The marketing department at Waitrose became a little red faced this week after a Twitter marketing stunt turned viral but not quite the way they they had planned.
Users were invited to compete the tweet “I shop at Waitrose because…” using the hashtag #WaitroseReasons.
You can read some of the responses below if you missed them this week. Instead of helping with the companies recent campaign to to portray itself as an affordable option, it did the opposite, with most responses ridiculing the chains middle-class, upmarket clientèle.
The moral of the story – Have a well planned out Social Media Strategy and be careful what you tweet for.
Custom variables allow you to get more details and tailored results Google Analytics, allowing you to define additional segments to apply to your visitors other than the ones already provided by Analytics.
Custom variables are taught as part of our Advanced Google Analytics Training course. If you are new to Analytics and think custom variables are a bit out of your depth then our beginners’ Google Analytics course may be better suited to your needs. Many of our delegates benefit for attending both the courses in tandem to get a complete picture of how to use Analytics and what it can do for their marketing campaigns.
We also offer our Google Analytics courses as part of an SEO package. Books with your choice of SEO, Social Media, Content Marketing, WordPress and Email Marketing courses to create your own custom 5 day training package and save over £500.
What is interesting to Google Analytics specialists is that Custom Variables allow you to set session level segments, which will stick to the visitor while they are active on the site, and page level segments, which correspond to pageviews and events on the site.
This allows you to get much more detailed with the information you’re gathering and storing in the custom variable. For example, you could separate different sections of the site by using the page level scope, or you could track if a visitor has completed a particular action during their session with the session level scope.
The different levels of interaction that can be used to find out more about your users behaviour are:
The Visitor; such as the browser or mobile phone operated by a person.
The Session; what happens during the period of time during which the visitor is active on the site.
The Page; activity on a page like a click on a movie button or an add to a shopping cart
Examples of when custom variables would be useful include:
Monitoring the actions of logged in users against logged out users
Monitoring the activity of different membership levels (paid, free, advanced etc.)
Categorising content by topic
Comparing new and existing users – which products did the look and how did they use the site.
Limitations of custom variables:
There are only 5 slots available to contain custom variables
A visitor takes up one slot forever
A session takes up another slot for the time spent on site
A page takes up slots page by page. The slot empties after a pageview.
To add custom variables you simply need to add some a new line to your existing GA tracking code.
Index (required) - Determines a custom variable slot. 5 slots are available, numbered 1-5. Single variables should be placed in single slots.
Name (required) - the name of the variable. this will appear in your Google Analytics reports when viewing custom variables.
Value (optional) - the value of the variable paired with name. For example, if the Name was ‘User-type’ then the value could be ‘regular-user;
Opt_Scope (optional) - a level within which a custom variable functions. You can assign the custom variable to three levels; 1 (visitor level), 2 (session-level) and 3 (page-level). If you leave this clear then Analytics will use the default level 3.
Here’s an example of custom variables in Google Analytics given by our trainer Nikki at BrightonSEO.
I really enjoyed watching The Fixer last Tuesday on BBC2. With her usual style and panache Alex Polizzi advises a failing family car repair garage, Guidebridge MOT in Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester.
Honestly (some would say brutally) she administers her hard truths about customer service, organisation and marketing.
When the fleet inspector arrives (fleet work is the name for servicing done for companies with many vehicles to service), he tells her that he likes to find the s**t in people! This is apparently an acronym for:
Sincerity
Honesty
Integrity
Trust
With usual sharp wit Alex responds “so you want me to help them get their s**t together.”
Customer service has never been more important in my opinion. The family were under the impression that their customer service was good. They then demonstrated otherwise by keeping customers waiting without any explanation of when their vehicles would be ready. Not only that, but customers were made to wait in an area that in her own words “one would want to slit your wrists in”.
In the training business, there are times when clients need answers to questions that only trainers can respond to, so sometimes although we prefer to give all clients immediate responses to their questions we may need to wait for a response ourselves. It is important at all times to keep the customer informed of progress. A polite email or phone call is all it takes to explain any delays so the customer knows exactly when they can expect what they are looking for. It is imperative to keep communication going, nobody likes to be ignored.
A lack of marketing seems to be a common theme in the series. Alex suggests to the garage that they revisit an old idea “Women at the Wheel” where women were invited to a free session enabling them to learn to change a tyre, fill their oil and water etc. Everybody loves a freebie, and if it encourages potential clients to revisit you, even better.
Once customers receive a great or free deal, you have built a relationship with a potential paying client – you now have their trust and have gone a long way towards sorting your s**t out! These potential clients are much more likely to come back, and loyalty is what you are looking for especially in the service industry.
