Twittaholics Unanonymous
February 18, 2010 by Jim Hedger
Filed under WMR Blog
Yesterday I posted a Twitter message about how my recurring addiction to campaign analytics was causing me a measure of personal distress. Addiction is not the sort of thing one wants to talk about in public. In most circumstances, addictions are highly debilitating. It’s pretty easy to spot the addiction when you find yourself referring to referral stats three to six times per minute. For what it’s worth, I haven’t checked stats at all since I began this paragraph. ’scuse me for a sec…
OK. Thanks for your patience. In case you were wondering, I just had to check a few numbers and found I am pretty happy with them. A new wave of Tweets was issued a few minutes ago and several outstanding members of our small legion of followers have taken the time to reTweet them. That happy circumstance confirmed, I can feel my heart rate receding back to its normal rate of 60 someodd beats per minute. I am resisting the urge to look at the landing page stats until our team-meeting later today. Having people around me when I look should serve to dampen my pie-eyed child-at-Christmas reaction to numbers. I am a mature professional web marketer and I can exercise self-control when I need… I need. hmmmm. OK, ’scuse me. BRB.
What most surprised me yesterday about what could only be interpreter by my followers as a Tweet for Help was how many respondents actually sympathized with me. I figured they would despise me for morphing into the low-down stats addict I seem to have become. It seems they too are statistically addicted to campaign stats and they gleefully reached out to my message about campaign stat addiction (at least, according to my stats). Informed minds love company it seems.
In rare cases, such as with the late journalist Hunter S. Thompson, embracing our addictions can be a path to success. For web marketers, knowing who is doing what, when and where, and then being able to ascribe correct values to the next questions, why and how is critical. For instance, I am pleased to know that nearly 70% of those who have responded to our Tweets live in the United States. Another 8% live in Canada. Those are the folks most likely to buy the service we’re selling.
Furthermore, I have happily created spreadsheet after spreadsheet detailing data about what times draw the greatest response and which messages prompt the most action. My brain is practically salivating at the thought of gathering enough data to start creating line graphs. mmmmmm….. line graphs make the world a better place.
Unfortunately, I can’t expect to have enough data to make a remotely useful or even interesting line graph a few more days. There’s something to look forward to thought the prospect of a weekend suffering delayed satisfaction syndrome is daunting. It’s ok. In the words of the great Hunter S. Thompson, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” I’m already a pro. I can deal with any weirdness thrown at me by my lack of useful line graphs. I’ll have enough data soon enough. Until then, I can satisfy my urges with little peaks at the raw numbers. Just a short glance, mind you. I do have real work to do.
Increasingly, our society is rightly starting to view addiction as a disease rather than a personal weakness. To tell the truth, I don’t really feel much dis-ease when I comb through campaign stats. I feel rather good actually. It’s the obsession I have an issue with. Perhaps that sort of obsessiveness is useful to my employers. They seem to think it is at any rate. But it is a relatively beautiful day here and I am spending way too much of what could otherwise be free time examining stats. At least they’re good ones.
SEGuru’s Great Big Organic (SEO) Tool
August 18, 2009 by Jim Hedger
Filed under WMR Blog
Memo: SEGuru’s Great Big Organic Tool
To: The busy webmaster and search engine optimization specialist on the go
From: SEGuru and WebmasterRadio.FM
Re:
WebmasterRadio.FM’s SEGuru, host of SEO Rockstars decided to open his tool chest and publish a page organizing his favorite SEO tools, reporters and checkers.My
Great BigOrganicTool.com puts several dozen free tools used by crackerjack SEOs on one page. It’s the tool box we use when analyzing our own SEO efforts at WebmasterRadio.FM and we’d like to open it up and share it with you.With love and respect:
SEGuru and WebmasterRadio.FM
WebmasterRadio.FM Sees 75% Increase in Listeners
June 24, 2009 by Jim Hedger
Filed under WMR Blog
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It has been a month since I last took a long look at WebmasterRadio.FM’s listener stats. Since we changed our website and improved our distribution feeds in late January, the network has been far better able to track listeners across the number of channels our shows are accessible through. While we knew our stats were good, growth over the past four weeks has been incredible! Earlier today, WebmasterRadio.FM measured an overall 75% increase since listener stats were last taken in mid-May.
