One of the keys to making logical data driven decisions about your site’s marketing is to know how the things you’re doing (starting a new ad campaign, social media effort, changing a landing page design, adding a new site feature, etc.) are affecting your site’s traffic trends. A simple way to keep track of these actions in Google Analytics is to add them as annotations on any over-time graph in your reports. You can make these private or share them so everyone in your company with access to your reports can see them.
Here’s how you add an annotation:
Within your analytics account, click the little tab beneath the timeline:
You’ll see any prior annotations you’ve created (though if it’s your first time, which it would be if you’re reading this, there won’t be any prior annotations!), and you’ll see a link on the right labeled “+ Create new annotation”.
Type your notes, choose your sharing/private options and that’s all there is to it! Easy but invaluable in terms of correlating traffic trends with your traffic-driving initiatives, on and off your site.
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Back in July, as I was about to plunge into a fall marathon training program, I decided to skip it instead and work on running the same number of training miles, but with a far different goal. Instead of working on distance, I wanted to work on speed. And while the experiment’s far from over, it seems to have worked so far. On Aug. 12, I ran the Cigna Elliot 5K in Manchester 47 seconds faster than my prior 5K best, which had only improved by a few seconds over the prior two years I’d been focusing on marathon distance.
EXPERIMENTING ON YOURSELF, SET GOALS AND MEASURE
Notice I referred to this training cycle as an “experiment.” I suppose if I had a coach, or had come from a high school or college running background, this would be less of an experiment and more of a time-tested strategic shift. But for me, I read training books, talk to other runners in our club, share info on message boards and DailyMile, and then try and figure out what sort of training is going to work best for this aging body and this incredibly busy life. I set goals, log assiduously, measure and compare similar workouts, routes and races over time. What was I eating, drinking? What temperature was it? Humidity? Sleep? Experiment. Perfect for someone a bit (?!) geeky, on the one hand, who loves data, loves to track progress through cycles and try and figure out what it all means. But on the other hand, in training and in racing, there’s always a moment when the data part goes out the window and it’s just all guts and heart and flinging yourself at the wall as hard as you can. A nice contrast.
THE SCHEDULE
Anyhow, basically what I’ve been doing is logging same number of miles a week (between 45-55), but instead of running the 9-14 mile midweek tempo runs and race pace long runs I would have put in for marathon training, I switched from a 5-day-a-week schedule to 6 days, and built the schedule out of shorter runs with a heavier focus on speed. Without those midweek medium long runs, I was able to hit our Wednesday night track workouts much harder, and run my shorter tempo runs much faster. And I’ve seen major changes as a result, both in terms of my recovery time between hard intervals and the pace I can run them at. Then there’s the August 5K I mentioned – my first race as a 40-year-old and a personal best, 47 seconds faster than the prior PR back in June of this year. I’m hoping to run one more of those this fall and improve again this year.
IN PRAISE OF DOUBLES
The other thing I’ve really come to appreciate in this training cycle are doubles. They work great both in terms of getting lots of mileage in without beating yourself up, and in terms of scheduling. I find it’s much easier to fit a 4-mile easy run in before everyone gets up in the morning, and the a 6 mile tempo run at lunchtime or in the evening, than it is to squeeze in one ten miler. And my legs are much fresher the next day after doubles than they are after a single long run. Skipping midweek long runs wouldn’t work for marathon training, since you wouldn’t be getting the same physiological benefits. Since the longest I’ll be running this fall in one stretch is a half marathon, though, these doubles are a great way to bulk up the base mileage you need to keep building speed, without beating up your legs or your schedule too much. They also make good training for Reach the Beach. I’m running on an ultra team again this year, and I’m running in position 3, which means 6 legs totaling 39 miles in about 24 hours. Doubles, and triples!, make a lot of sense to me in terms of training for something like this.
NEXT
So the experiment continues, and we’ll see how it pans out with reach the Beach in September, the Smuttynose Half Marathon in October, and our newspaper’s fundraising race, the Santa Fund 10K on Halloween. If I ran the experiment correctly, these all stand to be PRs. Then it will be on to the final stage of the experiment, where I see if an increase in baseline speed can translate into a significantly faster marathon next spring!
