KLM Airlines moves over 11K employees to Google Apps!!

Google Apps News March 2010 Both customers and IT partners are converging around Google Apps to transform the way they do business. New customers to Google Apps: • From the clouds to the cloud: Find out why KLM Royal Dutch Airlines moved 11,200 crew members into the cloud. • From scarcity to abundance: Sports Basement stops inbox rationing and quota limits and gives everyone access to rich communication and collaboration tools (Free webcast). Google Apps moves forward: • New! Google joins the Cloud Security Alliance, a non-profit focused on best practices and education around the security of cloud computing. • New! The Google Apps team goes to America’s Small Business Summit to answer questions from small businesses. • New! The Google Apps Authorized Reseller Programturns a year old. Get timely customer news and product updates delivered to your inbox by signing up at theOfficial Enterprise Blog. All the best from Google, and stay tuned!

Using Facebook and need more donations? - Take John Haydon's advice.

Socialbrite

---

How do I get my nonprofit’s Facebook fans to donate? Posted: 02 Mar 2010 11:01 AM PST Getting an army of Facebook fans for your nonprofit is not an easy feat. It takes lots of planning, hard work, and time. But just because you have a lot of Facebook fans doesn’t mean that you’re any closer to meeting your fundraising goals. Especially if you’re unknowingly creating barriers. When potential donors go to your donation page, is it immediately clear how they can donate and what amount they can donate? Do they have to search around your site? How many mouse clicks does an entire transaction require? 7 things to keep in mind Show Them Impact – One thing that worked very well during the Tweetsgiving campaign was showing people what their donations would buy. It created a direct line of site between donation and impact. Make It Fun – Red Nose Day is a huge hit in the UK, precisely because it’s so much fun! Think of creative ways to make sharing fun for your fans. Make The Dollar Amount Specific – The ever-present “donate now” button with no recommended dollar amounts, gets far less results than an ask with a specific dollar amount. Make It Easy To Share – The moment a person donates is the best time to ask them to share that action with others. Applications like Giving Impact and givezooks do this really well with their social fundraising apps. Target The Ask – Similar to most email marketing services, Facebook allows you to target your messages to a specific subset in your fanbase. You can slice by location, gender and age. Measure The Ask – Measure traffic, clicks, average donation amounts and number of donations. With enough data, you’ll be able to refine your approach over time. Also, Facebook provides great analytics for their Facebook Pages. Keep It Simple – Frank Barry wrote an excellent guest post on optimized social fundraising. Go back and check it out. One last thought. Don’t be discouraged if your first attempts to spur fans to act don’t get the results you expect. It takes time to build an active community. What’s been working for your org?

Phybridge joins forces with Cisco = The Uniphyer Rocks!

Phybridge Inc. Joins the Cisco Developer Network and Completes Cisco Interoperability Verification Testing Mississauga, Ontario - March 26, 2010 - Phybridge Inc. announced that it has joined the Cisco Developer Network as a Registered Developer within the Unified Communications technology category. In addition, Phybridge's UniPhyer has successfully completed interoperability testing with Cisco Unified Communications Manager, 7.1. The Cisco Developer Network unites Cisco with third-party developers of hardware and software to deliver tested interoperable solutions to joint customers.  Members of the program share Cisco's strong commitment to customer service and satisfaction and are required to undergo interoperability testing based on criteria set forth by Cisco.  With offerings such as the Phybridge UniPhyer, customers can more quickly deploy a broad range of Cisco Compatible business applications, devices, or services that can enhance the capabilities, performance, and management of their Cisco network. Phybridge Inc.: Phybridge's mission is to bring practical innovations to market that provides customers and partners an easier way to deploy and manage their VoIP installs resulting in reduced total cost of ownership and enhanced return on investment.  The award winning Phybridge UniPhyer allows for an optimized converged voice and data network; enabling the deployment of IP Telephony to be quick and easy with no network or business disruptions. This patent pending solution leverages existing telephony infrastructure to provide Ethernet, PoE and Quality of Service over a single pair with reach of over 1,200 feet. Complementing the existing data network, the UniPhyer allows customers to centrally converge with the data network while having a separate physical path for voice; reducing deployment and day two management complexities.  With a UniPhyer infrastructure customers can realize the benefits of Cisco Unified Communications Managers and Cisco IP phones with no compromise.  Sectors such as education, healthcare, hospitality and government greatly benefit.  Phybridge is looking forward to teaming with Cisco to bring their customers to the future of communications with much of the focus being on implementing the productivity enhancing Cisco applications ensuring a reliable converged network that handles both voice and data.  * Interoperability testing is designed to simulate typical customer configurations, and does not replace the need for on-site testing in conjunction with actual implementation. For more information and to learn about the 14 compelling benefits of deploying IP Telephony wit the UniPyer, please visit http://www.phybridge.com/uniphyerbenefits.aspx

Google Apps for Educators Webinar recording.

