If your interested in how many people are reading your blog, you need to obviously track visitors.  This can be done quickly and cheaply using Google Analytics.  Google Analytics used to require an invitation code, but recently Google made it freely available to anyone.  After you sign up for an account, you simply cut and paste code into your blog template (usually the footer or the bottom of the page template) and off you go.  Its not quite real time - usually 8 - 12 hours behind, meaning if I log in now (AM on Thursday), I will see the stats for end of day yesterday.  Google Analytics tracks all the web stats that you’re used to seeing in your websites analytics program (assuming you have one).  If not, you could use Google Analytics on your site as well as your blog.

Google Analytics won’t track the readers who view your content through their news readers.  In order to do this, you need a tool like Feedburner.  Feedburner is also free.  When you create an account it takes the feed from your existing blog and turns it into a new feed.  This new feed - in the form of a URL - can then be applied to your blog templates so when readers subscribe, they are actually subscribing to the Feedburner feed rather than your blogs feed (You can tell a Feedburner feed because it starts with feeds.feedburner.com/.  Pay attention to how many bloggers do this).  At any point, you can log into Feedburner and it will tell you how many subscribers your feed has.

It’s very important to note that if you’re one of those bloggers that likes to change your templates, or you are in the process of creating a new template, you will need to apply the analytics code and the Feedburner URLs to every template you use.  If not, you risk missing web traffic stats or worse, having users subscribe to the wrong feed.

Hope this is helpful to those just getting started.

Considering Twelve Horses is headquartered in Reno, Nevada, I feel it is my obligation to talk about one of the largest anomalies our area experiences each year around the Labor Day Weekend - Burning Man. To explain what Burning Man is, "is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind," so says the official website. But I’ll do my best to summarize.

Burning Man is week-long event that attracts 30,000+ people from all over the World. It is held in the Black Rock Desert on a giant playa just outside the small town of Gerlach, Nevada. People come to camp, construct a temporary city, and create an experience based on self-expression and community. After the giant archetypal man is burned in mock effigy, people begin to disperse, and eventually the playa is once again left devoid of any human trace. Despite all of the hype about strange people and unlawful activity, it is really a peaceful demonstration that produces some truly amazing and creative artwork.

From a marketing perspective, Burning Man is a fantastic example of the power of word-of-mouth. Create an event that people actually want to go to, and guess what, they come in mass. No prints ads; no TV commercials; no email blasts; no special offers or coupons. They’ll even be willing to pay $375 for a ticket.

Let’s see….30,000 people x $375 = $11,125,000. Not a bad budget for an art party out in the desert. However, I believe much of this money goes to permitting, security, supplies, and other administrative costs; and all of it goes back into the event. Commerce isn’t even allowed within the limits of the proverbial city, so I assume even the organizers are practicing what they preach.

The financial impact for Reno is not something to ignore either. As the Reno Gazette-Journal reports, 11% of attendees earn $100,000 or more annually, 9% earn between $75-$100K, 14% earn $50-$75k, and 24% earn $25-$50k; additionally, 61% have bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degrees. People are flying into the airport from all over the place, renting cars and RVs, buying food and supplies, and in general using the products and services the Reno area has to offer. Throughout the week, you can go into a grocery or outdoor store and many of their shelves are empty. Make plans last minute and try and rent an RV, and you will have to go as far as Sacramento, CA to find one; and the price will be marked up 200%!

Yet, go to one of the official tourism sites like the the Nevada Commission on Tourism or the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority, and you will really have to search to even find a blurb about Burning Man. These two outfits spend millions of dollars marketing the Reno region, but are clearly reticent to align themselves or endorse what some may consider to be a racy and unwholesome event. Because of these decisions, people across the world that learn about Burning Man will associate it with Nevada, but they more than likely will not associate it with Reno. Think about all of the Google juice alone that is not being utilized.

The last but certainly not least subject that I want to touch on regarding Burning Man is their use of technology. If you go to their homepage, you will see that they now have a Webcast, a television station, a virtual city, online social networks, online polls, and even wireless capability in a desert area that you wouldn’t be able to get a cell phone signal on to save your life any other time of year. I even found this cool Burning Man Beatmaps on Susan Mernit’s Blog, which I linked to from a Rojo newsletter that I subscribe to via email. Cool stuff!

Kudos to the folks that have created this event. It is definitely something to marvel at whether you are an artist, a marketer, or a techy. As to whether I am going to marvel at in person, well, I’ll leave that up to your imagination.

Technorati : black rock desert, burning man, nevada, reno

What is “Using Wordpress as CMS?” is a great post about how companies and individuals are using the freely available and open source blogging software, Wordpress, for there site.  The examples linked in the article are sites that don’t look or act like blogs but take full advantage of the features and functionality that Wordpress offers.

