Are you building your online presence with social media? Blogging, Twittering, posting links and creating a social stream of content takes time. But if you aren’t tracking your numbers, how will you know if your time is well-spent? And where do you look for good ideas for new content?
It’s important to start with the measurements that are important to you and your goals. Add to that the trends that are important to your readers. These two sources of information will help inform your content strategy. Here are some high-level questions that I ask to help people think through what to measure and track.
- How many people are visiting your site?
- Where are they coming from and what do you know about them?
- How many subscribers does your blog have?
- Which of your posts are generating the most interest?
- What is happening in your niche that others are interested in?
Think through these questions for your business, and decide on some measurable metrics. For example, time on site is an indicator that a visitor found what they were looking for on your site. Once the metrics have been developed, look for sources of information that give you data to track. There are a ton of analytics and tracking options out there, but I’ve found that a daily visit to the following (free) sites keeps me on top of my numbers, provides feedback on trends, and doesn’t take more than about 10-15 minutes to complete. Plus, no knowledge of code is required to get started.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an extraordinarily powerful reporting engine that uses a little piece of code in your website to track your visitors. It can tell you how many visitors you’ve received, where they came from, how they found you, what browser they use, how long they stayed on your site, where they clicked through, and dozens of other statistics. For the time-pressed user, the default reports give a snapshot of your site activity that is more than adequate. For the hard core website guru, the ability to drill down, slice, dice, and parse the data is worth the price of admission. It is important to note that for Google Analytics to work, you need the ability to insert a small code snippet directly into the html of your website for it to work (you don’t actually write any code, you just cut and paste according to the step-by-step instructions in your account). The only real shortcomings are the update frequency (daily rather than real-time), and the lack of integration with other platforms, i.e. high-end commercial multi-channel/multi-platform monitoring apps – which, by the way, are not free.
Google Alerts
Alerts is less about analytics, more about trend-spotting and staying on top of your area of expertise. This service will send you (ahem) alerts based on any search criteria that you choose. News, blog posts, web sites, videos and groups that contain your search terms will either be emailed to you at the frequency that you choose (immediately, daily or weekly) or sent to an RSS feed. Create an ego-surfing alert to see how often your name pops up and in what context. Better yet, create a few alerts based on the common or popular terms that your readers/customers are searching (as found in Google Analytics) to stay on top of the latest results.
Google Insights for Search
As a starting point, take your Alerts and plug them into Insights for Search to see patterns based on time and location. Use Insights to discover trending topics in your niche, regional hotspots for your product or service, and seasonal or event driven patterns. Like Alerts, Insights is more about figuring out what to do than about evaluating what you did.
Feedburner
Despite appearances, I am not trying to proselytize for Google. They just make some pretty cool free stuff for folks like you and me, and Feedburner is another example. Feedburner is the application that turns your blog posts into an RSS feed. This is called syndication, and it basically means that your content is available to your readers at their convenience, when and where they want it. With a Feedburner account, you can track how many people are subscribed to your feed, the popularity of each of your posts, and which posts are directing traffic back to your site. Feedburner offers several other services to help you improve your content and increase your reach.
Bit.ly
Have you ever sent someone a link and wondered if they clicked on it? Do you struggle with putting links inside the 140 character limit in Twitter updates? Bit.ly is one of a growing number of URL shortening services. These little guys take a long, ugly website address (the URL) and swap in a short, cute one. Bit.ly also provides you with real time tracking stats – send out a bit.ly link on Twitter, and you can watch as people click on it in real time. This is one way to test the “catchy-ness” of your headlines, or see how much attention you receive at different times of the day (hint: lots of people check their Twitter streams during and right after lunch). Create a bit.ly account and you can go back through all of your past bit.ly links to see how each has fared, including your share of the aggregated clicks for a given site.
Filtered Mail
Aside from comment spam protection (built in on major blogging platforms), the next best thing you can do to manage comments is set up your email to give comments special treatment. I use Gmail, with a filter that sends all of my comments to a separate folder. (I also happen to receive these on my Blackberry, which is probably overkill for most). Besides having every opportunity to be responsive to my readers, this system also provides a quick feedback loop on the posts that are getting attention. It is valuable to know the content that compels your readers to comment, because it indicates interest in that area (okay, enough alliteration…)
Host Server Stats
The main server statistics that I think are worth keeping an eye on are bandwidth and storage. Hosting companies don’t have unlimited resources (although cloud computing may come close) so they will give you resource caps so your website doesn’t cause other websites to suffer from performance anxiety. If you store and host lots and lots of media like pictures and videos, and your site gains in popularity or gets a sudden rush of visitors, you are likely to exceed your resource caps. Just make sure that you check these once in a while, especially when your site readership starts to grow.
Bonus: Portal
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so I think there is value in keeping an eye on the latest hippity-happenings across the world. Be sure to check your favorite portal site. Examples include: Yahoo!, MSN, or (gasp!) AOL. Customize your home page to give you news, information and story ideas based on your interests. Find interesting stories that deserve a mention or your spin on your blog. Stay current and relevant.
Those are my suggestions for tracking and trending tools. Now I want to hear from you: What’s working for you? What did I miss?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related posts: