Week 2 Analytics and KPIs

One area of internet marketing that I find the most interesting is analytics. Coming from a scientific background, I like to measure and look at statistics. I like to fit data to models. Learning about how website hits are counted and miscounted by under- and over-representing the data is interesting.

I started looking at websites three months ago with Alexa, an Amazon owned company, and graduated to using Quantcast, which I find much more specific. We discussed these in class this week. Tt was interesting to hear that Alexa is less accurate. I have a friend who works for SPSS, a statistics company involved in this area. SPSS was recently bought out by IBM. He works in the area of telephony. I am interested in asking my friend if he can predict an outbreak of flu.

KPIs, key performance indicators, tell you how many people you convert to customers. If I invited 100 people to view my site and 30 people visited but only 5 people joined that tells you the conversion rate.

It was interesting to hear that webmasters tend to be males of a certain age.

One new word I learned was meme. A meme is a viral idea like a story that becomes part of the culture and has an almost cult-like following. Apparently the kid who smashed the iPad is trying to reach meme status.

One of the new places I've started exploring on the internet is Quibblo. By the looks of it this could be one of the new places that young people hang out to escape the grandmas on Facebook (for me everyone new that wants to be my friend is an older relative). I created a quiz and one of the last questions was,"Do you want to attend a Taylor Swift concert?"

Some interesting articles on teenagers and social media can be found. I want to follow what teens do because I know that they'll find something interesting and hopefully it is more cool than smashing an iPad:

1. Teens and Social Media
   
2. Social Media & Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults

What I learned this week is the growth rate of Twitter. I had attempted to use Twitter a while ago but did not understand it. After hearing Amber Mac's talk I understood that using Twitter takes time. I've started using Twitter again. This time with a different approach. I still wonder how they make money.

1. I don't have to read all the tweets. It is not email.
2. I will follow "famous" people and websites and blogs first.

So far I've found that as I follow people the number of people who follow me grows. What is cool is that I get to see people like Rick Bayless show the dishes he plans to serve at Frontera Grill before it happens. And maybe it isn't him that does the posting (it seems like it is) but it makes you feel more connected on a direct level and feel the "pulse" of what is happening out there. To get started I recommend Tweet Top.