Hello WA/Conversion world, Taylor here. Oddly enough, my very first LunaMetrics post is to brag about how great my first year with the company has been (and first year in the “real world.”) I’m the SEO here at LunaMetrics, and Robbin had asked me to prepare a self-review. Naturally, my SEO skills kicked in and Robbin thought it would be great for me to share my thoughts with all of you!

*short pause to let the excitement sink in*

7 Reasons Why My First Year at LunaMetrics was a Success

1. I was very concerned that because this was my very first job out of college I wouldn’t be able to meet expectations, and eventually be the demise of LunaMetrics. Thankfully, I feel like I was able to carry my share of the work load, and (with Robbin’s help) deal with any adversity.
2. My SEO knowledge has quintupled (I say “quintupled” because I don’t know what’s higher than that!) When I first came into this job, all I had was some very basic knowledge of SEO and a lot of passion. I really wanted to excel in this field, and get a full understanding of the Search Engine world. I think I’ve done an amazing job so far with the help of my early training with Robbin, reading SEO books, attending conferences, asking Rob questions (he’s our Canadian SEO friend), reading blogs, and (of course) trial and error.
3. I feel confident with my SEO abilities. Am I an SEO guru? No way. I do, however, look forward to new SEO challenges – instead of fearing that I won’t be able to solve a problem. I really owe a lot of that to my trip to SES NY in April. During one of the Q&A sessions, I was able to answer about 8/10 of the questions. I realized that maybe I’m a lot better at this than I thought. Don’t confuse arrogance with confidence. I by no means developed some sort of ego when I had this epiphany. I know now that no matter what I have to tackle in the future (in the SEO world at least), with enough time and commitment I’ll be able to understand it, and overcome it. And that is a BIG deal to me.
4. What I thought was going to be the biggest disaster of my SEO career, ended up being my biggest success. Of course I am talking about the [specific client's] website. That website was a complete disaster, and I had to deal with a dozen SEO issues that I had never addressed before – all at once. On top of that, I was having to deal with the ego of a web designer who just didn’t get the SEO world. When [that client's site] lost most of its rankings, their traffic plummeted, half the site didn’t work, and 90% of their site was in the supplemental (all on Christmas Eve, of course), I thought for sure this account would get me fired and my career would be forever scarred. After a lot of hard work, patience, and help I was able to make this site my biggest success story. Oh, the irony.
5. I’ve done a couple of public speaking events…and enjoyed them! After working here for 2 months I remember Robbin telling me that she hoped I would start speaking on SEO in the future. I remember my jaw hitting the floor and I tried to start thinking of a way out of it. Fortunately, after watching multiple great presentations from Robbin and the help of Tim Sweet, I was able to overcome my stage fright and give well informed sessions (in my opinion). I look forward to my next speaking engagements!
6. I enjoy what I do. I can’t tell you how great it is when people ask if I enjoy my job and I tell them how much I love it. I just feel bad that they don’t get the same joy out of their jobs. My biggest goal in life was to enjoy what I do for a living. I’m very thankful that I was able to find that so quickly.
7. My self review is a top 7 list! Who else can say that?

My parents were taken aback when I first told them that I was going to quit my webmaster job with a multi-billion dollar company to begin a new venture with LunaMetrics, a small internet consultancy specializing in web analytics, search engine optimization and conversion (among other things). They wondered why I would take such a risk. “After all”, my dad said, “you aren’t in your 20’s anymore, you have a mortgage and a child and you need to consider your retirement.”

But, really, who ever listens to their parents?

So I ditched the webmaster job and began an exciting new phase of learning, exploration and frequent contributions to the LunaMetrics blog (starting with this one). That was 5 days ago.

On Friday I received my first phone call at my new place of employment. Who was on the other end of the phone? It was a career recruiter who found my name (and my new job title) online. She first asked me if I would be interested in interviewing for a job as the vice president of web marketing and analytics for a large public company. And then she asked me how long I’ve been with LunaMetrics. Needless to say, 4 days is not a very impressive length of tenure so the phone call ended pretty quickly.

