Archives for June 2010

The Anatomy of a Twitter Profile Review

June 22, 2010 By Glenn Gabe

When other users receive a notification that you followed them on Twitter, there’s a good chance that they will click through that email to check out your profile. When they hit your profile on Twitter, you have about 10-15 seconds to impress them enough that they will follow you back. Given that you only have a few seconds, are you providing the right information in your profile, is there enough information, is it accurate, and can they get a feel for who you are and what you do? These are all good questions that you should be thinking about.

When I’m helping clients with Twitter marketing, I often get questions about what to tweet, Twitter etiquette, who to follow, how to engage users, etc. However, it’s usually not long before the topic of Twitter profiles come up. For example, what should be included in a solid profile, what should the bio include, what should your avatar look like, should you link to a website, blog, etc? Although profiles on Twitter are relatively simple, they are definitely important. Your profile is often your first impression on Twitter, so it’s important that you put your best foot forward. And that’s especially true when you are first starting out on the microblogging service. In my opinion, you can really shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t understand what other people are looking for on your profile.

The Anatomy of a Twitter Profile Review
Based on what I explained above, I thought it would be a good idea to provide the anatomy of a Twitter profile review. I’ll explain the core elements of your profile that other users are reviewing, provide best practices for fleshing out these elements, and explain how your profile can impact your follower count. If you are new to Twitter, my hope is that you can leave this post and make sure your profile is helping you versus hurting you. Without further ado, let’s dig into Twitter profiles. Note, I’ll simply use screenshots from my own profile in order to highlight each profile element.

Your Name, Twitter Handle and Avatar (Image or Photo)
When you receive email notifications about new followers, the first thing you’ll see is the person’s name and Twitter handle. It might look like “Glenn Gabe (glenngabe) is now following your tweets on Twitter”. A Twitter handle is essentially your username (in this case glenngabe, all as one word). I highly recommend using a handle that ties directly with your name, brand, or company name. I would not get too creative here… If your first impression with someone is corny, weird, ambiguous, or offensive, then you might kill your chances of a follow back almost immediately. For example, “Money Man Jimmy is now following your tweets on Twitter” (with a handle of @moneymanjim) won’t necessarily be a great move for you. Since there are many spammers on Twitter, I probably wouldn’t even click through to a profile like that. Don’t make the mistake of alienating Twitter users before they even reach your profile.

In addition, you can view their avatar in the notification email (the image that someone uses to represent their account). This too can be a telling story. Is the avatar a headshot of the person, a logo, a funny image, cartoon, celebrity photo, is it blank, or is it something even worse like a risky image? Be careful with the avatar you choose. Again, this is your first impression. Twitter is so much about personal engagement that I almost always recommend using an actual photo, if possible. Remember, you’ll be engaging other people on Twitter, so you typically want to know that an actual person is on the other end.

If you’re a company that’s setting up a company profile, then you can use your official logo (although I’m not a big fan of following logos). If you’re a recognizable brand, then it’s a different story. But most companies aren’t recognizable brands… Also, if the person managing your account is your social media manager, then I have no problem letting that person use their own photo, as long as their bio explains what they do (more on that soon).

My recommendation: Use a descriptive handle (something close to your name if you can get it), use an actual photo of yourself as your avatar, and use your real name as the name on the account. If you do that, other users will know that Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) is now following them (and they can check out an actual photo). You’ll start off the right way, and will give yourself a greater chance of gaining new followers.

Your Bio and Location
When you meet someone for the first time at a meeting or conference, what do you say to them? Do you crack a joke during that first exchange, do you say nothing, or do you succinctly introduce yourself by providing your name and what you do? For most of us, it’s the latter. I believe that it’s extremely important to list your full name in your profile, as well as a thorough bio. “Thorough” is a relative term given you only have 160 characters to play with, but you can still get enough in your bio to clearly state who you are and what you do.

When reviewing someone’s profile, I look to see if the person has their full name listed and if they have created a bio. I typically won’t follow someone back if they just have a partial name listed, along with a thin bio. Let’s face it, if you are looking for a lot of privacy, then Twitter isn’t the place for you. If you check my bio, you can see that I provide my full name, my company name, the areas of online marketing that I focus on, and a link to my blog. More about profile links later. You can quickly get a feel for who I am and what I do. If you leave some of this information out, you risk not being taken seriously. That means you might limit the amount of people that will follow you back. And that’s not good, especially when you’re new on Twitter.