In case you'd like to share the information presented during the webinar with others, or watch again yourself, please make use of the following resources:
• Recorded video
• Published slide presentation
• Q&A Transcript
• Maine Township case study

If you would like more information about Google Apps Education Edition, please visit our website atwww.google.com/apps/schools. You can also access and review previous webinars in our Google Apps Education Resource center

If you have more questions about Maine Township's use of Google Apps, you can contact the Dr. Hank Thiele from Maine Township High School District: HThiele@Maine207.org 

Exchange Migrations to Google Apps have been enhanced.

Migrating from Microsoft Exchange now even easier with new Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange tool

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 03:28 AM PDT

The new Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange tool simplifies migration of email, calendar and contacts from both hosted and on-premise Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. With this tool, admins can:

- Do multiple migrations in parallel.
- Centrally manage migration without end user involvement.
- Selectively migrate email, calendar or contacts (or any combination thereof).
- Migrate from Microsoft Exchange 2003 or 2007.

Editions included:
Premier and Education Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
- Download page
- In the administrator control panel, in 'Advanced Tools', enable the checkbox 'Allow users to upload mail using the Email Migration API'.
- Enable two-legged OAUTH, as outlined here.

An extraordinary way to build community - Thanks SocialBrite!

Tap into the collective power of your community

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 10:30 AM PDT

The Extraordinaries lets your organization create a crowdsourced ‘mission’

By Kim Bale
Recruiting friends and supporters to get real work done virtually on behalf of social-good projects is easy and fun with the help of The Extraordinaries. Based in San Francisco, the company has created a platform allowing anyone to create a micro-task and blast it to their community of friends and supporters to generate real, usable output when they spend a few minutes of their spare time on an iPhone or computer.
You can download the iPhone app at BeExtra.org and check out a wide array of simple tasks you can help with. Missions featured today on the Beextra home page include:

• Build a collection of cute dog photos for GoodDogz.org.
• Help build a searchable photo archive for the Smithsonian Institution (yes, thatSmithsonian).
• Create a list of job resources for youths on behalf of Goodwill.
• Rate tweets from the SXSW conference.

The tools The Extraordinaries have created are available to nonprofits, for-profits, politicos, evangelists and passionate people alike. For example, Citizens Market, a company tracking corporate behavior, is using The Extraordinaries to research and rate company behavior. To map children’s recreational spaces,KaBOOM! is asking people to mark the GPS location of a playground, rate it up or down and snap a photo, such as the one at top.
Anyone can create a mission and harness the power of the crowd to achieve results while engaging and interacting with the broader community — the Extraordinaries has 29,000 registered users, more than 250 missions and 240,000 micro-tasks completed. The team vetts all apps submitted to the site.

Ways for nonprofits to use The Extraordinaries

How can you use The Extraordinaries?
1. Identify your needs. Many tasks, particularly administrative duties, are ripe for crowdsourcing. The Extraordinaries breaks these tasks into small bits of work with the potential for a big impact. Where could you use a few hundred extra hands? First identify your needs, then see how The Extraordinaries community can help meet them.

Use the community to organize your photo archive by adding descriptive tags, making it searchable and easy to navigate.

