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This past weekend, I had the opportunity to present at the SCAVA conference about my experience starting Palmetto Technology Hub with Michael Carnell.The first half of the presentation is about how Palmetto Technology Hub currently runs.  The second half offers my opinion on what we did well, what needed improvement, and challenges along the way.SC Association of Volunteers Presentation
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If you can't keep up with the changes in Facebook, I don't blame you. It seems like there's always a new feature or a change in a privacy setting. I'm not listing everything new in this post, but want to point out a couple things of interest.

Did you know you can comment on a page without "liking" it?  Allowing people to interact with your page without "commitment" could encourage more activity.  It also implies that people who do like your page are true fans.

You can also "subscribe" to profiles.  For example, if you want to follow to updates of someone well known in your field, but not become their "friend", you can subscribe to their profile. Of course, people will have to allow subscribers and will also be able to see who has subscribed to them.

Today I had the opportunity to speak to the Charleston Grant Professionals about the important of having a web presence.   This slides reference different tools I use and are generally free.
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I'm speaking at Geekend this weekend on Google Analytics.  Anyone who has used this tool will probably agree that the amount of data it provides can be overwhelming.  To keep yourself from becoming inundated with all those numbers, it's important to start out with some questions.

Are people clicking through the links in your e-mail newsletter? If not, you may want to reconsider the type of content you provide or the anchor text of your link.

Are people bouncing on a key page?  If you have a page where people are taking a quick visit, then leaving your site, you should check if there are any issues with it.   Also, look at how people arrived on that page.  It is possible the referring site represents that page as being something that it's not.

Is your AdWords campaign driving useful traffic? Do these visitors make purchases or indicate interest another way, such as using your 'contact us' form?

There are a lot more questions you can ask and hopefully the above ones are enough to get you started.

I attended GAUGE conference recently; an event that’s all about Google Analytics.  In addition to the great suggestions on using an analytics account, I noted two great takeaways about working with data in general.

Collect only the data you need.  It sounds obvious, but do you really need to know every single thing about a person?  Too many questions may come across as intrusive, so think about what you really need before you request certain information.  When you are looking at your analytics account, you probably don't need to review every available report to answer your specific questions.

Don’t just report out.  Are you displaying data in colorful charts and graphs, but not doing anything with it?  Do you show numbers at your board meetings with no action plan?  Make sure you are using data to make decisions about your organization.  Again, these takeaways don’t just apply to your analytics account.  They are also relevant to any data you have on your constituents or customers.