The highlight of the programme for me was when Alex turned up to the “woman at the wheel” event dressed in leathers.
During the time period in which she wrote her latest book, however, her capacity for positive thinking was tested to it’s limits. Until she told me her story I used to think of the profound words of wisdom from Big Brothers’ Josie ”Whenever I feel a bit low, I think about that woman who got her face ripped off by a chimpanzee “. Now I just think of Sue! She is brilliant, always smiling, brimming with ideas for her next project, I can’t think of anyone better to write a great positive thinking book.
I asked Sue for a few words about her book, she sent me this, suggesting we cut it by half and edit it to have more emphasis on positive thinking, but I think it’s just perfect as it is.
Thinking Positively
Brilliant Positive Thinking by Sue Hadfield
It takes four and a half hours to fly from Luxor to Gatwick. In April this year I spent the whole of the flight wondering if I would be totally blind by the time I stepped off the plane.
A week previously, with my husband, Greg, we had booked into a luxury resort hotel, on an island in the Nile, near Luxor. Holidaying without our children for the past ten years had meant that we could dispense with package holidays and be more independent: Greek island hopping, driving around Sicily, touring Libya, visiting New Delhi, Eastern Europe and America.
But this holiday was different: I’d just finished writing a book and we had decided on a relaxing holiday for a change. Earlier in the year we’d been burgled and my laptop was stolen. It contained the first half of the book (and no, it wasn’t backed up). Writing for me means no reading for pleasure and so I intended to lie in the sun, swim in the pool and catch up on my reading.
On the first night (after being delighted by the island, our apartment, the choice of restaurants and infinity pools) I sat in front of the bathroom mirror and started to apply my makeup. I closed my right eye and drew on the eyeliner, then I closed my left eye and my reflection vanished. There was a diagonal line across my vision – the top third of the room I could see – the rest was a wall of grey.
The young hotel doctor was reassuring and gave me eye drops – saying it was probably eye strain but to come back if it didn’t improve. It didn’t. We googled the symptoms and diagnosed a detached retina. He took us to ‘the eye doctor’ in Luxor. We found ourselves in a pot holed, back street, climbing three flights of outside steps to a Spartan room containing a wooden bench, an old Egyptian woman, an eye chart and some basic equipment. The eye doctor took one look at my eye and said that the retina was detached, that we must get to Cairo immediately for an operation but that we mustn’t fly because of the pressure. Read the rest of "Thinking Positively – The Way to Start the New Year"
When it comes to social media there is an ever-increasing number of online channels which can be used to quickly spread the word about your projects, products and services. But the wide range of choices available and the software available to manage social media can be daunting.
When it comes to managing your social media, consider what your business priorities are and what areas you need to focus on daily, weekly or monthly. Planning your social media activity is crucial!
Daily social media tasks are crucial for maintaining your image and conversing with others. While it is not time effectively to always be on Twitter and Facebook you want to make sure you respond to any communication quickly.
Twitter – Tweet and respond to tweets and retweets – Tools such as TweetDeck and HootSuite are great ways to manage Twitter and if there’s a topic you want to keep an eye on you can create a search column using the related hashtag.
Google+ – respond to mentions and comments on your posts, scan the feed for interesting content to +1.
Facebook – check your profile, pages and groups and respond as appropriate.
LinkedIn – respond to private messages and posts/comments in your groups if you have any.
Blogs – Respond to comments on your own blog posts – this opens up a dialogue between you and your users/followers, maximising opportunities for business relationships and reciprical marketing.
Bookmarking - Scan what’s popular on bookmarking and recommendation sites such as Delicious, Stumbleupon and Digg and then add your own bookmarks accordingly.
Analytics – Google Analytics is the main choice for clear and concise information and it now features real time reporting. This is great as you can monitor your traffic from social media channels during campaigns to find our what elements of your social media strategy are the most successful.
Welcome to Part 2 of our BrightonSEO 2011 round up. We hope you enjoyed BrightonSEO Part 1 featuring our round up of round ups! Once again we’ve provided either the slides or video for each talk for those who missed the conference. These presentations are all from the afternoon session and include the six 20 : 20 slide talks where each speaker had 20 slides which changed automatically every 20 seconds. After a great morning the afternoon session had a lot to live up to – but that it did with some interesting talks featuring Mad Men, James Bond and internet cats.
Neil Walker – Links – SEO Value vs Client Expectations vs Cost
Neil was the first of the afternoon speakers and was presenting his findings from research he had conducted on both SEOs and clients to find out if they shared the same expectations on links.
He found that clients didn’t often know what links they were after and so it is the job of the SEO to be transparent with the client and explain the cost of links and link strategy.
