Thanks for visiting again, why not get my Blog updates via Twitter?
Thanks! Eoin

Before you begin work on your website or Blog, you need to get the code needed to install Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a free, reliable tool that tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.

Basically, it will show you how people found your web site, so that you can fix problems and also focus your marketing resources on advertising that delivers a better Return On Investment. You can also use it to improve your site to convert more visitors.

Adding Google Analytics to your web site is an essential step, as it gives you more of an advantage over your competition, as you will be able to see what’s working and not working, not just guess.

To use Google Analytics, you need to sign up for a free account with Google and then insert a simple piece of code on each web page or into your Blog.
After you install it, you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website.

For a full list of the freely available Google Analytics features, go to: http://www.google.com/analytics/features.html

Instructions To Install & Configure Google Analytics:

A. INSTALL GOOGLE ANALYTICS

To install Google Analytics, sign up for a free account at http://analytics.google.com

You need to have a Google Account to do this, which is also free, just follow the directions on screen.

B. CONFIGURE GOOGLE ANALYTICS

i) Follow the steps provided by Google for creating a profile for your domain name.

ii) Take your time, as any mistakes may not be noticed until after you have done a lot of work, which may need to be re-done.

iii) Once these steps are completed, Google will provide you with some HTML code that copy to the bottom of every web page, immediately before the HTML </body>.

If you have a Wordpress blog, download this PlugIn to make life easier.

Be sure to select “New Tracking Code (ga.js)”, it looks similar to this:

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);

document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));

</ script>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-#######-#”);

pageTracker._trackPageview();

</ script>

C. To add this HTML code please follow these steps:

a) Scroll down to the bottom of each page, to where you see the body tag:  </body>

b) Right before the </body> tag, paste the lines of HTML code provided by Google.

c) Save the changes.

D. ACCESS YOUR WEBSTATS VIA GOOGLE ANALYTICS

To access your stats, log in to your Analytics account at http://analytics.google.com.

To learn more about using Google Analytics, take a look at this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KK7i084W2w

How To Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, it’s called micro-blogging because all posts must be 140 characters or less.
It can also be used as an Instant Messenger, if the person you are contacting in online.

Twitter is so new, that the only way to really understand Twitter is to get an account and use it.

So if you haven’t got a Twitter account, go to http://twitter.com and first watch the video.

Then click on the What? Why? & How? links.
This information will help to explain what Twitter is.
Next … join Twitter.

You will be asked for a User name, e-Mial address and password.

For your user name, I suggest you use your own name, with no spaces, so if your name is John Smith, your user name would be johnsmith.

Be sure to fill out your Twitter Profile. To do this, LogIn to Twitter and look to the top right of your screen, for “Settings”.

For “More Info URL:”, I suggest you put a link to your blog or website.
For “One Line Bio:”, write a short bio about yourself, make it interesting, especially if you want people to follow you.

What next?

Twitter is based on “Followers” and “Following”

“Followers” are people that have decided to Follow your updates.

“Following” are the people your decided to Follow their updates.

In order for someone to see a message you send to them, they must be following you.
So people that are your “Followers” can read your messages, but unless you are also following them, they can send a message to you.

There is a way around this, that I will show you later.

When you want to send a message (called a Tweet in Twitter slang) to someone, you use the @ symbol + their User name.

My username is eoinoleary, so to send a message to me, you would start the message with @eoinoleary

Remember I wrote that in order for someone to see a message you send to them, they must be following you? and that there is a way around this?

Well if you send a message to anyone on Twitter, using the @ symbol + their User name, it will show up in their “Replies” section, that you can find on the Right, under Home.
However, many people don’t check their replies, so there is no guarantee that they will see it.

Using Twitter

To use Twitter, you need to do is to find people to Follow and people to Follow you. The best way to do this is to find people you know on Twitter,.
You will also be able to see how they are using Twitter and maybe send messages to each other.

To do this, login to Twitter and look to the top right of your screen, for Find People.

You have three choices.
1) Find On Twitter: Which is good if already know someone you know is on Twitter.

2) Invite from other networks: If you have an online e-mail account, you might be able to find people you already know by letting Twitter take a look.
At the moment Twitter can automatically check Gmail, Yahoo mail, AOL, Hotmail or MSN.

3) Invite by e-mail: This is easy, just send an e-mail to people you know, asking them to join.

You can also look for celebrities on Twitter, like Barack Obama, http://twitter.com/BarackObama, who used Twitter during the 2008 US Presidential election.

Be aware that you will find that many celebrity Twitter Accounts are fake accounts, so before you follow them, be sure to take a look at their posts and their profile.
A fake account should be obvious.

I’ve been using Twitter since 2007 and I find it interesting to see what people do with it.

Twitter can be used in many ways, but I’ve observed some interesting characteristics.

The people that have been on Twitter for a few months seem to have adapted Twitter for their needs, posting frequently, with a high percentage of useful information.
Most of these people have a large number of followers, at least 500 but probably far more.

Now I know that “useful information” is dependent on the individual, but why would you follow someone that always posts useless information?

Then you have the people new to Twitter, the majority seem to spend their time feverishly running around trying to build their Followers. I was guilty of this in the past myself.

Posting Useful information is the main tip for Twitter, but Following and Interacting is the real secret of Twitter.

If you follow people that you genuinely want to receive tweets (posts) from, and interact with them, you will start to see Twitter in a whole new light.

This is by no means a full Twitter how to, but it should get you started and don’t forget to follow me, eoinoleary on Twitter.

I’ve made a few screen capture videos in the past, but yesterday I tried out the new “Record Powerpoint” option in Camtasia 6.
The video is just an advert for my web site, using an easier to remember URL.

It was an interesting test, I had trouble getting the Audio to record during the screen capture and because I hadn’t the time, I didn’t try to hard to fix the problem, instead, I just narrated over the recorded presentation.

You’ll also notice that the quality isn’t great, and I think that this is due to the original setting, but it could be due to Camtasia 6 recording the Powerpoint presentation in full screen.
This is something I’ll have to test, because I don’t think they would have the option if it didn’t work.

Here is the video, there is no SEO and I have made it private, so it won’t mess up anything I upload in the future.