Thursday, November 1, 2012

Analytics

So my grassroots social networking campaign to win the Supernova Future of Work award is almost coming to an end as tomorrow is the last day of voting.   I've been paying close attention to the traffic analytics since they are probably a good indication of the amount of votes I'm getting.  I figure since analytics and the future of work go together like cornflakes and milk I'd share what I've been looking at.


As you can see from the graphic above the top three traffic sources coming in to my post are social networking sites.  It's important to note that I made plenty of phone calls and sent out emails to pretty much all my contacts but the traffic doesn't lie, social networking sites are the best way to get the word out.  Here is a more detailed view:



I have drawn 2 conclusions from Facebook's mobile site moving the most traffic:  
  1. The concepts that we have put in to place at Industrial Mold related to the future of work being based around mobile information portals are fundamentally sound.
  2. You can always count on your friends.
What surprises me most is that more pageviews came from LinkedIn than Twitter.  I use Twitter far more than LinkedIn but mostly for information consumption, I don't post very often compared to most Twitter users.  Since I am on Twitter so much more I just assumed that it was generating more pageviews but again,  data doesn't lie.  Truly you can make all the assumptions you want but until you have the analytics related to your decision, in a lot of ways you are flying blind.  

Here is another interesting twist, because I was so certain LinkedIn was a dead end from a traffic standpoint I decided to test the waters and do a paid campaign.  LinkedIn Ads will let you pay to put your message in front of targeted groups of strangers.  I thought it would be an interesting experiment so I unfolded a crisp ten dollar bill and handed it over.   I paid per impressions instead of clicks which is another discussion entirely, but the gist of it is my ad was put in front of about 5000 people.  So obviously the higher than expected traffic from LinkedIn was due to my super PAC level ad campaign BUT a detailed look at the analytics revels that is not the case.  Here are the actuals from my campaign (click to expand)   


This data tells us a couple things.
  1. I actually got zero clicks from my ad campaign.
  2. LinkedIn jacked me for twenty cents.
  3. I should have gone the pay per click route. (which LinkedIn actually recommended)
The bottom line is that when data is collected and communicated in a meaningful way can tell you a lot of things about your circumstances.  Whether your trying to win an award or run a business, analytics can be a powerful ally.  This is the kind of stuff that the future of work is all about and it's the backbone of what we are doing at Industrial Mold and Machine.  Lastly, and most importantly, if your still reading this and you haven't voted for us yet CLICK HERE, read about what we are doing and support us with your vote.









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