Career Changes: The Great Holiday Balancing Act
For a while, 2020 seemed like it would never end. It was just one calamity after another. The year started quiet enough. I was even excited because there didn’t seem to be anything on the horizon to worry about.
Then the rumors about a mysterious disease started, but I wasn’t too worried. After all, it was far away and someone else’s problem.
“When will countries stop messing around with chemical warfare?” I wondered as I went about my business.
The rumors kept growing bigger and closer to where I lived until they were too big to be ignored.
Finally, it arrived and movement was restricted.
The country shut down.
Masks became mandatory.
My office closed.
My family members were infected. First, one and then another.
The world looked like a bad zombie apocalypse movie. In the spirit of full disclosure, I had to stop watching zombie movies and tv shows because they had become a little too realistic. They no longer seemed far-fetched anymore.
Now, that the holidays have started, I find myself looking back on what has been one of the hardest years of my life, by far. On one hand, 2020 seemed like it would never end. On the other hand, now that the year is coming to a close, it feels like it all flew by in a flash.
Boy am I glad to see it go.
It has been a year filled with worry about my health and the health of my friends, family members, and random strangers (every sneeze and cough makes me jittery these days). It has been a year filled with incredulity as I watched people flout common sense and simple safety measures.
It has been a year filled with family and close relationships as quarantining forced everyone to slow down and stay indoors.
It has been a year filled with learning, personal development, and growth, as I focused on the opportunity that being forced to stay at home for six months gave me.
While I hope to never, ever see another pandemic in my lifetime again, I will miss spending time with my family and on personal development as the world slowly returns to normal.
Holiday Studying
Am I the only one finding it difficult to remain focused during this holiday season? At first, I was afraid that I was losing interest in the Conversion Optimization mini degree from the CXL Institute.
But every time I manage to study, I find myself quickly engrossed in the material. So, a lack of interest isn’t the problem. I think it’s a combination of the fact that the holidays are here and the year is almost at an end.
I’m not too enthusiastic about celebrating the holidays due to the beating 2020 gave me. I’m more relieved that the whole year (and hopefully the entire drama) is almost over. As I’m breathing a sigh of relief at having made it through it all, I’m struggling to find the strength to continue pushing myself as I did before.
It’s like now that my mental muscles feel safe to relax, they refuse to get back to work. I might just take a few days off studying and give myself a much-needed break instead of fighting against it.
Wrapping Up Google Tag Manager for Beginners
I finally finished Google Tag Manager for Beginners. The only critique I have for this course is there is no way for me to practice what I’m learning.
Chris Mercer makes the topic so interesting that I’m eager to practice what I’m being taught. But without my own website, I really can’t.
This week I went through:
1. Tracking Engagement: YouTube Videos
I learned how to set up tags that are based on interactions with youtube videos embedded on web pages. I can see how far along in the video users get before leaving. If users are dropping off quickly, that could indicate that they’re not interested in the video entirely or that the video is too long.
2. Data Layer 101: Storing Details
Here I learned how to push information into the data layer for temporary storage.
3. Data Layer 101: Reading Details
After information is pushed to the data layer, I learned how to get it into the hands of Google Tag Manager.
4. Tracking Ecommerce: The Basics
We reviewed the difference between Standard eCommerce (looks at the purchase information and what was purchased) and Enhanced eCommerce (looks at how it was purchased, along with what was purchased) in Google Analytics. I then learned how to create transaction tags.
5. Deep Dive: Cross-Domain Tracking
Cross-Domain Tracking refers to tracking users who, in a single session and the same visit, go across domains, or root domains. I learned that if the flow of your website user experience moves between more than one domain, you should set up your Universal Analytics tags to measure those visits as one.
If you don’t do this, Google Analytics will treat users, who move between more than one domain (all within your website), as two separate visitors, which will inflate the number of users that appear in your reports.
6. Deep Dive: Tag Sequencing
In Google Tag Manager, timing is important. This lesson taught me how to specify tags to fire immediately before or after a given “primary” tag is fired.
7. Deep Dive: Formatting Variables
In this lesson, I learned how to format values in Google Tag Manager.
8. Wrap-Up and Resources
There was a bonus course on form submission in this lesson that taught me how to enable the validation of a form submission to verify that there were true submissions and not just people randomly clicking the button.
The best part of this course was the fact that I passed the final exam on my second try. I was so excited.
One thing that has helped me throughout this program is taking extensive notes. As I’m taking the exams, I just flip through my notes to the areas I can’t remember. Once I finish this mini degree I plan on reviewing all of my notes.
In a perfect world that would happen as soon as I finish the Conversion Optimization mini degree. But I already have plans to start Content Marketing (or Technical Content Marketing, as it is now called) mini degree immediately (semi-immediately because my brain is going to need a break) afterward.
