Building Your Personal Brand as an Expert
Posted by Jason Egan in Career, Personal Brand, Web AnalyticsAug 12th, 2008 | 10 responsesAs I have said in a previous post on this blog, being successful and being good at your job are two different things. Some have said via comments and Twitter, that this is sad but true. However, I disagree. This is simply a fact, and it is up to everyone to just recognize that there is a difference and learn how to best take advantage of this and become good at your job and AND successful at the same time! Since I work in e-commerce and Web analytics specifically. I’d like to start an open discussion on how to be both. First there’s being good at your job.
In terms of Web analytics, being good at your job should at least include knowledge of the following:
- Segmenting your visitors, including knowing which are the best segments and how to find new ones
- A/B &multivariate testing and site optimization
- Understanding, in the most advanced way, how to implement your Web analytics solution (not just how to run reports)
- How to debug analytics implementations (WASP and Charles are great tools)
- Creating reports and dashboards that are of actionable use
- Understanding the difference between reporting and analysis and when each is appropriate
- Understanding how to track what is actionable as opposed to everything in the world
- Being able to setup a good system of dashboards and reporting so that you can spend energy on real analyses, as opposed to just reporting
Now, let’s say that you’ve nailed everything above and you are the master of analyses, testing and your analytics tool of choice. So how can you become successful as a Web analyst. First, let’s limit our definition of success to staying in Web analytics and becoming well known and respected within the field. The end goal being better job prospects and advancement opportunities at your current job. Here are some of the things that you can do:
- PRESENT to management, don’t just e-mail analyses
- Work regularly on presentation skills (Presentation Zen is a great resource with links to other resources)
- You should WOW management at least every other week. As a Web analyst, you’re probably sitting on a gold mine of info of which management is completely unaware. Make sure to show them things on a regular basis that gets you (not an email) in front of them and noticed!
- Get on the Yahoo! Web Analytics Board and start interacting with people
- Get on the Twitter and start interacting with Web analytics professionals
- Attend relevant conferences and industry events (at least 1 or two per year, and mingle/network)
- You can also think about starting your blog (again, anything to get your name out there as an expert). I’m thinking of switching to a video format to get myself out on the Internet even a little more.
In the end one of the keys to being successful is building responsible for you own personal brand and how it is perceived within your job as well as within the industry. In short, you need to get out there and make yourself known as an expert. To wrap things up, here’s a great video from Gary Vaynerchuck (host of Wine Library TV) on developing your personal brand, whatever the focus:
Do you have any career or Web analytics success tips that you can share?
10 Responses to “Building Your Personal Brand as an Expert”
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About Me
I must say this is a great article i enjoyed reading it keep the good work
Great article Jason! And I’m honorred you are mentionning WASP
I’m watching my brand with Google Alert, which brought me to your blog. I’ve added it to the WAA Search Engine and the list of Web Analytics Conversations (more details on my blog).
Stéphane Hamel
http://immeria.net
Thanks, Stéphane. Understanding how to debug Web analytics implementations is an overlooked skill. I was pleasantly surprised when I was interviewing for my current job, that the hiring manager actually asked, “How do you debug Web analytics?” A person very new to the field or one that was rather inexperienced would most likely not have known how to answer that question, even though it’s not all that hard to answer.
Hello, Jason,
Shhhhh…you are going to give away the secrets to being a Web analytics guru. You have given some extremely helpful tips in a concise and well written article. I have a couple of other items you may want to consider:
1) Analyze the click stream of your prospective clients and understand what your prospects are trying to achieve. Take one more step, understand the click stream patterns, and remove the sticking points. The sales funnel should be easily understood by everyone. In my case, I always run my changes by Mom. If she can understand how to complete a sale, then I have done my job. It may just be as easy as showing a progress bar, and allowing the client to follow the sales process through completion.
a. I am assuming that everyone understands that click stream is analyzed anonymously. It is crucial to value the privacy of Web visitors.
2) There is always room to improve the conversion rate. Learn how to use the Google Optimization tool. Keep your tests simple, and test more often instead of running a large multivariate test. This is a common mistake made by freshly minted Web analysts.
a. Optimizing your Web site and increasing the conversion rate is the fastest way for management to take notice of your Web analytics skills.
I really enjoy your articles. Keep them coming!
-Darren
Darren,
To elaborate on your first point, I also find it most useful to examine the “sticking points” and the sales funnel by segments of visitors. In most cases, you may not even be exposed to the “sticking points” in the funnel unless you look at how segments like “first time visits” or “visits from paid search.” Just looking at “all visits” often meshes everything together so much that you can’t see anything. THe forest for the trees so to speak.
As for testing, I have a lot of thoughts on how testing alone should change how we evaluate our sites with analytics tools altogether. I’ll save that for another post as I could go on and on here. Thanks for your thoughts!
Having an internal belief system and confidence in your work that is so strong you can challenge conventional wisdom, even at the Senior levels of the company, is a characteristic of an analytical expert, inside or outside web analytics.
‘Course, you have to be willing to get fired once in awhile too, but nothing wrong with that if you’re really that good!
All good points, Jim. I’ve also found that while being able to challenge conventional wisdom is a good skill to have, you also need to have good communications skills in general when asserting your expertise. A little patience can help as well.
I remember a specific instance myself of continually questioning a business owner as to what changes they could actually enact with the complex interactions that they wanted to track. It took having to ask several times in a row to get them to admit to themselves that they truly didn’t know what they could actually change. No one likes being made to look foolish when you challenge their wisdom. So being able to change and train people and executives overtime is as much an art as a science.
Of course, communications skills are of the utmost importance for success in any field.
Good summary Jason. Being extremely new to web analytics I find this very helpful. Where were you when I posted “furthering web analytics career”??
The communication piece to management is by far the most difficult challenge I have currently (next to being “technologically challenged”, debugging… huh?) I find that the people you try to speak to are so wrapped up in their own beliefs/traditional education that they are very close minded to the new realms of web marketing and trends (very commonly talked about). Presenting stunning data is really my only hope right now.
Plus being a baby-faced 27 year old online marketing specialist takes away from my perceived credibility!
Another point I’d like to make for anybody else as rookie as me is that understanding general e-marketing is a big plus as well. Knowing what’s going on and what customers are saying about you’re brand can help answer “what happened” type questions that HIPPO’s generally tend to ask. ie “Why is our overall traffic down”
Jason – Yes, of course, as you pointed out, “culture skills” are important to success in any field…
Interesting job path you’ve had in TV-related analytics!
If you ever add offline analytics to your world at JTV let me know, I can tell you where the bodies are buried on the TV side of the business…
Jim, Web analytics here is actually part of a business intelligence team. We integrate a lot of offline TV data directly into our analytics tool (Omniture in this case). We also integrate a lot of the online data back into our Oracle databases. Offline and online data/information are both mingled here in a manner that most companies could only hope really. I’ve found that it is great to have the Web analytics role be a part of a business intelligence team. There are a lot of opportunities for learning on both sides.