2. Create a mission. The Extraordinaries has created a few standard templates, making it easy to create a micro-task, or “mission,” and the list continues to grow.
• Build a map. Whether your organization is creating a map of playgrounds across the country or you just want to locate community gardens, this mission will allow your friends and supporters to help you build the map.
• Collect photos. Let the general population help you build a photo library with this mission. Users take and upload photos, which can then be rated, creating a ranked stock library for you to use.
• Tag and catalog photos. Organize your photo archive with the help of The Extraordinaries. Friends and supporters can add descriptive tags to your digital library, making it searchable and easy to navigate.
• Research a topic or issue. Need research on grants available to your organization, or information on businesses not engaging in sustainable practices? Let your community help do the research and generate usable data.
3. Complete your profile. Just like any social site, The Extraordinaries asks that you complete a profile for your organization. Upload a logo that is simple and recognizable, along with a brief description of who you are, what you do and why you’re asking for help. These are largely read on mobile phones, so brevity is key.
4. Engage your community. Let your friends and supporters know they can do real work for you via their iPhone or computer. Encourage them to download the iPhone app or complete your mission via the Web. The Extraordinaries can provide you with direct links to your mission page and embeddable tools for your website. When people complete your mission, they’ll have the opportunity to tweet about it and share it via Facebook or email, increasing your exposure and missions completed.
At South by Southwest Interactive on Friday, a TechSoup representative cited the Extraordinaries’ efforts to bring a new dimension to relief efforts after the earthquake in Haiti. The site collected 8,137 news photos and volunteers submitted 76,584 image tags, resulting in 746 possible matches and 24 matches good enough to contact family members.
Clearly, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the service’s possible uses in the years ahead.
The app is not yet available on other platforms.
How would you use The Extraordinaries? Share your ideas in the comments below.

Kim Bale, a former staffer at the Extraordinaries, is interested in exploring how nonprofits can use technology for social good.

Related

• The Extraordinaries: Building the ‘micro-volunteering’ movement (Socialbrite)
• New ways to take social actions (Socialbrite)
• Harnessing the crowd for social good (Socialbrite)

Social Media resources for any organization. John Haydon = Good PR

How To Create A Custom URL For Your Facebook Page In 70 Seconds   2010-03-12 10:08:34-05 During the TechSoup webinar on Facebook yesterday, one question that came up was about creating a custom URL for your Facebook Page. There are three reasons to create a custom URL for your Facebook Page: It’s easy for supporters to remember. Creating the custom URL prevents someone else from registering it. And if someone else does register your [...] read more...   29 Pros And Cons Of Starting A Blog For Your Nonprofit   2010-03-15 10:48:02-04 Starting a blog for your nonprofit is not something you take lightly. Based on my conversations with nonprofits, I’ve found the following “pros and cons”: The Pros Of Starting A Blog For Your Nonprofit Blogs are much less expensive to host and manage than traditional websites – and most hosting companies feature “1-click” installation of WordPress. WordPress is [...] read more...   How To Demonstrate Integrity On Your Blog   2010-03-16 07:26:12-04 Following is an intro to a guest post I published today on Tanveer Naseer’s blog. ______________________________ Integrity, as Tanveer has talked about before, is a critical factor in attracting and retaining readers, subscribers and customers. In the offline world, integrity is something people easily recognize. It could be demonstrated by returning something on time that you borrowed, staying [...] read more...   How To Shoot Yourself In The Foot   2010-03-18 10:30:17-04 You expend all of your energy fighting to promote your non-profit’s cause. You spend time nurturing relationships with your biggest fans. And you care deeply about the people impacted by the issues you fight for. It’s in your DNA. So I can understand how frustrating it must be when your marketing folks decide not to post a [...] read more...   What I do I advise non-profits how to implement inbound and social media marketing strategies. If you're interested in hiring me, let's talk! Sponsors

VOIP Solution that rocks!!

Stop searching for a four-leaf clover to bring you luck and help you deploy IP Telephony reliably. With the UniPhyer, voice quality is guaranteed and not left up to luck.  Experience what everyone is talking about!

Move to the future in communications with confidence knowing you have a reliable robust platform for IP Telephony and Unified Communications with the award winning Phybridge UniPhyer.  Customers and Partners are stating that thePhybridge UniPhyer is a game changing technology that is setting a new standard for deploying IP Phones and Unified Communications in business.  The Phybridge UniPhyer leverages the existing, proven reliable, telephony infrastructure to create a separate IP network with Power over Ethernet ideal for IP Phones.  Customers have optimized their network upgrades by expanding their network to include a second drop to every desk.  All the benefits of IP Telephony with the reliability you come to expect from your voice network. Here are some of the benefits users have experienced with the UniPhyer: · Lower Cost to optimize your network for voice -Over 50% savings compared to the old way of converging networks.  · Quick and easy deployment - No network or business disruptions. · Quality of Service guaranteed - eliminating the stresses of having voice and data share the same physical path.  · Voice continuity - Voice will survive if data network fails or crashes. · More secure networks - separating your voice and data paths with fewer points of entry · Maximizing Return on Investment - More of your budget being allocated to business enhancing applications and training. · Lower Day Two Management Requirements - Save money and reduce your stress by having an optimized network with voice and data being physically separated.  · Standardized experience - Voice point-to-point infrastructure is standard across all locations making the deployment of IP Phones repeatable, predictable and fully scalable. To find out more about how the UniPhyer can save you money, stress and help your company move to the future of telephony with confidence please visitwww.phybridge.com or call 888-901-3633

Full Featured Email Delegation in the Google Apps Solution.

