That’s right, Goo Goo over Google Analytics, and excuse me for the lack of better phrases, was definitely on point.  The event hosted by Social Media Club – Los Angeles was streamed live to over 46,746 people (108,807 total views) on TechZulu.

Update: Watch Video Below!

Below is information on what we learned.  Check back on Monday to see the video of the event in its entirety.

1.     It’s easy, 5-minutes easy, to setup Google Analytics – As John Shiple mentioned…it’s easier than going to your local café and ordering coffee.  Many content management sites such as WordPress and Blogger make it so easy to track the behavior of your visitors by allowing you to copy + paste a tracking code in the headers or footers of your site.  You’ll be collecting analytics data in no time!

2.    Having the Right Goals in Mind – Many people focus their energy towards driving large volumes of traffic to their site, which is great, but what you do with that traffic is even more important.  Is your bounce rate high? Are you experiencing a drop-off on certain pages? Google Analytics tracks all that.  By making your conversion goals more deliberate and spelled out such as “collect an email”, “add an item to shopping cart”, “spend X dollars to buy my product”, and “confirm sale” , you greatly improve your metrics  and are more enabled to make more informed decisions to improve your company’s online marketing campaign and overall bottom line.

3.    Tracking Inbound Traffic – Learning where your traffic came from and how they got there is just as important as what they do once on your site. So make sure you code your links to be human-readable.  Use us for example; we over here at Highly Relevant like to comment often on interesting social media blogs found on Mashable as well as other blogs regarding online reputation management. In this case, of commenting on Mashable we would use the http://www.highlyrelevant.com/social-media-marketing.html as s opposed to http://www.highlyrelevant.com/online-reputation-management.html.

This helps online users on Mashable know we are part of the social media community plus it also helps us determine where most of our traffic is coming from – social media blogs or online reputation management blogs.

4.     Need Help? Don’t fret.  GA help is Everywhere – The panel members provided the following resources:

• Avinash Kaushik – the GURU of Google Analytics has a blog on the subject:  Click Here.
• Google’s Conversion University has a bunch of training guides.  Here’s the link:  http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/
• Google Analytics works within Facebook.  See this link:  http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/

5.    Creating Funnels –Funnels are great (and illustrative) tools for building the steps towards your company’s goal.  They also show you how to identify your user drop-off rate at each step.  Essentially, if there’s drop-off for every step you will want to limit and simplify the number of then in order to successfully convert into sales.

A special shout-out to the very informative speakers– You guys were great!

Check them out on twitter to see what other projects they are working or if you have any questions.

Serena (Host): @serena
Erica: @SnowboardWomen
Alex: @aybecker
Andrew:@andrewhahn
John: @FreelanceCTO

With the release of its latest product, Google Buzz, Google announced today its plan to compete with the likes of Facebook and MySpace. The company is off to a jumpstart in membership by integrating Gmail account users directly into the social network, which already has established 150+ million users.

Check out Google’s video demo:

The two core philosophies behind Google Buzz, as described by Bradley Horowitz, vice president for product management of Google, was people’s fondness of sharing life experiences and being able to do so in-real time.

Todd Jackson, product manager for Google Buzz, began his demo by logging onto his Gmail account, which captured plenty of interests because of the curious splash page introducing the company’s newest release. He described it as, “an entire world within Gmail” and that is exactly what it is. Whether Gmail users want to be part of another Social Network or not, one thing is certain and that is for Google to create a seamless transition between email, social networking, and sharing media.

Some of the main features showcased were Google Buzz’s ability to allow users to autofollow, share rich content (in private or publically), all at a fast rate and within a newly integrated inbox decked out with plenty of new press-of-a-button shortcuts. For instance, in the same way that users press “C” to compose an email, they will now be able to press “R” to comment/reply to a buzz post. Picasa, Twitter, Flickr and plenty other sites will be aggregated and allow for one-site access.

Additionally, Google is implementing a system in which they will email you about any updates on comments you or others made, much like Facebook, but with media attached to it so you won’t always have to log-in to see all the buzz you’ve created.

Google Buzz will be rolled out on mobile web via Google’s Mobile website, of course Buzz.Google.com, and from Google Mobile Maps whenever you “buzz” in from a certain location. Like any major release similar to this, it is being done in phases so expect Google Buzz to eventually become part of your life—willingly or not.