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- Dropped David and Sofia off for their first day of school. Sofia was just as confident on her first day as David was 2 years ago. Sniff.7:53 AM Aug 25th via txt
- 2010 NEAPNEA Fall Conference Sept. 10, 11; innovative election coverage, digital tools, and Sen. Scott Brown.http://ow.ly/2ukJK 10:19 PM Aug 24th via HootSuite
- Cool! RT @googleanalytics: We’re pleased to announce Weighted Sort! http://bit.ly/bNxDCA #measure #ganalytics#googleanalytics8:20 PM Aug 24th via HootSuite
- Goofy Internet mistakes are nicely bipartisan – check out Fast Company’s Top 10 Political Tech Blunders…http://ow.ly/2uiDn 8:19 PM Aug 24th via HootSuite
- Android has 75K apps to Apple’s 250K, but was top-selling US smartphone platform in 2nd quarter. War escalates. http://ow.ly/2ufuK 5:43 PM Aug 24th via HootSuite
- Interesting… RT @StKonrath: “PaperG’s Flyerboard Adds LATimes, Media News, As Revenues Rise 70% Each Month” – http://ht.ly/2ufek 5:39 PM Aug 24th via HootSuite
- Monetize your UGC community content farm, anybody? Overused digital media buzzwords: http://ow.ly/2ual4 2:52 PM Aug 24th via HootSuite
- Open house at David and Sofia’s school. Where did summer go? 7:56 PM Aug 23rd via txt
- Blogs with ads need to pay $300 fee. RT @mashable: Philadelphia Tax Code Sparks Big Controversy with Small Bloggers - http://mash.to/2tw0N 1:45 PM Aug 23rd via HootSuite
- RT @avinash: Qualitative Web Analytics: Heuristic Evaluations Rock! http://awe.sm/59cZ1 #why #process #bestpractices#youcandoittoo!12:30 PM Aug 23rd via HootSuite
- Web-based project planning tool http://TomsPlanner.com moving out of beta at end of week. Beta users get a year free.9:36 AM Aug 23rd via HootSuite
- Just got my requested access to Google’s Android App Inventor beta… nice! 1:48 PM Aug 20th via HootSuite
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It’s a no-brainer that publishers today have to be prepared to embrace tablets and other mobile device as key channels through people are going to choose to consume content, now in significant numbers and in the near future, in vast numbers. But let’s say, for the sake of speculation, that you’re not the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. You’re working on a different scale in terms of both investment resources and potential customer base. Custom app development for the iPad is expensive (as could be the licensing fees for a custom publishing app like the one the New York Times will be offering), and the number of customers with iPads in your market, or very large advertisers in your market who may be able to sponsor the app, may not be enough to give you a return on investment in development costs. What other options do you have?
“Why bother with the expense of developing an iPad app if it provides an excellent Web experience right out of the box?” asks Mark Toner in an introduction to an August NAA paper on app versus Web decisions for newspaper publishers.
This is one of the key questions that confronts publishers this year. An easy answer to might be money. In surveys, tablet device consumers have indicated they’d be willing to pay for content specifically formatted for their device. How specific does that formatting have to be to trigger that reach for the wallet?
- Could it be a Web site that is tuned to look good both on the Web or on a tablet?
- Or a Web-based app, which wouldn’t look great on a desktop or laptop screen but would look perfect on a tablet and take advantage of the touchscreen and rotation from vertical to horizontal aspect a tablet allows? jQuery and other scripting libraries that are being developed specifically for touch screen interfaces make this very do-able for in-house Web development teams.
- Or a native Web app that accesses all the functions the tablet device has to offer?
But again, these are early days, and with changes happening fast and furious in the market (look at the drastic price swings for ebook readers for example), no one answer is going to be right for every media company. But there will be some universality in terms of the questions small companies have to ask:
Here are seven interesting questions to consider when developing a mobile device strategy:
- What do you want your app to do content or utility wise?
- What do you want it to do business wise? (Make money directly via sales of the app? Sell ads/sponsorships into it? Act as a marketing vehicle? Sell something else, such as subscriptions to another product?)
- Are the template-driven solutions provided by vendors sufficient to your needs? How custom does your app need to be?
- Do you have the programming talent in house to develop a native app?