When using mail delegation in Gmail, you can now allow a delegate to see your contacts in addition to your email.

Editions included:
Premier Edition

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
Administrators must first enable mail delegation by checking the 'Mail Delegation' checkbox under 'Email Settings' in the administrator control panel. Note: This option will only be visible if your control panel is set to 'Next generation (US English)'.

To enter a delegate, users can select the 'Accounts' tab under 'Settings' in Gmail and click 'Add another account' to enter their delegate's email address.

Once the delegate is signed into their own own Gmail account, they can then access their manager's account from the account selection menu at the top of Gmail. The delegate can access their manager's contacts by clicking the 'Contacts' link. Clicking the 'To', 'Cc', or 'Bcc' links in the mail compose window will also bring up the manager's contacts.

Here's an online seminar that all business owners should attend.

Join us for a webinar on "Why Cloud-Based Security and Archiving Make Sense."

Hi peter,

Email security and compliance are critically important to organizations of all sizes. Email-based attacks are on the rise, archiving and e-discovery needs are escalating and IT departments are increasingly accountable for addressing these needs within an organization. Yet in a period when IT budgets are stretched, organizations with on-premise solutions invest significantly more money and IT resources maintaining security infrastructure - performing often unplanned and unexpected capacity upgrades - and less time on strategic activities that drive business. Consider the following:

• 
  
  At least 75% of all email traversing the Internet is spam and 38% of organizationsreported that malware had infiltrated the corporate network through email during the 12-month period ended April 2009.¹
• 
  
  More than 60% of organizations believe that the IT department holds the majority of the responsibility for communications security and compliance, but fewer than 20% feel they are well equipped to handle it.²
• 
  
  42% of Best-in-Class organizations decreased their help-desk costs and time need to remediate email attacks by more than 20%.³

Join us on March 23 at 10 AM Pacific Time for our live webinar on Why Cloud-Based Security and Archiving Make Sense. We will address the critical and growing requirements for better email security and email archiving, as well as illustrate the benefits and cost savings of a cloud based approach to managing both. This webinar will include:

• 
  
  An overview of the best-in-class practices, including results from recent research, presented by Michael Osterman - President, Osterman Research
• 
  
  An overview of Google's enterprise IT solutions, presented by Adam Swidler - Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Google
• 
  
  A live Q&A session with the speakers and you, the audience.

Register now to secure your place at this event to be held on March 23: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=577694921&SourceId=internal

For more information on Postini Services, please visit:

www.google.com/postini

Sincerely,

Adam Swidler, Google Enterprise

The Cove + TakePart = Social Change.

If you have a movie design to bring about change in the world, take a look at how TakePart is working to share the message of "The Cove".  Thanks SocialBrite...

• ‘The Cove’: Will movies usher in a new era of social change?
• Social media begins with goals and a strategy
• A WordPress plug-in to simplify SEO

