Today the question on every companies mind is “Is Social Media Worth It?”. Dominos pizza would tell you “Yes” without hesitation.

Last week a video leaked out of two Domino employees doing revolting things to a pizza. Although claiming to be a hoax, the video got millions of views within minutes as it went viral on twitter and other social sites. The video is currently unavailable due to copyright claims done by one employee, but unfortunately for Dominos pizza the damage was already done. CNN has covered the story as well saying the employees have been sentenced to jail time.

Outraged at the video, people on all social media sites (mostly Twitter) were asking Dominos what was going on and how they would counteract this. Once again, unfortunately, Dominos was not on Twitter to discuss what was going on and how they would make things better. Dominos was doing and saying things but just not covering social media sites.

The President of Dominos pizza in the US did make a you tube video to discuss the measures being taken.

However, Dominos biggest failure in this viral disaster was that it was not on Twitter to pick up what was being said about them. So the lesson of the month is that Social Media is not just about viral marketing but for customer relationship as well. Especially relevant when there is an online crisis!

Realizing this, Dominos has reacted positively and set up a twitter account, which has over 1,000 followers already, and they are communicating about the issue openly. If you notice that their twitter name is dpzinfo it’s because they also failed to secure their company’s name on social media sites (highly recommended) and someone else has squatted on their name.

It seems companies would rather learn the hard way. Social media, although time consuming, can save your company at the end of the day. A good start to recovery by Dominos but they are another example for all companies out there to realize how powerful Social Media is.

View what people are saying now on Twitter about Dominos.

Which one sounds more true?

People trust a Robot
People trust a logo
People trust a human being.

Ok so maybe neither really sound the best but let’s put it this way. What is the common theme behind all of the above. Human influence. Humans had to make robots and company logos. Humans are behind everything that we create, especially on the web. So why are we hiding behind fancy designed logos and pictures?
It has been scientifically proven that people like people. A familiar face is far more affective than a company logo when trying to engage in conversation, or anything for that matter. After all, we are social beings. The day we are born we have the innate capability of facial perception, even after many years of no exposure. It’s a fact people forget patterns easily, such as those in logos and advertising, but faces are much easily remembered, “I recognize you from somewhere..” So why don’t companies take advantage of this?

Well, I know a few people have said that when it comes to social media especially it’s easier to designate a logo to a company as opposed to a face because for one, logos are timeless, two, faces age and three, people sometimes change ownership. These pose a problem. So what can we do about it?

Well for starters not all is lost. There are a few options that companies can take into consideration.

1.    FACE: Put a face up. Ok sure maybe you will have to update it every 5 years to show those wrinkles and white hair, but in reality that’s what people want. Humans. Nothing that looks fake or intimidating. A nice big old-fashioned smile in a photo does wonders. It gives relevance and creates trust. It makes a reader think “ Ok I am dealing with a real person and they mean business”. If you are changing ownership, honesty is a great way to keep that trust going. A message to say that the face will be changing won’t affect following, as long as quality stays the same. Big company? Many owners/partners? One picture with everyone in it is still as affective or individually written blog posts (like Wolf21 does).

2.    LOGO:  Ok, so if you really don’t like the idea of a picture, then putting your company logo is fine. How you can make it work for you is by writing your blog in first person. This gives your blog a better feel to it, as if someone is talking and giving information. It adds relevance. A company logo might have reader’s think it’s a bit cold, but by writing in the first person you can add a bit of personality, which will give it some warmth. Once again giving room for trust and that illusion of a one-to-one conversation with a real person.

Make it social, make it relevant.

On Thursday, Google announced their  Google Analytics Channel on YouTube. From basic to advanced analytics, you can now learn it all on YouTube. I watched a few of their videos over the weekend and they are very informative and very easy to follow. As we look ahead into 2009, staying ahead of your competitors by improving your return on investment (ROI) numbers will be mandatory. Google analytics is a great tool to start you in the right direction.

You may have missed the Google Analytics seminar in Montreal on Monday December 8 th and 9th, however, they are coming to Toronto in April 2009. You can keep track of the registration date and review the training material on your own or check get an RSS feed from the Wolf21 blog as we will be blogging about the seminar when the date is set.