Your Followers to Following Ratio
When you’re just starting out on Twitter, it’s hard not to have follower-envy or a complex about the number of followers you have. Typically, nobody knows who you are, nobody cares, and nobody is chomping at the bit to follow you. You’ll be caught in the black hole of Twitter for a while. During the process of growing your Twitter account, almost everyone ends up following more people than they have followers (and that’s for a while).

So it’s natural that one of the first things you do when someone follows you on Twitter is to check how many followers they have. That’s fine, but what about the number of people they are following? Does the ratio matter? It absolutely does… There’s a natural follower to following ratio that you’ll often end up seeing. For example, 800 followers while following 750 is a normal ratio to see. Then, there are times you see an abnormal ratio, like someone who is following many more people than they have followers. This can be a red flag and could tell you that someone is quickly following a lot of people in order to build up their own follower count. On the flip side, if someone barely follows other people, are they really a good person to follow? It might signal that they don’t engage many users. For example, following only 250 people, but having over 4000 followers. Both scenarios could signal a problem…

A normal follower to following ratio will be closer to 1:1 (for most users). For example, someone might have 1500 followers and they are following 1350. That ratio is much stronger and looks more legitimate than someone following 7500 people with only 1500 followers. As people become more popular on Twitter, they might have more followers than people they follow, but the ratio will often still look normal. For example, someone might have 8000 followers, but they are still following 5000 people. As you get used to Twitter, you can tell pretty easily what’s legitimate and what’s not. If you see someone following the world without many followers, then you might want to explore their profile before deciding what to do. Also, after I check someone’s follower count and follower to following ratio, I often check the number of tweets they have (to see if that number is in line with the number of followers they have). More on that below.

How Many Tweets Do You Have?
One profile element that I often look at is the pure number of tweets that a user has. The reason is simple. It should make sense, given the number of followers they have (and is hard to game). For example, if someone has over 2000 followers and only 25 tweets, something isn’t right. That’s unless they are famous. Unfortunately, some people game Twitter followers in order to inflate their follower count. Checking their pure number of tweets is a great way to identify people trying to game the system. Most people that have built up a decent amount of followers have tweeted often. For example, I have almost 5000 followers and I have over 13,000 tweets. That makes sense and you can tell I’m on Twitter often. If I had 100 tweets and 5000 followers, then you should probably run from my profile, and not walk. :)

Your Profile Link – The Link to Your Website, Blog, or Profile
On Twitter, you have the ability to provide a link in your profile. I believe it’s important to include a link to build more credibility. For example, many people link to their website or blog. You can also point to your LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, etc. On Twitter, it’s not unusual for someone to check out your profile and then click through the link you provide to see what you’re all about. I see many visits from Twitter to my website. Again, think about meeting someone for the first time. If you didn’t tell someone where you were from and what you do (with some backing), you would have a hard time building up credibility. I highly recommend providing a link and making the destination something that helps you build credibility.

Shortened URL’s in Your Profile:
Some people use shortened URL’s in their profile, such as using a bit.ly link. I’m not a big fan of doing this, since you don’t know where the link is taking you. There are a lot of scammers and spammers on Twitter and links can potentially take you to malware, scams, etc. Therefore, I recommend providing a full link to your blog or website (something people can clearly see). If you go to my profile, you’ll see a raw link to my blog (using my domain name). Again, you want to make it easy for people to learn about you. Don’t make them think too much. You could end up losing potential followers.

Are You Listed?
Lists on Twitter enable you to organize certain users into categories. Typically, you only list someone if you think highly of them. For example, if you were a PR executive, you might list several thought leaders in a list titled “PR-Leaders”. So, the number of times that users have been listed is a metric that some users look at to see what other people on Twitter think of them. To me, that number doesn’t have to be incredibly high, but should make sense given the other elements I’ve listed in this post. If you see that someone has been listed even 5 or 10 times, that might be fine. If you see a very low “listed count”, then you should understand the context before making any judgments. For example, are they brand new on Twitter? If so, then it makes sense that they haven’t been listed much. If they have 2000 followers and haven’t been listed once, then that might be a red flag. You will naturally be listed over time if you are doing the right things on Twitter, but that’s for another post.