‘The Cove’: Will movies usher in a new era of social change? Posted: 08 Mar 2010 10:10 AM PST Moving movie audiences to take action from JD Lasica on Vimeo. I‘ll confess: I was excited to see The Cove take home the Academy Award for best feature documentary last night. While all the entrants were worthy, “The Cove” is among the handful of movies pushing the idea of Hollywood productions as the fulcrum for social change. A few weeks ago I caught up with Christopher Gebhardt, general manager and executive vice president ofTakePart, the Beverly Hills-based digital arm of Participant Media, which marketed and helped bring “The Cove” to theaters nationwide. Participant Media (formerly Participant Productions) — Jeff Skoll’s social entrepreneurial film production company — has an incredible track record in bringing socially relevant films to screens nationwide, including “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “The Kite Runner,” “The Soloist,” “Syriana,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “The Visitor,” “Food, Inc.,” “North Country” and now “The Cove.” A breath-taking string of success. “The Cove” is remarkable for its guerrilla filmmaking tactics in chronicling the grisly business of dolphin hunting in rural fishing villages in Japan, where as many as 20,000 dolphins are slaughtered annually. It won the Audience Award at Sundance last year. Participant didn’t fund the film but funded its marketing. “We’ve spent the last five years at Participant figuring out how to take the film and really use it to … really get people involved with an issue,” said Gebhardt, speaking after a conversation on stage at Social Capital Markets 2009. You may have noticed one fellow on stage at the Oscars — film subject and animal activist Ric O’Barry — holding up a sign that said, “Text DOLPHIN to 44144.” (The camera cut away after only one second — the academy has a long tradition of not acknowledging or encouraging overly activist sentiments.) What’s cool about “The Cove” is that, just as the movie ends, theatergoers are met with the same message: Text DOLPHIN to 44144. When you text the short code, Gebhardt explains, you’re given ways to connect, including the option to sign online petitions to protest the brutal practice, send letters to President Obama, the US ambassador to Japan or Japan’s ambassador to the United States, or you can take other actions. Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo. (I’ve started producing these in a higher resolution 3800 kbps bitrate at 720 pixels wide.) I should mention that I was in the first group of bloggers in 2005 who signed on to guest-post on Participant’s first such effort: the “Good Night and Good Luck” site to discuss press reform and how changes in corporate ownership of the media have affected our democracy since the days of Edward R. Murrow. Actions you can take I’ve been a fan of TakePart for months now — it’s the mechanism that connects Participant Media films with taking action. “Every film [we produce or market] has a social action campaign wrapped around it,” Gebhardt says. One aspect of “The Cove’s” marketing campagn was to reach out to NGOs to see what kind of campaign makes most sense with the topic that the film addresses. My own view is that Participant Media could use a bit more guidance in running social cause campaigns. The TakePart site has a section on The Cove where users can take the following actions: Write to our leaders and help get the word out in Japan Learn more about dolphins in captivity Calculate your mercury exposure Help Save Japan Dolphins’ efforts on the frontlines Support the filmmakers with your donation I’ll post an interview with TakePart editor Adriana Dunn soon. JD Lasica works with nonprofits, social change organizations and businesses on social media strategies. See his profile, visit his business blog, contact JD or leave a comment.

Video Adds for you business

Check this out.  This looks good for any small business.

http://www.turnhere.com/

Have baking skills? Want to End Hunger in this country?

Support this cause.

Dear Peter, Do you like to bake brownies? How about chocolate chip cookies? Would you like to put that passion to work for children facing hunger? This week kicks off Share Our Strength's Great American Bake Sale® 2010, a growing movement of bakers and volunteers dedicated to helping Share Our Strength end childhood hunger in America by 2015. Take a second to visit the Great American Bake Sale website. Sign up to participate in a bake sale near you or host your own: http://join.strength.org/GABSchallenge Last year, 7,600 volunteers joined us and raised more than $1.2 million through Great American Bake Sale. Those funds helped provide thousands of children facing hunger with healthy meals. This year, our goal is to raise $2 million dollars. Will you join us? http://join.strength.org/GABSchallenge/ Throughout the year, we'll tell you about other opportunities to help Share Our Strength end childhood hunger in America like attending one of Share Our Strength's local Taste of the Nation events, or participating in Share Our Strength's Great American Dine Out® this fall. But it's bake sale season now and we need your help. So if baking is your passion, I hope you'll roll up your sleeves, gather your ingredients, pre-heat those ovens, and help us bake a difference. Thanks for your support, Amy Braiterman Great American Bake Sale P.S. Mark your calendar for the first annual Great American Bake Sale National Challenge taking place April 16-18. Will you take the challenge? http://join.strength.org/GABSchallenge

4Q - Powerful free survey tool.

Check out this tool that was created by an analytics god.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2LJliORQPQ


sign up here
http://www.4qsurvey.com/

Cheers, PR

Kill Useless Web Metrics: Apply The “Three Layers Of So What” Test

One of the best Analytics newletters on the market. Here is the latest from Avinash Kaushik


