You would benefit from having your own Google Analytics on your website rather than having your vendor's info. Here's why.

This week's question of the week has come up 3 times already and it's only Wednesday.

So it's time to talk about it. I recommend this to all of my clients to prevent future headaches. 

Why should I have my own Google Analytics account? My vendor has one for me?

Answer: So what happens when they aren't your vendor anymore? 

• They could close.
• They could have a rate increase that you don't agree with so you no longer want to do business.
• A new and better vendor could come along.
• You might want to run reports on your own with out requesting them.
• You might want to add conversion goals on your own.

There are many reasons that relationships dissolve and if it dissolves with a website or SEO vendor, you will lose all of your site history if it's in their account.

At this time, Google Analytics accounts can not be transferred from one account to another. So the data collected... all of the valuable historical... will stay in your vendors account and be lost to you.

Plus it's so easy to create your own pixel and give it to them to place on your site (it is YOUR site). You can do this and set it up and never look at it again - BUT you always have it.

This blog will help you create the pixel under your own account name so you can send it to your vendor. Click here for that article. Because at some point, you or someone you employee will be able to use the information.

*Please note - when you do this, MANY web guys and SEO vendors gets nervous. "Why are you doing this?" they opine. "Are you going to discontinue my services?".

Sometimes they even tell you that it can't be done because it messes up the reporting.

The best ones won't be nervous. They will know their value to you.

A good web guy will be able to do it without it messing up the reporting.

But if you start hearing the excuses above, then tell them that you'd like them to remove their pixel and add yours. Tell them you'll make them an admin on your account. (don't forget YOU have the RIGHT to this information.) Telling them this usually helps them to figure it out.

So go for it as soon as you're able. Get ownership of your own information. I repeat... someday you will be glad you did.

Super Geek alert... for those of you that want to go deeper into the technical, here's the information about 2 or more GA on one site. For those who don't want deep geek, you can look away. You have what you need already : )

Multiple tracking codes on web pages

This information is straight from Google Support.

Google allows Multiple tracking codes on web pages however some configs may not be supported.

You can install multiple instances of the Google Analytics tracking code on your web pages to send data to multiple properties in your account.

Not all configurations are supported. You can, for example, install multiple instances of the Universal Analytics tracking code (analytics.js) on your web pages but only one instance of the Classic Analytics code (ga.js). Multiple instances of ga.js might result in inaccurate data collection, processing, or reporting. You can, however, install one or more instances of analytics.js on web pages that also have a single instance of ga.js.

Using multiple tracking codes might be useful if users with access to different properties need to see data from the same web site, or if you have multiple versions of a web site. You might, for example, want to collect data from example.com using one instance of analytics.js, collect data from example.co.uk in another instance of analytics.js, and use a third instance of analytics.js on both websites to see the aggregate data.

Using Multiple Tracking Objects you can combined multiple Google Analytics ID's and accounts, this is useful for multiple site owners overseeing all of parts of the website. This can be done by editing the JavaScript see the example below:

ga('create', 'UA-XXXX-Y', 'auto');
ga('create', 'UA-12345-6', 'auto', {'name': 'newTracker'});  // New tracker.

Ghost Spam in your Blogger Dashboard and Adding Google Analytics to Your Blogger Blog

As we discussed in the post about weird referrals showing up in your Google Analytics which is actually Ghost Spam, Ghost Spam is in many places including your Blogger Dashboard.

Ghost Spam doesn't hurt your site or your blog. Ghost Spam is taking advantage of backdoor tactics to show up in your reporting results.

The spammers do this because tons of people see them as a referral, get excited and click on their link to see who is doing all of this referring to your content. Well no one is. They aren't helping you get traffic. They are just showing up in reporting in the hopes that you DO click on them. You are then creating traffic for THEM when you click. 

So you have boosted THEIR traffic which they can sell and even hopefully sell YOU some SEO services (or other services) because who better to sell SEO help to than people who don't know enough about SEO to know that they are Ghost Spam?

Good news is that in most cases they do no harm to your content.

So what can you do? Even if they aren't hurting your content, they are inflating your traffic numbers and not allowing you a clean image of what your real traffic is.

1. You should hook Google Analytics up to your blog. It will give you more information that your blogger dashboard anyway. (see below)

2. You can then add a filter to your Analytics to show metrics that don't include ghost Spam. Click here to do that after you add Analytics to your Blogger Blog (or any blog).

