WVU IMC Analytics & SEO Practice

Online Data Reporting: Take it from “What a mess!” to Whatagraph I’m going to be up front with you: I am not a data fan. I don’t like studying numbers, I don’t like comparing them, and I certainly don’t like reporting on them. I am a language person. My main strengths are writing, editing, and creating whatever form of messaging my company or client needs. Ask anyone in public relations or communications and they’ll tell you the same thing: I don’t do numbers. However, we language people can’t live in a bubble of denial, either. Our roles are becoming more integrated with marketing, sales, content producers, development, website SEO, etc. Many of us already perform in roles that incorporate two or more of these discplines. Even job titles of these professions are changing as skill demands grow to keep up with the ever-widening digital landscape and content mountains companies must conquer.   That means it’s essential for everyone in a company who has a hand in producing...

Determining How Social Media Works for Your Business A case-based example on the differences between popular social channels Social media is indispensable for most businesses in this fast-paced digital era.  Companies that have been around since before social media may get by OK if their customer base is late Generation X, Baby Boomers and Matures.  Those generations are digital immigrants and probably became regular customers before social media took a dominant role in human culture. But if a company is just starting out, getting set up with at least a couple social channels is pretty much a requirement, if only to grow brand awareness and mark a place within your industry’s competition. Here are some charts from Statista that show data on social media usage in the United States.  The first chart shows which age groups are using social media, and the second shows which platforms those age groups are using: Now, the four social networks listed are not th...

Return visitors: Who are they and why don’t they buy your stuff? One of the easiest website metrics to track is return visitors . Return visitors cleanly show up on the website analytics dashboard as a topline metric.   But one of the hardest things to do with return visitors is turn them into customers. Having return visitors is great. It means they like a website or brand, they help keep the traffic up, and maybe they’re even engaging with the brand through email or on social media. But, if they’re not buying anything (or, for nonprofits, donating), why are they really there? Many companies struggle with this reality. They’re trying to figure out, “What’s the key to conversion for returning visitors?” The blog post from shopifyplus lists these three essentials for understanding and converting return visitors: According to shopifyplus, for ecommerce, most website traffic is return visitors. This means there’s a ton of potential customers, but companies can’...

How Neil Patel uses referral traffic to create surges in his own website traffic & build his brand Neil Patel is a dominant leader in the entangled world of search engine optimization (SEO). He has proven strategies for every aspect involved in managing a website that achieves a business’s online goals. Through his web analytics expertise, he manages to untangle everything to produce clear, actionable strategies and tips for every way to optimize a website and reach whatever goals brands set forth. In one of his very detailed, example-rich blog posts , Neil Patel explained how to leverage a variety of sources of referral traffic to boost one’s own website traffic, and consequently, the brand. Referral traffic is that directed to a website from another internet source. Examples of referrers are social media posts, press releases, review websites, and others. This is so valuable that there are actually companies dedicated to researching the best ways to boost referral traffi...