Tag: Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub

Analytics Strategy

Monish Datta Stays on the Vegetarian Wagon (Sort of) at WAW

Posted on by Eric Peterson

I’ve officially dropped off the first page of results for a Google search for Monish Datta. Further proof that SEO is an on-going process! Monish made a crack last year that this blog was going to start dominating search results for his name. I took his wisecrack and ran with it! “Dominate” has never really happened, but I did briefly climb into the top 5 of organic results a few months ago.

From Monish’s tweets, a handful of us knew he had gone vegetarian a few weeks ago, and no one (Monish included) knew how he would fare at a barbecue joint. As it turned out, he ordered fish, which he said was good enough to count as staying on the veggie wagon. Laura Thieme asked if Monish had actually tweeted about what he was eating. Indeed, he has!

Monish Datta on Twitter

Although I wasn’t cognizant of it as I was reading his tweets, Monish has provided fodder to Twitter critics who equate “tweeting about what you eat” to public navel-gazing. The question is: will he now become self-conscious about it, or, rather, will he go to the other extreme and provide detail at every meal? I’m sorta’ hoping for the latter.

Yes, There Was Actually a Topic Beyond Monish’s Diet and Twitter Usage

This month’s event was sponsored by IQ Workforce. Corry Prohens made the trip to central Ohio to present on what he is seeing on the jobs/careers front for web analysts and search marketers.

WAW Columbus -- August 12, 2009 at Barley's Smokehouse and Brewpub

Highlights of the presentation included:

  • The Good News: internet retailers and online advertising have both continued to grow throughout the current economic downturn
  • The Bad News: there are more people chasing fewer full-time web analytics jobs, and there are fewer remote/virtual office positions and less willingness/need on the part of companies to relocate candidates to fill positions
  • Many people find their way into web analytics as a complement to another role: SEM, SEO, digital media analytics, offline marketing analytics, research/qualitative analysis, BI, etc. Having this complementary skillset clearly identified and articulated can be useful in a job search
  • Contracting has its pros (high demand, usually more money, more flexibility, less politics) and its cons (the need to always be selling, limited “depth” with any project/company, travel often required, administrative headaches, and it can be hard to go back to a non-contracting role)
  • When trying to hire a web analyst, work directly with the recruiter (don’t use an HR intermediary), write the job description yourself, be clear as to “needs” vs. “wants,” and choose a recruiter with expertise in the area you are hiring

A handful of resources that Corry provided for anyone who is looking to more effectively manage their career in web analytics:

My one addition would be WebSight, Stratigent’s monthly newsletter.

Attendees from Far and Wide

As I wandered around the room chatting with attendees, I realized we probably had our widest geographic reach of any of our Columbus WAWs to date:

Locally, we had had attendees from Acappella, AOL, Bizresearch, Cardinal Solutions, Cisco, Highlights for Children, JPMorgan Chase, Lightbulb Interactive, Nationwide, Ohio Historical Society, Real Estates’s SEO, Resource Interactive, Victoria’s Secret, and a few others that I probably missed (note to self: a sign-in sheet would really be helpful!)

We had a good set of mingling/mixing before and after:

Cheng Deng and Todd Greene
WAW Columbus -- August 12, 2009 at Barley's Smokehouse and Brewpub

Dave Culbertson and Steve Krause
WAW Columbus -- August 12, 2009 at Barley's Smokehouse and Brewpub

Monish Datta, Karen Schneider, Bill Carey, Jen Elliott, Andrew Blank, and Steve Colon
WAW Columbus -- August 12, 2009 at Barley's Smokehouse and Brewpub

Noé Garcia and Eric Moretti
WAW Columbus -- August 12, 2009 at Barley's Smokehouse and Brewpub

Franklin Gbenah and Carol Fleming
WAW Columbus -- August 12, 2009 at Barley's Smokehouse and Brewpub

What’s Next?

Our next WAW is tentatively slated for September 16, 2009, but I have yet to secure a sponsor. Let me know if you can help on that front — I’ll pursue any lead!

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Analytics Strategy

Columbus WAW July 2009 Recap — Bizwatch and More!

