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Visitors at the Coca Cola Village Amusement Park in Israel got a taste of Facebook in the real world when they were handed RFID-enabled Facebook bracelets. These bracelets allowed people to login into their Facebook accounts and then “like” the various attractions and recreational activities in the amusement park that would show up on their Facebook profiles. And since “tagging” is a big feature in Facebook, all the visitors had to do was flash their bracelets when the resident photographer takes their photo which would auto-tag them in the uploaded image on Facebook.

5 Google Analytics metrics that can help improve your blog

When was the last time you checked your Google Analytics reports? IF you’re like most, it’s not enough. We put so much time and effort into developing rockstar content for our blogs and promoting them, sharing and commenting that we don’t spend nearly enough time analyzing the data and adjusting our blogging approaches.

I’ve made a concerted effort recently to change that (personally, for this blog, to be clear–I check client data weekly or daily in some situations).

As I’ve been checking and playing with Google Analytics more, I’ve ran across a number of key metrics I find myself checking more often than others. Below are five I check out routinely and how they can help you develop more compelling content–and ultimately, a better blog.

* New vs. Returning visitors: What’s your ratio look like here? If it’s high on new visitors and low on returning, what can you do to encourage readers to return more often? Maybe re-consider the placement of your RSS/email subscriptions buttons? Consider adding a subscribe button at the bottom of each post? If you have a lot of returning visitors and not too many new ones, maybe you need to rethink your community strategy. What are you doing to promote your content? Should you include more guest posts? Are there sites that would be open to syndicating your content?

* Visitor loyalty: This section is a treasure trove of stats. Find out how sticky your content is (depth and length of visit). And how compelling it is (recency and loyalty). If the bulk of your readers are only visiting one page and staying less than 30 seconds, you may need to work on developing richer content. After all, you want your customers/readers hanging out at your site for longer than that (and hopefully, visiting more pages). When was the last time readers visited your site? If it’s within a week and you churn out content regularly–you’re happy. If it’s a month ago, maybe that’s an indicator that you need to work on the quality of your content. A lot of insights to be gleaned here.

* Referring sites: Great tool for identifying exactly where your blog traffic is coming from. Is it coming from Twitter? Facebook? Organically? LinkedIn? Other sites? Monitor where your traffic is coming from regularly and tweak your promotion/sharing strategy accordingly.

* Keywords: Quick, basic tip: Start strategically tagging and planning for keywords you want to be searched for using the Google Ad Keywords tool, and watch it pop up (hopefully) in this area. For example, I recently wrote a post about developing social media editorial calendars–and tagged it according to the keywords I noticed that weren’t overly searched for. That wasn’t by accident–from a business perspective, that’s a service/value I provide to my clients, so I wanted to rank higher for a couple key phrases around that concept. A few weeks later, it’s popping up in my keywords in Analytics. Now, if I can just start popping up on page one…

* Top content: A basic item to check, but an absolute must when it comes to maintaining a blog that’s relevant online. What topics are interesting your readers? They should pop to the top of this list pretty quickly. Use that information and data to think about additional topics. Do the top three posts in your “top content” list have anything in common? Are they all tackling the same concept? Are they all list posts? Find the common threads and exploit them in future posts.

I’d love to hear your ideas on how you’re using Google Analytics to improve your blog–either personally or for clients. Please share in the comments–we can all get smarter.

Note: Photo courtesy of vrypan via FlickR Creative Commons.

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Unique and creative outdoor advertising campaigns from all over the world.