Data, data everywhere yet nary an insight in sight.
Is that your web analytics existence?
Don’t feel too bad, you share that plight with most citizens of the Web Analytics universe.
The problem? The absolutely astonishing ease with which you can get access to data!
Not to mention the near limitless potential of that data to be added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided to satiate every weird need in the world.
You see just because you can do something does not mean you should do it.
And yet we do.
Like good little Reporting Squirrels we collect and stack metrics as if preparing for an imminent ice age. Rather than being a blessing that stack becomes a burden because we live in times of bright lovely spring and nothing succeeds like being agile and nimble about what we collect, what we give up, and what we deliberately choose to ignore.
The key to true glory is making the right choices.
In this case its making right choices about the web metrics we knight and sent to the battle to come back with insights for our beloved corporation to monetize.
A very simple test can allow you to figure out if the metric you are dutifully reporting (or absolutely in love with) is gold or mud.
It is called the Three Layers of So What test. It was a part of my first book, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.
What’s this lovely test?
Simple really (occam’s razor!):
Ask every web metric you report the question “so what” three times.
Each question provides an answer that in turn raises another question (a “so what” again). If at the third “so what” you don’t get a recommendation for an action you should take, you have the wrong metric. Kill it.

This brutal recommendation is to force you to confront this reality: If you can’t take action, some action (any action!), based on your analysis, why are you reporting data?
The purpose of the “so what” test is to undo the clutter in your life and allow you to focus on only the metrics that will help you take action. All other metrics, those that fall into the nice to know or the highly recommendedor the I don’t know why I am reporting this but it sounds important camp need to be sent to the farm to live our the rest of their lives!
Ready to rock it?
Let’s check out how you would conduct the “so what” test with a couple of examples.
Key Performance Indicator: Percent of Repeat Visitors.
You run a report and notice a trend for this metric.
Here is how the “so what” test will work:

“The trend of repeat visitors for our website is up month to month.”
So what?
“This is fantastic because it shows that we are a more sticky website now.”
(At this point a true Analysis Ninjas would inquire how that conclusion was arrived at and ask for a definition of sticky, but I digress.)
So what?
“We should do more of xyz to leverage this trend.” (Or yxz or zxy – a specific action based on analysis of what caused the trend to go up.)
So what?
If your answer to that last “so what” is: “I don’t know… isn’t that a good thing… the trend is going up… hmm… I am not sure there is anything we can do… but it is going up right?”

At this point you should cue the sound of money walking out the door.
Bottom-line: This might not be the best KPI for you.
Let me hasten to point out that there are no universal truths in the world (though some religions continue to insist!).
Perhaps when you put your % of Repeat Visitors KPI to the “so what” test you have a glorious action you can take that improves profitability. Rock on! More power to you!

Key Performance Indicator: Top Exit Pages on the Website.
[Before we go on please know that top exit pages is a different measurement than top pages that bounce.]
You have been reporting the top exit pages of your website each month, and to glean more insights you show trends for the last six months.

“These are the top exit pages on our website for the last month.”
So what? They don’t seem to have changed in six months.
“We should focus on these pages because they are major leakage points in our website.”
So what? We have looked at this report for six months and tried to make fixes, and even after that the pages listed here have not dropped off the report.
“If we can stop visitors from leaving the website, we can keep them on our web site.”
So what? Doesn’t everyone have to exit on some page?

The “so what” test in this case highlights that although this metric seems to be a really good one on paper, in reality it provides no insight that you can use to drive action.
Because of the macro dynamics of this website, the content consumption pattern of visitors does not seem to change over time (this happens when a website does not have a high content turnover – like say a rapidly updating news site), and we should move on to other actionable metrics.
Here the “so what” test not only helps you focus your precious energy on the right metric, it also helps you logically walk through measurement to action.

Key Performance Indicator: Conversion Rate for Top Search Keywords.
In working closely with your search agency, or in-house team, you have produced a spreadsheet that shows the conversion rate for the top search keywords for your website.

“The conversion rate for our top 20 keywords has increased in the last three months by a statistically significant amount.”
So what?
“Our pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is having a positive outcome, and we should reallocate funds to these nine keywords that show the most promise.”

Okay.
That’s it.
No more “so what?”
With just one question, we have a recommendation for action. This indicates that this is a great KPI and we should continue to use it for tracking.
Notice the characteristics of this good KPI:
#1: Although it uses one of the most standard metrics in the universe, conversion rate, it is applied in a very focused way – just the top search keywords. (You can do the top 10 or top 20 or as many “head keywords” as it makes sense in your case, just be aware this does not scale to the “mid” or “tail”.)
#2: It is pretty clear from the first answer to “so what?” that for this KPI the analyst has segmented the data between organic and PPC. This is the other little secret: no KPI works at an aggregated level to by itself give us insights. Segmentation does that.

