msdanielle - just another ego blog site

In less than two weeks I’ll be on a plane headed for Tokyo! What a crazy thought. I’ve never been to Japan before, surprisingly, since about 90% of my friends have (and I don’t have many Japanese friends). It’ll be mid-summer and I can’t wait for the hot, humid climate that awaits. I won’t mind the approximately 14 hour flight from Los Angeles, seeing as how the trek to Bali was an excruciatingly disorienting 22 hours.

What do I plan to do on my trip, you ask? First and foremost, eat. I plan to eat my way all the way through Japan, from Tokyo to Osaka. I have two weeks to consume as many delectable delights as my stomach can manage. I’m also going to try to document as much as I can, since well, who cares if I look like a tourist. I am a tourist, and I’m Japanese so it’s OK if I take my camera everywhere. Gives me something to post here on my blog.

I’m also looking forward to visiting the amazing temples and beautiful scenery of the countryside. While I plan to do these things, I really have no idea what to expect. Each time I travel it’s such a huge learning experience. It’s humbling, educating, motivating, and just fun!

But I have a question - do you think I should bring my laptop? I know, pretty lame question right? Well, I’m not sure I want to carry it with me, or worry about it. But you never know when it might come in handy, plus I could put all of my pictures onto my hard drive. Again, I know, lame, but let me know what you think. I’m not always going to be in the city, so I don’t know if I’ll have access to communication. The flip argument is that I’m on vacation, and I shouldn’t worry about the rest of the world. LOL

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

As for myself, Yes. Some people can juggle 20 million things and not be distracted while tending to any one particular thing. That’s not me. Let me tell you why.

When I was a kid, I was a pretty good student. For the most part, I got A’s, but it wasn’t easy for me. I tried very hard to study the lessons I was given and finish my homework so I wouldn’t get stink-eye from my mom. I’d read chapters three…four…five times over just to remember the basic information I needed to pass whatever test I was taking the next week. I tried and tried and tried to battle the distractions of the tv, radio, phone calls, and whatever else generated the slightest bit of noise so as to not sacrifice my studies.

Meanwhile my brother would breeze through text books with the tv on, in the middle of the living room, answering the phone and eating all at the same time…and still pass with flying colors. What am I doing wrong? I need to study harder…

Little did I know that I probably had ADHD. During class I’d be the kid with her head in the flip-top desk, rummaging around for something to scribble on, listening to the teacher, and talking to my desk-mate all at once. Really. And when someone walked in the door, it didn’t matter who, I had to look and see who it was. It’s like someone was waving a shiny coin in front of me and I had to look. (If you have ADD tendencies, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) Thinking back on these instances, I was the only one in class that would look up, even if it was during a test. If something or someone was moving, I was immediately distracted. This continued through high school.

Twitter is the mystery person walking through the door. More specifically, the little Twitterrific window that pops open every so often…. Who is it? Why are you here? What do you have to say? Are you here for me? Why won’t you let me finish my test?!

I resisted joining Twitter for a long time and I had a feeling this would happen. It’s so distracting, but I just can’t lock the door. What if they have something really important to say, and they have to say it to me? I want to know. I need to know. I have to know.

Have you unlocked the door for Twitter?

[This has been a dramatization by your friendly neighborhood marketer, MsDanielle. Follow MsDanielle on Twitter at your own risk.]

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

Today I turn 31. Yep, it’s been a whole year since I joined the club. Thirty was a pretty milestone year for me (for many reasons too long to list), but there’s not much about 31 that screams “milestone.” It’s sort of “30 again” in my opinion. The crazy thing is knowing the next huge milestone is 40. Yikes! How would (or did) you celebrate 31?

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

Here’s something you don’t see everyday — Prince getting down on the dance floor in Hollywood. I hit up Deep last night at Vanguard and there he was, gettin his groove on. I snapped one pic and his bodyguard yelled at me, “No pictures!” He looked like he was going to pound me straight into the floor. OK.

He was in town for this past weekend’s Coachella music festival. Here’s the picture I took. Do you see him? I’m not sure who the beautiful curvy woman was though.