Neil Walker gives his opinion on the conference along with his slides here.
Roger Warner – What Can Social Media Learn From Mad Men?
This proved to be a very popular talk with Roger using the TV show Mad Men to compare traditional advertising to SEO with the emphasis on learning from traditional methods to improved social media relations. Roger has posted up his talk in a nutshell using the following points:
Social Media is not a spaceship – it’s a communications tool.
The full BrightonSEO 2011 Round Up is the most comprehensive available. We feature our pick of the best round ups alongside our own round up with video, slides and comments.
The second speaker at BrightonSEO 2011 got everyone talking and tweeting. John McElborough gave his advice on building a private blog network and added a pinch of controversy to the morning. The usual twitter buzz was rising to a crescendo and #BrightonSEO was trending, but spattered amongst the “Best ever” tributes and tweets of resounding praise were a few disgruntled SEO’ers in the audience tweeting about lack of ethics and Black Hat tactics. I’d like to point out that this is a FREE event. If it were highly priced, superbly slick and full of uber expensive Key Notes we wouldn’t see the likes of John McElborough and his honest account of Quick fix SEO. He didn’t claim to be ethical, and he was quite open about the fact that in the near future this may not work, he was aware that the Panda Update was still being tweaked and that tomorrow he could be wiped off the face of Google. More about surviving the Google Panda Update here.
He also admitted that Fake Whois identities may not be a great long term plan. I loved his honesty. If it were expensive we probably wouldn’t have the privilege of seeing John and having a good debate about it. We probably wouldn’t see people like Dave Peiris - @sharkseo. See #BrightonSEO 2011 – Attracting Quality Links . I like the eclectic mix of speakers. If Brighton SEO continues to grow the way it has over the last two years (far from it’s humble beginnings upstairs in the pub) we may begin to see less of the Johns of SEO and more high profile Keynotes and polished presentations, then we might be missing something.
I think Kelvin Newman put on a great show. He “owned the stage” as Simon Cowell would say, “he nailed it”, Kelvin has the XFactor.
Don’t forget to watch the video – juicy debate recorded as well as the presentation.
Building a Private Blog Network – a controversial talk by John McElborough at #Brighton SEO
John McElborough – Brighton SEO
McElborough told his audience to leave ethics behind, asking them to make their own minds up on whether his strategy is white hat or black hat.
John McElborough’s method (building a private blog network) is to create a network of anything from 20-100 private blogs, all linking back to a main site. He went on to tell you how to make the domains all look as if they are on different servers with unique IP addresses, and even suggested that you fake your ID on Who-Is when you register the domains. The idea is to build up lots of easy links from each of the domains to each other and to your main site, as well as building up the authority of each private blog using traditional link building techniques.
Black Hat tactics?
He started by talking about the content of the blogs, starting with 5-10 posts on each site, he suggested using interns, students and writer samples. The acquisition of content by these means didn’t sit well with the copywriters at the event as explained on Ensign Jen’s blog. He is obviously going with the quantity not quality angle here.
Everyone talks about ROI (return on investment) and many businesses use Google Analytics to measure the ROI of their internet marketing endeavours using the number of sales measured against the data they get about user activity before they “add to cart” or similar.
What if you have no e-commerce on your site. Maybe you provide a service, provide information, market a cause or a brand and there is no on-line payment transaction to enable this type of analysis. What should you be measuring? How can you use Google Analytics data to interpret the success of a visit to your website?
Whilst the jury is still out about how much Google uses visitor loyalty data when calculating the quality of your site. I think it is safe to presume that after the Google Panda update, these metrics are becoming much more relevant to page position in the SERP’s than before. If you follow our surviving the Google Panda update guidelines, you will be well on your way to solving any problems that you discover when analysing your visitor loyalty.
If you are new to Google Analytics I would strongly recommend our Google Analytics Course, we get rave reviews. For those who are familiar with the basics you can fine tune your master skills on our Advanced Google Analytics Course, we also provide SEO training, however back to the plot.
Measuring Visitor Loyalty in Google Analytics
We recommend measuring successful visits using the four different metrics in the “Visitor Loyalty” section of Google Analytics found in the Visitors section that appears when you log into your account:
Loyalty
Recency
Length of Visit
Depth of Visit
Visitor Loyalty Google Analytics
The fact that Google Analytics shows you the distribution of the metrics is key to being able use use this data in a way that allows you to analyse and measure success.
The different levels of interaction that can be used to find out more about your users behaviour are:
I really enjoyed watching 
When it comes to social media there is an ever-increasing number of online channels which can be used to quickly spread the word about your projects, products and services. But the wide range of choices available and the software available to manage social media can be daunting.
