Discussion 7

For my blog, the visitor engagement could be measured through the metrics such as their average time on the site and the number of return visits. If these viewers are truly engaged, they will return constantly to check out the new offerings of my blog. One other tool is the content overview, which was a bit disappointing because my blogs were rarely opened for comments, which I begged for. (Thanks Benay for the only comments!) By blog had a very low average time on the site, which was just under a minute. This tells me that I should have or could implement something more user friendly and attractive, unless my content was just not what they were pursuing. One of the most disappointing metrics, however, was the lack of success with my facebook. For a month and a few weeks, I promoted heavily through this social media tool but to no avail. Only one referral through Facebook occurred, although I have very few friends on there that are interested in marketing. The bounce rate was high at 80% but then again everything could be seen with a single view until the last days of the course, but the time reflected that they couldn’t have actually read much. Engines and direct traffic were tied with 38% of visits with referrals taking 23%. My map overlay was interesting and showed visits from the UK, Japan, and India, which was not expected when we started. My blog seemed effective at bringing in new visitors, however, with 2/3rds being new to the site, although sadly I only had 31 visits.
With this blog, I counted on Facebook to bring in visitors but should have kept tabs on its lack of success so I could seek out other methods sooner. My email address book has only a few people in it, so it wouldn’t have been effective but could have shared about the site with friends and family to get the viral marketing going, especially if they were to send it to their friends and family, post it on their facebook, etc. I also wish I would have continued to add the discussion questions to my blog more diligently so it could bring in visitors due to key words. For example, Frito Lay marketing was a keyword that brought a visitor to my site and other searches could have brought even more. With a small budget, I could have made simple fliers or advertisements for the different subjects/keywords that my blog focused on, although the fliers would be difficult to trace as far as success unless I implemented a survey into the blog, which could have been a unique challenge. Also, I would have delegated some time/resources into seeking out and adding other professionals, students, and respected bloggers to become friends with or follow their blog so that some of their traffic would bounce over to my blog. If I did any sort of advertisement, it would be geared toward this same demographic, although fliers would have to be more specific, such as a room full of potential marketers. Although I first thought the analytics were just a bunch of complicated code, Google actually breaks it down very well and explains everything in simple terms, especially when you click on the ? above the titles for results. They do a great job of tracking visitors and their behaviors to help marketers guide their efforts more effectively and address any irregularities. If you guys are interested, you should look over by 6th bulletin for an interesting issue referred to as click fraud. This is something that our knowledge of analytics could help us battle in the business world to preserve our resources.