How Stories Search makes Snapchat a real-time YouTube

3/31/2017

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How Stories Search makes Snapchat a real-time YouTube

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Snapchat is shifting from a social network limited to content shared by people you follow to an ephemeral, real-time database of what’s going on now everywhere. Today Snapchat launched Search for Stories submitted to its public Our Stories. It makes Snapchat as deep as whatever the world is sharing, creating near-infinite rabbit holes to go down, and a stronger competitor for YouTube and Twitter.

That aligns exactly with Snap IPO strategy following the slow-down of user growth after the removal of auto-advance and the launch of Instagram Stories and Facebook’s other competing clones: Snapchat wants to be where some people spend tons of engagement time, rather than where everyone spends a little time.

It also sees Snapchat break one of its cardinal rules. User generated content is no longer limited to a lifespan of 24 hours. A Snapchat spokesperson confirms to TechCrunch that some Snaps submitted to Our Stories that appear in the new Search feature will be visible from less than a day to up to a few weeks or even months.

If content around a theme is being submitted more rapidly, what’s seen in Search results will turn over more quickly, while themes that only get submissions every few days may see Snaps stay visible for longer to make sure there’s something to watch for the theme.

VIDEO

How Snapchat Stories Search works

In January, Snapchat opened the ability to submit to Our Story from people in certain locations like big events or at certain times like Christmas everywhere, to everyone everywhere all the time. But this meant it was pulling in way more content than its human curators could package into specific, widely-visible Our Stories like ones for the Macy’s Day Parade or the NBA Finals.

Now, Snapchat is using algorithms to scan the caption text, time, and visual elements found in Snaps submitted to Our Story and group them by theme. For example it could pull out Snaps with the words “dog” or “puppy” in captions, or use machine vision to detect the shape of a real dog in the photos or videos, and aggregate them into an Our Story that comes up when people search for “Puppies”. Snap notes you could use this to watch a nearby basketball game, see what’s happening a local bar, check out a specific Fashion Week runway show, or explore a vacation spot.

The rollout of the feature begins with people in select U.S. cities being able to search for public Our Stories, but everyone’s submissions are already being indexed. For now, no ads, sponsored lenses, or sponsored geofilters will appear in the Search collections.

Snaps submitted to Our Story can appear in Search results for up to months, rather than disappearing after 24 hours like usual

Why Search makes Snapchat endless

Previously, you could think of Snapchat like a television with the Stories of people you follow as different cable channels. Discover and Snapchat Shows were like HBO, offering extra premium content. All you could watch was what these channels aired. If you flipped through all the channels and still weren’t satisfied, you were out of luck.

Search is like having the world’s biggest Blockbuster video rental spot open up next door. Suddenly you can browse a near-endless array of content in all sorts of categories, from popular mainstream releases to weird niche foreign films. New films arrive faster than you can watch them, so there’s always something you haven’t seen available.

For the biggest Snapchat fans, this uncaps their potential engagement time. You can now do around-the-clock movie marathons.

Another analogy is to think of Search as turning Snapchat into the ephemeral, real-time YouTube built for mobile video creation. YouTube indexes the world’s online recorded video content with Google’s search prowess. But often there’s a delay of a few hours to days from when something is recorded to when people upload it. And since YouTube was originally built for the web, the clips are typically longer, from 30 seconds to a few minutes.

That norm subtly discourages short-form, mobile-shot, real-time, off-the-cuff content. And that leaves the door open for Snapchat and its new search feature. Instead of just relying on text descriptions and manually-added tags, Snapchat is using machine vision to see what’s actually in content, categorize, and index it. Since it’s all mobile and people submit to Our Story as soon as they’ve shot something, plus its curated mostly by algorithms, content should be more quickly searchable.

And because Snaps disappear eventually, even if not just after 24 hours here, it encourages the submission and searchability of raw, unpolished, but still compelling content YouTube isn’t getting.

Finally, you could also see Stories Search as a competitor to Twitter. If you want to read what people are saying around a topic in real-tme, today you search Twitter. But now if you want to SEE what people are capturing with their cameras around a topic in real-time, you can search Snapchat. The camera is the new keyboard, after all.

These ideas both support the narrative Snap has been pitching to investors. It can’t sell itself on future user growth and eventual massive scale like Facebook since its growth plummeted late last year around when Instagram Stories launched. Instead, while it only has 158 million daily active users, it repeatedly highlighted that they spend 25-30 minutes a day in Snapchat on average. Search thereby fuels Snapchat’s best hope for growth, not in breadth of users but in the depth of their engagement.

If Snap can’t get everyone on earth using it because of Facebook’s slew of Stories competitors steal the international markets and older demographics, than Snap must get the U.S. teens it already has addicted to stick around longer. Search is how.

