The Top 50 KISSmetrics Posts of 2012

It’s a new year! And I would wager that it’s probably stacked with new and exciting goals, filled to the brim with marketing ideas to try out. Before you jump into this year’s awesome marketing plan, we want to take a moment to shine light on the amazing content published here on the KISSmetrics blog in 2012. This way, you can catch up on the great information you might have missed throughout the year so you can start off 2013 with a knowledgeable bang! This sampling of our top content includes posts on analytics, conversions, social media, SEO, website design, and much more!

Analytics

• The 2012 Guide to Google Webmaster Tools – Analytics Integration, +1 Metrics, and More – Learn about the new ways to set up your website with Webmaster Tools, the new data included in Webmaster Tools about your website, important data you might have forgotten about, and how to connect it to Google Analytics to learn more about search queries driving traffic to your site.
• Why You Ought to Throw Away Your Vanity Metrics for These 5 Customer Metrics – Have you ever logged into your analytics account and noticed how your traffic and pageviews are up? But when you dig a bit deeper and start to analyze the impact of those increased pageviews, you probably notice that your revenue hasn’t really gone up at all.
• 4 Hot Analytics Trends That Are Effective And Profitable – Jump on some of the following digital trend and the tools that help you monitor those trends so you can make your digital marketing strategies both effective and profitable.
• The 8 Google Analytics Features Every Site MUST Have Enabled – I’m going to lay it to you straight: Google Analytics doesn’t offer any value out of the box – it’s costing you money because you spend too much time looking at metrics that don’t matter.
• The Ultimate Guide to the New Google Analytics Social Reports – Social media brings us free traffic, scales well, and requires zero up-front investment. There’s just one problem: tracking social media would make a coal miner weep. By the end of this post, you’ll be completely comfortable using the new Google Analytics social reports.

Business & Ecommerce

• How to Turn Complaints Into Compliments & Compliments Into Brand Advocates – This post will teach you how to monitor your online brand mentions, turn complaints into compliments, and turn those with compliments into brand advocates.
• 5 Genius Examples of QR Codes in Marketing – Companies have found innovative and unique ways to not only get you to scan their code, but boost their brand awareness in the process. Here are a few of the most memorable ones – and a few examples to get your mind stirring.
• Are You Making These Online Advertising Mistakes – The following list of faux pas are what I’ve found to be the most common things marketers are missing when running online advertising campaigns. None of the following best practices are super complicated or hard to figure out, but they do take some time and attention to get right.
• Why Your Qualified Leads Refuse to Sign Up: The UX of Plans and Pricing – Every SaaS application has a funnel. Landing page, maybe a demo or pricing page, and then sign up. Your landing page and “Plans and Pricing” are your showroom. So let’s make it shine.
• The Psychology of Why Sexy Websites Suck at Sales – All great news—we can rest easy knowing our desire for a flashy, sexy, all-singing and all-dancing website is actually going to increase sales as well as our egos. Right?
• How to Use Gamification for Better Business Result – Have you ever collected frequent flyer miles, taken pictures of your record MPG in your Toyota Prius, or filled out a complete profile on LinkedIn? If so, you’ve been gamified.
• 5 Psychological Studies on Pricing That You Absolutely MUST Read – Below I’ve analyzed 3 recent research studies that dive into pricing of products and services in hope that you might better understand how to price your own goods.
• 9 User Experience Pitfalls That Repel Website Visitors – In this blog post I’m going to share some things that send users away from your website – all of which you have the power to reverse!
• 5 Reasons Email Marketing Crushes Social Media Marketing for B2B – Don’t get me wrong. Social media is great, and you should use it in your marketing if that makes sense for your business. But you should not put it ahead of email marketing.
• The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing – Starting a business is exhilarating. Unfortunately, the build it and they will come theory doesn’t hold much weight and those overnight success stories you hear about are often the result of behind the scenes years of hard work.

Content Marketing

• Content Scrapers – How to Find Out Who is Stealing Your Content & What to Do About It – In this post, we are going to look at some potential link building benefits to content scrapers, how to find out what sites are scraping your content, and what you can do if you want to either benefit from the linking standpoint or have them take it down.
• How to Create Your Own Promo Video for Under $100 – If you’re like a lot of startups or small businesses, the typical price for creating a professional explainer video just isn’t in the budget. I’m here to give you a few insider tips on how you can create your own explainer video in a few weeks on a budget of $100 or less.
• The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging – In this article we are going to look at exactly how you can get guest blogging opportunities and make the most out of them.
• 44 Must Read Resources on Content Marketing – If there’s one single reason why companies around the world continue to incorporate “content marketing strategies” into their yearly plans – it’s because it has been working for hundreds, if not thousands of years!