Posted on by Eric Peterson

We had another great Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday last week at Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub. This month’s sponsors were Bizresearch and the Web Analytics Wednesdays Global Sponsors. We had right at 30 people attending:

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday -- July, 2009

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday -- July, 2009

Laura Thieme of Bizresearch presented on search marketing and the challenges of trend analysis therein. She walked through one in-depth case study and sprinkled examples from other clients into the discussion as well.

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday -- July, 2009

Bizresearch has a product called Bizwatch that, when combined with some fundamental best practices of SEO and SEM, looks like it can yield some handy insights in a hurry! Laura is a self-professed constant tinkerer with her presentations, but I think the one below is pretty close to what she walked us through:

Bizwatch Search Analytics Solving PPC & SEO Problemswith Bizwatchhttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=bizwatchsearchanalytics-solvingppcseoproblemswithbizwatch-090706000851-phpapp02&stripped_title=bizwatch-search-analytics-solving-ppc-seo-problemswith-bizwatch

View more presentations from Laura Thieme.

As the group grows, I’m finding that the evenings wind down and there are people I didn’t even get to say “Hi” to — both new attendees and long-timers. But, some of the discussions I had included:

  • Chatting more in-depth with Chris Dooley of Foresee Results. I’m looking forward to a future WAW when Chris will be challenging the group to think about the offline and post-visit behavior of site visitors and how often that doesn’t get considered by internet marketers. I also picked up a new blog to follow, as Chris mentioned that Kevin Ertell had joined Foresee Results and recommended his www.retailshakennotstirred.com blog. Ertell only started the blog last month, so it remains to be seen if it has legs. So far, his posts look to be pretty in-depth and grounded in real experience. Chris also mentioned that Eric Peterson wrote a white paper for Foresee Results, which had me poking around on the White Papers area of their site — it looks like there are some really good reads there! I’m not sure which one Eric wrote…so I may just have to download several of them!
  • Chris also mentioned a new “session replay” tool that Foresee Results just introduced called CS Session Replay. It sounds like a direct threat to Tealeaf, but it is apparently wayyyyy slicker. I don’t know if Chris (right below) was extolling the virtues of the product to Scott Zakrajsek of Victoria’s Secret or not. They might have just been discussing who put those half-drunk beers down next to the glasses of water they were drinking…

    • Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday -- July, 2009

  • I chatted with Paul Hall of the Mastery Marketing Group about the work they’re doing to drive a “360 degree view of the customer” using data from multiple systems (CRM and other). That discussion led to me bringing up Webtrends, Omniture, and Eloqua all as tools that I know of that have very real capability to do user-level tracking and analysis of web activity.
  • Our “farthest travelled to attend” award (not really an award…just me pondering after the fact) went to Kim Merritt-Butler of TheURLdr.com. Kim was in town from Cumberland, Maryland, and is very interested in getting a similar group started up in the Washington, D.C. area. So, if you know of anyone in that area whom Kim should get in touch with, please let me know and I’ll pass the information along! We were both surprised that there is not already a WAW — even an older/dormant one — in that area already.
  • I didn’t get to chat with him much, but Gareth Dismore could’ve made a case that he’d actually travelled the farthest, as he’s now based in Colorado Springs with SearchSpring. He was back in town for a couple of weeks, and he didn’t move away long enough ago to count. Or so I decided. After the fact. For an award that exists merely as a construct within this blog post.
  • I talked to several people who were new to web analytics — were starting to see it crop up and are attending WAWs as a way to dip their toes in the water (which is a great place to start!). I found myself giving my standard recommendations on that front: Occam’s Razor blog, Eric Peterson’s Analytics Demystified blog, and Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. I know scads of blogs and books have cropped up over the past few years…but these still nail the basics, IMHO.

I wrapped up the evening with a lengthy discussion in the parking lot with Bryan Cristina and headed home thinking Thursday was going to come awfully quick. Then I spent an hour getting my neighbor’s garage door unmangled, as she’d backed into it with her minivan before it was fully open and was leaving on vacation the next morning. I am clearly not as young as I used to be, as I didn’t fully recover until I cratered at 9:45 PM on Thursday night and got in a solid eight hours!

Next month’s Columbus WAW is already scheduled. It will be on August 12th at 6:30 PM, again at Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub. The event is being sponsored by IQ Workforce, and Corry Prohens will be presenting on job hunting and career management in web analytics and search marketing. I hope to see you there!

