People often believe that when something is free, it means two things: 1) Not very good, 2) No competition or a need to update.

As I have previously mentioned about the Golden Age of Analytics with Google Analytics, point one is entirely false as Google has recently been able to really up its game within the web analytics arena by providing some really spectacular online marketing features that will benefit many agencies that take advantage of it. I finally now have access with it for some of my clients and will be salivating through it for probably the next month until I can squeeze just about everything I can from it (my poor GA representative will get to know me over the next month as I call with lots of questions, lol). Go install it after you read this post.

This post tackles the second part with Nuconomy coming out with something that no other qualifiable web analytics package has to date–the ability to track social media traffic and the correlation with them. Now, I know what you should be thinking: Social media does not convert! There is no direct ROI in it. But the counter-argument would be that there is a branding effect, a talking effect, customer interactions, etc. that cannot be measured. Yet, what Nuconomy has done is put their money where their mouth is, tracking those exact effects. Now you can find out whether or not there is an indirect impact for your company and if not, leave the social media fanatics with only this:

So, what do I think is the most important factor in a social media strategy?  Social Media

When competing against a free product or service, you have to be able to market yourself for niche areas, innovate to stay ahead of the pack, and listen to what your customers want. This is where Omniture SiteCatalyst has seriously failed as a Web Analytics provider–it fails to listen to customer complaints (slow load time) and it fails to stay ahead of the pack by not placing in basic SEO tracking that Google Analytics offers for free.

So please, check them out, but do not join the beta–I’m trying to get into that, do not want more competition than there already is to get on that list.

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I had wanted to do an in-depth post on noting what you could do with Google Adword’s new ability to show actual search numbers, but All Things SEM did a fabulous job of the ideas that ran through my head when I heard about this news.

Instead I’ll just remark that there are two important types of people humans listen to: The Pessimist (seen here as Smackdown) vs. The Optimist (seen here as All Things SEM).

The Pessimist takes the news of Adwords showing search numbers by beginning in this way:

The problem is, however, that those numbers are meant for people doing research into PPC traffic. The numbers shown have very little to do with what people actually search on using Google.com.

Often times they will claim the mantle of “Realist” insisting that the Optimist is naive in the approach. Yet, the instinctual drive towards thumbing down new information limits the boundaries of what is possible.

The Optimist takes the news in this way:

More Accurate Data

Better Upfront Planning

Click Through Rates for SERPs

Title and Description Testing

Improved PPC and SEO Synergies

The Optimist takes down ideas and creatively comes up with new possibilities to test and use in order to create new opportunities and improve upon existing campaigns. Yes, sometimes that leads to wrong paths and errors, but without trying and testing, then you are left with a stagnant campaign.

I prefer to take the path of creativity and new ideas rather than shooting down new possibilities and thus why All Things SEM goes into my RSS feed. You want someone who sits down and thinks of all the possible ways to work with and use new data rather than throw it to the wind.

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The Olympics haven’t even started, but here I am talking about the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Why? Got sent a link to the English version of the site for the Shanghai World Expo.

I had to go to Wikipedia to get a better understanding of what a World Expo is and then to the Shanghai World Expo site to understand what it will be about:

Expo 2010 Shanghai China will be a great event to explore the full potential of urban life in the 21st century and a significant period in urban evolution.

Know a couple of friends who’d be interested in that–number of times I tell him he should go to Shanghai just for the architecture.

Expo 2010 Shanghai China will centre on innovation and interaction.

Call me when it centers around inventions.

Expo 2010 Shanghai China will also be a grand international gathering.

This I don’t doubt.

Why bring this up? I recall back in 2003 in one of Pudong’s parks a huge sign proclaiming the World Expo coming to Shanghai in 2010 or so…

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Venture Capital continues to increase to China, particularly in advanced of the Olympics, as $3.2 billion has been put into Chinese companies, an increase from $1.8 billion the previous year according to John Boudreau of the San Jose Mercury News on May 11, 2008 titled Money Pours into China, Despite Challenges.

