You cannot make effective decisions without good data. Here are several tools that are indispensable in dealing with many web challenges for me:
WebCEO
Use For: Making decisions on SEO vs. Pay Per Click advertising, estimating traffic from ad campaigns, managing links, search submission and idiot checking SEO on web pages.
Do not Use For: Advanced SEO.
Yahoo Analytics
SinceRead the Rest…

You have a company profile. Customer service is on Twitter. Maybe you have a fan page.

Have you ever bought an ad?

No?

In case you were wondering, all that wonderful sharing and content was built with one objective:

Sell ads to people like you.

So, why are you playing with end-user stuff instead of focusing on selling something?

Probably because your social media guru told you, “Ads don’t perform well on Facebook or LinkedIn.”

Just in case you already don’t know, here’s Facebook, LinkedIn and other’s social website’s main line business plan:

1. Create a lot of visits and page views with social content.
2. Capture incredibly detailed user profiles.
3. Get paid for running highly targeted ads to millions of users.
4. Profit.

Did you notice that Facebook’s business plan is not sending free traffic to your fan page?

So, why is it that you aren’t advertising on Facebook and LinkedIn?

Two questions:

How much have you spent building up your email list?

If you had to start over, how much would it cost to rebuild your list?

Unsuccessful marketers view their mailing list as an accumulation of people that didn’t buy right away. As a result, the list has little value and can easily be replaced for less than was spent to build the list.

Successful marketers view their list as rocket fuel for growth. The list is directly responsible for future growth. It’s marketing’s answer to operation’s new material handling system or accounting’s shiny new ERP system.

In short: a good list costs a fortune to replace because it can generate a fortune in sales.

The question for you:

What is your email list worth?

A while back, I asked a bunch of web analytics experts what it is they valued most in their analytics software: accuracy, real time or ease of use.

Most said Accuracy.

Which is breathtakingly stupid. Apparently a lot of experts don’t get one of the basic rules of web analytics that was true in 1998, and is still true today:

There is no such thing as accuracy.

So why is it that Web Analytics Sofware isn’t accurate?

In short, there are three ways to track web visitors, and each have their faults:

Pixel Tracking: A 1×1 pixel graphic is displayed and logged from the analytics server. Here’s the problem: ad blockers, misbehaving caching proxy servers and privacy software (aka anti-spyware software) “eat” these pixels by blocking the request for to display them.

JavaScript and Flash Trackers : A small script or flash piece is ran on each page that sends information to the analytics server. The problem: privacy software aggressively blocks theses methods as does turning off JavaScript. Oh, and for Flash, if Flash isn’t installed (it isn’t on 100% of smart phones and about 8-12% of browesrs), Flash is useless.

Server Side Log Files: Ha, you say, I track my site using my server’s log files. Well, that’s great except for the fact caches, both on the browser and in caching proxy servers both make hits dissappear.

In short, web metrics aren’t exactly bult around accuracy. That does not mean they are not useful (more on that soon).

Building social media profiles is a genuine time sink. This innovative service will build social media profiles for you by having you fill in one online form, then having a social media expert build  social media profiles on 25 different sites  for you.  Social media profiles are entered by hand and include three jobs, three schools, your contact info, personal statement and profile photo.  The entire process takes two to five business days to complete.

What makes this service especially innovative is that all of your social media profiles (except those that don’t support Ping.fm) are connected to a Ping.fm account. Ping.fm is a tool that lets you post status updates, short messages, blog posts, photos, and videos to all of your profiles with a single message. Instead of spending 45 minutes posting, you log in to ping, pop in your message and you are done.

I’m excited to share our first social media product. It’s pretty simple:

• We’ll completely set up 25 social media profiles for one person for $95.
  What’s included, how it works and detailed pricing is available here.

That should save about eight hours of time, plus we’ll get it right, guaranteed (that means we’ll fix it, or if we can’t we’ll give you your money back).  The basic idea is simple: we do the work so you can go to your meeting, save the universe, or go home early.

In short, it’s a set of tools for social media users. Doing repetitive tasks is not something that most people enjoy. We’re a little funny. Being former employees of the Department of Redundancy Department for a large divison of the Department of Defense, we like repetition and monotony, and nothing is more repetitious than managing social media websites.  So we figured we’d make a few tools available to you that might let us do the boring grunt work while you go out and get the next blockbuster deal, go out and party or just feed your pet hamster.