After I hung up, I turned to Robbin to tell her the story. After laughing a bit, we started talking about this industry and how it is in such demand. There are so many possibilities and so much opportunity to make an impact. And it all comes at such a great time because companies (and the people who run them) are beginning to recognize the power behind the data. They understand why they must make their company more visible on the web. They realize that they can get to know their customers by seeing how they interact online. And, by optimizing their company’s web site, they can enhance their customer’s/member’s experience, thus building their brand loyalty.

On the way home from work, I called my mother to tell her about the call. She responded by saying, “You made the right choice. Congratulations. This is going to be a great experience for you.” And it really is!

So, by way of a long story, I wanted to introduce myself to you, let you know how thrilled I am to be involved in the web analytics industry and how excited I am to begin sharing ideas with you.

Shareen Jordan
Director, Web Analytics
LunaMetrics

When I used the phrase blog whore the other day, Taylor, our search analyst, and I both turned so red that I said, “Just go home so I don’t have to be any more embarrassed than I already am.” (And ironically, LunaMetrics has been getting ready to work with Prolasta, so we have no end of opportunities to be embarrassed.)

So the blog whore problem is about people who write and say, “Please feature my product in your blog.” “Please mention my survey in your blog.” Please, please, please. On the one hand, I’m flattered, on the other, I feel like … well, you get it by now. (And I don’t even get to make money at it…)

Now, whomever you are, reading this, don’t think I am talking about you. I know you take it personally, but I get email a couple times a week asking me to write about something. Don’t you want to rate my product? Don’t you want to publish my new study? (At least all those investment bankers who call to talk about web analytics don’t ask me to blog about them.)

Let me point to Eric Mattson as a shining example of how to market to bloggers. When he wanted me (and everyone else who participated in his first research study on Thinking Like a Blogger) to blog about it, he didn’t write me and say, “Here’s the study you participated in, please write about it.” Instead, he made me feel really special. I can’t find his original email, but it said something like, “I’ve just finished this study in conjunction with the University of MA, and normally the download costs money, but since you participated, here is a complimentary copy.” And I thought, wow, this would be cool to blog about. He might have had that in mind all along, but he didn’t make me feel … well you get it.

So if you want someone to blog about your report/survey/article/whatever, woo them. Take the indirect route, which always works well in matters of the heart. Make that blogger feel special and loved, like s/he’s getting a scoop.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Robbin Steif

Those of you who have Internet consultants working for you - do you ever wonder if you are getting the most out of them?

Here are six ways you can get your Internet (or other) consultant to work harder for you:

1. Leave some money on the table

Yup, you read that right. It’s hard to love clients who negotiate too hard. If you have negotiated to get less work for less money/time, that’s pretty reasonable. It’s when you’ve pushed really hard to get the same amount of work for less money that you’ve started a relationship where they love you less. (And on the supplier side: Never ask for a higher price with the assumption that “that’ll give the client room to negotiate.” The client will just feel like you were ripping them off to start with, and you’ve begun a relationship where everything is negotiable.)

2. Don’t ask for five different rewrites of the proposal.

You aren’t turning your consultant into your business partner by doing this — you’ve made him do a lot of work for free, and it wasn’t even work that you can use to improve your bottom line. If you have to ask for one rewrite, be sure that you are very specific in what you need (so that there won’t be a third!) One might argue that if the proposal isn’t meeting your needs, the consultant isn’t asking the right questions — what kills me is when I do multiple rewrites and they all say basically the same thing, and finally the client is happy with the adjectives or verbs in the nth rewrite.

3. Stay involved.

You may feel like you want a consultant so that you don’t have to be involved. But the more involved you are, the better the quality of work will be. Any way you look at it, you know so much more about your business than your consultant ever will or can afford to learn. Furthermore, if you are involved, you create a stronger bond with the consultant - they know that you care. And let’s face it, if you’re involved, you see what they’re doing. (If I only got to make one point, it would be this one. Clients who are involved get so much more value that the ones who are hands off.)

The best-loved are the clients who invite us to their marketing meetings (and pay for our time there.) They’ve signaled loud and clear, “You’re a member of our marketing team.”

4.Don’t ask for free work.