How to add Google Analytics to your Blogger blog metrics.

1. Make sure you have an Analytics account. If you are using Blogger, then you have a Google account already. Just log in to Google Analytics. 

If you are brand new to Analytics, then click the sign up button. 

Create your new account. 

The account name should be the name of your business overall and not specific to the blog. You will have the ability to have multiple properties under each account name.

So you can have Acme Ice Cream as your account name.

Then properties under that account can be Acme Ice Cream website, blog, social, etc.

2. Set up your Blogger Blog property under the correct account name. This property should be referred to as the name of your blog.

You do this by clicking on admin, then the drop down next to properties and choose "create new".

Add the blog URL. Add the industry and time zone.

Click the Get tracking ID button. 

Read and agree (if you do agree) to the terms of service.

For Blogger you are going to copy the tracking ID only. It's the first thing in the upper left corner. You do not need the  HTML code in the box. You would use that if you were adding Analytics to your website. (see this post for that)

The code you want will look something like this UA-71111111-1

3. Then go back to your Blogger dashboard.

Click on settings, and then other. There is a place to paste your code like in the image below.

You are set. ~

As soon as you're emotionally able, you really should consider adding the filter to remove Ghost Spam from Analytics, too.

If you're only mildly geeky, setting up Analytics is enough for today.

Add a calendar reminder for 3 months from now to do the filter. Include this link in the reminder so that it's easy to find. http://howtododigital.blogspot.com/2016/02/blocking-ghost-spam-in-your-google.html

I find it easier for my clients to deal with that after they have used Analytics for awhile so they have a bit of understanding of how Analytics flows.

Well actually it's easier for them if I just do it, but that's not the point of this blog : )

Answer to - What is the referral t.co in my Blogger or Google Analytics?

Lot's of questions this week from customers asking about t.co in their Google Analytics. Great news is that t.co appearing in your referral traffic is not Ghost Spam. (Read more about Ghost Spam here).

So what is t.co? The simple and non-geeky answer is that it traffic coming from Twitter. It is a wonderful and valid source. If you're keeping it simple... you're done : )

The medium geeky answer is that in 2010, Twitter started using it's own link shortener (like bit.ly and tinyurl). So anytime that you either compose a Tweet on Twitter or click a Twitter button on a site to share content, Twitter shortens the URL using their own t.co program.

It benefits the user because shorter links use less characters. It also claims to "scan" the page that is being linked to prevent malware. Hence there is some page validation going on.

It benefits Twitter because Twitter can take advantage of the marketing information that they can garner from posts and interactions rather than letting third party apps (again like bit.ly or tinyurl) get that information. That information is gold in marketing. That's part of how url shorteners stay "free" on the web. They are gathering marketing info. Not in an evil way, mind you. They are simply measuring engagement, how a person got to the page before they clicked, how many people engage with different content etc. This information is used to help people do targeted marketing.

As a small to medium business owner, I will be encouraging you to do some targeted marketing and will show you how.

Let us know if you have any questions!
Please follow us on Facebook by clicking the link on this blog.
AND Have a lovely day : )

Blocking Ghost Spam in your Google Analytics Referral Sources

As we learned in the post about What is Ghost Spam?, Ghost Spam is something that hits your Analytics but not your actual website. It works by garnering traffic from people that see the spam link in their Analytics reports, don't realize it's spam, and click on it to see who they are.

Important things to know:

1. They are not hurting your actual site. They are report spam only.
2. They do not impact your SEO ranking. Google doesn't access Analytics when making decisions about organic or paid ad ranking.
3. They are not attacking your reporting because you are a small or medium business. Everyone is equally susceptible to this type of Ghost Spam. Larger sites usually have someone on staff who have taken steps to block it from the reporting. Also, larger site numbers are much less skewed by these bogus numbers. Small and medium business value pretty much every page view. The percentage is much larger to us.

Good news is that you can take steps to use filters in your Analytics that will block these numbers.

This project is mildly geeky on the "how hard is this?" spectrum. You should be able to follow the steps pretty easily BUT you need to have a handle on your site traffic for the past several months and also know your domains and vendor domains (if any).