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March 31, 2017 at 06:49AM

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Twitter kills egg avatar instead of hate speech and no this is not an April Fools' joke

3/31/2017

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Twitter kills egg avatar instead of hate speech and no this is not an April Fools' joke

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Twitter kills egg avatar instead of hate speech and no this is not an April Fools' joke

Boom: egg drop.

Image: mashable composite

By Nicole Gallucci2017-03-31 18:19:04 UTC

Twitter is finally making some changes — just not the ones we asked for.

On Friday — following the unveiling of its messy new replies feature — rather than making strides against the noted hate speech problem on Twitter, the social media platform revealed it would changing its ~~iconic troll~~ default egg avatar to some weird AF other thing. Great.

The little egg avatar, a classic sign of a bot or troll account, has been transformed into a new design that's presumably supposed to resemble the outline of a human's head and shoulders. But instead, it kind of just looks like one tiny, deformed egg hovering above one half of a slightly larger egg. Twitter announced the change in an overly detailed blog post on Friday.

One of the main complaints, of course, is that rather than simply changing the appearance of the avatar so often associated with harassment on the platform, Twitter should be taking more active steps to fix the problem.

Change the default user pic from an egg to vague silhouette, THAT is going to solve the harassment issue and finally make Twitter profitable

— Tom Summerville (@the_vesperian) March 31, 2017

Me: This site is a hideous avalanche of hate speech and death threats from Nazi Twitter eggs

Twitter: that's terrible. let's change the egg

— Eldritch Costello (@acekatana) March 31, 2017

As you can imagine, with the death of the Twitter egg so close to Easter, many users were also feeling emotional about the loss.

And as is customary with most new features, people had a lot of jokes to make. Thus, the sad new grey image was mercilessly trolled on its very own site.

The hilarious Darth Twitter account had a field day with the new design, creating alternate heads and topical comparisons to items like spring Starbucks cups.

RIP eggs, you will be missed. Now, about that harassment problem ...

WATCH: This teacher has gone viral with his unique handshakes for his students

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March 31, 2017 at 06:28AM

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How To Use Facebook Chatbots to Market Your Business

3/31/2017

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How To Use Facebook Chatbots to Market Your Business

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Interested in bringing your customer service to the next level? Chatbots may be able to grant that wish. They have taken the tech world by storm, and now social media giant Facebook has jumped onto the trend.

Chatbots are the newest release in its quest to revolutionize customer service through social media. Using chatbots, your business will be able to offer a variety of services to consumers and connect with them more directly and efficiently. Facebook bots will provide your customers with personalized options and the same interactive communication of talking to a customer service rep.

According to Tech Crunch, bots may render 1 -800 numbers obsolete by eliminating wait times and menu trees. They will also change the way customers search for information by sparing users the hunt for specific criteria for a product or service. Chatbots will run through Facebook Messenger and offer several main features, the first being the ability to send and receive texts and images. They will also provide businesses with built-in message templates, which can be implemented without any programming knowledge.

The last of the capabilities are the welcome screen and null state calls-to-action to help customize your bot. With over 900 million monthly users on Facebook Messenger, the chatbot promises to be a powerful tool for your small business. To read more, see the full article here.

The post How To Use Facebook Chatbots to Market Your Business appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

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March 31, 2017 at 05:33AM

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Twitter is getting rid of the egg avatar because that will totally fix the abuse problem

3/31/2017

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Twitter is getting rid of the egg avatar because that will totally fix the abuse problem

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Everyone knows that Twitter has a harassment problem. And while the service has tried things like banning abusive users (both on a temporary and permanent basis) it hasn’t really fixed the problem.

But Twitter now thinks it has a real solution. Cracking the egg.

In a long-winded post the service announced they are replacing the default egg with a unisex profile picture resembling a head and shoulders silhouette.

Beginning in 2010 all new accounts started with their default profile picture as an egg. Since then it has become a integral part of the Twitter brand. Everyone, even non-hardcore Twitter users, know the egg. Even CNN frequently features the egg when they show tweets from politicians and other celebrities.

Twitter gave a bunch of reasons for the switch. Some, like the fact that a more generic profile picture should encourage new users to actually upload a real profile picture of themselves, make sense.

But Twitter also said that they were switching up default profile pictures in an effort to combat harassment. Specifically they think that since abusive accounts often have the egg as a profile picture, there is now “an association between the default egg profile photo and negative behavior”.

Gee, ya think?

What Twitter isn’t understanding is that abusive tweets sent from an egg account will now just be abusive tweets sent from a silhouette account. Switching up the profile picture may be putting a bandaid on the problem, but it does nothing to fix harassment in the long run.

A abusive tweet is a abusive tweet whether it’s next to an egg, a silhouette or a real person’s avatar.

Plus, as a byproduct Twitter is killing off yet another part of Twitter’s unique internal language and identity – just like they did with @replies and favorites.

Don’t blame the egg, just fix the problem.

