Kaizen Marketing through Analytics

Why is HitTail the perfect complement to whatever analytics system you use today? Some folks will say real-time analytics isn't important, but I'm telling you that it IS important by how it immerses you into the actual pulse of your site. For example, if your site hits the homepage of Yahoo, you know it in seconds, rather than the next day, after your servers have already been taken down. Now not everybody lands the homepage of Yahoo, but the same principle applies to if you get a single link from a single site--wouldn't you like to reach out to them moments after they've established the link?

Another benefit of real-time data is just sitting there watching your search hits scroll by as they occur tunes you directly into the minds of your audience--in a way next-day statistical reports simply can't. You are directly plugged into the minds of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of web travelers RIGHT AS they're doing their thing. The image that comes to mind is The Matrix, watching all the green code scroll by, and seeing the woman in red amongst it all. But the difference here is that the people scrolling by are REAL searchers, and you can voyeuristically watch them do their thing. This EXISTS TODAY, and is sort of a Zen marketing state that HitTailers know well--contemplating the black river of keywords.

If HitTail wasn't the and must-have second piece of tracking code based on it's real-time feedback alone, then the way it provides actionable data without the chart fuss that cause paralysis through analysis should cinch the deal. HitTail is the paralysis cure, because you simply move left-to-right across 4 tabs and follow a recommended, proven, route (indeed, nearly mindless) process to improve your site. The process is scientifically built on William Edwards Deming's principles of total quality management (TQM) and the Japanese concept of Kaizen, wherein you take HitTail's writing suggestions and engage in the website content release/feedback/release/feedback cycle immediately. It also works with PPC.

HitTail fills the desperately needed gap in marketing for a tool that dispenses with nonsense reports and jumps right to the bottom-line of what you should be doing to improve your site from a content-standpoint. It quite literally turns your entire website into a giant suggestion box that your audience unwittingly uses every time they visit you via search. The suggestions can be immediately plowed into either new website content in (usually) blogging software for the organic or natural search engine optimization (SEO) approach, or into long tail AdWords campaigns, that result in remarkably low cost-per-click (CPC), high click-through-ration (CTR) and a large number of total clicks. The snowball effect should ensue. None but a few marketing gurus in the PPC industry gurus ever noticed this effect.

Bottom line--no matter what your primary analytics package may be, be it Omniture SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics, WebTrends, Yahoo's IndexTools, Microsoft's Gatineau, or whatever--the must-have second piece of tracking code that should go on your site is HitTail, due to the benefits of real-time data and immediately actionable writing suggestions and super-charged keywords for AdWords campaigns.

Total Quality Management (TQM), Kaizen and the Suggestion Box

OK, just one quick blog post today, as I dive deep into my work. I likely won't be checking email much today, or taking phone-calls, as I have to finish some very large deliverables for a client. But I wanted to get a post out on one of the topics that has been coming up over and over.

Yes, HitTail suggests what to write about.

Yes, HitTail does this based on the existing activity on your site.

Yes, blogging software helps--particularly the long archive and index pages.

But exactly HOW this process works has not been sufficiently addressed. We've been referring people more and more frequently to this diagram.

So, as you see, "seed" content is required to get the HitTailing process going. If you don't have a product, you don't have a product to improve. There needs to be a website and pages there in the first place. Yes, we understand HitTail is a tempting way to "start the build", but you must start the build using your own imagination, expertise, or other keyword suggestion tools, like WordTracker or the inventory suggestion tools.

Get out about 100 seed posts.

And once your site is seeded, HitTail will start issuing suggestions. And you can focus on constantly improving quality, by "answering" the suggestions popping up under the Suggestions tab, as surely as if it were a Suggestion Box! But if your suggestions are not good enough, then maybe it's time to "spiral out" to new concepts, such as I am doing with this post. I have mentioned Edwards Demming, TQM and the Japanese concept of Kaizen plenty. Yet, very little hits based on it. Consequently, this is a post to remind everyone that HitTail isn't merely analytics software. It's part of a website total quality management campaign.

Of all these Wikipedia links, I most suggest reading the entry on Kaizen. Pay attention to the continuous improvement in tandem with a respect for people.

This is why you take HitTail suggestions to build natural search traffic, but ONLY when they make sense in the context of your site, and REALLY DO improve your website. This post is a perfect example. I need to get these keywords into a headline, but I'm not going to waste your time. Now, you know why Japan made a massive economic comeback after WWII, and how these concepts translate directly into website management and online marketing techniques today.

Selling The Dream - Voice Above the Din

Selling The Dream is my all-time favorite Guy Kawasaki book, probably because it's the first time I was introduced to his brand of evangelical marketing, at a time that I thought I could really change the course of computing history. I was a student intern with Commodore Computers at the time the second generation Amiga Computers came on the scene--a kooky, ahead-of-it's-time creative platform. It didn't hurt that when I picked up my first copy of the book, it contained a surprise signature by the author, which I later found to be authentic, based on a signed letter Guy returned to me a few months later, as I was trying to entice him to help me lead a stockholder revolt. Unfortunately, this chapter in my life didn't have a happy ending, as the demise of Commodore (as we knew it) was a forgone conclusion, and I was just along for the ride as it played out. What a heart break.

How does this relate to HitTail? Hold tight. We're getting there.

Anyway, Selling The Dream, is an under-billed book on the Internet, probably because it pre-dated the popular Web, and reads a bit antiquated today, now that social networking and blogging has filled a lot of that evangelism space. Today, The Art of The Start gets most of the attention. But it's Selling The Dream that taught me about passionate business, and clear thinking. And those are two critical elements of effective HitTailing, and the line that clearly delineates our users from AdSense spammers. Our registered users are often social causes and independent small businesses. They are folks who need to raise their voice above the blogging masses. HitTail sites are full of passion and purpose. And the posts are well-thought out steps in a plan to achieve niche dominance.

In other words, HitTail is helping to sell the dream.

HitTailers are a bunch of Guy Kawasaki disciples and don't know it. We are creating passionate users. It occurs to me every time I see another blogger post that they love HitTail, even though analytics software has been around forever, and been free for quite some time. Why then, does HitTail inspire folks to spontaneously evangelize it? It's because there has been a disconnect, until now, between the gathering of information from your Website visitors, and your ability to turn around and use it. It should be an almost automatic process, with the website owner "getting into the zone", listening to what their website is trying to tell them, as if reading entries dropped in a suggestion box. When the suggestion is good, the website owner is enabled to act upon it almost immediately, making a much tighter spiral development cycle than was possible in the past--in a process that has more in common with Edwards Deming's TQM or Japain's Kaizen than Web development.

So, thanks Guy, for helping me sell the dream.

And to all the HitTailers out there who are reading this, I'm not so much promoting a book, as I am a way of aligning one's true nature to one's endeavors in life. The Internet is a remarkably enabling technology. Theoretically, we are approaching a point where, as Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, might put it, infinite consumer demand is being met with infinite supply. But that supply isn't the mega-stores. It's you. People liked to bust on Time Magazine's naming of "You" as the person of the year. But they nailed it. But it's not just posting YouTube videos to change the course of elections. It's finding your market, no matter where in the world your customers might be located, and having the ability to raise your voice above the din (with HitTail, of course).