Some (many) people (I am still not sure why) choose to block the spam using exclusion filters. It's a fast an easy fix BUT you have to be on it all of the time. You need to be aware of new sources and would have to add the to list weekly to prevent new spam from being reported in your Analytics traffic numbers. I find this to be a waste of time and much less effective than using an a inclusion filter that only reads valid host sources. (essentially your site name and any vendors that you use on your site).

If you would like to move forward adding a filter to your view, I will walk you through it below.
DO NOT skip the step where you add a second "view" in your Analytics. Every time you play with settings you run a risk of losing your history. Losing history is much worse than having some spam numbers in your reports. Adding a second "view" allows you to keep a main view that is unaltered and is always there for you.

To make a second view in your Analytics:

1. Sign in to Google Analytics
2. Click Admin tab and "account and property" to which you wish to add the view
   .
3. In the VIEW column, click the drop down menu and then Create new view.
4. Select either Web Site or App. We'll discuss in future posts what the difference is on this. You want Web Site. 
5. Enter your new view name. I usually name this view something very obvious like "Site traffic without spam".
6. Select the Reporting Time Zone.
7. Click Create View.

Now when click back on home in Analytics, there are two views two choose from, All Web Site Data and your new one.

The first is your unaltered view and is always there for you with your history. The second view will get the filter applied to it.

Now we will create your filter. You need to find a list of your valid hostnames. This will include your site and any vendors that need access to or that are linked to from your site. Don't be Ghost Spam tricked...they use names that you have heard of before like Google.com and Amazon.com. Unless Google or Amazon is a vendor of yours, this is most likely spam.
To create this filter you will need to get a list of hostnames that are valid for your site.
in Analytics go to your original view in Analytics and then:

1. Reporting Tab
2. Audience on the left side
3. Click drop down next to Technology and select Network
4. At the top of the report, click on Hostname
5. Adjust your date range to at least 6 months ago through now. 

This gives you a list of hostnames, including the ones that are spam. Now you can make a list of all of your valid hostnames. Again, these are yours and any vendor or services that you use.

• yourmaindomain.com
• blog.yourmaindomain.com
• es.yourmaindomain.com
• payingservice.com
• yourvendor.com
• anotheruseddomain.com

For small to medium business sites, the list of hostnames usually contain the main domain, subdomains and vendor domains. When you are confident that you have your list of valid hostnames, then its time to create a "regular expression".

This is a string that includes all of your VALID hostnames separated by a straight up and down line. |  (it's usually under the backspace on keyboards).

The line means "or". Also, there's no need to add subdomains if you don't want to. Your main domain will catch them all. 

yourmaindomain\.com|vendordomain\.com|payingservice\.com|translatetool\.com|anyotherdomain.com

Then create a Custom Filter.

Go to Admin tab, View (on the right) and make sure the drop down box is the NEW view that you created for this. 

Click the red +filter button.

1. Type your filter name. Make it something that is clear and makes sense. Ghost Spam Filter usually works for me.

2. Choose custom.

3. Choose INCLUDE (or else you'll be only blocking real info instead of spam).

4. Copy paste your carefully crafted "regular expression".

5. Click "verify this filter" to show what your Analytics report will look like with the new data filter in place. Whether you think it's right or not is a gut call here. You should have enough of a feel for your traffic to know if this is real. If you don't have that gut feel, I recommend aborting this mission for a month or two until you know your numbers better.

If it's good, then save it, set it to save. You can make sure at this time that the filter is on your new "view" and not your "all web site data" view.

And that is that. You have applied a filter to a special view in your Analytics that will allow you to read numbers that only apply specifically to your site.

You have also excluded any new spam that comes around because rather than blocking spam one by one, you've excluded all of them at once. Even new ones. Please remember that every time you add a tracking code to a new service/vendor's page you'll need to make sure they are included in your "regular expression".

Wow you have learned a lot today. If you have any questions, please let us know. Also... why don't you follow us on Facebook to get notified of new posts as they occur? We'd love to have you in our tribe : )

Ghost Spam. What are these Weird Referral Sources in my Google Analytics?

This week's top client question:

What are these weird referral sources on my Google Analytics like traffic2cash.xyz and top1-seo-service.com and free-social-buttons.xyz (and on and on and on)? I am concerned because the bounce rate is very high for these? What do they mean?