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March 31, 2017 at 05:19AM

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Here's the deal with those ugly colorful status updates on Facebook

3/31/2017

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Here's the deal with those ugly, colorful status updates on Facebook

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If your Facebook News Feed is probably looking a bit more colorful recently, there's good reason: The company is thirsty for your precious personal content.

Facebook has been rolling out a new way to post status updates since the end of last year. Write something in the "What's on your mind?" box and you'll be prompted to select a background color for the text, which gives the post a much more prominent slice of real estate in the News Feed.

The feature was originally exclusive to Android, but it's hitting iOS and desktop now.

So, to be completely clear, this is a first-party Facebook feature and not the product of some third-party app. The text is still highlight-and-copyable — it's not a static image. If you want it but don't have it, you'll just have to wait for it to be enabled on your Facebook account.

Facebook is desperately scrounging for ways to get users to create and post original content. Theoretically, the social network is about connecting with your friends — getting users hooked on consuming and sharing details from their personal life rather than posts from media outlets or brands is key to Facebook's bottom line.

Beyond that, the social network is up against Snapchat, which gives users a ton of creative ways to express themselves. In a sense, the colorful statuses check two boxes: They encourage original sharing, and they give users a new toy to play with.

The only problem? They're pretty damn ugly. Still, don't be surprised when they come to a News Feed near you.

WATCH: Samsung has unveiled the new Galaxy S8, and it's beautiful

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March 31, 2017 at 03:27AM

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How Any Digital Business Can Explode Using Word of Mouth Marketing

3/31/2017

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How Any Digital Business Can Explode Using Word of Mouth Marketing

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We live in a digital age.

Each day we’re bombarded with an endless stream of online ads via social media, websites, search engines, videos, and so on.

Marketing companies spend billions upon billions each year researching, analyzing, and pushing ads to consumers.

But you know what?

No matter how sophisticated and streamlined digital marketing becomes, it still pales in comparison with the power of good old-fashioned word of mouth marketing (WOMM).

According to in-depth studies from Nielsen, “WOMM recommendations still remain the most credible.”

Just look at this graph that ranks consumers’ trust, depending on the form of advertising and the action it produces.

Positioned right at the top as the number one trust factor is “recommendations from people I know.”

It heavily shapes consumers’ opinions on brands/products/services, and this is unlikely to ever change.

Here are a couple more stats that demonstrate the power of WOMM:

“74 percent of consumers identify WOMM as a key influencer in their purchasing decision.”
“WOMM has been shown to improve marketing effectiveness by up to 54 percent.”

Just think about it.

Would you feel more comfortable buying a product recommended by a close friend or by a marketing message shoved down your throat by some slick marketing guru?

I would bet the former.

The full impact

There’s another important detail I’d like to point out.

It has to do with the long-term impact of acquiring new customers through WOMM.

According to the Wharton School of Business,

a customer you acquire from WOM has a 16 – 25 percent higher lifetime value than those you acquire from other sources.

This means you’re far more likely to get repeat business from an individual who’s acquired through WOMM than otherwise.

They also have a higher likelihood of becoming brand advocates or even brand ambassadors.

Consumers trusting other consumers

And there’s one more thing.

You don’t necessarily need to have a person recommend your brand to someone they know directly to benefit from WOMM.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of consumers trust recommendations from other consumers.

According to Nielsen,

68 percent trust online opinions from other consumers, which is up 7 percent from 2007 and places online opinions as the third most trusted source of product information.

Bright Local also reports,

88 percent of people trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts.

The way I look at it, old school WOMM has meshed with the digital age.

Many people now turn to other online consumers, whom they don’t actually know, to find out whether a brand is worth purchasing from.

If you can impress a handful of consumers and turn them into brand advocates, it can have a domino effect: they spread the word, which can lead to a surge in sales.

It can set off a chain reaction.

Have we forgotten about WOMM?

There’s a paragraph in a Forbes article I really like:

The problem is that for the last few years, marketers have been focused on ‘collecting’ instead of ‘connecting.’ In other words, brands are too caught up in collecting social media fans and they are forgetting to actually connect with them.

I think this really hits the nail on the head.

Many marketers (myself included) are guilty of it to some extent.

I feel we’ve gotten so caught up in the latest and greatest marketing techniques that we sometimes forget about what good business is founded on in the first place: relationships.

Before there was social media, SEO, PPC, or even radio/TV commercials, most businesses gained new customers from old school person-to-person recommendations.

But it’s never too late to cash in on WOMM.

However, it does require a slightly different approach from the one used in the past.

The great thing is there are some really potent resources and platforms out there to streamline WOMM and maximize its impact.

I’d now like to discuss some fundamental tactics you can use to make your digital business explode using WOMM in the modern age.

Focus on your core audience, not the masses

The first step to making this strategy work is to understand who your core audience is.

Founding editor of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly formulated what I think was a brilliant hypothesis in 2008—the 1,000 true fans theory.

His idea was that any artist, business, etc. could survive on having only 1,000 true fans and that “returns diminish as your fan base gets larger and larger.”

