I used to frequently share stats and trend data on digital media usage here. So when Future Buzz community member and past contributor Ed Zitron linked me to the The Media Benchmarks Report it was good inspiration to start doing this again.

Our team at Google frequently talks to web analysts, who in our recent account say they spend about half their time answering basic analytics questions for other people in their organization.

Recently, I visited my alma mater, University of Florida in Gainesville, FL, to speak with advertising students about digital marketing, analytics and how to start a career in our field. As I had expected, I received many questions from students, both after my talk and via email.

Silicon Valley loves fancy job titles. It’s just something we do, and software and technology lend themselves to it. But it’s not always helpful. In many cases, these new titles are simply a reinventing or coopting of a practice that is already well-served by existing practitioners.

I know readers here are a really busy group, but after 9 years of blogging consistently, then not publishing for several months some of you may have wondered what happened. Rest assured I’m fine and have no plans to stop sharing my ideas here.

As I’ve been writing about tools and tactics quite a bit lately, I thought for this month’s column I’d take a step back and share some ideas on how you can become a better analyst.