Digital IQ: Web Analytics with Avinash Kaushik

Posted on 25. Nov, 2008 by Michael Brito in Social Media

The event was Digital IQ training (mandatory training for all marketers at Intel). The topic was web analytics.  The speaker was Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, which I just ordered from Amazon. Rohit Bhargava also presented at the training session.

Despite his harsh, yet fair criticism of Intel.com, the material presented by Kaushik was inspiring; and his passion about the subject rubbed off on most of us in attendance. Sometimes, it’s good to hear others’ points of view; especially when they are from the outside looking on. I am curious if our web team will address some of his concerns.

I am no analytics guru and quite honestly, hate numbers and percentages; but the way he presented his perspectives was very easy to follow.  One thing that Kaushik didn’t cover was web analytics is it relates to social media.  The questions that usually come up here at Intel are:

  • How do we quantify “content views” in Flickr and YouTube?
  • How do we quantify a comment and/or conversation in our corporate blogs and abroad in tools like Twitter and Facebook (not quantity of comments, but sentiment)?
  • Can a conversation be monetized and be authentic at the same time? If so, how can a monetary value be attributed to a conversation?

Tough question, I know; but these are questions that many marketers in this space are still trying to understand and work through.

A few funny acronyms that Kaushik mentioned, which I have never heard before but were quite funny

HITS – How Idiots Track Success
HIPPO – Highest Paid Persons Opinion

 

 

Rating: 2.6/5 (32 votes cast)

    |     Email This Page Email This Page
Subscribe to Enterprise Social Media Did you enjoy this post? If so, please subscribe to our RSS feed

3 Comments

Posted in Social Media

3 Responses to “Digital IQ: Web Analytics with Avinash Kaushik”

  1. Tom Diederich

    25. Nov, 2008

    Great post, Michael. I worked with Avinash at Intuit when he was director of Research & Analytics at Intuit. Very smart — and nice — guy.

    Analytics and social media haven’t, in my opinion,  haven’t been figured out yet. Like you, I am no fan of numbers and percentages — yet I am forced to work with them.

    This would be an excellent topic of conversation for Avinash to cover in his blog. :)

  2. Avinash Kaushik

    26. Nov, 2008

    Michael (+Tom!),

    Thanks for the feedback. 

    Social Media is a tough thing to measure at the moment, mostly because we are still trying to figure out what we are doing. I know that sounds odd writing in a blog. : )

    I believe that we have to think different. When I came up with a way to measure success of blogs only one source of the data was a “traditional source”. More here: http://is.gd/Y0

    We are going to have to take the same approach, look beyond traditional ways of collecting data and the sources we have used. New Metrics. New Tools. 

    I have been using Twitter and Flickr for the last few months, so a post on metrics might follow (for me the best way to have a point of view is to actually participate, observe and learn).

    -Avinash.

  3. Tony Jones

    01. Dec, 2008

    I agree with your post Michael I was there and Avinash was a tremendous speaker! Working in social media analysis I went right to where you did, how does this apply in that space.

    As Avinash commented I do not think there is a silver bullet right now, there are many possible solutions but in the end we need to arrive on one, and really one that speaks in dollars.

    Without it we have no real idea of where to invest and how. In fact Avinash inspired me to start a blog on this very subject, when I have some content I’ll send a link ;)

    Tony

Join the Conversation