In other words, you’re more likely to have success if you focus on gaining 1,000 true fans rather than tens of thousands, or even millions, of lukewarm fans.

Tim Ferriss has actually embraced this idea, and it has been a key part of his meteoric rise to fame.

Ferriss even talks about the concept of 1,000 true fans in-depth in his new book, Tools of Titans.

And I think this is a good approach to take in WOMM.

You’re far more likely to create brand advocates if you focus on truly connecting with your core audience rather than trying to appease the masses.

This basically goes back to Pareto’s 80/20 principle, which applies to many different areas of life and business.

The premise is that 80 percent of your customers account for 20 percent of your sales and 20 percent of your customers account for 80 percent of your sales.

What you need to do is put most of your attention on “wooing” the 20 percent and deepening your relationships with them.

If you stick with this game plan, your core audience should grow even stronger, and you’ll be creating the perfect environment for WOMM to take place.

Be authentic and transparent

I know saying something like this may sound a little generic and cliché, but it’s still very important.

I feel many brands are out of touch with their audiences, and they end up suffering for it in the long run.

I believe authenticity and transparency are two of the most vital traits a brand can possess.

Most people can spot any ounce of pretentiousness from a mile away.

And with so many sleazeballs out there today, most consumers have developed a sense of skepticism that isn’t easy to stamp out.

I also realize that simply telling you to be authentic and transparent is a little vague.

You might be asking: how exactly does one accomplish this?

Of course, this is a huge topic to tackle, but I really like these suggestions from Copyblogger on how to get your customers to like you and build trust:

When it comes to transparency, it all boils down to being yourself and making it a point to engage with consumers.

You want to “humanize” your brand.

Check out this post from Vision Critical for more on this topic.

It highlights five specific brands that embraced transparency and found success as a result.

Leverage reviews

As I mentioned earlier, most consumers are receptive to online reviews and trust the opinions of other consumers even if they don’t know them directly.

If you can get your satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, you’re almost guaranteed to see a spike in sales.

So, I suggest doing everything within your power to encourage your satisfied customers to leave reviews.

This starts by “claiming” your business on some of the top review sites such as Google My Business, Angie’s List, and Yelp.

I won’t go into all the details of this process, but I recommend you check out an article I wrote on NeilPatel.com on how to get more online reviews.

This will provide you with an in-depth look at and tips on how to make this strategy a success.

I also suggest looking at this post from HubSpot that talks about 19 online review sites that can help your business get more reviews and gain traction.

Add fuel to the fire with a referral program

If you really want to expedite your WOMM, consider implementing some sort of a referral program.

When done correctly, it can lead to an influx of new customers while giving your brand equity a nice boost.

Here is a great example of a referral program that got it right.

Several years ago, Dropbox started a referral program that offered customers up to 16GB of free storage for “inviting a friend” to join.

What was the end result?

The refer-a-friend feature increased signups by 60 percent
Users sent 2.8 million direct referral invites
Dropbox went from 100k to 4 million users in just 15 months
This resulted in a 40x increase, or a doubling of users every 3 months

This just goes to show the power a referral program can have.

The key is to come up with some way to reward existing customers for referring your brand to a friend.

This could be a discount, freebie, cash back, or whatever.

As long as the reward has genuine value and isn’t going to kill your profit margins, it should work.

The specific reward program you’ll want to implement will depend largely on your industry or niche.

That’s why I suggest reading this post from Referral Candy.

It goes over 47 different referral programs that totally crushed it and should give you some ideas on coming up with an approach for your business.

I also recommend checking out this guide from Referral Rock, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know on the subject.

Conclusion

With all the cutting-edge, sleek, and sexy marketing techniques out there, WOMM sometimes gets overlooked these days.

And that’s unfortunate.

If you look at studies involving research on WOMM, it’s easy to see that it’s still alive and well.

In many ways, WOMM is more powerful than ever when you consider the ease with which consumers can share reviews with one another.

I know I usually find myself reading at least a couple of reviews before I purchase something on Amazon or especially before I book a spot on Airbnb.

The way I look at it, it’s never been easier to harness the power of WOMM than it is today.

It’s simply a matter of bringing this old school concept into the modern marketing era.

By using a handful of fundamental concepts like the ones I discussed, you can absolutely make your digital business explode using WOMM.

The best part is that many of the new customers you receive will be repeats and will even recommend your brand to their friends.

And this is the very definition of creating a sustainable business model.

How big of a role do you think WOMM plays in business today?

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March 31, 2017 at 03:01AM

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Tibetan Lama gives up monkhood for marriage and people love it

3/31/2017

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Tibetan Lama gives up monkhood for marriage and people love it

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Tibetan Lama gives up monkhood for marriage and people love it

Thaye Dorje, His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, is the leader of the 900 year old Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.

