Google Analytics

The book I read to research this post was Google Analytics For Beginners by SSRG Solutions which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. There is a fair amount of books on this topic but not as many as on some computing topics like Facebook Marketing which helps make it relevant. It is only around 40 pages so is quite short. Google Analytics if you don’t know is a free program that gives you statistics on things like number of visitors and page views for your website or blog. They give you a bit of code to paste into your website which has to have cookies and HTML enabled. The bit of code literally is a cookie which excludes it from many high end where there is a need for more security and this option is frequently disabled. Google Analytics which came about when Google purchased Urchin which was a paid program although more than capable. It gives you information like which posts are more popular, unique visitors to your site, what keywords were used etc. There are more high end analytical programs available but they tend to be very expensive. Many blogs use Google Analytics by default and if you self host a WordPress site you can use it with that. It can also be used with social media and also integrates with Google services like Adwords. It is particularly good for people who sell goods online and want to see the effects of different campaigns like blog posts on a product. In this regard Adwords is particularly effective because you can see which search terms are most effective and also how much you can afford to spend in purchasing these. Google operates a bidding process for these often with a cap limit on total sales you are willing to purchase. I think it is a must have if you are a small to medium sized business. I did enjoy this book and would recommend it mainly for people who don’t know much about it. It’s simple to understand but powerusers might want a more complex and lengthy book.

Marketing On Linkedin

The book I read to research this post was Mining The Gold From Linkedin by Kimberly Dubbeld-Deas which is a very good book which I bought on Kindle. This is only a short book that presents in step by step form how you should be promoting your small business on Linkedin. This author has written similar books in the same series on Facebook & Twitter as well. Linkedin is the best B2B marketing opportunity on the planet and a must for a business to promote itself. Linkedin do let you advertise on their site with adverts starting at $10 each and there are 2 programs, one for businesses with a marketing budget of less than $25,000 and the other is more than that amount. When you join Linkedin there is a free basic option which is probably no good if you are promoting anything and business and pro accounts which you pay for but let you network easier with other people. Don’t forget on Linkedin if you contact anyone especially to do business you normally get another party to introduce and recommend you. There are groups on Linkedin and some are specifically for small business like Business Matters Magazine which is one of the bigger ones. There are also networker groups in general like Leading International Open Networkers or LIONS. You can write articles and answer questions to show off your expertise and become an expert in your field and win business. There are also 3rd party sites like http://lions500.com which are for linkedin networkers and charge a subscription. It is a good idea to start your own group when you get quite a lot of contacts. An interesting thing is often business pages with in Linkedin are ranked higher in Google than a companies website. This is an interesting book that I enjoyed reading and I think it is useful to anyone with a small business.

 

Mobile Marketing

The book I read to research this post was Mobile Marketing For Dummies by Michael Becker et al which is a very good book which I read at

http://safaribooksonline.com

This book is a few years old so some of the technology in it might have been superceded like at the time of publication Windows Phone 7 hadn’t been released yet. Apparently in developing countries almost everyone who can afford it has a mobile phone because the infrastructure of a standard phone network just isn’t there. This book is about marketing your company for people with mobile phones and a lot of it’s geared towards the smartphone market. A lot of companies get a mobile marketing agency like http://www.constantcontact.com. An interesting technology is IVR or Interactive Voice Response where a customer phones you and is presented with a menu where they press a button or speak into the phone to activate an option an example is http://www.angel.com of a provider. Some banks like Western Union are allowing people to buy stuff direct from their mobile phone an interesting example is Amazon where you simply enter your password and your credit card details are entered automatically once set up initially. If you get a mobile website I have one at http://oldescratbag.com a good provider which I use is weebly or try

http://starcut.com .Some companies use a bluecast provider at shows or exhibitions etc where a message or photo etc is sent to people walking by your stand by bluetooth and they have the option of accepting it or not. An example is

http://www.aura.net . Also a website I recommend which is all the latest mobile technology news is http://engadgetmobile.com . I enjoyed this book and it has a lot of information about mobile marketing crammed into it.