What Are Your Last 20 Tweets?
This is where the rubber meets the road. Similar to reviewing the blog posts of a blogger, checking the tweets of a Twitter user can speak volumes for the quality of that user. When you visit someone’s profile, you get to see their last twenty tweets. You might find a great list of valuable tweets to outstanding content, several retweets, conversations, etc. That’s all good to see. But, you might also find random thoughts, profanity, a lack of valuable content, no retweets, no conversations, affiliate links, etc. This is why it’s important to consistently and continually provide high quality content via your Twitter stream. Twitter is a “show me” medium. If you can show other users how valuable your tweets are, you’ll give yourself a much better shot of gaining new followers. So, when someone checks out your latest tweets, do you want them to see low value updates or great content? Think about this the next time you’re about to tweet something. :)

When Is the Last Time You Tweeted?
When you check the last twenty tweets from a user, you can also check the last time they tweeted. That’s important, since you might see that their last tweet was over a month ago (or worse). In a perfect world, you would see that someone last tweeted less than 24 hours ago. Even better, you would see some tweets from just a few minutes or hours ago. You don’t want to end up following a lot of people that don’t post updates! That’s the antithesis of a good Twitter user and a waste of time for you… This is also why I recommend that you tweet daily. Not doing so can result in losing potential followers. I never like seeing that a user hasn’t tweeted in days (or longer).

Summary – Do You Need To Tweak Your Profile Now?
If you’re new to Twitter, you might be surprised to learn that a Twitter profile review is not so simple! As you spend more time on Twitter, you’ll understand more about the importance of each element listed above. When you break it down, Twitter users don’t want to get gamed, they don’t want to follow spammers, and they don’t want to bog down their accounts by following zombie users . That’s why you should spend some time and make sure you are providing the right information in order to make a great first impression on Twitter. Remember, you will have potential new followers checking out your profile on a regular basis. You just need to make sure you can convert them to followers. Unfortunately, many people are not doing a great job at this. My hope is that you can.

How To Track Elapsed Time (or Time to Complete) in Google Analytics Using TimeTracker [TUTORIAL]

June 2, 2010 By Glenn Gabe

Tracking elapsed time in Google Analytics via Time Tracker Over the past few years, conversion optimization has become an incredibly important service that I provide for my clients. Sometimes in order to improve conversion, there are times that I need to analyze a multi-step process that occurs on one page. A good example of this would be an elaborate form that visitors need to fill out (without linking to additional pages). Or, I might be tracking a multi-step process that spans several pages, but want to know more about each specific step. If you run into situations like these, then it might not be sufficient to simply track how many people converted. You might want to analyze how long it’s taking for those visitors to complete a certain process (in order to identify obstacles along the way). This is when using tracking functionality like TimeTracker in Google Analytics can come in very handy.

What is TimeTracker in Google Analytics?
TimeTracker extends event tracking in Google Analytics and enables you to track elapsed time, or Time to Complete. I’ve found that many people aren’t familiar with TimeTracker, don’t use it much, or don’t know how to properly set it up. So, I’ve decided to write this tutorial to walk you step by step through the process of setting it up. Then I’ll quickly show you how you can check the event tracking reporting for TimeTracker in Google Analytics.

For our purposes, TimeTracker will enable us to trigger the start of a process (like clicking a button, entering text, or selecting a checkbox). We will start a timer at that point. Then it enables you to trigger the end of that process (again by some action taken by the user). At the end of the process, we will stop the timer, record the elapsed time, and then communicate with Google Analytics to track the result as an event (via Event Tracking).

Let’s get started. Open up your html editor of choice and get ready to use TimeTracker.

1. Define What You Are Going to Track
For this tutorial, I’m going to keep the process and form simple so you can clearly understand how to use TimeTracker. I’ll show you how to start the timer with the first click of a form element and then how to stop the timer and send the data to Google Analytics when users click the submit button. Again, this will be a basic setup so you can easily follow along. You will probably want to write some custom logic for your own projects, based on the specific process you are going to track.

2. Adding The Form Elements
We’ll start by adding a simple html form to your webpage. In your form, add a group of radio buttons to enable users to select their age. Since this is the first form element, we’ll start the timer via TimeTracker when someone clicks a radio button. After adding the radio buttons, you can add several additional form elements, based on what you need to track. I won’t cover how to add the additional form elements, since they don’t impact TimeTracker. Basically, they can be standard html form elements (text boxes, dropdowns, checkboxes, etc.) At the end of our form, we’ll add a submit button for users to complete the process. The submit button will first stop the timer and then send the data to Google Analytics via Event Tracking. We’ll complete this via a custom JavaScript function that we’ll write later in the tutorial. Don’t worry, it’s a simple JavaScript function. :)

Radio Buttons Will Start Our Timer:

First, add your form, the radio buttons, and your submit button: We will add the TimeTracker code later in the tutorial.



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3. Download the JavaScript (or link to it from your code)
The TimeTracker JavaScript code can be found on the Google Code page for extending event tracking. You can either link to that code directly from your page or you can include the code in your own JavaScript file. I included the code in my own file by copying and pasting the JavaScript code into a new text file and saving it locally as “time-tracker.js”. Note, you will also need your typical Google Analytics snippet included in the page.