Image: Karmapa / twitter Page

By Sohini Mitter2017-03-31 14:14:13 UTC

Love conquers all.

Thaye Dorje, the 33-year-old leader of Karma Kagyu, one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, has abandoned monkhood to marry his old friend.

While he will now have to renounce some of his duties, he will continue as the 17th Karmapa (leader) of his tribe, announced his office.

Dorje, who became Karmapa in 1994, tied the knot with Bhutan-born Rinchen Yangzom in a private ceremony in Delhi, where his wife currently resides.

"My role and activities as Karmapa will continue as before – with the single exception of conducting ordinations... As Karmapa, I will continue to protect and preserve our beloved lineage," Dorje was quoted as saying.

"I have a strong feeling, deep within my heart, that my decision to marry will have a positive impact not only for me, but also for the lineage," he added.

The newly wed monk with his wife and family.

While leaders of Buddhist sects marrying is rare, Dorje is not the first. The 15th Karmapa was also married.

The monastic traditions will now be passed on.

Thaye Dorje was just one-and-a-half years old when he started telling people that he was the Karmapa, AFP reports.

Under Tibetan tradition, monks identify a young boy who shows signs that he is a reincarnation of a late leader. Dorje became Karmapa at the age of 11.

People have congratulated him on social media and hailed him for "sending out a positive message" to the Buddhist world.

@karmapaorg One can only imagine how my heart sings now! Unexpectedly greatest news, like a ray of light after gloom. Karmapa Chenno! ⚭ ? ⚭

— Alexander (@nichtbemerkt) March 30, 2017

@karmapaorg Dear Karmapa, I feel enormous joy! Best wishes for your wife, for you and for the precious lineage.

— Dennis van de Water (@Autisme_iQCoach) March 29, 2017

@karmapaorg Congratulations! May you both be happy, joyful, loving and healthy for the benefit of you and all sentient beings.

— Daniela Liebert (@Daniela_Liebert) March 29, 2017

@karmapaorg Congratulations and all the best to you and the beautiful Rinchen Yangzom. How wonderful! May this news bless all and inspire love & bliss ♥

— lörschibörschi (@loerschiboersch) March 29, 2017

WATCH: Hindu priests are now helping to combat child marriage in Nepal

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March 31, 2017 at 02:27AM

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Dear @Jack I dont love Twitter anymore

3/31/2017

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Dear @Jack, I don’t love Twitter anymore

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Dear @Jack, I don’t love Twitter anymore | TechCrunch

This isn’t an easy letter to write. I mean, we’ve been through so much together… Remember the good old days, back when everything was new and exciting? You were even trying to disrupt vowels then!

Oh how innocent we were. How full of hope for the possibility of a 140-character microblogging service. For the joy it could bring, and the good we could do together — even just with SMS.

Now I look back and I just feel numb.

What you did yesterday finally made me see it, Jack. You can’t hurt me anymore. All those years I was pouring my heart into 140-character snippets, eagerly retweeting the wisdom I saw bubbling up all around me, engaging in conversations with interesting strangers — but how did you repay so much goodwill? With coldness, Jack. With indifference.

Thing is, you never really listen.

Sure, you drifted away for a while. You had that new role — playing at being chairman of the board. Maybe you had started feeling rejected too. But instead of reaching out, like you could have, and listening to what I really needed, you retreated. You shrugged and said ‘not my problem’. You gave me the cold shoulder.

How did you repay so much goodwill? With coldness, Jack. With indifference… You never really listen.

But that’s not all. For years you and your friends held our perfect chronology hostage, threatening to destroy what we’d built together as you fell in thrall to your new algorithmic gods.

I begged you not to do it. I pleaded. But your heart had hardened. I doubt you even felt a flicker of feeling when you flipped that switch and rewrote our story.

I shouldn’t be surprised. For so long now you’ve been saying you know what’s best for me. Putting me through endless A/B tests. Becoming more controlling of what you think I should see.

I should have spotted the warning signs before it was too late. But I didn’t want to believe it, Jack. I wanted the old you back. So I defended Twitter — even when others were busy laughing.

And then there was the abuse. I pleaded with you to listen — to do something to stop it. I shouted and screamed. But for some reason you couldn’t fix it.

Maybe your attention was elsewhere. Or you didn’t feel it was your problem to solve. Sure, you said you were going to change things. And tried to fob me off with a few tools or by telling me to tell you when bad stuff happened. But I could see in your eyes you were conflicted.

You used to say you didn’t want to take sides. That it was not your place. But then you’d lash out wildly when under pressure. The truth is you should have been putting your energy into fixing the problem at source years ago. I don’t think you realized how much goodwill had been lost — until it was already gone.

It’s like you put so much faith in your algorithms you didn’t have eyes to see how much was falling apart around you.

Jack, I can’t feel sorry for you now because I don’t feel anything anymore. I’m at peace with what we have. I haven’t cut you out of my life entirely but nothing you can do can hurt me because I don’t love Twitter anymore.