Key Performance Indicator: Task Completion Rate.
You are using a on-exit website survey tool like 4Q to measure my most beloved metric in whole wide world and the universe: task completion rate. (You’ll see in a moment why. :)
Here’s the conversation…

“Our task completion rate is down five points this month to 58%.”
So what?
“Having indexed our performance against that of last quarter, each one percent drop causes a loss of $80,000 in revenue.”
So what? I mean in the name of thor, what do we do!
“I have drilled down to the Primary Purpose report and most of the fall is from Visitors who were there to purchase on our website, the most likely cause is the call to action on our landing pages and a reported slowness in response when people add to cart.”
Good man. Here’s a bonus and let’s go fix this problem.

Nice right?
Notice in this case you have a inkling to the top super absolutely unknown secret of the web analytics world: If you tie important metrics to revenue that tends get you action and a god like status.
Keep that in mind.
So that’s the story of the “so what” test. A simple yet effective way of identifying the metrics that matter.
This strategy is effective with all that we do, but it is particularly effective when it comes to the normal data puke we call the “management dashboard”. Apply the “so what” test and you’ll make it into a Management Dashboard.
Closing Summary:
Remember, we don’t want to have metrics because they are nice to have, and there are tons of those.
We want to have metrics that answer business questions and allow us to take action—do more of something or less of something or at least funnel ideas that we can test and then take action.
The “so what” test is one mechanism for identifying metrics that you should focus on or metrics that you should ditch because although they might work for others, for you they don’t pass the “so what” test.
And killing metrics is not such a bad thing. After all this is the process that has been proven to work time and time again:

More here: Web Metrics Demystified.
Ok now it’s your turn.
Do you have a test you apply to your web metrics? What are your strategies that have rescued you during times of duress? What do you like about the “so what” test? What don’t you like about it? Do you have a metric that magnificently aced the “so what” test?
Please share your comments, feedback and life lessons via comments.
Thanks.
PS:
Couple other related posts you might find interesting:

• Six Web Metrics / KPI’s To Die For
• 4 “Useless” KPI Measurement Techniques
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Kill Useless Web Metrics: Apply The “Three Layers Of So What” Test is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Google Now Covers All Apps With Advanced Backup

Google recently extended what it describes as highly advanced and sophisticated data backup and recovery to all components of its Apps communication and collaboration suite.

At the core is real-time, synchronous replication in multiple servers and data centers of every morsel of data entered into or modified in any of the Apps components, like Gmail, the Docs office suite, Sites and Calendar.The level of protection, both in terms of the amount of data preserved and of service restoration time, is typically only affordable to very large companies and cloud computing vendors, according to Google.

"Anytime you change any data in Apps, whether writing a sentence in a document or changing a cell in a spreadsheet, in the background we go and write that data to multiple servers within one data center and also in other data centers," said Rajen Sheth, Google Apps senior product manager.

Over several years, Google has been adding Apps components to this "best in class" disaster-recovery umbrella, to the point where the entire suite is now covered. Also included are stand-alone Apps components versions, such as regular Gmail, Docs and Sites accounts. "Now we have it across all of our applications," he said.

Google doesn't charge for this disaster-recovery protection, whose goal in the event of a system failure in a Google server or facility is to lose no data and provide "instant" failover for minimal or no downtime, above what is possible with even a very expensive storage area network (SAN), Sheth said.

Google has often caught heat whenever its hosted applications suffer downtime, particularly Gmail, although those instances have decreased over time. While Google expresses regret whenever one of its online services goes down, it also usually points out that its uptime exceeds those of the typical IT department.

Some large companies have invested in synchronous replication of the sort Google is able to do, but at a cost that is prohibitive to most enterprises and smaller businesses. Google is able to provide this disaster recovery protection for free because it operates many data centers around the world that are connected via high-speed links, Sheth said.

Google will post a blog detailing the technology on Thursday, partly to announce the protection for the entire Apps suite but also because it has realized that this background infrastructure information is important to share as it courts CIOs and IT managers at large enterprises, Sheth said. Big IT departments can appreciate the benefits and cost-savings of this disaster recovery protection.

"We haven't talked all that publicly about this," Sheth said.

Apps is free in its Standard and Education editions, and costs US$50 per user per year in the Premier version, which offers a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee. Google officials have said the goal is to raise that guarantee to 99.999 percent uptime.