Here’s a short video clip I took of him. You can’t really see him, just his long sleeve white shirt bouncing around. It’s loud and distorted so turn the music down if you’re at work or have your headphones on. Just another random night in Hollywood.

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

Do you guys recall the criticism Tracking202 originally received regarding their free pay-per-click ad tracking tool? If not, you can read up on it here. Essentially, their mistake was not that they created a poorly designed PPC tracking tool (offered to PPC managers and affiliate marketers), but that the data managed was to be hosted on their site. Questions of data privacy quickly arose. Without prior trust in the advertising and online marketing community, they were quickly written off by many.

However, Wes Mahler listened to the criticisms (with which I agreed) and they’ve announced the launch of Prosper202, the self-hosted version of Tracking202. You can now download and host the application on your own server without compromising your data. I plan on checking it out very soon, and commend Wes and his team on stepping up and working toward creating a trust in the community.

If any of you try it out, let me know how it goes. I’m interested to hear your feedback. Feel free to send Wes feedback as well, as I know he will appreciate it. [Download Prosper202 here]

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

During the last day of ad:tech I was able to sit in on a session with Google Analytics evangelist and author or Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, Avinash Kaushik. If any of you have looked into mastering Analytics, there is a good chance you’ve heard of him or read his blog. I recommend you bookmark it or subscribe to his feed. He’s an avid blogger and analytics enthusiast, and donates all book sales proceeds to charity.

There were a few resonating points that he made that I wanted to point out. However, before I do that, here is one tip I have for you all when attending conferences.

CONFERENCE TIP

During sessions, if you’re the type that likes to take lots of notes because your attention span is lacking (like mine), take pictures of the slides to help you remember the discussion (remember to turn off the flash or else you won’t be able to see the slides). Not all sessions are recorded or audio-archived. And even if they are, it sometimes takes weeks for them to be posted on the conference site. You might feel silly the first time you do this, but do you really care? You’ll be the one person with actual slide images to help you recall the discussion.

Words of Wisdom:

Take advantage of your site search.

Avinash recommends taking a good look at your site’s search data, if possible. Site search not only helps the navigation of the site for the user, but it also gives you data to interpret. Analyzing your top 20 site-searched terms may show a high degree of variance compared to the web-searched terms that people use to find your site.

Find out what’s changed.

He asserts that your top 25 of anything rarely changes for most sites. Use your reports to find out who’s sending you new traffic and which new keywords are being used to find your site. Check out how to create a “What’s Changed?” report here (additional resource here). It helps you find out which data is actionable (i.e. which sites to create a relationship with, etc.).

Where Analytics is heading…

As marketers, we are constantly seeking ways to track more and more data. Avinash projects that we may see an increase in event logging. This involves setting up goals that are not necessarily determined by page views and clicks. For example, create a video and set up goals for playing, pausing, 25% into the video, etc. (see slide below!). This can be achieved in java, ajax, etc. Creating these types of actions and tracking could eventually lead to the demise of traditional programs like Analytics (which is probably why I can’t find an article on his site about “event logging”!).

Hot tip for new users.

An audience member asked what best tip he would give Analytics newbies, if they had to focus on one area initially. His response: Look at the bounce rate of your web site and its pages, your traffic sources, and your search keywords. Bounce rate is essentially the percentage of users who come to your site and leave without clicking on anything (they’ve literally bounced from your site because it sucks, according to Avinash). It is the low-hanging fruit that can be easily understood and easily fixed first to help increase your site’s page views. What is your site’s bounce rate?

[Thank you to Avinash Kaushik who gave a great presentation and provided very earnest answers during the Q&A session that followed. He also gave away copies of his book for free, which I’ll be reading very soon.]

