Hello World and welcome to the Marketing: Demystified Blog! This blog aims to shed some light on the different areas of marketing, with a slight bias to Online Marketing and in particular, Web Analytics.
So why did I decide to start this blog?…
I recently organised the London May 2008 Web Analytics Wednesday event (WAWs are designed to bring together anyone interested in Web Analytics for an evening of drinks and Networking) in Conjunction with the eMetrics Summit. Due to not having enough time to run a Web Analytics vendor panel during the day, they had changed the evening’s schedule and swapped out Jim Sterne’s (Founder of the Web Analytics Association) presentation to accommodate the eMetrics 2008 vendor panel discussion.
Eric T. Peterson (Founder of WAWs) speaking at the March 2008 London WAW event
I found out 30 minutes before the start that they wanted me to introduce the panel to the 150 strong audience and also wanted someone from my company (SCL Analytics) to take part on it as we were organisers and sponsors of the WAW event being held that evening. Arriving with a couple of colleagues relatively new to SCL Analytics, I offered to represent SCL Analytics on the panel. The panel consisted of some of the leading minds in Web Analytics (including representatives from Omniture, Google, OX2, iPerceptions, Coremetrics, ForeSee Results and Stratigent LLC), so to say it was a daunting prospect is a slight understatement.
If I am honest, I ended up struggling a little to actively partake in the discussion, but I did come away feeling quite positive, as everything these industry leaders said (some of who had been doing this for ten years plus) made a lot of sense and reflected a lot of my own thoughts on Web Analytics and the state of the industry today.
Emetrics Summit/WAW London May 2008 Vendor Panel Discussion (I’m on the far left)
I came away with the feeling that I have a fairly good grasp of online and Web Analytics and this was one of the primary motivators for this blog. To further develop my understanding and offer a place for me to get my ideas and thoughts down on paper - hopefully next time a vendor panel discussion comes my way, I will have more confidence in my ideas to actively participate and answer some of the audiences questions.
I’d been thinking about setting up a blog for some while now and some secondary inspirations came from a desire to understand how to set up a website from scratch. I have learnt a lot about websites and writing HTML while at SCL, but not really had that much exposure to the back-end and building a website from the ground up.
I thought that registering a domain, organising web hosting, setting up a blog, setting up tracking for it, editing CSS, using FTP packages and writing regular content would give me a greater understanding websites and also provide me with a playground to test out some online marketing techniques, such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), to try and drive some relevant traffic to the blog.
Inspiration also came from Avinash Kaushik who writes a very interesting and engaging blog on Web Analytics and in particular a post he made recently on the Benefits Of Blogging - A Practitioner’s Perspective.
I also thought it would be nice to hopefully makes some new friends along the way and build up some dialogue with regular readers (if I can manage to hold your attention for long enough). So hopefully you enjoy reading this blog and find parts of it interesting and useful and I will do my best to keep it up-up-date with some regular posts!
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Mostly this is a test of the comments, wondering if I need to register and if my site URL will show-up in a link that I can use to leach pagerank from you.
Um - that’s about it really.
Bob Mitchell
May 25th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
[...] Read the original: Inspiration Behind the Marketing: Demystified Blog [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Welcome the the blogosphere Chris! I look forward to reading your posts.
-Avinash.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Hi Avinash,
Thank you for the kind welcome and for helping to inspire the creation of this blog!! I look forward to the challenge ahead of me, in becoming a fully fledged blogger…
-Chris
June 12th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Hi Chris,
Im kinda hurt that I didnt get a link on your blogroll, and I bet Bob would love one too
Im impressed with the posts so far, very long and in depth. Well done for jumping on the blog bandwagon im sure it will help you out in the long run for a long time, I know mine has given me a boost a few times.
Anyways I hope everything is working out for you and wish you all the best.
Matt