With return on investment (ROI) on everyone’s minds during these difficult economic times, you need to stay ahead of your competition by making every penny count. There is no better place to start than Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that provides a ton of information and statistics that, if installed and interpreted correctly, will provide most of the answers you are seeking about your website’s strengths, weaknesses, and overall performance. So if Google Analytics is so great, and so free, why would anyone pay to utilize a website activity tracking program? Well, there are a couple of reasons that might make you decide to shell out some of your budget towards a paid tracking tool.

One major drawback to Google Analytics is that it does not store historical data for you. If your website, perhaps the coding or the tagging encounters problems or changes that interrupt Google Analytics, you can lose a lot of data. Forever. With a couple of paid programs out there, however, you can retrieve that lost info without problem.

On Linkedin a little while ago, I actually read a conversation about how the tagging on someone’s website had, for some unknown reason, been changed and as a result Google Analytics had stopped capturing data. They ended up losing a whole bunch of unrecoverable data.

At a conference a little while back, Tim Armstrong, SVP, Google, admitted that Google Analytics needed to improve upon capturing ROI. This is not new information; anyone that makes a living providing online marketing help can tell you that tracking and measuring ROI is not as easy as pasting some code on a client’s site. We also know that this is not an issue that is unique to Google Analytics. Every program out there has its strengths and weaknesses. I am hopeful that Google will improve Analytics ability to measure ROI soon. Until then, however, many of us are utilizing a combination of Analytics and other tracking programs to in an effort to provide data and ROI measurement to clients.

Many SEO Experts agree that Google Analytics is one of the most useful free tools available in our industry. It is free, easy to install and easy to use. There is so much information that, if installed and interpreted correctly, it would be near impossible not to improve several aspects of a website under evaluation.

It is not, however, always easy to interpret Google Analytics data. This is especially true for the average small business/website owner. Let’s consider the page views section.

Many people look towards the page views section of Analytics to gauge viewer engagement. It is commonly thought that, the higher the page views, the more actively engaged the viewers are with the site and the more likely the viewers are to contact/purchase/return. While this may be true for some sites, it is not necessarily true for all sites.

So, if a high page rank is not indicative of a higher level of user engagement, what exactly is it telling us? Well, a high page rank could be an indication that your website is not well laid out. This is especially true for ecommerce sites. In all likelihood, viewers are having a difficult time finding exactly what they are looking for and, as a result, are having to delve more deeply into your site than they would prefer.

A better indication of user engagement would be to 1. Take a look at bounce rates and 2. Implement well designed goal funnels then track your abandonment rates. If either of these two numbers is higher than you are comfortable with, it is time to decide how to alter your site so that you are achieving the right engagement / higher conversions.

If you’re not capturing and measuring your web site’s performance it’s costing you money!

Why do I make such a bold statement? The reason is simple… why do you have a website? – To get more business of course! (Presumably this would be the answer for 99% of corporate website owners). The next question is … how are can you get more business from your website? – One of the answers to this question is by capturing your web site’s usage statistics. But that would cost a lot of money or be a huge amount of work you say! So how does one set about to capture website statistical data and measure a web site’s performance? Well there is an easy and best of all it’s FREE! It’s called Google Analytics. Google is one of those wonderful free killer apps from the good folks over at Google. Setting up Google Analytics on your website requires three things: a) Register for a Google Account (you can use any existing email account) b) Sign-up for Google Analytics c) load the a few lines (the Google Analytics tracking code supplied by Google) code to the bottom of every page on your website. See below for an example. Sit back and watch the statistics accumulate! I will delve deeper in the setup and usage of Google Analytics in future blog posts.

The snippet of code to be added just before the </body> tag on each page of your website.

Note: You must get this code from Google Analytics as they will assign you an account number when you sign up.

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);

document.write(“\<script src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’>\<\/script>” );

</script>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(‘UA-9999999-1);

pageTracker._initData();

pageTracker._trackPageview();

</script>