The innovation of the Silicon Valley and its reputation around the world has sparked interest within China to create its own areas, with most of the money being sent to Beijing or Shanghai metropolitan areas as centers of China’s high-tech world.

It may be easy to get money for start-ups within China, but the brutal secret of business within China is just how competitive the environment is. China may still be the new land of opportunity, but to really make a stable Silicon Valley environment, it will require a stable supply of energy for the industry, strong individualistic sentiments, and lack of government regulations that are often hard to come by in other nations.

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In the past, the Chinese were well-known for a whole variety of inventions up until around the late 1700s where a new emperor decided that having reached it pinnacle, could just slack off and coast. The West, after falling behind after the fall of Rome, innovated massively upon Chinese inventions over the years and came back to teach China a hard lesson about taking things for granted. Now, in our globalized world, the Chinese are innovating heavily:

This is either the best or worst iPhone review ever. Wendy Cheng is apparently the most popular blogger in Singapore. Before giving her the real iPhone, her producers tricked her into reviewing a Chinese knockoff. But she actually liked the fake, saying it’s “not bad for a shit*** China phone.” The real iPhone? Only “mediocre,” and “I really don’t like the touchscreen…it’s f***ing shitty.” Oh, that’s just the tip of this iceberg of awesome.

The iPhone in my opinion is definitely crippled here in the US, primarily from how very non-free market it is currently and also has limitations on what I kinds of files I can place on it as well (hence why I gave my wife an iPod–I want a music player that I can place any kind of file on it).

Nonetheless, my point is that the Chinese are innovating heavily on a variety of products and are learning in turn from America. And America should keep an eye on not becoming too complacent, protectionist, or lazy as otherwise the Chinese will surge past the US.

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China’s prominence is rising in the high-tech world on a variety of fronts as China’s Alibaba.com has enjoyed a massive 340 percent gain in net profit tied to China’s fast-growing economy. The number of unique visitors (as of October 2007) is second only to the US (yes, China’s large population has helped), however, their presence is being felt all around the world from World of Warcraft users having to sell their characters at a cheaper rate to compete with the Chinese ones to within China as homegrown sites such as TenCent, Baidu and Sina all reach more native Web surfers than Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo.

Nonetheless, one should be careful to equate fast growth, large numbers, and impressive actions with that of how China will overtake other first world nations in the near future. Strong growth now, does not mean it will continue to do so in the future.

Even more so, one should always be careful about making predictions of country growth with innovation and new tech centers. A new book called Silicon Dragon by Rebecca Fannin notes:

It’s going to be years before it becomes very pronounced, but China is slowly emerging as the next Silicon Valley.

If you look at venture capital money flowing in, it’s a phenomenal rate. China has been the fastest-growing target for venture capital in the last four years: far faster than anywhere else in Asia or the U.S. or Europe.

Venture capitalists used to say they’d never invest outside a 30-mile radius of their offices. Now VC firms like Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Accel Partners are all focused on China. Virtually all of the major venture capital firms in the U.S. have teams and funds there. It’s been a huge shift. And for every startup that’s funded in China, there’s a startup that’s not funded somewhere else.

Yes, the growth and money put into China has been tremendous, but if its going to be years in the future, we can only imagine how long China’s growth and strength can last. The Asian Tigers were seen as phenomenal and Japan itself was seen as going to overtake the US back in the 1980s, but as we all saw, some fundamental economic instabilities became too pronounced to avoid leading to stagnation within.

Keep in mind one important point from all this:

We have to ask: what innovation has the new China produced already? [B]eing a manufacturing powerhouse is quite different from actually [originating] the products, let alone inventing novel ones.

In other words: Look beyond how fast the growth is, beyond how much money is being invested, but dive into how stable is this system? Is this growth based on sound principles? Is the country able to adapt to economic downturns? Are there any intrinsic problems that will prevent future growth during the hard times? Lastly, what is actually being created and not just mimicked?

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How aware are you when you focus on something? Click and view the test first before reading on:

The Awareness Test

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