thinks

I read Occam’s Razor almost every day. Few blogs provide as much content that helps me get better at my job. Now its author, Avinash Kaushik, has written one of the most useful books of the last year. Following in the steps of Gradiva Couzin and Jennifer Grappone’s most excellent “Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day,” comes Avinash’s equally excellent “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.” Kaushik - following the format of the series - has structured the book as a series of weekly lessons designed to link web analytics to business results. The book includes sections for e-commerce, blogs, and customer support sites. Very cool. Even better, Kaushik donates the proceeds from sales of his book to charity. Now, one of the ways I monetize this blog is through affiliate revenues, with the links to Amazon in the book review delivering revenue for me. Not this time. Following the links on this review take you through Kaushik’s affiliate ID, contributing still more to these worthwhile causes. To help the cause, you should buy Avinash’s book even if you never plan to read it. Of course, it’s so good, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t read it.

Marissa Mayer - who both likes to talk about the future of Google and is the most powerful woman on the Internet - is in the news again. Interestingly, she talked about three topics primarily:

1. Google’s plans for behavioral targeting with search.
2. Google’s mobile plans, particularly their Google Voice Local search (see “The Most Powerful Woman on the Internet”)
3. Facebook and the social graph

Seems there’s something to this local, mobile, social web thing, eh?

Forrester Research outlines four components of engagement, though, even they admit putting them into practice is going to take some work. I’ll look at these in more detail over the weekend and offer my take on what drives engagement online next week.

Much as I said yesterday, the amount you can learn from the Web to improve your business is staggering. Here’s one of the finest experts working today telling you how to improve your business. For free. So here’s the thing. Future Now is giving this to you. Are you doing the same for your customers?

Steal this business model to succeed online…

When uber-VC Fred Wilson provides a roadmap for offering a successful online service, we all ought to listen. B-schools should provide this much value.

Quick tip: another way the web helps grow your business

Learning. The number of resources available to small business through the web is amazing. Prior to the internet, companies like Intuit and Amex couldn’t have scaled offerings like these. Do you take advantage of as many of these as you can?