Pizza Billboard

Clever billboard designed to promote Donatos pizza. [more pizza ads]

Frozen Bus Stop

Bus shelters in Russia were decorated to look frozen as a part of summer marketing campaign for Coca-Cola. [link]

Giant Rejoice Comb

Large comb was used to promote Rejoice hair products. [shampoo ads]

Mini Billboard

Car and a surfer were placed on a Mini Countryman billboard. [mini ads]

Heinz Bus Stop Ad

Bus shelter filled with tomatoes promotes Heinz Ketchup. [bus stop ads]

Cadbury Billboard

Fantastic ad designed to look like a giant chocolate bar. [more billboards]

Dumocalcin Giant Bones

Bridge columns in Indonesia were transformed into oversized bones. [link]

Crunched Billboard

Cool billboard in Denver reminds drivers that tailgating isn’t worth it. [link]

Tibits Giant Fork

Oversized fork was used to promote Tibits vegetarian restaurant. [link]

McDonald’s Crosswalk

Pedestrian crosswalk was decorated to look like McDonald’s fries. [link]

There’s lots of them. With a sneaky plug at the bottom from whomever created the infographic.

Cheeky.

The illusion of diversity: visualizing ownership in the soft drink industry

Background
Three firms control 89% of US soft drink sales [1]. This dominance is obscured from us by the appearance of numerous choices on retailer shelves. Steve Hannaford refers to this as “pseudovariety,” or the illusion of diversity, concealing a lack of real choice [2]. To visualize the extent of pseudovariety in this industry we developed a cluster diagram to represent the number of soft drink brands and varieties found in the refrigerator cases of 94 Michigan retailers, along with their ownership connections.

Click here to zoom in

or download PDF version of Soft Drink Industry Structure, 2008



Results
We recorded 987 varieties of soft drinks. These were sold under 195 brands, and 102 parent companies. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group offer 411 of these varieties (41.6%). The top 50 varieties were found in more than half of all stores, and were owned by just the top 8 firms. In contrast, over 300 varieties were found in only one store each.

Less dominant companies tend to fill two different niches: 1) they sell inexpensive brands, often available only at specific retail chains, or 2) they compete in newer categories such as energy drinks, teas and flavored waters, rather than the more established soda category.

The most successful competitors in these new categories may eventually be bought out. Glaceau/Vitamin Water, for example, was acquired by Coca-Cola for $4.1 billion in 2007.

A key strength of this study is the more complete picture it provides of the ownership structure of an industry, as our previous work has excluded smaller firms [3,4].

Coca-Cola’s 25 brands and 139 varieties

Pepsi’s 18 brands and 163 varieties

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group’s 20 brands and 109 varieties

Conclusion
The illusion of diversity in the soft drink industry extends beyond obscuring ownership, as its products are primarily water and sweeteners. More research is needed on the links between pseudovariety and the consumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor substances.

Methods
We conducted a complete inventory of soft drinks in the refrigerator cases of food retailers (n=94) in the Lansing, Michigan metropolitan area (population 454,000) in March, 2008. This was a component of a larger study of retail food access, which included an inventory of fresh fruits and vegetables [5], and we limited our study to stores that sold fresh produce. Our inventory also excluded non-refrigerated beverages, 100% juice, 100% water, and dairy products. Ownership was determined through company websites and trademark databases, and varieties were classified into six categories (soda, energy drink, sports drink, water, tea, juice/punch). This information was then encoded in a cluster diagram using the visual cues of proximity, form, size and color to amplify cognition [6].

Map of study retailers


Literature Cited

1. Toops, Diane. 2008. The trends: another cola war brewing? Food Processing, June 3.
2. Hannaford, Stephen G. 2007. Market Domination!: The Impact of Industry Consolidation on Competition, Innovation and Consumer Choice. Westport, CT: Praeger.
3. Howard, Philip H. 2009. Consolidation in the North American organic food processing sector, 1997 to 2007. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 16(1), 13-30.
4. Howard, Philip H. 2009. Visualizing consolidation in the global seed industry: 1996–2008. Sustainability, 1(4), 1266-1287.
5. Goldsberry, Kirk, Chris S. Duvall, Philip H. Howard & Joshua E. Stevens. 2010. Visualizing nutritional terrain: a geospatial analysis of pedestrian produce accessibility in Lansing, Michigan, USA. Geocarto International, in press.
6. Howard, Philip H. 2009. Visualizing food system concentration and consolidation. Southern Rural Sociology, 24(2), 87-110.