The difference between professionals and amateurs in most disciplines comes down to writing things down. This is because professionals always try to improve what they do - and without writing down what changes you make to your Online presence - and measuring what impact that had - there is no way of continuously improving or even understanding your methods.
This principle is also known as the Deming-Shewhart cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) which is at the heart of pretty much every disciplined approach to DOING STUFF you care to name.
But we will just call it Keeping an Online Marketing Log. And by doing so - and by analysing it alongside your analytics data and conversion measures - you can begin to see what is working for you and what isn't!
These are the sort of things you should log;
- New content (just the primary keywords)
- High-value links established
- Email campaigns sent and basic data (click through rates, unsubscribes, conversions, etc.)
- Significant PageRank changes
- Web functionality changes
- Look and feel changes
- Form, funnel and check-out process changes (even very small ones)
- Online advertising changes and campaign data (site: CTR, CPM, etc)
- PPC campaign changes
- Affiliate marketing arrangement changes
- Social Networking changes
- Changes to promotions and offers
- Basically everything you do to your Digital Assets that you think will make a difference
The more you record, the more you can later analyse as to reasons why you suddenly do (or don't) rank for certain keywords, or have fallen foul of Google, or have suddenly changed your conversion ratio, or are selling more of one type of product, or whatever.
Another way of looking at is this. If you don't write down the key changes dictated by your Digital Strategy, then do you really have one?
The Chilli Digital "101 Online Marketing actions you should take before your business dies" is designed to help you get started with SEO, Email Marketing, Web site management, Social Networks and Digital Asset Optimisation. It is also available via the Chilli Digital Twitter feed and via Facebook. If you want to get serious about Online Marketing, contact Chilli Digital via 020 8241 8818. If the line is busy please try again later.