I’m sorry. It should pain me to say so but it doesn’t — because you took all my passion for Twitter and crushed it.

And now I see you casually ripping up the threads of friends’ conversations — and, once again, failing to listen when people tell you what a mess you’re making — and I can only feel sorry for you, Jack. Sorrow. That’s all that’s in my heart now. I have no hope left for us.

I’m just sad it’s ending like this.

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin

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March 31, 2017 at 02:19AM

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Google Analytics: How to Analyze the Behavior of Your Site Visitors

3/31/2017

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Google Analytics: How to Analyze the Behavior of Your Site Visitors

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Do you want to learn more about how people use your website?

Wondering how the Behavior reports in Google Analytics can help?

To explore how to navigate the Behavior section of Google Analytics, I interview Andy Crestodina.

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Andy Crestodina, author of Content Chemistry and co-founder of Orbit Media. Andy specializes in content marketing and Google Analytics.

Andy explains how to analyze the behavior of your website visitors.

You’ll discover a few Google Analytics tricks to employ immediately.

Google Analytics: How to Analyze the Behavior of Your Site Visitors featuring insights from Andy Crestodina on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.

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Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show:

Google Analytics

Why Marketers Should Care About the Behavior Category

The five basic Google Analytics reports.

In Google Analytics, the Behavior category is one of five main categories that you find on the left-hand sidebar. Andy says the categories are organized from the top of the funnel down to the bottom. The first category is Real-Time, or people on your website at the moment. Real-Time is followed by Audience (who those people are), Acquisition (where they came from), Behavior (what they did), and Conversions (who took which successful profitable action).

People dedicate a lot of time to the Behavior category because the reports show what’s happening on each URL and how people flow through your website. Andy says you can see where people go, how much time they spend on pages, bounce rate, percentage of people who leave after seeing just one page, number of pages per visit, and so on. The Behavior category is the core of Google Analytics reporting.

What you find through Behavior reports is often surprising, Andy continues. Although a website is designed to encourage visitors to navigate through it in certain ways, the Behavior reports show how visitors actually move through your site.

Listen to the show to hear an explanation of the value of behavior analytics with a restaurant analogy.

Behavior Flow Report

Andy believes Behavior Flow is an interesting and sometimes confusing report because it mashes up data from other reports. The Behavior Flow report looks almost like an infographic. It shows how many people are on your website, where they move as they navigate from page to page, and the page where they leave your site. After the starting page, the next column is first interaction, the column after that is second interaction, and so on.

Behavior Flow shows the most popular path through your website, which is important. Knowing the most common path helps you prioritize changes to your website. For example, if you have only 10 minutes to work on your website this week, you need to spend that time on the pages people visit most often. Even if your website has thousands of pages, a small percentage of those pages receive the most traction and traffic.

Therefore, when you have a great piece of content such as a beautiful testimonial or a compelling visual, you want to put it where people are more likely to see it. If your website was a city with a highway flowing through it, you’d put your billboards on the highways, not on little backstreets.

In the Behavior Flow report, the first column is the Landing Page option, which reflects where your website traffic comes from. You can change the default Landing Page option to see the website traffic from a specific source. For example, you can select social options to see how people coming from different social networks move through your site.

Change the default Landing Page option to see the website traffic from a specific source.

Next, you see the Starting Pages column. Andy says this column lists only the top pages. (For analysis of a specific page, you need to look at the Site Content reports.) Each page (URL) is a green box. Next to the green box is a red line with a downward-pointing arrow. The red line shows how many people left from the page. Hover over the red line to see the number. If people continue to another page, a little gray line connects the starting page to the next visited page. With these gray lines, you can see at a glance the highway going through your city of a website.

When you click a green box, you can select an option that highlights the traffic through that web page. For example, Andy can see that people who visit his article Website Best Practices tend to go back to the blog’s main page. From there, a percentage goes to the website’s homepage.

The Behavior Flow report shows where a user goes after visiting a specific article on your website.

Use the Behavior Flow report to see where users go after visiting a specific article on your website.

Andy says you don’t need to spend a lot of time analyzing behavior flow. With this report, your goal is to develop a good sense of the major paths through your website.

Listen to the show to discover what I learned about a specific Social Media Examiner article by analyzing the flow.

Site Content Reports

Andy says the All Pages report is one of the most important reports in Google Analytics. To see this report, select the Behavior category and then Site Content. You’ll find the All Pages report under Site Content.

The All Pages report lists every URL on your website, so this report enables you to see the behavior flow for any page. Scroll through the list to find a post or use the search feature. By default, you see 10 pages at a time, but you can choose to view more per page. Andy is looking at a blog post called Ways to Improve Your Website.

After you find the post you want to analyze, Andy suggests looking at the Navigation Summary tab. (You’ll find two tabs right above a post’s trend line: the Explorer tab appears by default and the other tab is Navigation Summary.)

