Career Changes: For the Love of Reading
The one thing that has stood out to me during my career transition into conversion copywriting is the amount of reading that is required to establish yourself as an authority in this field. The people who are at the top of this field read an enormous amount of books and academic studies. They read widely, not just focusing on one particular area. They read deeply, not browsing through the topics. They read often.
I’ve always loved reading. It’s been my drug of choice since childhood. I could read from morning until night, breaking only to eat or go to the bathroom. I remember feeling let down whenever I finished a particularly good book. This was because I had to return to reality where everything wasn’t all tied up in a neat little bow or made sense.
I’m not sure when I stopped reading altogether, but I imagine it was some time after I started my corporate job, and life got busy and hectic. So finding a career path that would allow, and even encourage, me to read has me feeling like a kid in a candy store. Almost like it’s too good to be true.
The only drawback is that the books I read now aren’t my genre of choice. Now, I’m reading books and articles on Psychology, marketing, and copywriting that will help me grow in my new career path. They’re not as easy to get into as my go-to genre, which is romance, where the young, beautiful, and quirky heroine is rescued from her life of mind-numbing drudgery by a brawny, ne’er do well, that her family can never accept.
Continuing with Google Tag Manager for Beginners
My expectations for finishing this module within a week were realistically low. As I mentioned last week, I had reduced my study time from 4–5 hours to 2 1/2 hours a day. So I knew it’d take a bit of time for me to get through it. True to form, I’m still on it.
By now, I shouldn’t be surprised by how much I enjoy Chris Mercer’s courses. This course is the second I’m taking that he’s taught in CXL’s Conversion Optimization mini degree, and I’m really enjoying the process. He just has a way of making the material seem interesting.
For a little while, I was scared I was turning into a big Google Analytics nerd or something. Luckily before I could go into full panic mode, I remembered that Chris Mercer is just a really good teacher.
This week I made it through the following topics:
1. Getting to Know GTM (Google Tag Manager): Data Layer
This unit explained what a Data Layer is. Which is basically, a javascript object that is used to pass information from your site to our Tag Manager container.
When Google Tag Manager loads on the page, it creates a data layer.
2. Getting to Know GTM: Organization
In this unit we looked at the two different levels of users:
- Admin ( or Super User) — Should only be given to people who need to add and remove other users, up to and including you. Be careful who you give this right to.
- User (Everyone else) — Users who do NOT need to add and remove other users. Essentially, almost everyone falls into this category.
We also learned about the importance of utilizing naming conventions for both yourself and other users of the account.
3. Getting to Know GTM: Preview Mode
A tool in GTM that I find particularly useful is the Preview Mode. Preview is a way for you to check and make sure that all of the changes and adjustments you’ve made in your container actually work.
Preview Mode lets you test your changes before you make it live for the rest of the world to see.
4. Getting to Know GTM: Workflow
Workspaces help to keep changes separate and siloed so that a change in your container does not automatically overwrite changes in someone’s container.
For example, if someone changes something in your company’s GTM account that would normally affect your container, Tag Manager will alert you to that and allow you to update everything so you’re always working off of the most recent version.
5. Getting Started: Creating Your First Tag
This unit walked us through creating our first tag (much like the name implies).
A Tag is basically a script that Tag Manager puts on pages at the appropriate time and fires as required so that the platform knows what’s going on.
6. Getting Started: Scripts and Pixels
I learned how to use the built-in tags such as Google Ads Remarketing, Conversion Linker, and Twitter Universal Website.
This unit also taught on the importance of checking for a built-in tag BEFORE selecting Custom HTML.
7. Tracking Engagement: Clicks and Time
In this unit, I learned how to set up click triggers and timer triggers.
- Click Trigger — Whenever the mouse button is pressed, GTM knows to fire a click.
- Timer Trigger — Helps to measure the amount of time a user spends on a page to complete a task.
8. Tracking Engagement: Scroll
Tracking Scroll Engagement helps you to know how many people are scrolling down your page. This piece of information is especially useful if, for example, you want to measure lead opt-ins on a page where your form is at the bottom of the post.
You’ll be able to figure out if you should move the form up, if the problem is the form, if no one is seeing the form because they’re not scrolling far enough or if people are seeing the form but are not interested in the offer.
I also learned why your bounce rate shouldn’t be very high nor very low (single digits).
9. Tracking Engagement: YouTube Videos
Here, I learned how to set up triggers that track how much of a video on your page, users are watching.
All of these are ways of tracking how users are interacting with your site, in a bid to improve engagement and conversion. This week as I was browsing through Amazon, my mind flashed to the course and I took a more critical look at the ways they’re using all the measurement tools that I’ve been learning to improve my buying experience (quite successfully, to be honest judging from my bill).
It didn’t stop me from buying (sadly) but it was interesting to see how they implemented the information they’re getting through the use of analytics.
