that’s for the purpose of his learning or for making special types of “sandwiches”, I’m not sure.

Peter Laurent vs. Peter Newsome

With his double indented listing on Peter Newsome’s name, Pete Laurent is becoming quite a force against Mr Newsome. It will be interesting to see in due time what happens to this interesting debacle.

For more information about the attempted hijacking of Mr Newsome’s Name, read the full story here.