Well, these sources in your Google Analytics and Blogger reports are called Ghost Spam. It is spam. They never actually hit your website. They enter into your Google Analytics through a backdoor path called Analytics Measurement Protocol which is a feature of GA intended to allow web site developers to gather and measure data. Hackers have figured out how to use it to their advantage to get into your reporting with out have your tracking code. To get your code, most probably they generate random codes with the GA pattern (UA-XXXXXX-Y) then using an automated script they send fake data directly to your reports.

Why are they doing this? Because they are using the natural curiosity of people reading their Analytics to garner traffic. Every day, hundreds, thousands maybe even tens of thousands of innocent people just like you open their Analytics in hopeful anticipation of seeing increased web traffic and learning more about their potential new clients. They go to the referral section and see tons of traffic from a "weird" URL and they click on it to see what it is. THIS MOMENT IS THE MOMENT THAT GHOST SPAMMERS WANT. Clicking on the link sends you to weird redirect pages where services are offered. Maybe it's SEO services for people who aren't sure whats happening in their Analytics. Nothing harmful actually happens (usually and yet). They are just hoping that you buy something from this redirected page and they get a cut. It's a cheap method for them to get tons of traffic. Most people don't buy, but they only need a small percentage to respond to an offer, they get their cut and move on. They don't have to invest tons of money into this Spam Scam. 

Isn't Google fixing this? Well over all - of course they are! Remember that GA is a free service and has many many many moving parts. When they make a change to one part, many other things change. Google doesn't take that lightly. So changes are thoughtfully handled with time spent measuring the ramifications of those changes. If they weren't working on it, it would a gazillion times worse.

Is it always in the referral sources? No. It's most often there, but it sometimes can appear in Organic (when you see random or nonsensical keywords), and sometimes Events (they can be tricky and say "to use this feature visit event-tracking.com").

How can I check for Ghost Spam? Follow the steps below. Everything that isn't tied directly to your domain name or to a vendor that you use for your site is most likely spam. MAKE SURE you choose a wide date range before you run this report.

And yes even Google.com is most likely spam. They use names like t"Google" because it looks popular and harmless. None of your web pages are directly on Google.com. It's not a "host" for you.

Special note... one of the most common misunderstood referrers is t.co. That one is actually good. It's Twitter! You can read more here if you wonder about that.

Ok I see it, know I have it and I understand it. What do I do about it? You have two choices. 1. (less geeky) You can adjust your reporting like we did above and disregard the bad data.

2. (more Geeky) You can apply filters to your Google Analytics that will filter out the bad data for you. This has to be done very mindfully so that you don't lose precious data. We will cover this in this blog.... Adding Filter to remove Ghost Spam metrics.

We will also be covering this for those using Blogger in the next few blogs as well.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions. You can follow us on Facebook or add your email to be notified of our new blogs.

Measuring Brand Lift With Google Analytics

Measuring your brand lift is a great way to validate your marketing job, or your value as a vendor to your clients. It's also just a great way for small to medium businesses to see if they are growing in their market.

Brand lift is best measured one tactic at a time. So for example:

• One ad campaign with a vendor.
• One new marketing person.
• One PPC campaign.
• One TV campaign. 

A marketing person can run multiple programs and use brand lift to validate their efforts. OR you can try adding PPC (and nothing else) to your media mix and measure the impact of that tactic. Just as long as you don't launch a new TV campaign and PPC in the same month and expect to be able to measure each piece. You will be able to measure the campaign as a whole, but not TV vs PPC.

Basically what we will measure is whether people have top of mind awareness of your business name when they are online looking for a product or service. Are they searching for auto repair and happened upon your site OR did they search specifically for your business name or type in your site name directly?

When they type your name directly, you have brand lift. Your brand is becoming more recognizable in your market.

It's also an interesting way to use digital metrics to measure non-digital campaigns. Brand lift can happen and be measured when you add a TV campaign, for example, by analyzing the time period that the campaign ran. 

How do you measure brand lift? Let's go to your Analytics. 

You will want to choose "Acquisition" from the left side, then "all traffic", then "channels".
There are two things to measure here. First is direct. These are people who directly type your website URL into their browsers. 

Click on "direct" and you will see this traffic. You want to look at number one which is (usually) just a /. That forward slash represents your home page.

Now go up to the date in upper right corner and choose your comparison ranges. Give some thought to what you are comparing. If there is some seasonality in your business, you may want to compare year over year. If you are judging a marketing campaign, then compare to the month before you started that campaign. 

