Geek

3 Things Google Analytics Can Teach You About Your Private Practice

Guest post by Liz Lockard, a self-confessed Google Analytics geek who loves helping small businesses get more out of their marketing data.

Do you have a website for your private practice? If so, you can’t pass up the best free marketing insights tool for your business - Google Analytics.

If you don’t already have it installed, go do that first (check out my mini Google Analytics setup tutorial for that).

Sure Google Analytics can tell me about my website, you say, but what can it tell me about my practice?

Here’s just three things you can learn about your practice from Google Analytics.

1) Where in the world are your prospects from?

Google Analytics can tell you exactly where every visitor to your website is visiting from. When logged in, just head to Standard Reporting - Audience - Demographics - Location.

You’ll get a map that looks a lot like this one:

You can view as top-level as on what continent and as specific as in which city your visitors are located. What could that mean for your practice? If you were considering expanding your practice into a neighboring state, Google Analytics can help guide that decision by giving you data on which state sends your site the most visitors, or which state sends you the most engaged visitors. City-wise it could help you target local in-state marketing efforts.

2) What is your most popular content?

Do you have a blog or host other articles on your site? If so, Google Analytics can tell you exactly which page or post is getting the most visits. Simply head to Standard Reporting - Content - Site Content - All Pages.

You’ll get a list that looks like this one:

You can see exactly which pieces of content on your site are most popular by visits, time on site, and a whole host of other metrics.

What could this mean for your practice? Your most popular content is a great indicator of what your audience finds most interest and what will be popular in the future. You could develop a follow up piece or similar pieces of content for future blog posts or articles. You could extend the topic into your weekly newsletter, or use the topic in other marketing channels.

3) Which referral source is sending the most traffic?

If you’ve ever pursued a specific marketing channel only to wonder if those new patients or newsletter sign ups actually came from there or somewhere else, you’ll understand the importance of this Google Analytics capability. Simply head to Standard Reporting - Traffic Sources - Sources - All Traffic.

You’ll get a list that looks like this one:

You can see exactly which traffic source is sending you the most traffic (or most engaged) - whether that’s search traffic, email marketing traffic, social media traffic, or other sites you’ve written for or advertised with.

What could this mean for your practice? You can finally stop wondering what’s working! And finally start making data-backed decisions for your marketing efforts and budget. If you didn’t see a single click-through on an ad you ran for 3 months on a popular site - pull it! If you saw a lot of engaged visitors coming from a guest post you wrote for another site, consider writing for them again! This is one of my favorite insights from Google Analytics - being able to actually evaluate marketing efforts.

(bonus points if you measure this traffic based on conversion - but that requires that you have goals set up)

What Do You Think?

Do you have Google Analytics set up for your site? Ever use it to pull insights for your business? Did you find this article helpful? Let me know in the comments!

About The Author:

Liz Lockard is a self-confessed Google Analytics geek who loves helping small businesses get more out of their marketing data. If you enjoyed this article and are interested in more ways of how you can use Google Analytics to up your marketing game, you can sign up for more free training and get on the first-to-know list for her upcoming course Google Analytics: The Missing Manual here. Follow her on Twitter @lizlockard.

(c) Can Stock Photo

Social Collaboration For Shrinks: Add Your Favorite Practice App To Listly

Two heads are better than one...and two thousand heads are infinitely better. Come on, private practice shrinks, let's do some social collaboration with Listly.

Earlier this week I introduced you to the concept of online social collaboration and suggested some possible ways it might be useful in private practice. I invite you to join in an easy social collaboration experiment by adding to my list of mobile apps I use most for managing my private practice.

As a tech geek and social media freak (and yes, I think these diagnoses should be added to the DSM 5), I delight in the brilliant new mobile apps that are available for fun, for learning and for business. I have my favorite iPad and iPhone apps that I use, but I want to draw from your collective experiences and see what apps you recommend.

Enter Listly (lists made easy + sharable + fun), a really cool and easy to use social media collaboration tool that you can embed in a blog post or website (see below). Here are my favorite private practice apps, links, and description of their use. Will you add yours to the list below?  Here's the process:

  • Click the "Sign in" button on the top right side and sign in with Facebook or Twitter (if you don't have a Facebook or Twitter account, then I'm surprise that you're reading this blog)
  • Click the "add to list" pink button on the left side
  • You'll see pop-up box with the option to add item with or without a link
  • Add your suggested app
  • Fill out the short form with item link (if you have it) name, description, tags
  • Click "add item" button on the bottom of form
  • While you're at it, see the "like" and "dislike" buttons on the side of each list item? Feel free to vote on ones that you like.

 

View more lists from Julie Hanks, LCSW

 

Thanks for participating in this social collaboration experiment. Fun, huh? More on social collaboration in the coming weeks! If you think of a practice related list you'd like to start, please post a link in the comment below so we can add to your Listly.

(c) Can Stock Photo

What The Heck Is Social Collaboration?

New trends in PR encourage online collaboration. Embracing new platforms can help therapists build professional presence and grow their private practice.

I recently attended an amazing conference in Park City, Utah called "Evo '12" The Evolution of Women in Social Media Conference. What's a shrink doing at a social media conference? In addition to being a therapist, I am a self-professed social media junkie and tech geek. So there.

A conference highlight was a workshop called "The Evolution of PR: A Culture of Collaboration, Connection and Community" taught by PR guru Sarah Evans and search technology innovator Jennifer Gosse. Both presenters work with a new social collaboration platform called Tracky (which you'll be hearing more about in an upcoming posts as I get more familiar with it). There was so much good technology and PR information that I couldn't take it all in or write it all down. I didn't want to miss anything so, I turned to social collaboration.

What is social collaboration?

At this point you may be asking "what is social collaboration?" Social collaboration involves processes that allow people to interact, work together, problem solve and exchange information online.

How can social collaboration help private practitioners?

In short, online social collaboration is a way to raise the visibility of your practice by producing more content through compiling and curating information. It's a way to engage your online social media followers, and also a method of gathering and sharing information with other like-minded professionals. Another use for therapists is in collaborating on notes from conferences and workshops as you'll see later on in this post.

An example of social collaboration: Storify

Storify is an easy to use online platform that allows anyone to tell a story through curating online articles, links, photos, and social media posts.

After attending the PR workshop my head was buzzing with new tips and tools. Why not try out social collaboration to document and share the stuff buzzing in my head? I logged in to Storify.  In about 15 minutes I had curated my favorite tweets, posts, photos, tips, tricks, and notes from many social media platforms posted by workshop participants and published a story on Storify.

I've embedded the story below so you can get a feel for what a rich experience social collaboration can be. Also, in addition to noticing the collaborative format of Storify, check out the content and the creators I've included. Notice that throughout this story I'm also sharing  the names and profiles of many who attended the workshop - social collaboration also means free PR.

[View the story "Evolution of PR: Building A Collaborative Culture " on Storify] How cool is that? Did you also notice that every element within the Storify article is easily sharable on social media? And you can post a comment right in the story. Try it out. That's the fun of social collaboration - synergy of ideas and energy. I love it.

Here are some possible ways you can use Storify in your practice:

  • Create stories relating to new research in your specialty areas
  • Curate current news topics that relate to your practice areas
  • Collect favorite quotes
  • Compile links for interviews you've participated in
  • Embed Storify articles in blog posts on your practice site

The possibilities for shareable content creation are endless through social collaboration.

Later this week we'll do a social collaboration exercise together. You in? Be thinking about your favorite mobile apps for your practice so you can jump in and share your thoughts!