Resources:

• Avinash Kaushik’s Blog
• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
• Juice Analytics

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

Did any of you receive PayPal’s monthly “newsletter” today? I was cleaning up my inbox and was shocked that they’re emailing their recipients with affiliate deals. Here’s the email in its entirety:

Here are the reasons this irks me:

• I am to receive their “PayPal Periodical newsletter and Product Updates,” which should (in my opinion) contain PayPal related news and product and service updates.
• There is no valuable content relating to my PayPal account or PayPal services in this email. They could have easily included something of value to me, and included the aff links post content.
• The entire purpose of this email is to push sales from users who use PayPal at checkout for these  merchants, not to provide valuable information.
• PayPal is not an affiliate coupon site.

I am also an affiliate of Eastbay and if I fired out an email to everyone who subscribes to my blog with my affiliate links and codes, I bet a lot of people would be pissed off too. I know, PayPal is the merchant and is using the newsletter to send out deals you might not be able to find on their site. I get it. But I have to emphasize this is their monthly newsletter, their one opportunity to reach out to their users, not their coupon feed and I expect they would want to provide some valuable information.

I allow many of my service providers to contact me with updates and surveys since I know the value of keeping the communication channel open, and I like to know if there are changes in their service as well as provide them feedback. I am just especially disappointed with PayPal since their product newsletter appears solely as a means to push sales. As a marketer I feel there are better ways to optimize it and provide value, and as a user/affiliate I feel they’re taking advantage of their right of contact. Disclaimer: This is purely my opinion and I’m not saying PayPal is doing anything illegal. What do you think?

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

Here are a couple video clips I took of the closing keynote session at ad:tech yesterday. Martin Sargent and Gator of Revision3’s Internet Superstar interviewed Kevin Rose of Digg, Kent Nichols of AskaNinja, Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary, and Jeff Macpherson of TikiBarTV. I caught half of the keynote before having to catch my flight back home. There were a couple instances where relevant information regarding ad revenue was referenced, wrapped up in a lot of silliness…good times. My camera ran out of memory so I only captured a few minutes. Hope you enjoy.

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

One thing I really love about conferences such as ad:tech is that it gives us bloggers a chance to meet up with each other in real life! We ate at a wonderfully cozy restaurant called Annabelle’s Bar and Bistro, which was right near the Moscone Center.

I began organizing this meet-up last week and to my surprise there were very few (actually only one) restaurants that could accommodate our party at 7:30pm. I’ve never eaten at Annabelle’s and normally I prefer to go by recommendations but under the circumstances we had little choice other then venturing further away from the immediate area.

Annabelle’s was surprisingly good. I ordered the rib-eye. It’s hard not to order rib-eye when it’s on a menu like Annabelle’s. Medium rare please. It was cooked to perfection and the cheesecake that followed was delicious too. The only minor complaint I had was that the French onion soup was served in a bowl with the cheese sprinkled on the top. Tisk, tisk… But it tasted delicious so I will let this minor detail pass.

If any of you organize a meet up during a conference, I recommend planning ahead by choosing a restaurant and sticking with your choice. Give your guests plenty of notice so they’re also prepared, and just have a great time! Here are some pictures from our dinner — some people I’d met before and some I hadn’t. Thanks to everyone who made it out!

My buddy Bob Buskirk and I. Bob took some pictures of the food, which I think he’s going to be posting!

Wes Mahler of Tracking202 snuck in this candid pic of Ian Lee of HealthCastle and his Editor-in-Chief, Gloria

BCM blogger Greg Morgan and Garrett Gee, owner of Dealoco

Garrett and Wes, newfound buddies. In a strange coincidence, they met previously at the Crunchies in San Francisco!

Me and Ian Fernando. He also got the rib-eye and killed it.

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

I just got out of one of Google’s presentation on Analytics, Measuring and Tracking for Success, where the speaker presented tips on using the most effective measuring reports in Analytics. Tips were very general and did not extend beyond the explanation of existing tools, however we were presented with a short list of useful Analytics resources. If you’re interested in learning how to master Analytics, you may want to bookmark these pages for future reference.

• Avinash Kaushik’s Blog (Occam’s Razor) Google Analytics Evangelist
• Justin Cutroni’s Blog Google Authorized Consultants
  
• Google Analytics Blog The Official Google Analytics Blog
  
• Google Analytics Conversion University
• Site Scan GA Analytics Site Scanner
  

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]