How many of you with a blog or a website got to the part where you had to set up all of your tracking and analytics and got really, really excited?
Yeah, me neither.
For many of us, learning how to navigate Google Analytics, figuring out how to place a code snippet on a page and writing the perfect tracking URLs isn’t something that comes easily. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to read through 159 million different advice articles on how to set up — then manage and learn from — the analytics on my blog. All while pumping out a minimum of 20 new posts a month?
Maybe some people want to do this work, but I want a better way to make decisions.
Don’t invest in measuring outdated metrics.
Today on the web, to get the analytics you need, you have to patch together bits and pieces of data across several tools. And check that data every single day. That means deciphering:
Google Analytics (including pageviews, demographics, events and goals)
Organic search (SEO)
Tracking links (like how to build UTM tags)
Affiliate links
CPM (measuring impressions)
CPC (measuring what people click on)
CAC (for acquiring new customers)
Social media metrics for each platform
Then, sadly, as you pull together all of these different services, it gets painfully clear that you have to figure out different terminology, ways of measuring things and nothing is designed to be easily understood at a glance.
On top of this, if you actually want to know who your readers are and what they want to learn from you, you also need to navigate how surveys work, set up a way to capture email addresses and tap into your followers on social media.
There are some fantastic platforms out there for writing and distributing your content, but there isn’t a single one that offers a comprehensive analytics dashboard where you can instantly see what’s working (and what’s not).
Understanding these metrics is crucial if you want to make money on ads – or even just get a better grasp of who your audience is. Without analytics, you’re flying blind.
If you don’t figure out how to set up robust analytics and tracking on your blog in 2016, you’re toast.
So, why hasn’t anyone made this easier?
It’s a brave new (mobile) world.
Today, communities on native mobile apps — where your members are meeting each other and coming back daily with push notifications — have an edge over starting a blog or simply building a following on Instagram because of powerful network effectsandcomprehensive analytics built in from day one. This is no Frankenstein science project that requires you to pull together 10 difference analytics systems to try and build your business. Rather, you have a simple, easy dashboard that tells you what’s working, what’s not and where you should focus next.
For savvy bloggers diving into mobile, they are learning more — and learning faster— about what their audience wants and why they are coming back. And in 2016, if you can’t track the interactions between the people you’re bringing together, your software isn’t doing its job.
Get on board or get left behind.
As we’ve learned on the web, analytics are essential to anything you do, especially if you want to make money doing it.
Analytics are your key to better decisions. If you can make better decisions about what to write, when you put it out into the world and who you will bring together doing it, you can turn your passion into a business much faster and more efficiently.
In a mobile world, you want to focus on a new set of metrics that answer new questions (that really weren’t possible to easily answer on the web):
Contributors. How many people actively engaged with the content I created? Did they share it with their social networks?
Trends. Which topics bring people back the most often? Which conversations inspire them to take an action?
Retention. Who are the people that are returning daily to learn from me and from members like them? What percentage of those people are returning month over month?
“If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.” — Peter Drucker
If you’re starting a blog in 2016, you’re starting a business. As the founder and CEO of your own destiny, you have to focus on quickly making decisions that will move your business forward.
When you create a community made up of your biggest fans and followers — and give them the unique opportunity to meet and interact with each other — you’re cutting your workload in half (hellooo no need to churn out 30 blog posts a month by yourself). Suddenly, you have more time to dive into analytics that will show you what to do next. And because it’s all in one place, you aren’t wasting time parsing through all that raw data across multiple services.
Now you’ve got ways to harness your audience that brings them back daily on mobile and inspires them to take an action that’s bigger than just a ‘like’ or a visit.