We just signed a new client that is going to use Wordpress for their site’s content management.  They want to use the full blogging abilities combined with a few static pages to have a rather dynamic website.  I’ll post a link when it goes live.

tags: Blogging, Wordpress, CMS

For a while now I’ve been telling clients that search engines love blogs.  In fact, when doing research for this post most of the results from Google were blog postings.  Here’s five reasons I believe blogs provide great SEO:

1. Fresh content - If a search engine has the option of showing content created in 2002 about a topic, or a post made a few days ago, it will likely choose the new post.
2. Linking - Search Engine algorithms look at outgoing and incoming links to a site.  Since most business related sites choose not to link to other sites (the “lets keep them on our site as long as possible” mentality), they rank rather low in outgoing links.  And since they aren’t linking to others, others are less likely to link to them.
3. Keyword Rich - Blog posts are short.  Because of that, bloggers get to the point and tend to use more keywords then a jargon filled page written by a marketer and passed through multiple revision processes.  Also, blog posts are categorized and tagged adding more keywords to the content.
4. Good content - When a blogger is blogging multiple times a week, they can only say so much about the same topics before it becomes repetitive and boring: so they stretch.  They blog about how their topics are applied to other industries.  They blog about related news and information.  They blog about anything that fits into their area of expertise.  This creates new unique content that is valuable.  When someone searches for these obscure - or niche - topics, these posts float to the top.
5. RSS - Blogs have RSS feeds.  Search engines are paying more attention to RSS feeds as they provide a clear and concise version of the content without any old school SEO tricks.  An RSS feed contains the post’s date, title, full or abbreviated text, tags, enclosures and other relevant information.  They can’t be faked with a ton of keywords in the sites presentation or meta data.

There are other factors that go into search algorithms besides these and these factors alone will not a first result make.  Please feel free to add any of your own thoughts in the comments below or by emailing me at jkenzer@twelvehorses.com.

tags: SEO, Blogs, Google, Yahoo, Search Engines, RSS

I have been maintaining a second - or maybe its a third or fourth - blog over at http://www.thekenzers.com/joshkenzer.  I broke this blog out in an effort to provide a space that I could get a geeky on (geeky means posting technical content).  For the following reasons, I have decided to combine that content with the content here:

• Increased Density: More posts in one blog rather then the same amount spread over multiple blogs.
• For the Geeks: Some of you may be interested in Gmail’s private email option, IE 7 Beta 3 observations and reviews of blog WYSIWYG software.
• Fewer Blogs to Manage: OK managing blogs is not that hard but it will be one fewer.

When I post geeky stuff, I will use the category, “Geeky Stuff.”  If you’re not interested in these posts, please skip these posts but I recommend giving them a chance.  You may find some interesting stuff.

Mike Rundle has an excellent post over at Business Logs discussing how successful social networking sites give users something in exchange for their content.  Mike suggests that users get pleasure from submitting content and this pleasure has a multiplier based off the return for submission.  He postulates that if you submit a story to digg.com it takes about 5X in terms of effort for a return of 50X in pleasure (where X is the multiplier).

I think Mike hit the nail on the head.  When Jason Calacanis recently offered to pay diggers for submitting content to Netscape.com he was utilizing Mike’s theory.  For Jason, the effort required (in both switching from Digg and finding the stories) would be minimal compared to the pleasure multiplier of getting paid.  I’m not sure if he actually hired any but if I was a top digger - currently ranked 536 - then I would have seriously considered it.

Moving forward, sites need to seriously consider what the user is getting in return for there effort.  Getting consumers to fill out simple forms has always been a challenge, now every new site wants their users to add pictures, videos, bookmarks, posts, etc.  Web 2.0 is fueled by the community, the community is fueled by its user generated content.

When Fox Interactive initially purchased MySpace, they acquired it for $580 million. Well, they are definitely recouping their investment because Google just closed a deal with Fox for $900 million. Granted, Google doesn’t have to pay unless certain levels of traffic are achieved, but I have a feeling Fox will do their best to ensure they do. Of course, there is always the ad revenue as well.

Obviously, Google does not believe MySpace is going any where any time soon. Industry chatter questioned the staying power of MySpace, but it looks like users aren’t investing their time and energy into creating pages on MySpace to simply toss in the towel for another social networking site. If you are a business and want to leverage the power of search, you might want to get a blog going, and then get some presence on MySpace.

The benefit for Google is obvious. Users of MySpace can quickly and easily search the Internet directly from the site. They are capitalizing on the tremendous visitation - according to Nielsen/Net Ratings they had 45.7 million unique visitors in June. The more users that gravitate toward using Google for online searches, the more Google comes out ahead of its competitors, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com.