The Google Analytics Behavior Navigation Summary shows you the web page that led visitors to your selected page and the web page people visited next.

The Navigation Summary shows you the web page that led visitors to your selected page and the page people visited next.

Andy says the Navigation Summary is powerful because you see the page on your website that led visitors to your selected page and the web page on your site that people visited next. After you view the Navigation Summary for a page, Andy says you can analyze how that page is working. Start with your home page to see which items in the main navigation are clicked most and least, and develop ideas about how to optimize your visitors’ experience.

Andy says you need to be able to look at something and say, “This is working. Can I make it work even better?” or “This isn’t working. Can I either improve it or just remove it?” For instance, say you have a giant orange call to action on your site and no one is clicking it. You’d likely determine that something about the call to action needs to change. You could add white space around it, change the button text to indicate a benefit, or try a different call to action.

Andy says you should also consider removing items that people don’t click because removing an item makes everything that’s left more visually prominent. If you have something that’s visually loud and you can tell from the Navigation Summary that no one is clicking it, consider taking it off the page. You just cleaned up the site and made everything that remains easier for visitors to find.

This data also gives you clues into what information people need in what order. For instance, Andy says you might look at Back button behavior. People who come to a page and then go back to the one before likely didn’t find the answers to all of their questions. Use these insights to change the labels in your navigation, add or remove elements, change calls to action, front-load content earlier in a sales process, and more. You want to do a better job of guiding visitors through your website.

Andy also talks about the Exit Page reports, which are especially relevant to social media marketers because they often send traffic elsewhere (to a social network) for engagement. Social media marketers also blog and naturally link to other websites, resources, content, friends, partners, and allies. From this report, you can see the exit pages from most to least popular.

When you look at Exit Page reports for insights, Andy says to consider three questions: What’s the intent of visitors who come to the page, did they meet their goals, and is your site or company extracting some benefit from the visitors while they’re on the page?

For a social media marketer, a blog post that’s a popular exit page still fulfills its purpose of helping visitors achieve their goals. Andy says if these visitors move on, the visit is still successful. Tool roundups are another type of post where no one is going to stick around. However, Andy says you can use Exit Page reports to see where you’re encouraging people to leave and make sure you’re doing so deliberately. For pages intended to generate leads or sales, Andy says that exits might indicate something more problematic.

When I ask if it’s a problem that my homepage is one of my top three exit pages, Andy says no. The homepage is a top exit page because Social Media Examiner is like a magazine. People can come to the site, scan the headlines, have a short visit, and go.

Exit Pages shows how many times a user left your site from a specific page.

The Exit Page report shows you where people leave your site.

Listen to the show to hear what I discovered about the people who read our How to Use Instagram Live article using the Navigation Summary tab.

Event Tracking

Event tracking enables you to see not only the page where people leave your site, but also where they go. Andy explains that Google Tag Manager enables you to track this information, which normally isn’t available in Google Analytics.

Google Tag Manager helps you manage JavaScript tracking codes and pixels from tools like Google Analytics and social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. So instead of putting a tracking code or pixel on every page, you put the code in Google Tag Manager, which puts the code on website pages for you. (Andy has an article about setting up Google Tag Manager, and you’ll find the link at the end of the notes for this podcast.)

Event tracking can also show you when someone takes an action that doesn’t take him or her to another page. For example, you can track when someone clicks a PDF or watches a YouTube video that’s embedded in your page. Andy calls event tracking the “duct tape” that catches all of the interactions that aren’t page views.

Andy says tracking where your readers go when they leave can help you make better decisions about your content. For example, you might inadvertently entice your visitors to take some action that isn’t what you want them to do. With event tracking, you can see when that’s happening and decide how to change your web page.

Listen to the show to hear Andy share more examples of how to take action based on event tracking data.

Additional Tips

I ask Andy what additional tips he can share about visitors’ behavior on a website. Andy says that anyone who has a search tool should look at the phrases people enter when they search your website. To see what people are searching, click the Behavior category and then expand the Site Search option to find a report called Search Terms.

Andy says the Search Terms report can reveal all sorts of gold. You may realize people are looking for topics you don’t have, topics you thought were easy to find, or topics that are popular and deserve more attention in your content strategy.

After you see the Search Terms report, Andy recommends you search for everything people are searching for on your site. You want to see what visitors are seeing. You also want to know if your search box is a crutch for bad navigation. Andy believes that at the very least, the Search Terms report is a listening tool.

I ask Andy to discuss a trick for adding dimension to your reports. Andy says you find this tool in the Behavior category by clicking Site Content and then All Pages. On the Explorer tab, you start with a list of page URLs. Andy says you can use the dimension tools for this list to answer all sorts of questions about your website.

Use the Google Analytics secondary dimension drop-down menu to dive deeper into audience behavior.