Click the TimeTracker() Title to Access the JavaScript Code:

4. Add the JavaScript code to your webpage
In order to add the code to your webpage, simply include the following line of code in the head of your html document.

Note, make sure you enter the actual location of the JavaScript file on your server and that you reference the correct file name. Replace “yourdomain.com” with your own domain.

5. Create Your TimeTracker Object
You will need to create a TimeTracker object in your JavaScript code, which we will end up calling from our form elements in order to start and stop the timer. The code will also send the data to Google Analytics (via Event Tracking). Add the following code below the code you entered earlier (where you referenced the TimeTracker JavaScript file).

6. Customize the JavaScript (Histogram for Time Intervals)
There is an optional array you can specify when you create the TimeTrakcer object. It’s called setHistogramBuckets() and it enables you to set the time intervals that get passed to Google Analytics (when the event is sent and tracked via Google Analytics). For example, you can specify the time intervals (the buckets of time) that Google Analytics will drop users into (based on how long they spent completing the process you are tracking). If you leave this empty, TimeTrakcer has default time intervals (which might not fit well, given your specific form or process).

The default buckets will start at 100 milliseconds and go up to 5000 milliseconds. In case you are wondering, there are 1000 milliseconds in one second. I highly recommend setting the time intervals, based on the specific process you are tracking. For example, if you think the process could take up to three minutes, then you would set up intervals leading up to three minutes. Three minutes is 180 seconds, or 180,000 milliseconds. For our purposes, we’ll set six intervals starting at one second and that go up to 25 seconds. If it takes someone more than 25 seconds, you’ll see it recorded as 25000+ in your reporting (so they won’t be left out). Here is the code you should add right below the code you added above (where you created your TimeTracker object). Note, add this code within the script tags you already coded earlier.

Specify your own time intervals via the setHistogramBuckets() function:

timeTracker._setHistogramBuckets([1000, 2000, 5000, 10000, 15000, 25000]);

The final block of code should look like this:

7. Add JavaScript to Start Your Timer
Now that you have your form elements in place and you’ve included the necessary JavaScript code, you’re ready to start your timer. In the first form element (the radio button), add a call to TimeTracker to start the timer.

Now here is the code for the JavaScript function called completeTracker(). Add this code to the head of your html document:

function completeTracker() { timeTracker._recordEndTime(); timeTracker._track(pageTracker, undefined, 'Lead From Page X'); }

The code explained:
The first line simply stops recording the time. The second line sends the data to Google Analytics via event tracking. The first parameter is your pageTracker object, which is created via your standard Google Analytics code snippet. The second parameter is optional and will enable you to customize the category of the event in your reporting. Categories are essentially the top-level name of an event in your reporting. The third parameter is also optional and will enable you to customize the label that is reported in event tracking. I added a label called “Lead From Page X”, so you could identify where the event was triggered. You would obviously want to replace X with the actual page name that contained your form. You can read my post about Event Tracking in Google Analytics to learn more about the various parameters involved with tracking events.

9. Upload and Test
When you upload your files, make sure you include both the html file and the external JavaScript file. Also, make sure you are referencing the external JavaScript file correctly or your code will not work. For example, did you upload the JavaScript file to the same directory, a code-only directory, etc? Make any necessary changes in your html code if the JavaScript file isn’t placed in the same directory as the webpage containing your form. If you are all set, then click away. I recommend going through the form numerous times from separate browsers and separate systems. Remember, the first radio button triggers the timer and the submit button stops the timer and then passes the data to Google Analytics via event tracking.

10. Wait and Check Reporting
You will probably need to wait a few hours before you can view the reporting in Google Analytics. After which, you can access the Content tab and then click “Event Tracking”. If you click the Categories tab, you should see a TimeTracker category. If you click that category, you should see the various times listed. These are the time intervals that we set using setHistogramBuckets(). If you click each time interval, you will see the specific form or page that triggered the event. For our purposes, all the events were triggered via one form and page. However, that might not be the case if you have multiple forms running on your site.

TimeTracker Events in Google Analytics:

Congratulations! You have just successfully tracked elapsed time (or Time to Complete) in Google Analytics. My hope is that you’re thinking of many more ways to use this functionality in your own projects. I recommend brainstorming several ideas for using TimeTracker to see the potential impact on conversion. I would start small and then increase the complexity of each project as you get more comfortable. As you can see, it’s relatively easy to set up and can provide insight into how long it takes visitors to complete certain processes on your site.

By the way, it just took you 10:42 to complete this tutorial. Just kidding. :)