If your reaction to the headline was, “what on earth does Web analytics have to do with my job?” you probably weren’t alone. Web analytics might be thought of as the realm of SEO pros and online marketing teams, but it can be an incredibly valuable tool for PR teams too. In fact, Web analytics can give you insight into the value of PR and the types of business outcomes it helps drive in a way that hasn’t been possible ...

Communications professionals are becoming increasingly savvy about digital media, but far too few companies take the opportunity to tie their PR efforts to business outcomes that can easily be measured through web analytics (e.g., website traffic, new business leads, white paper downloads, online sales, etc.). One big reason is that even the best enterprise web analytics solution can't achieve this on its own. Out-of-the-box reports from Google Analytics, Omniture, Coremetrics, etc., will tell you what blogs and news sites are driving traffic and engagement at ...

If you're attending the IPR Measurement Summit, make sure to check out our talk on web analytics and PR strategy: http://www.instituteforpr.org/education/som_program_content1 // //

Forrester and Google announced the results of their study on trends in enterprise web analytics yesterday and the results suggest that companies are starting to realize that analysts, not software, produce useful insights. The study, which surveyed the web analytics decision makers at 198 companies with annual revenues of at least $500 million, found that 60% of respondents believe that web analytics analysts are more valuable than software and that 52% prefer free tools because it allows them to invest ...

Context recently completed an ROI study for a client, tying online media analysis (e.g., sentiment, key message penetration, product mentions, etc.) to their web analytics. I thought I would share a really top-level finding here, showing that many types of earned media have produced higher conversion rates than Google AdWords. Given most marketers’ strong faith in the highly-targeted nature of paid search, I think these results will surprise some people: // // PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... ...