The comparison will show you what the direct traffic to your site was, and what it is now since you either .... added a campaign, opened for business, hired a marketing person... what ever is being measured.

Now go to Acquisition, All traffic, Channels again and choose organic. Once you click on organic you will get the top keywords used to get to your website. These keywords were used in a search to get to you. Most likely because the person wasn't positive of your web address so it's easy enough to just Google your business name and get there.

The results default to the top 10 keywords. You can go to the lower right side of this page and increase the numbers. 

So what you are seeing is a list of keywords used to get to your site. Having the date comparison option selected shows you growth (or decline) of each.
Over all, you want to continue to see a growth in your business name being used as keywords period over period. 
There will be many industry and generic keywords for your industry in the list. For Brand Lift, you are looking for an increasing percentage of your actual business name being used.
Make sense? Let us know if you have any questions. 

9 Answers for the FAQ - Why Doesn't My Google Analytics Information Match What My Vendor Is Reporting (Including DFP and Facebook)

I get this question several times per month. Why don't my Google Analytics numbers match my vendor reports, including Facebook and DFP (DoubleClick For Publishers)?

While Google Analytics is wonderful for understanding how visitors use your website, it doesn't track session data the same way that log servers track clicks. Sessions and visits and clicks are not measured in the same way because although in our minds and for basic reporting they are the same thing, in the techy underbelly of website traffic, they are not the same thing and are not measured in the same way.

If you don't want to get too geaky, you can stop here and know that it's ok. Industry standards show that a minimum 10-15% margin of difference is normal. It can be more if any of the issues in the super geaky section below apply to you. I have also heard many say it's up to 40% on Facebook reporting.

When you use a vendor that is trusted and that has years of experience with successful campaigns, you can rest assured that you are not being scammed. The top vendors work each day in the industry and with the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) to maintain integrity among those offering digital marketing. It's not all a ploy to trick you. The reporting is just different - doesn't mean it's wrong. 

If you want to get mildly geaky, here is the basic reason:

1. Click data is based on ad server logs from the ad exchange(s).  Analytics data (such as Google Analytics) that measures sessions, etc, is based on cookies or page loads. Two different measurement sources. In order for Google to record a "session", the following needs to occur:

A. A click from an ad takes place and the browser is pointed to the advertiser’s landing page.
B. When the browser starts to download the landing page, there may be a request for several files at the same time, including JavaScript, CSS, images, video, audio, etc., including the Google Analytics tracking code.
C. The Google Analytics JavaScript file must first be downloaded and interpreted by the user’s browser.
D. The user’s browser/device and security settings must support:
• Cookies
• JavaScript
• Images
E. If any of the above are disabled, Google Analytics may not be able to record a session.
F. Next, the browser sends a separate request to www.google-analytics.com, the Google Analytics servers.
G. Finally, a session is recorded.

This alone is a big chunk of why sessions and clicks don't match in reporting. Your vendor gets and receives a click and they count it, it's that simple. But steps A-G above have to happen before Google Analytics records a session. 

Ad servers track clicks, while Google Analytics tracks sessions. (info obtained from Google Support.)

*****You could use a UTM code to help mitigate some differences as long as you remember it will still never match exactly. Click here for UTM code info.

And if you'd like to get super geaky, the following is information directly from Google Support and Vicimediainc.com. 

2. YOUR LANDING PAGE MIGHT REDIRECT TO A DIFFERENT PAGE

Redirects in landing pages can often keep the Google Analytics code from launching and properly identifying the traffic.

3. USERS MIGHT HAVE SET THEIR BROWSER PREFERENCES IN WAYS THAT PREVENT GOOGLE ANALYTICS USED ON WEBSITES FROM COLLECTING DATA

Users entering your website through a click might have JavaScript or images turned off, or might use other technologies preventing Google Analytics from reporting about your website users (such as by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on).

There is also more information from Vicimediainc.com here:

4. If a user comes to your site from an ad, and then leaves the landing page before the Google Analytics tracking code executes, then the “gclid parameter” is never passed to the Google servers, and that click is not associated with the session. The result is a clicks vs. sessions discrepancy.

