Google Analytics, is a great, free tool to help you better understand where you traffic is coming from, what keywords are generating traffic and even how your landing pages are converting. (I'll be doing a podcast on this soon!)

Google recently revamped the tool and now it's even better.

Here are some of the improvements:
* Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
* Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
* Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
* Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

Some great resources:
Google Analytics Blog - Official Google blog from the Analytics team
Conversion University - Articles on traffic and conversion
Free 7 day Google Analytics mini-course

And, on a related note - Google purchased Feedburner (the leading blog and podcast RSS metrics provider) and will certainly be looking to create a one source for web metrics tool that includes RSS feeds. Should be interesting. What a success story for the folks at Feedburner too.

So, how are you tracking your leads and conversions? Are you?

4:00:04 PM    

In the last few weeks I've conducted interviews with the mainstream publications below. The discussion about what to do online or, for that matter, whether to do it at all, is still pretty wide open I think.

Forbes - 6 Marketing tactics worth paying for
Fortune Small Business - 4 Ways to market your business online
Wall Street Journal - Taking Business Online Isn't a 'Must' Move

So, what business doesn't need to be online?

12:00:03 AM    

Man, do I get tired of the question posed in the title of this post.

Creating content has always been a good idea, if you've got a business, at least one that wants and needs customers, then you need to create lots of relevant content - a blog just happens to make the process a whole lot easier. So, stop thinking about it so much and start writing.

Write what? - everything that happens to you is content if you let it be.

Everything you think, say, read, see, smell, taste, hear, encounter - it's all there waiting for you to turn into something useful for your business. All you have to do is apply it. Life practically vomits content fully at your feet if you just pay attention. Yeah but, yeah but, yeah but, - stop whining and start paying attention with this new radar and watch what happens to your brain.

It's not enough to sit down in front of a computer and think - what should I write today, that's why you're stuck, it's just too hard to create from scratch like that. You've got to start actively taking mental notes all day long. (I carry a pocket moleskin notebook, like the one pictured here, everywhere I go)

Do this and all of sudden you will find that you can:

• Turn something you overhear on the bus into a lesson your readers can relate to.
• Fully explore the answers to questions your prospects pose over and over again
• Tell the story you read on another blog and make it fit a solution you provide
• Tell your readers all about the conference you attended
• Paraphrase the lyrics of song you heard on the drive home to drive home a point
• Share the moments of truth you discovered reading a new book
• Introduce visitors to a symphony that's just right for the office

When you begin to look at content creation in this way you will start to filter much of what happens all around you in ways that matter to your clients and prospects - team that with getting your filtered thoughts down on a blog routinely and you'll be amazed at how many ways you grow personally and professionally.

12:00:03 AM