Andy Beal wrote the most wonderful post on the power of saying no. Soon after I read it, a client wrote me and asked if I would take a two day trip to another state to attend her all-day meeting. She offered to pay for my flight and hotel. Empowered by Andy, I wrote her back and gave her a couple of different ways we could do this (in person, by phone) and I attached prices to each. She didn’t answer that email but business went on as usual until she wrote again, asking for more free work. This one was an easier request (no travel required) but I didn’t want to stick her with another price tag and I didn’t want to do the work for free, so I just ignored it. The work was incredibly important and time-sensitive (I eventually learned), and if she hadn’t started the pattern of asking for free work, I would have stepped up to the plate immediately with a reasonable price.

5. Think twice before you tell your consultant that she’s wrong, and then think one more time.

Most of my company’s clients hire us because we know a lot more about the Internet than they do or want to. So I’m often baffled when they turn around and tell me, or someone from my company, that they aren’t going to do it our way. It sometimes makes sense (they don’t have the resources, for example), but often, the answer is “I just don’t like it.” “It’s not me.” “I really don’t care what the numbers say, this is what makes me feel comfortable.” I walk away thinking, “But wasn’t the idea to improve your website? — what happened to that notion?”

6. Don’t insult your consultant.

I was worked with a client who wanted me to consider his way of doing things. It was an interesting idea, he had. But still, I was absolutely shocked when one of his lieutenants sent me an email, musing that rational people don’t like to be open minded. “Right,” I thought cynically before deleting it without replying, “That’s absolutely the way to get your consultant to work hard for you — insult them.”

Many thanks to the brilliant mind who suggested this topic.

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

Blogger did an update yesterday (scheduled for the same day as an update of Google Groups.) My feeds are not working now for new subscribers (at least on my computer - I would love if someone else would try it and send me email or just comment) and I can’t even complain about it on the Blogger Google group… Another good reason to get off Blogger.

Sorry.

Robbin

For anyone in the blogosphere who has been living under a rock (that must be hard to do at the same time), there is a game of blog tag going on. The idea is, you tell five personal things about yourself and then tag five other bloggers to do the same. June Li tagged me but I am ready to turn the game upside down now. (No offense June, and your article on Mountain Dew not owning their own chatter was excellent.)

Let’s face it, readers really don’t care whether I hate my mother-in-law or that I got kicked out of the sixth grade for telling the teacher that she was wrong. On the other hand, I am dying to know who you all are. (Well, maybe not dying. But certainly, incredibly curious.)

Every once in a while, I find out who reads my blog. Thrice I’ve gotten emails about things that were broken on my blog. Sometimes I find out by seeing myself in another blog. Sometimes I find out through my role in the WAA (I’m co-chair of the marketing committee), and I’ll be going about my WAA business, working with a volunteer who then volunteers, “Hey, I read your blog.” On Friday, someone sent me a RegEx question.

So, in the same vein that Time Magazine voted you Person of the Year — do tell about yourself in the comments. You don’t have to say how you embarrassed yourself in junior high (so what else is new?) or that your boss doesn’t approve of blog-reading time or anything else personal. Just… tell us who you are. But if you don’t know what to say, or just don’t want to say, maybe you will answer some of these questions:

• What do you like about this blog and/or why do you read it?
• What do you hate about this blog? (I’m a big girl, I can take it.)
• Are you more interested in web analytics posts or conversion rate posts?
• Do you have a Regular Expression that you are trying to figure out (and if so, what is it?)
• If you are one of a handful of people who come to the blogsite all the time but never subscribe — why not?

Well, that’s five suggestions to my five readers, maybe I can feel like I still played the game.

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

So here I am, actually writing my post in the FeedBurner office. I figured that while I was here, I would learn about IE7 and Feedburner.

But first, let’s not forget what’s really important: The FeedBurner offices. Every bit as cool as the company. All the walls are different colors, and the tables are set up like industrial picnic fences. You can feel the energy in the air.

Anyway, John Z, my always-responsive correspondent, explained the issues to me.

The new IE 7 has the ability to subscribe to feeds (just click on the feed button.) But since it’s not a “standard FeedBurner thing,” I couldn’t understand why I was getting FeedBurner statistics showing me that I had IE7 subscribers.

The issue, John said, is about autodiscovery. Many blogs and podcasts have set feed preferences in their source code. That way, when someone goes to subscribe to a feed with IE7, if they have their autodiscovery set up as FeedBurner, they can track the subscription through FB. Blogger users like me are out of luck - Blogger doesn’t support autodiscovery.