For example, say your question is, “Which pages are the most popular among people coming from social media?” By adding a secondary dimension, you can show the acquisition medium for each page. (Andy says a secondary dimension simply inserts a column of information from another report.) To add this column, click the Secondary Dimension drop-down list above the list of pages and then select the information you want to see.

At this point, you might see all of the acquisition sources, including organic and social. By using a filter, you can limit the information in the second column to just social. Andy explains that the search box will filter only the first column (the primary dimension). To filter the second column, you need to click Advanced and set up an advanced filter, such as “include medium containing social.” After you click Apply, you’ll see the most popular pages as viewed by people who came from social media.

Just click around, Andy suggests. You can add anything as a secondary dimension and then use the advanced filter. Creating a custom report takes a total of maybe five clicks.

To save a custom report, click the Shortcut button in the upper-left corner of the page. (If you click Add to Dashboard, Andy says your report appears on a screen with lots of different reports and they will all be small.) After you click Shortcut, give the report a name (for example, Top Pages for Social) and click OK. You can find your Shortcut under Customization.

Listen to the show to learn about using date ranges to create and compare reports and why this technique is so powerful.

Discovery of the Week

Reverb is an interface that allows you to use Amazon Alexa instead of other artificial intelligence apps such as Siri on your Mac OS or iOS device.

Reverb

Ask Alexa a question and it gives you a response type. For example, connect Alexa to your home to turn on the lights, ask Alexa for weather and traffic reports, and so on.

Reverb also enables you to be less tethered to Amazon devices for Alexa, such as the Echo or the Echo Dot. For instance, if you have a Dot in your office but you’re on the go, you can pull out your phone, open Reverb, and ask Alexa anything. Reverb has all of the benefits of the service without the hardware.

Reverb is on desktop for Mac and on mobile and tablets for iOS and Android.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how Reverb works for you.

Listen to the show!

Key takeaways mentioned in this episode:

Social Media Marketing Podcast w/ Michael Stelzner

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What do you think? What are your thoughts on Google Analytics Behavior reports? Please leave your comments below.

Google Analytics: How to Analyze the Behavior of Your Site Visitors featuring insights from Andy Crestodina on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.

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March 30, 2017 at 10:07PM

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Google Analytics: How to Analyze the Behavior of Your Site Visitors

3/31/2017

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Google Analytics: How to Analyze the Behavior of Your Site Visitors

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Do you want to learn more about how people use your website? Wondering how the Behavior reports in Google Analytics can help? To explore how to navigate the Behavior section of Google Analytics, I interview Andy Crestodina. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Andy Crestodina, author of Content Chemistry and co-founder of Orbit Media. Andy specializes in content marketing and Google Analytics. Andy explains how to analyze the behavior of your website visitors. You'll discover a few Google Analytics tricks to employ immediately. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Google Analytics Why Marketers Should Care About the Behavior Category In Google Analytics, the Behavior category is one of five main categories that you find on the left-hand sidebar. Andy says the categories are organized from the top of the funnel down to the bottom. The first category is Real-Time, or people on your website at the moment. Real-Time is followed by Audience (who those people are), Acquisition (where they came from), Behavior (what they did), and Conversions (who took which successful profitable action). People dedicate a lot of time to the Behavior category because the reports show what's happening on each URL and how people flow through your website. Andy says you can see where people go, how much time they spend on pages, bounce rate, percentage of people who leave after seeing just one page, number of pages per visit, and so on. The Behavior category is the core of Google Analytics reporting. What you find through Behavior reports is often surprising, Andy continues. Although a website is designed to encourage visitors to navigate through it in certain ways, the Behavior reports show how visitors actually move through your site. Listen to the show to hear an explanation of the value of behavior analytics with a restaurant analogy. Behavior Flow Report Andy believes Behavior Flow is an interesting and sometimes confusing report because it mashes up data from other reports. The Behavior Flow report looks almost like an infographic. It shows how many people are on your website, where they move as they navigate from page to page, and the page where they leave your site. After the starting page, the next column is first interaction, the column after that is second interaction, and so on. Behavior Flow shows the most popular path through your website, which is important. Knowing the most common path helps you prioritize changes to your website. For example, if you have only 10 minutes to work on your website this week, you need to spend that time on the pages people visit most often. Even if your website has thousands of pages, a small percentage of those pages receive the most traction and traffic. Therefore, when you have a great piece of content such as a beautiful testimonial or a compelling visual, you want to put it where people are more likely to see it. If your website was a city with a highway flowing through it, you'd put your billboards on the highways, not on little backstreets. In the Behavior Flow report, the first column is the Landing Page option, which reflects where your website traffic comes from. You can change the default Landing Page option to see the website traffic from a specific source. For example, you can select social options to see how people coming from different social networks move through your site. Next, you see the Starting Pages column. Andy says this column lists only the top pages. (For analysis of a specific page,

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March 30, 2017 at 10:02PM

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Google Analytics: How to Analyze the Behavior of Your Site Visitors

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