- If you go with a native app, how does cost of development, then the cut that goes to the iTunes app store, affect the profit margin you’re looking for?
- If you build a Web app, do you have a system in place on your existing Web system that would allow you to require a subscription to access it?
- Do you have the resources to create or enhance content especially for the app, or will its primary selling point be its tablet-friendly formatting?
What are some others?
Tags: apps, iPad, mobile, newspaper, publishing
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From cameras to quality running shoes (you’re not going to run a marathon in cross trainers), there are many example of situations in which specially designed, single purpose tools beat their multi-purpose competitors hands down. Can ebook readers like the Kindle and the Nook, with super crisp screens, light weight and long battery life do the same vs. the multi-use iPad? Interesting piece in the NY Times on this: http://nyti.ms/cqzg7m
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I wrote this piece on fishing with kids for NH.com and it appears on the homepage today. It includes information and links on how to get started, gear, and where to access kid-friendly shoreline fishing in New Hampshire. Also note the photo – David as a wee fisherman a few years back. Hard to believe time goes by so quickly…
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David reads a story on the Silly Bandz fad aloud to his sisters from the Sunday paper’s Parade mag. He should know. Note his arm! Boy, it may have been many years since the “friendship beads” of my own childhood, but in some ways things are very much the same.
Tags: David
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I love the marathon. The preparation for racing this distance is a rigorous test of mind, body and spirit. It requires discipline and strategy, and enduring the training eases and clears my mind to tackle the non-running challenges life presents. But as I found myself finishing up Vermont City Marathon at the end of May, just six weeks after Boston, and immediately planning a training schedule for a fall marathon, I began to wonder if I was getting carried away. And in the long run, if I was hurting my long-term running goals.
Just about the time these doubts surfaced, I got the July/August issue of Running Times in the mail and read the provocatively titled piece by Jonathan Beverly, “The Marathon: A Race Too Far? Is it time to get over the marathon?” My instinct upon reading the title was to say, “heck, no, who’s this crazy anti-marathon guy anyway?” But as I read on, I found myself agreeing with many of the points he made, especially as they related to my own running.
Basically, Beverly isn’t dissing the marathon, or suggesting people shouldn’t run them for the joy of simply finishing them, or anything like that. He’s saying that for someone interested in racing a marathon for a specific time, and who has done three or four times without making too much improvement, and who doesn’t have much more time to commit to training than he had the last time around, there’s another option. Take that 45-to-55 miles a week you were going to use to train to run a marathon at about the same level you ran the last one at, and apply it to training for a 10K instead. This could bring much bigger results. Why be a survival or mid-pack marathoner two, three or more times a year on 55-miles-a-week training, when you might become a competitive, or at least a further-toward-the-front-of-the-pack, 5K runner? During the past couple of years while I’ve focused on learning to run marathons, my 5K PR has only improved by a few seconds. That’s been bothering me… I think I could run faster than that, but marathon training precludes the kind of speed work that would allow me to test that.
How can I improve my marathon times?
And that’s where I found myself as I tried to pick a fall marathon. My last three marathon times, all run within 12 months of each other, were Bay State 3:13:20, Boston 3:12:49, and Vermont City 3:13:06. That’s about what running peak mileage of 55 miles a week gets me. Maybe I can get a bit faster without increasing that mileage, but to really make a big jump, like running a sub 3:00:00 at some point, I’ve got to really improve my turnover efficiency on the speed side, run more miles during the week, and lose some weight.
Three of the reasons I'd rather not try taking my mileage from 55 miles a week peak to 75+ this year...
This summer/fall is not a good one for going beyond 55-mile weeks. I’ve got family, including three awesome, very young children who I want to take fishing and hiking and read to and play with and teach, and lots and lots of work, and frankly, other things I care about doing in the bits and pieces of precious free time that are left. So while one mad and masochistic part of me would love to take my mileage up to 75+ a week and see what that gets me, and thinks I could do it by adding miles at night while everyone is in bed, it’s just not going to happen this year. A man’s got to sleep once in a while. (At least this guy does. I know some who manage 75 miles a week, work, family and more amazingly well, seemingly because they can get by on about three hours of sleep a night. Not me.)