WebmasterRadio.FM’s audience access our shows in three primary ways. The first is as a podcast file through an outside service such as iTunes or Odeo. The second is on-demand listening or downloading from individual show archives on the WebmasterRadio.FM website. The third is by tuning in live when shows are scheduled to run.
Of the three, the iTunes/Odeo group is by far the largest, accounting for just over half our audience at 53% of total listeners. On-demand downloads or listens comes in second at 32% of total listeners. Only 15% of our audience listens live when a particular show is scheduled. Given the actual listener numbers, that 15% is a rather intimidating group to think about when hearing the studio count down to one’s mic going live.
Certain shows had amazing increases but the largest were seen by specialty programming such as conferences, specials, and town-halls. The Public Relations Society of America conference channel, for instance, saw a 485% jump in listener numbers. Search Marketing Expo coverage jumped 445%! WebmasterRadio.FM coverage of adTech conferences saw a 286% increase over last month!
Among specific WebmasterRadio.FM shows, the biggest increase in listeners was achieved by FiredUp! with Gordon Rudow which saw a 178% increase in listeners. Mobile Presence saw a 154% increase. CoverStory saw a 140% jump, Webcology saw a 131% jump, LifeTips saw a 123% jump and Landing Page Optimization with Tim Ash saw a 118% increase in listeners.
We see a number of reasons for the increase in our listener numbers over the past four weeks. WebmasterRadio.FM just hosted the amazingly successful Affiliate Convention in Denver. We certainly gained a number of listeners from that effort. We have also been using social media applications such as Twitter and Facebook far more effectively.
A third reason is a natural growth in the industry. As the only online radio network representing the digital marketing and B2B community, WebmasterRadio.FM is naturally attracting a larger audience as a larger community learns about the network. Last but certainly not least among reasons for growth is the quality of our programming. We’ve gone out of our way to work to bring shows our audience tells us it wants to hear while retaining as diverse a line-up as possible. New shows like LPO, Mobile Presence, and Office Hours appeal to specific listening audiences, as does Affiliate Marketing Insider, Domain Masters and the German language Webmasters on the Roof.
Now that Affiliate Convention is put to the back burner for the next few weeks (we’re planning Affiliate Convention ll for early December!), we have some time to develop a few new programs, work on our website and find new distribution sources for our one-of-a-kind programming. Wait ’till ya see what we have coming up for September!
Using Search and Social Media to Save the World
March 20, 2009 by Jim Hedger
Filed under WMR Blog
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Can search save the world? That’s a question ecological researchers are asking themselves as they look at the global use of keywords in search queries and social media posts. A study from the UK and Sweden published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment suggests using web crawlers to find and spider this information could speed currently ponderous environmental monitoring procedures.
While human activity is altering the Earth’s ecosystems at an unsustainable increasing pace, human observation is tracking, recording and documenting environmental destruction in every part of the planet. As this information is thought about and recorded, it is applied to web documents, used in search queries and placed in blog and social media posts.
Once on the web in one way or another, information can be crawled or spidered and thus “discovered†and compiled into an overview of the planet’s health from the perspective of its human inhabitants.
The idea is similar to the concept of Google Flu Trends which uses search queries from across the United States to give a very accurate assessment of the spread of flu viruses across the nation.
Author of the study, Tim Daw of the University of East Anglia said in a press release, “If we look at coral reefs, for example, the Internet may contain information that describes not only changes in the ecosystem, but also drivers of change, such as global seafood markets.â€
According to the blog kept by the study’s authors,
“The challenge is that existing monitoring systems are not at all in tune with the speed of social, economical and ecological changes. The implication: rapid and often irreversible loss of ecosystem services vital for human well-being and security for example, clear water, food from marine resources and agricultural landscapes, and mitigation of natural hazards.
Meanwhile, the development of informal communications and information sources across the internet offers a novel source of monitoring data to track, identify and perhaps even foresee vital changes in ecosystem services. For example the potential for webcrawlers to detect disease outbreaks based on news reports on the web has already been demonstrated. We explore the potential for similar technologies to revolutionize ecological monitoring.â€
Daw and his colleagues at the Stockholm University Resilience Centre are seeking ideas, suggestions and inspiration from web users and other ecologists in comments on their blog.