So why do I still see IE7 subscribers? When someone clicks on a generic feed link on my blogsite, and they are using IE7 as their browser, IE7 knows that I have a feed (and knows that I have FeedBurner, since that’s the spot that the orange feed link usually goes to), formats it like a feed and serves up the opportunity to subscribe. Like this - see the Feedburner address in the address bar (with their flaming icon)?

Summary: If someone uses IE7 to subscribe to a feed with FeedBurner autodiscovery enabled, FeedBurner always measures it. If someone uses IE7 to subscribe to a feed like mine (no autodiscovery) they have to use the icons on my site, not merely the IE7 icons, for FeedBurner to notice it.

So for all you IE7 subscribers whom I don’t know about: hello out there! (And it is oh! so cold in Chicago.)

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

ps John Z gets all the credit for this post. I am just the journalist here and get credit for all the mistakes.

I consistently am reminded that not all website owners — even ecommerce website owners — have purely financial goals.

Usually, I see non-monetary goals that are about ego or competitiveness. However, I got onto the B&H website yesterday - Saturday - (because they have great prices) and was surprised to see that the shopping cart was closed, but would open at 5:45 pm.

I whipped out my calendar and saw that in New York City, where they are based, nightfall was at 5:08 PM last night. Then I went to Shimon Sandler’s site. He did a piece that I read a couple of weeks ago. At issue were Orthodox Jews who own e-commerce sites and wanted to turn off the sites on the Jewish Sabbath. (This time, I actually noticed that he linked to the B&H site as an example.)

B&H is not a small 10-page website. They have 424,000 pages according to Google. They sent me a 420 page catalog in the mail after I dropped $35 for a jumpdrive and a USB cable there. Online weekend shopping will continue to get stronger as just about everyone has broadband at home, and this is a big (private) company willing to forego plenty of Friday night and Saturday purchases in the name of their beliefs.

Read my other post on this topic: The Web, is it just about making money?

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

This just in: blogging is a genetic trait.

Well okay, the research report, done by podcaster Eric Mattson and professor Nora Ganim Barnes of the University of Massachusetts, didn’t really go there, or at least not that far. They wrote,

An overwhelming majority of the [80] bloggers [in the survey] believe the attitude and behavior associated with having an effective blog can be taught. The challenge, they say is teaching a business to speak in an “authentic voice” regardless of what communications tools it chooses to employ. These bloggers believe that if businesses practice open and honest communications consistently in all their activities, they will be successful, regardless of whether they blog or not.

In the final analysis, blogging is more than posts, links, comments and feeds. Instead, it represents an attitude for interacting with employees, customers and communities. Perhaps it is not so much about having a blog as it is about thinking like a blogger…

It’s true, they really don’t go anyway near the nature argument. But whether it’s nurture or nature, I think that the ability and inclination to write completely transparently and admit to being less than perfect doesn’t come naturally to some people.

Well, don’t take my word for it, check it out yourself. I was surprised to see that it is a $52 download, given that most academic papers are free. But then, I was also surprised to see that I was in the report. Now that I see my name there, I have this distant memory of answering a survey….

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

At the Summit, I heard Avinash Kaushik speak (or as Dylan says, How can you go to the Summit and not hear Eric Peterson and Avinash and Sam Decker?) And as usual, Avinash was wonderful, soon he will have groupies following him around. But I didn’t agree with one thing he said. I wish he were right - making more money for the company and more money for your boss is the road to success. Unfortunately, I feel like all anyone cares about is ego. (To be fair, he did touch on this.)

Customers say, “I don’t care what the right thing to do is, I want to do a better job of what my competitor is doing.” Or they say, at my last company we did it this way [five years ago, a million years in Internet time.] Or they say, my wife|husband doesn’t like it. It’s true, as Avi says, that the person with the largest income gets to decide, but my real issue here is, not only do they get to decide, but they too often decide based on what makes them feel important, not on what makes them and the company more money.

As a consultant, this is a hard place to be. (It is probably even harder as an employee!) I always feel ethically obligated to point out once to the customer that if we do it our way, they will make more money. Then when they say, “I don’t care,” I can say, “OK, we will do it your way.” But sometimes I wonder what they are paying for, doing it their way or achieving success.

I guess it is all in the definition of “success.”

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

ps I promise that I will do Regular Expressions Part VIII soon.