Conversions & Copy

• 6 Easy-to-Get Insights That Can Boost Conversion Rates on Low-Performing Pages – Would you like to know the secret to lowering the bounce rate on your web pages at the same time increasing their conversion rate? It’s not that hard to do if you can match your web visitors with your web page’s goals… and the way to do that is to use these six insights I’m about to share with you.
• Can Product Videos Increase Conversion Rates – Considering that video now appears in 70% of the top 100 search results listings, and that viewers are anywhere from 64-85% more likely to buy after watching a product video – this is one marketing force you can’t afford to ignore.
• The 8 Questions That Create Perfect Landing Page Copy – Four questions you should ask yourself before you start writing your first draft and four you should ask yourself after you’ve written your first draft.
• 40 Checkout Page Strategies to Improve Conversion Rates – Shopping cart abandonment and conversion rate drops on a checkout page may seem to be a bitter fact of e-commerce life. Print out this helpful checklist and use it to optimize your checkout page for higher conversion rates.
• 9 Steps to Write Your Ultimate Home Page Headline – I’m not talking gimmicks. I’m not talking overhyped promises. I’m talking about a logical approach to writing headlines that will actually take you from [cliché alert] zero to hero in exactly 9 steps.
• 7 Tips to Boost Your Site’s Conversion Rate Using Images – Images not only add life to a website, they also make it convert better. People no longer want to browse a website – they want to experience it. Using the right images can boost your site’s conversions and get you to connect better with your target audience.
• What The Highest Converting Websites Do Differently – Did you know that companies that take on a structured approach towards conversion optimization are twice as likely to see a large increase in sales?
• Help Your Website Sell More: 11 Overlooked Page Elements That Drive Online Sales – In this post we look at eleven often overlooked page elements that can be the secret heroes of your conversion success story.
• 8 Habits Of Conversion-Focused Copywriters – In this article, you will learn the one word that makes headlines convert, why you should go beyond your comfort zone, and other habits practiced by conversion-focused copywriters.
• 54 Quotes from Startup Leaders on How to Improve Conversions – I surveyed 54 companies and asked each of them one question: What is the one thing that you did that had the strongest positive impact on conversions?
• 50 Ways To Seduce Your Web Visitors With Persuasive Landing Pages – You’re about to learn how to make each element of your landing page more enticing. And make your conversion rates go up. And celebrate your business growing.
• 6 Copywriting Mistakes That Shatter Conversion Rates – It’s always a challenge to write effective landing pages, but it’s easier when you know the mistakes to avoid. Read on to learn the worst way to talk about pricing, the structure that strangles your copy, and four other copywriting mistakes that can damage your conversion rate.
• Why “The Fold” Is A Myth – And Where To Actually Put Your Calls To Action – If you’ve spent any time at all learning about web design, online marketing, or conversion-rate optimization, you’ll have heard to never put calls to action below the fold.

Search Engine Marketing & Optimization

• Meta Description Magic: Think Less about SEO & More about Click-Throughs – In this post, we will look at how search engines use meta descriptions, what the top SEO blogs say about meta descriptions. Click here to learn about meta description magic!
• How User Personas Can Improve Your SEO Strategy =- User personas are fictional characters which are typically used in the user-centered design process to represent the different user types of a website. I’m going to talk about how they can be applied to your SEO.
• 6 Indispensable Free & Freemium SEO Tools – Six free and freemium SEO tools for keyword research, on-site optimization, link building, suggestions, and monitoring keyword rankings.
• A Simple Step by Step Guide to SEO – Today, we’re going to look at some easy things you can do to start your website’s SEO on the right foot – even if you can’t hire a professional to help you out.
• 14-Point Checklist to Dominate Your Personal Brand on Google – Google yourself. See that? It’s your personal brand. Unless you love everything about each listing on the first page, us this 14-point personal branding SEO checklist.
• 7 Critical SEO Errors of E-commerce Websites – It’s common for online merchants to think that by simply listing hundreds or even thousands of products on their e-commerce website, search engine traffic will start rolling in. It turns out that is far from reality.

Social Media

• 6 Tools to Learn More About Your Twitter Engagement – If you’re ready to dig into some great analysis of your Twitter world, then check out these 6 awesome tools that will help you learn how to get even more out of Twitter.
• Help Customers Find You: How to Use Keywords on Your Social Networks – In this article, we are going to show you, step by step, some of the places and different ways you can use keywords on your social media pages.
• Pinterest Marketing Tips for SEO, Traffic, and Online Reputation Management – Statistics about Pinterest, how it compares to Tumblr, and tips for marketers looking to get more out of the Pinterest network.
• 17 Little Known Social Media Tools You Should Be Using (and Why) – To help you cut through the clutter; here are 17 must-use social media tools that have helped clients and their businesses. You’ll also get reasons for why you should be using these tools, too.
• 20 Days to a High-Quality, Highly-Engaged Twitter Following – You can have a high quality following in just 20 days, only spending 20 minutes a day, and by engaging in the following activities.
• 6 Tools Social Media Experts Use to Update Facebook Pages – Six third-party tools and applications used by social media experts, brands, and agencies to keep your Facebook page up to date.
• 5 Essential & Easy Social Media Metrics You Should Be Measuring Right Now – It’s easier than you think to measure your social media efforts. Here are five simple, but oh-so-useful social media metrics you should be measuring right now.
• What Can You Learn from These 6 Companies That Thrive On Twitter – The brands that get the most out of Twitter are the ones who use it correctly. In this article we’ll showcase 6 brands that are taking full advantage of Twitter.
• 8 Surefire Ways To Increase Engagement Facebook – I’ll share with you some methods that have helped me increase my Facebook page engagement and some that I’ve seen worked for others.
• The 5 Surprising Factors Behind the Most Shared Tweets – Would you like to know what goes into creating the most popular and successful tweet? And would you like to know how to use that information to write your very own tweets so they get shared a lot?
• 29 Companies Tell You How To Rock Social Media – 29 companies tell us how they approach social media and what they recommend for others. These companies don’t fit into any one industry.
• Beyond the Basics: 30 Fresh Social Media Tips for 2012 – Today, I want to cover some significant changes in social media strategy on the top social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Are there any of your favorite posts from KISSmetrics that didn’t make the list? Please share them in the comments, and Happy New Year!

About the Author: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing for personal, professional, and business bloggers. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.