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Conferences/Community

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday: A Speedy April

Posted on by Eric Peterson

We had our monthly Web Analytics Wednesday meetup at Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub last week. Once again, the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors (Coremetrics, Analytics Demystified, and SiteSpect) sponsored the event, which is always appreciated!

This month, in lieu of a formal topic, Dave Culbertson facilitated a round of speed networking — like speed dating, but with the purpose of driving interaction beyond everyone’s immediate tablemates. Each round lasted for 1 minute, and the main challenge was getting people to stop talking and shift on to the next person! It was a little intense, but Dave cut it off after 15-20 minutes, and the overwhelming consensus was that it was fun and useful!

 April 2009 Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday

April 2009 Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday

At the end of the exercise, Dave commented that he really hoped we could start extending these 1:1 connections and interactions through social media. As it is, Dave (@daveculbertson) is one of the most interesting people I follow on Twitter, especially when it comes to finding and tweeting links to content that I find interesting and informative. We’d actually thought ahead (if “six hours before the event” counts as “ahead”) and made a sign-up sheet that included a space for the attendees to write their Twitter usernames and indicate if it would be okay to post them. I then proceeded to leave the sign-in sheet behind when I left! Something about Barley’s — last month, I left my notebook behind and had to go and retrieve it the next day (2 beers over 2.5 hours plus a full meal…in case you’re wondering — it’s just something in the air there!).

So, instead, we’re broadening our social media presence. Consider joining one or all of the following, depending on where/how you hang out on the ‘net:

  • Facebook — we’ve had a WAW Columbus group there for some time
  • Twitter Group — this was Dave’s suggestion, and I haven’t used twittgroup.com before, but we’ve now got a cbuswaw group there as well
  • LinkedIn — might as well kick it old school, too, so we’ve now got a Columbus WAW LinkedIn group

Pick your poison, one or all!

Overall, the event had a great mix of both practicing web analysts (from companies like Resource Interactive, Highlights for Children, Victoria’s Secret, Lightbulb Interactive, Coldwell Banker, …and I’m just rattling off the companies I can remember, so this is an incomplete list) as well as some web analytics-centric companies: BizResearch, ClearSaleing, SearchSpring, and WebTech Analytics (all the way up from Cincinnati!). And, with a handful of sharp people in the crowd who are currently looking for full-time work, it was great that TeamBuilder Search came out as well! From a quick count of faces in my brain, the attendance broke down to be ~25% first-timers, ~25% loooonnnngg-time attendees, and 50% who have attended 1-5 times before. All in all, a great mix!

The most-interesting-but-random site/tool that I learned about this month was City-Data.com — think The World Factbook, but for U.S. cities rather than for countries! And, with a slew of charts that are pretty clean and provide a pretty good way to get the flavor of a town — weather, jobs, houses, and so on.

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Analytics Strategy

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday: April 22, 2009

Posted on by Eric Peterson

In the interest of not messing with a good thing, we’re returning to Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub this month for our regular gathering of full-time, part-time, and just-generally-interested web analyst types.

We had a great turnout last month, and we’re on pace to match that this month, which means we’re needing to go easy on the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors. Rather than asking them to cover the full bill, we’re just having them cover the food and having everyone be on their own for beverages, which is still a wickedly good deal!

We’ve gotten feedback in the past that it’s good to have every second or third meetup be presentation-free, and this month will be one of those. However, we are looking into doing a little post-dinner speed networking — it’ll be quick, and we’ll find out whether it works or not. The inimitable Dave Culbertson of Lightbulb Interactive is running point on that and has been noodling around as to the best approach. It should be fun!

The details:

When: Wednesday, April 22nd at 6:30 PM
Where: Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub (1130 Dublin Road, Columbus, OH)
I hope to see you there!
And, if you, or anyone you know, would be interested in sponsoring a future Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday, please drop me a line at tim at gilliganondata.com. Our sponsorship flexibility is unparalleled in the industry — think rhythmic gymnastics meets Reed Richards. It’s a great way to get high visibility in a group of elite local marketing professionals. It’s a great way to support Columbus as a hotbed of web analytics thought leadership. It’s good karma.
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Analytics Strategy

A Record-Setting Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus

Posted on by Eric Peterson

It turns out, as I’ve been looking at my records (read: old blog posts), that this month’s Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday marked our one year anniversary, which means it was our 13th WAW. As we were discussing it last night, we thought next month was the one-year mark, but, in a post from last May, I referenced that gathering as our third, and the Internet just doesn’t lie!

