I feel like a kid again on Christmas day waking up early to unwrap my presents.
First impression
Log in worked great. Hubspot sent me an immediate confirmation mail with easy to follow tips for getting started or contacting help.
Once logged in, I arrived at the “trial Dashboard.”
Simple enough so far, the dashboard is neatly organized into four sections: Get started; Get found; Convert and Analyze. It seems like they’ll walk me through all the processes – nice. The first section, “get started” guided me through setting up my website for analytics. Basically just pasting Hubspot’s tracking code on my site – same as you do with Google’s tracking code. Then clicking a button to test the tracking code to make sure it was working, which it was.
If anyone is considering using Hubspot to monitor multiple clients’ performance, you can unfortunately, only enter one domain. Hubspot does however suggest contacting them, which I guess keeps the option open to creating multiple accounts.
Here’s their help section’s response to that particular question:
Can I have multiple domains or multiple sites within one HubSpot portal?
Answer (Hubspot’s)
While it is possible to point multiple domains or subdomains to a single HubSpot portal, you are only allotted one page to point your base domain (represented in most file systems as '/') to.
This means that if you point multiple domains or subdomains to your HubSpot portal, you cannot point each domain at the base, root level to a different page - each will resolve to the top page in your list in 'Create -> Website Pages'. You can only have one page at the root level, and have to specify any other page by it's path in the HubSpot file system.
If you require a large number of sites, please contact us directly to discuss your situation.
Hopefully, their answer makes sense to you.
From here I quickly jumped past ”steps 2 & 3 to the ”analyze” section to see how it the tracking code performed - all seems well.
During my month long demo, I’ll make sure to compare Hubspot’s results with my Google analytics to see how the numbers match up.
Get Found
After checking out my analytics I went back to step two, “Get Found.” This involved three steps: Creating keywords; Writing a blog story (creating content) and synching my social media accounts with my Hubspot account.
I quickly put together a keywords list and moved on to creating a blog entry (this is it).
Create a blog entry
Interestingly, when I initially went to this section (create a blog entry) my only option was to create a blog within Hubspot’s own CM system. This immediately depressed me because I thought that maybe I had missed something or had not realized that Hubspot was just another CMS system after all. Was I that dumb?
My initial thought was that all my content creating during this trial, blog entries or landing pages, would have to go through Hubspot’s CMS – oh well...
As this was just a test, I figured I might as well go with it and quickly put together a blog using their template. I planned to post this entry in it.
Things change quickly
Worked called so I logged out and did some client stuff.
Later, when I logged back in to get to create my (Hubspot) blog entry, I was first prompted instead: if I would be using my own blog or domain – strange that this didn’t happen initially.
I followed the steps, entered my blog details, created a feedburner account and was off. Now my own blog was part of their system.
The process was easy to do and very well explained. I didn’t need Hubspot's CMS system after all!
I can now post this entry on my blog - as you can see.
For companies without the resources or know how to create their own blog, Hubspot’s CMS blog might be a good start - as it is already set up for analytics, easy to work with, etc…
Social Media
My next step was to connect my SM accounts and blog to their social media analytic and publishing tools. This was easy to set up. I like how they hold my hand.
This is all I have time for right now, I’ll post this entry and we'll see what happens.
About Andrew Singer
I provide communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of international companies, ranging from hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream clients like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the World Youth and Student Travel Conference. Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.
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