Focus on speed and efficiency
So ruling out adding more miles to this summer/fall’s running schedule leaves speed and weight. I’ve concluded spending a season dedicating 45-55 miles a week to workouts designed to build speed over shorter race distances, and aiming at a fast half marathon and 10K for the fall, will bring a bigger gain in the marathon I run next year than I would see if I trudged through another marathon this fall. As for the weight, we’ll see. I’d like to drop another 10-15 pounds over the next year or so, and I’ll give it a shot, but there’s a balance to find in all things, and if I’ve got to let discipline slip once in a while, then a fine meal and a good drink is a sweet pleasure to do it for … And as a non-elite runner, the pleasure of being able to eat a slightly decadent meal once in a while without feeling guilty is one of the perks of a 2,000 calorie Saturday morning long run. I’m not sure dropping a few pounds is worth giving that perk up for.
So that’s my plan. Curious to see how it pans out. Half-marathon, 5K and 10K race times this summer and fall and next spring’s marathon time will either bear out my thinking or prove it wrong. Interested to hear from others who split years into seasons to train for very different distances, and how that’s worked out…
Tags: marathon, Running, training
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It’s inevitable that at some point during a camping trip, I begin to do math. The math goes like this: tent site $25 a night, firewood, $4 a bundle, $x ice, $x propane for the stove, $x food, $x gear that needed to be replaced, gas, quarters for the showers, etc., etc. all of which lead to an equals sign on the other side of which is the cost of staying in a cheap roadside motel. At some point shortly thereafter, it usually begins to rain.
So why do we do it? I reflected on this during three nights of camping with Kris and our three kids in Franconia Notch last week (today’s my last official day of a week’s vacation). The reflection was especially potent as the first night of camping coincided with my 40th birthday, a milestone at which questions like “Why do I do X?” become especially significant. There’s a sense here of time beginning to tumble a bit more wildly, of the slope getting steeper, and the bottom coming on up a bit faster than it ever has before. Given that, it seems more important than ever to know why you do the things you do, and whether they are really things that you want or have to do.
So given that camping’s not a heck of a lot cheaper than a cheap motel, and it’s about a hundred times the work, and it requires a degree of abandonment to dirt and discomfort, to being too cold, or too warm, etc. what’s the point? I think part of it is the work itself. The rhythm that you begin to pick up around the camp site as you attend to the business of cooking, of cleaning, of setting up and taking down, of splitting wood and building fires and hiking off to the bathrooms or the showers or the camp store for some forgotten implement. The work connects you with the place and lets you become a part of it in a way you don’t if you just get out of a car and look at it. It connects the way a long run down a stretch of back road connects you in a way that a drive does not. It connects you intensely with the people you camp with, and provides countless opportunities for instructing the children, not only in the skills of outdoor survival, which are useful, but also in patience, fortitude, courtesy and active detachment from the blobs of data that cable lines stream into televisions and computer screens back home.
In any case, we had a lovely, if at times challenging, trip to Franconia Notch, at it was eerily beautiful to feel the kids laying up memories in their own skulls that must have so many common images of stark mountains and blue skies with my own, hardly faded, childhood recollections. The White Mountains are one of most beautiful places in the whole country, and I swear the hair on my arms raises up a bit in an almost numinous sort of awe whenever I pass that spot around Plymouth, where the land really begins to change. One of the great pleasures of parenthood is sharing the things you love with your children, and an even greater pleasure is when they respond to them the same way you do. At one point we were walking up a path and I heard Sofia stop behind me, and then gasp. I thought she’d been stung by a bee, or walked into a clump of nettles. I turned and saw her staring up at the great, sheer faces of the mountains around us as though she’d just noticed them for the first time. ”Look,” she said. ”Look at the mountains.” And that’s why we camp.
Worth noting that we stayed at Lafayette Campground, which I highly recommend for those looking for a less commercial-feeling, more rustic-style camping experience. No arcade or tennis courts on site, no RVs set-up for the whole summer with little gardens and outdoor lighting, etc. The sites are in the woods. Only downside might be the unpredictable weather in the Notch. Of course that provides its own share of opportunities as well.
More pictures from the trip here.
Tags: camping, Franconia Notch, hiking
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