It’s only taken a year, but we just might have hit upon the perfect spot: Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub. For a nominal fee, we were able to reserve a room, which gave us some real volume control when we got into the group discussion portion of the evening, and there’s plenty of room for future expansion. As it was, the final headcount was 28 people, which was right around 50% higher than we’ve ever had before. Credit for that goes to:

  • WebTrends, our sponsor for the evening — we finally got some folk to come out who have been meaning to in the past, but haven’t quite made it; some of those people are WebTrends user; unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict, Noe Garcia, the WebTrends account executive who supported our sponsorship request, wasn’t able to make the trip from Portland for the event.
  • Webtrends, who provided the evening’s speaker/topic — John Defoe, VP of Solution Services and A Bunch of Other Stuff, kicked off a discussion about using web analytics data outside of the web analytics environment; more on that in a bit.
  • The Amazing Blanqueras — we had some repeats who discovered us through past WAW promotions on Columbus Tech Life Meetup site, and we again brought in some fresh faces from the site; as Columbus Tech Life grows, so will WAW!
  • Dave Culbertson — ‘nary a WAW goes by that someone isn’t there because Dave ran into them and encouraged them to attend
  • Twitter — a number of people tweeted about the event, but my unofficial observations put Jenny Wells of TeamBuilder Search as the lead tweeter on that front

Other than that, we ran our usual gamut of promotions, and,presumably,picked up people through those channels as well. I’m sure we picked up a person or two who was Googling Monish Datta and wound up on this site (I’m up in the top 5 results for a Google search for Monish — I don’t think I’m ever going to overtake his LinkedIn profile). Feel free to take a crack about a WAW blog post not having definitive data on traffic sources…

As to the topic, John kicked off the discussion by sharing some examples of WebTrends customers who are using web analytics data beyond the web analytics environment:

  • A motorcycle manufacturer who uses web analytics data to score leads (site visitors) before passing them on to their dealers for follow-up — giving the dealers a prioritized list of who is more likely to be ready to buy
  • A media site that uses web analytics data to do an hourly refresh of the “most popular articles” on its home page (which led to a $2 million uplift in ad revenue, if I heard correctly) — I’ve always wondered how much that sort of functionality gets hit by a feedback loop (an article just barely cracks the “most popular” list, but, then, by being on the list, it gets more clicks and remains there), but I didn’t get a chance to ask
  • A company that uses web analytics data for targeted re-marketing via e-mail — identifying what content a person has viewed and using that to tailor e-mails promoting the same or similar products

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Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday - March 2009

John used those examples as a way to launch discussions of where others are using web analytics data outside of the web analytics environment:

  • I chimed in with my experiences with using web analytics data for lead scoring that combines web activity data with CRM information and then pushes the lead score into the CRM system
  • Scott Zakrajsek briefly explained out Victoria’s Secret uses web analytics data for targeted e-mail re-marketing
  • Bryan Cristina shared a Nationwide: Car Insurance example…that I totally missed (um…they’re my employer; you’d think I would’ve paid more attention there!)

The wrap-up thoughts, I think, could be summarized as follows:

  • Soooooo many companies aren’t even trying to do any of these sorts of things today
  • It won’t be long before these sorts of uses of web analytics data will be a must-have rather than a cutting-edge differentiation opportunity
  • It sounds easy enough, but, when you get down to it, getting different systems to really talk to each other (or to build a layer to pass information back and forth between them in a meaningful way) takes some roll-up-your-sleeves hard work and the tenacity to stick with it until it works
  • Having an engaged executive sponsor is darn near a must to pull these off
  • Having someone driving the project who really, really “gets it” makes things go a lot smoother…but outsourcing is a viable option

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday - March 2009

If you’re interested in learning more, it’s not too late to book a trip to Vegas for WebTrends Engage ’09! John’s got a whole session on this basic subject on Wednesday, April 8th.

If you’re interested in sponsoring a future Web Analytics Wednesday, drop me a line at tim at gilliganondata.com!

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