5. If your Google Analytics tracking code is at the bottom of your web page and placed right above the closing of the body section then you are definitely at risk for reporting discrepancies. And, the bigger and heavier the page the more at risk you are. Why is this an issue? Because a person who clicks on your ad and bounces quickly will in all likelihood never trigger the Google Analytics tracking code lying at the bottom of your page code. One simple solution is to place your Google Analytics tracking code near the top of the page to minimize the risk.

6. A VISITOR MAY CLICK YOUR AD MULTIPLE TIMES.

When one person clicks on one advertisement multiple times in the same session, the ad server records multiple clicks while Google Analytics recognizes the separate pageviews as one visit. This is a common behavior among visitors engaging in comparison shopping.

7. 3RD PARTY IMAGES

Some browsers give users the option to disable images that are requested from domains other than the current page. Disabling such images will prevent data from being sent to Google Analytics.

8. 1ST PARTY VS. 3RD PARTY COOKIES

Even among cookie-based tracking solutions, there is a difference between 1st party and 3rd party cookies. Because 3rd party cookies are set by a source other than the website being visited, they’re often blocked by browsers and security software. Google Analytics uses 1st party cookies.

9. YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKING CODE ON YOUR LANDING PAGE

This might sound like a no-brainer, but it happens too often that a landing page doesn’t contain the Google Analytics tracking code. If this happens, a click is measured, but no visit at all.

And here are some facts supplied by Facebook Support:
Facebook conversion measurement attributes conversions based on a 24-hour view and 28-day click through window. Any comparison you do against other tracking data must be within the same attribution model. 
Many 3rd party tracking providers use referrer URLs to credit conversions back to ads. Due to this method, these providers generally under-report Facebook conversions by about 40%. This is due to the fact that roughly 40% of Facebook users browse Facebook using HTTPS instead of HTTP. So when a user clicks on an ad on Facebook and converts on a site, the referrer cannot be recorded since the user left an HTTPS environment and entered an HTTP environment.

So in review:

• A session is not measured the same way a click is measured.
• You could be missing tracking codes (maybe).
• The visitor may have disable some tracking metrics on their browser.
• A shopper may click more than once if they are actively looking.
• Your landing page may use a redirect.
• Your tracking code could be too low on a heavy page. 
• HTTP vs HTTPS in one visit

Have You Looked at Your Pinterest Analytics Lately? (Pinterest 101)

Are you aware that Pinterest has analytics to look at, too?
The client I am using in this example has been doing passive Pinterest for awhile on their own and we are going to add it to the mix of coordinated marketing that I will be doing for them so this Pinterest analysis is their first.

The analytics tab for Pinterest is very easily accessible right on your home screen. It's right out there on the left side.

Let's click on overview.

Here you will see the overview (hence the name) of your account activity.

First thing that most people need to do is verify their website (see the confirm site button in the upper right module).

Starting from the upper left, you see a snapshot of your average DAILY impressions and viewers. 

In the middle is average MONTHLY viewers and average MONTHLY engaged people.

Below this is the top performing pins for your account.

Let's look back at top left module (your Pinterest profile) and click on "more". This information is more detailed and has the 4 tabs across the top to review impressions, re-pins, clicks and all-time.

All-time shows your best performing all time pins, and references similar pins from other people that perform better in search and then also in all interactions. I really do believe that all of these tabs are really self explanatory so I will not bore you with details. Please contact me if you want more details on this.

Going back to the main dashboard, let's click on "more" next to Your Audience.

This is a bit deeper dive into the demographics that make up your audience. Please note the 2 tabs on top, Demo and Interests, This information is cumulatively used to help you get the best image of who your viewer/follower is and what will be of interest to them.

Now you can go back to the upper left corner of your dashboard, hover over Analytics and click on Profile. You will notice that it's the same info as the "more" buttons next to each module that we clicked before. 

As this is a 101 walk through, this is the time for you to simply gather the new insights that you now have into you Pinterest account, successes, and most importantly... who your followers are.

You should be developing your audience persona.

For example, if your main audience is women aged 25-35, then you should develop a persona based on this. Amy is one of the most popular names for women in this age group (a Google search will help you name your persona).

Get an image of a 30 year old woman. This is the face that you think of when you market to your persona.

Your audience persona in this instance, then. would be Amy. She is 30. You got some insights into what she is interest in from you Pinterest analytics. You can get more demo info from her from your Twitter Analytics and from your Google Analytics. Don't try to knock this project out in a half hour, develop your persona as you go along. Use the developed(ing) persona as your muse.