Ever wanted to know just how well a campaign has gone? This great service from CrazyEgg.com can show you analytics in a whole new light and it’s FREE! Well not completely free, depending on your traffic volume requirements.

This service is great for optimizing landing pages or looking at increasing your advertising revenue if you are a publisher.

So how does it work?

• Sign up and create an account
• Enter in the URL page you want to track
• Insert the tracking code on that page
• Start tracking - it’s that easy

The difference between crazyegg.com and other services is that it offers so many variations to visualise your data and it’s LIVE data too.

1. Heatmaps - this is a great way to picture where the people are clicking on your landing page. It gives you an instant visual impact or ‘hot spots’ on that particular page
2. Confetti - shows you where the clicks are coming from, the volume of clicks, search terms and much more. Confetti is a great way to visual the various colours and where they are mostly congregated on the page
3. Overlay - this element shows you the volume of clicks that were generated on the page, either it be the buttons on the page, images or forms and also gives you a breakdown in % volumes where the people were referred from
4. List - this shows you basically identified objects (meaning main pages) that have been clicked on and also unidentified (which in most cases means links or buttons). It will also give you a % volume on the popularity of that object

Other great advantages that include in the paid version of the service is that you are able to share the data with clients, bosses or friends. You can also block certain IPs if you feel suspicious of them. Also have crazyegg.com send you notifications via email or RSS, this can help you keep on track of your campaign or advertising.

I’ve been using this service for just over a month now - and I think it’s great. It’s simple and easy to use and gives me the data that I need in order to help my clients achieve their goals. So thumbs up and let’s hope they keep improving their services.

Popularity: 73%

You may have already heard of the term before SMM (social media marketing) or not. But I’m most definitely sure you have heard of Social Networks such as Facebook and MySpace. As humans, we are a social lot, the need to communicate with other people is becoming more popular and essential in order to keep in touch with the outside world. We have become so time conscious and the need to do things faster and easier seems overwhelming, social networks fill the gaps in where we left off.

So you are a business and looking to tap into the Social Network world. You want to learn how to tap into the minds of millions of people and sell your products or services to them. THINK AGAIN. If you think that Social Networks are a way to generate revenue for your business - think again. BUT if you are looking to improve and increase brand awareness or develop your backlinking then you are in the right place.

Social Networks are fantastic for generating buzz, sharing ideas and getting everyone on the same page.

So let’s take an example case scenario to explain this in more detail for you:

1. You are a pet store owner and sell various products
2. You have a new website and have started selling your products online
3. You need traffic to your site and need to get people through the door

There are a lot of things that you are already doing to generate traffic like SEM & SEO and you have also invested money in other areas like email marketing, but you want to communicate with more groups and reach a wider demographic than just locally. So how do you do this?
Having a blog is usually the first place most people start. Writing about keyword specific topics about pets is where you should start and becoming an expert and sharing your knowledge about pets is very important, as it builds credibility and helps with reputation (branding).

• Join various social networks and create your own profile
• Create or join networks that are around your desired topic - in this case - pets
• Also look at forums - they are also very useful in finding people and discussions relating to your topic
• Engage with people and start building resources and backlinks to your website that is related to your topic

This is a lot of work and in some cases can take a long time to do, as a lot of research is involved and building trust and credibility doesn’t happen overnight either. And it can also be hard to control how people will link to your site too. But in a nutshell these are the basics of Social Media Marketing, though there is a lot more to it than this - like Social Media Optimization - though I will explain this in my next post.
So keep your eyes peeled and start getting out there and creating some BUZZ!

Popularity: 61%

Recently, Google Japans homepage had some changes that might not seem too major to most, but these changes represent the first time Google has added graphical links directly to the homepage of any one of its country sites!

Google is now becoming a destination and not just a search engine, something that, until now, it has always stayed away from doing. This has always been Yahoo’s market. Googles new steps, to become more of an integrated destination, are a sneak peek into what the search giant will look like in 12-18 months time.

What does that mean to the rest of us?.. To be honest, who knows at the moment. Google is growing in so many ways, with so many different properties, that its impossible to tell what difference any one of these is going to make at the moment.

Stay tuned, i will post more thoughts on this as i see these changes roll out.

Popularity: 55%