What is really interesting is the melding of individual web pages containing personal information and search information. Where will Google’s algorithms take us next?

Technorati : Fox Interactive, google, myspace

A YouTube purchase by Apple makes perfect sense.  It would give Apple a large market share of the consumer generated media market while providing a new reason to buy an iPod.  They could roll out a firmware update to all video iPods to play the Flash based video files or more likely come out with a new version.  Here is why it works:

• Video Quality - The quality of YouTube videos is nothing special but if you shrink those down to the size of the iPod screen, they will look great.
• Wireless Connection - Consumers have been asking Apple for a 802.11x or Bluetooth connected iPods for awhile now.  This would be the perfect way to roll it out.  By selecting and viewing YouTube videos wirelessly on your iPod, you will place the iPod as the true third screen (as opposed to 3G cell phones).
• Integration with iTunes - iTunes rocks.  Everyone knows it.  By taking what Apple has done for browsing large music libraries and tons of podcasts to the viral video market, finding awesome content would never be easier.  Also, after viewing a video through iTunes, a user could click a button that reads, "I want this on my iPod!"
• Pay for Play - All us viral video fans would be cynical about Apple’s motives in this purchase.   The talk of the blogosphere would be how Apple is now going to charge for YouTube downloads.  Damn straight!  Everyone is aware that the bandwidth costs are eating YouTube alive.  Why not charge a small fee for each viral video download.  Would it by $.99?  Probably not.  Would there be a way to cut the content creator into the revenue stream?  Possibly.  The point is, if anyone can figure it out, I’m sure its Apple.
• Larger Capacity iPods - If everyone is going to start running around showing their buddys the latest viral video, they are going to need larger hard drives.  This gives Apple a reason to introduce larger size iPods at higher price points (OK, I admit this one is kind of weak).

Robert and I recorded a podcast this morning with a Reno Real Estate agent that gets it. Diane Cohn  uses her blog and podcasting to introduce herself to potential buyers online. None of us will be surprised to know that much of the initial home buying research is performed on the Internet. During this process, buyers are more likely to find Diane because of her blog and podcast (stayed tuned to the Horse Power Podcast for the interview).

Prior to recording the podcast, we were chatting about whom her ideal clients are. She made the statement that she really likes those that do their initial research on the Internet because they are smart, ask good questions, understand the market better, are upfront and tend to be fun loving. This made my wheels start turning and I started thinking of some compelling questions:

• Is the Internet creating a new personality type?
• Do the core personalities of those individuals who spend a large part of their time online differ from those who don’t?
• Are the habits and patterns that we are learning online influence us in social settings?
• Does repeated uses of search engines cause us to be more straight forward and upfront?
• Does the analytical process used to research online extend into our personal and professional life?
• Does the social networking skills we cultivate online (IM, email, MySpace, Linkedin) carry over to how we network in real life?

I’m sure it won’t be too long before someone turns these types of questions into a book.

    Technorati : Internet, Personalities

As the Marketing Manager for Twelve Horses, I find great amusement and an appreciation for Seth Godin’s post on, “Ten Things Programmers Might Want to Know About Marketers.” My primary focus is to build Twelve Horses’ brand and bring more leads and prospects in the door, and much of this is done online. I depend on the expertise of our programmers to achieve these goals, but it is often challenging because of the degrees of separation regarding our responsibilities and daily activities.

Not only are our competencies, personalities, deadlines and daily activities different, but when the programmers are busy working on client billables, it is especially difficult to justify the notion that they should spend time working on Twelve Horses’ marketing activities. This touchy situation is further compounded by the fact that we are a marketing and technology company; so anything we do for ourselves better be good.

Some things that I try to keep in mind at all times are:

• Scheduling items far in advance.
• Outlining the purpose, flow, messaging, composition, and desired results of each job to hopefully limit excessive and annoying amounts of changes.
• Illustrating the importance of their efforts and the benefits to the company.
• Saying, “Thank You” after completion and making the effort to sustain a positive relationship.
• Sharing the results and rewards to convey the fact that it is a team effort.

These few items may sound simple, but I think they go a long way in helping to implement successful and efficient marketing campaigns. Internal communication, organization, and relationship building are key steps toward developing a better understanding between programmers and marketers.

Technorati : internal communcation, online marketing, programming, relationship building
Del.icio.us : internal communcation, online marketing, programming, relationship building
Ice Rocket : internal communcation, online marketing, programming, relationship building
Flickr : internal communcation, online marketing, programming, relationship building
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43 Things : internal communcation, online marketing, programming, relationship building