Okay.  Let me explain.  Marketers look at the product or service their company is selling, think of the value to their target market, and communicate that value proposition to the customer. I’ve been asking a lot of parents about their experiences with children.  I saw an interesting card in a paper store. (A quaint little store in Shirlington, VA – if you were wondering)  The card read — “Children will ruin your life.”  I posted this picture and asked my friends if this was true.  Most parents thought it was funny and while admitting to the difficulty associated with children, they all said the pros outweighed the cons. They talked about how children enhance and enrich your life and that they couldn’t see life without their children.

I think that to some degree, parents have to market parenting as a lifestyle.  I doubt anyone would say — I have ‘em and DON’T DO IT!!!!

I’m rereading a wonderful (autographed copy) of Competing on Analytics. This is not a web metrics book. It’s more of the case for metrics. This excerpt from the foreward is exactly why companies should care.

“My journey is complicated by the fact that all organizations seek to please the leader, so there is constant pressure to give my otherwise lame and ill-considered views far more gravitas than they deserve. Beware, as this process can feel good and be dangerously addictive… Hence, it is critical to create and constantly cultivate an environment that views ideas as separable from people, insists on the use of rigorous evidence to distinguish among ideas, and includes a healthy dose of people both sufficiently dedicated and skillful to do the heavy lifting.
Gary Loveman, CEO of Harrah’s

… as grandma says, ’nuff said.

I’m up and out today.  I really want to get this third album out.  It’s been at least 3 years since the last one and we’re overdue.  Don’t worry, I can handle multiple areas of focus.  My lil cousin just sent me some beats.  Good looking MK.    Not sure I can call you your family nickname in public.  He’s The Meddling Kid and I think it’s a name worth remembering just fyi.

I have another semi “shout out” to Brianna.  She was at a conference where a speaker talked about the importance of showing your full self.  and not obscuring some talents in work settings, etc…  I thought about that a lot.  I had a hard time talking about my music to my professional colleagues in the marketing world and otherwise.  I figured it was best to keep the identities separate, but I’ve been over that for a while now.  It was a great reminder to stay over it though.

So third album.  In the works.  Really this time.  If you haven’t gotten the first two, find them on itunes, amazon, etc…

madia

Metrics are all the rage now.  Get on board.   As demand for understanding the impact of all this web stuff meets expanded capability in tracking web activity, we find ourselves a little measurement happy.  It’s tempting to create report after report about where people are clicking, who’s tweeting what, and on and on and on.

I’m not going to lecture long because, well that’s not my style.  I’m a bullets and more resources kinda girl, so here goes:

• Meaningful measurement takes time.  If you develop the metrics based on your goals, you will better understand the progress you’re making.
• I believe that measuring also allows you to test different types of content and content delivery.  Don’t be afraid to experiment.
• When we’re thinking about websites, we don’t just want to know how many people went there but did they do what you wanted them to do?  Did they make the purchase, sign up for the newsletter, forward the article?

I’ve been going through a self-paced certificate program on web metrics.  Okay fine I’ve been reading books and blogs and that’s more than a lot of certificate programs.  So there.  Let me share some of my great reads so far:

• Avinash Kaushik is Analytics Evangelist for Google.  He’s written two books, both worth reading:  Web Analytics: An Hour a Day and Web Analytics 2.0.  He also has an awesome blog:  http://www.kaushik.net and you can find him on twitter @avinash
• If you need site analytics, Google Analytics is pretty great, and free.
• Klout.com – Free twitter analytics tool.  Pretty interesting…

Remember, focused measurement can be a powerful tool in helping your organization achieve it’s goals!

Okay folks, hold on to your seats. This is my first post from the iPhone. Yes, it’s like typing one super long text message. So writing straight from the device may be used for shorter posts. With the wp app you can maintain multiple blogs as well.

Here’s the good news. I’m going to post a lot more.