Central Perk: Be the CEO of More Than Just Your Job

miercuri, 21 decembrie 2011

Be the CEO of More Than Just Your Job

Posted: 20 Dec 2011 01:12 PM PST

Almost two years ago, Brad Feld put up an excellent blog post called "Be the CEO of Your Job" based on an interview with Mark Pincus of Zynga by the NYTimes. I loved the concept and have tried to apply it even since before I had a name for the attitude of independence that great companies tend to grant their team. From Brad's article:

Pause and ponder the idea. Assuming you are in an entrepreneurial organization, are you being the CEO of your job? Is this culturally (and functionally) acceptable? Do you get rewarded for taking risks and succeeding (or failing) like your CEO does? If not, would you be more effective if you did?

Now, if you are the CEO of an entrepreneurial organization, do you encourage everyone in the company to be CEO of their job? Is this culturally (and functionally) acceptable? Do they get rewarded for taking risks and succeeding (or failing) like you do? If not, would they be more effective if they did?

At the Mozplex, "CEO of Your Job" has come up in a few exec meetings and several hiring discussions, too. When it does, it's always as a positive quality we're seeking, e.g. "How can we empower so-and-so to be CEO of their job?" meaning "How do we remove restrictions (imagined or real) so that so-and-so can work on this independently, execute and take pride in that accomplishment?"

But in the last few weeks, I realized that there's a nuance to the logic behind being "CEO of your job" that can cause strife and frustration if it's not well-understood by the entire team. Here's an illustration that (hopefully) says the thousand words I'd rather not type:

CEO of More than Just Your Job

Owning your job is awesome. Empowering people to make decisions on their own and giving them flexibility is, too. But a danger arises when multiple people or teams are being CEOs of their job to the exclusion of the larger organization. This can happen at two-person startups or huge enterprises equally. Heck, I'm guilty of it myself! I get passionate about a particular aspect of the business at Moz (for example, this blog), and overinvest my own time in it, along with those of folks I manage or influence (which is quite a good number at this point). That pulls resources off other mission-critical projects and, potentially, hurts the company's ability to accomplish all those things that desperately need doing.

Mike King recently dropped by Seattle for our mini-Mozcation/charity bake sale (he gave a killer presentation called "What Being an Indie Rapper Taught Me About SEO"). On our walk to dinner after the event, I mentioned to him that it embarrassed me to say that, in the past few years, I've knowingly prioritized projects over SEO, social media or other inbound marketing efforts during our roadmap meetings at Moz. I know.... I complained for years about how the companies I advised as a consultant didn't put SEO first, and then, when I have the power to change things at my own organization, I put other projects first. I'm a hypocrite!

But, I'm also responsible for the success of the whole business, and sometimes that means stepping away from being CEO of just your job to seeing the bigger picture and knowing when your projects deserve to be on the backburner or even when something you're working on needs to be scrapped entirely in favor of a new direction or wholly new task. Autonomy and freedom to kick ass at your work is a great power, but also a great responsibility. If you put your job CEO-dom ahead of the broader goals, things can get messy.

p.s. Hopefully, this post can also help in-house, agency and consultant marketers who get frustrated with executives for not pushing through their agendas with the speed or passion we'd put behind it. Sometimes, especially if resource allocation is a roadblock, it might actually be the right decision (rarely, though). :-)

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Introducing Branded Keyword Rules and Metrics!

Posted: 20 Dec 2011 03:33 AM PST

Posted by Karen Semyan

Looking at your site’s aggregate organic search traffic is a bit like docking a boat without a depth sounder: Sure, you can gauge where you need to go, but you’d be wise to have more details before you head in.

On that same tack, we should have more detail about our overall search traffic before we use it to make decisions. First and foremost, this bucket of attention can be divided into two groups that we need to watch differently: branded and non-branded traffic.

Why segment your branded traffic?

By segmenting your branded and non-branded traffic, you get a clear picture of two important indicators of success: how visitors interact with your brand, and how they find you with generic, non-branded keywords. This information can help you can take action to target the keywords you care about. This split is also a useful metric to educate your organization or client about your brand pervasiveness and overall visibility.

That’s why we’re excited to roll out a new feature today: Branded Keywords. Now you can group your brand-related keywords together and see related branded data in-line with your reports.

What branded and non-branded traffic tells you

Keywords related to your brand tend to show up at the end of the conversion funnel, when visitors are already aware and interested. They’re more specific and unique, often based on company and domain names, key products, and variations/misspellings of those names and products. They aren’t subject to the fluctuations caused by search algorithms in the same way that non-branded keywords are. This makes them useful as indicators of long-term strength and popularity. For that reason, most sites should see a decent portion of traffic coming from brand-related keywords.

With new brand rules, you’ll be able to track that branded traffic clearly, and uncover any problems with branded keywords that aren’t ranking as well as they should be.

Things get really interesting when you remove branded numbers from your search traffic numbers and focus on your non-branded traffic. Now you have an clearer picture of the generic keywords that currently work hardest for you, which ones you should be targeting and are not, and which content is most effective.

A quick cruise through the feature

You can add brand rules for existing campaigns under Overview > Manage Brand Rules. Specify brand-related terms, and we'll filter all keywords that contain those words.

You can also add brand rules for new campaigns during setup. Once campaign setup is complete, your rules will be applied to any additional keywords you add.

Define brand rules for new campaigns

Add or remove individual keywords once rules are set up. At any time, you can label individual keywords as branded or exclude one from the “branded” filter under Overview > Manage Keywords.

Add or remove individual keywords once rules are set up

If your campaign is hooked to Google Analytics, you’ll see your historical traffic data split into branded and non-branded metrics.

View brand-related traffic data

You can get better insight into how people arrive at your site with in-depth metrics on top ten search sources, landing pages, and nonpaid keywords, including PPV, bounce rate, time on site, and more.

See in-depth metrics with your traffic data

See traffic data for brand-related campaign keywords when you filter branded keywords in your ranking report.

View brand-related traffic for campaign keywords

More options for managing your keywords include improved list filters, the ability to view all keywords in the list, and a new label filter for adding keywords.

And there’s more coming in the new year! You’ll see .PDF and .CSV reports added for traffic data. We’ll also start showing you your top keywords that send you traffic, so you can have the option to start tracking them.

Please let us know what you think or if you find something you don't expect to see. You can comment to this post or email help@seomoz.org. You can also go to the feature request forum to share a feature suggestion and see what other people are requesting. As always, we love to hear your feedback!