Bloggers Need Analytics
21 Apr
Copyblogger has a great post called The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers that distills a lot of the wisdom that’s out there about becoming a successful blogger. It’s got the usual stuff in there like being persistent, prolific, and consistent.
But look at what the #3 tip is:
3. Effective bloggers are analytical
They study their statistics, so they know where readers come from — what sites, what search engines, what search terms, and even what countries…
But that’s not all—just knowing all this stuff doesn’t do you any good if you don’t turn it into something actionable, right? Oh wait, Copyblogger has more to say about it:
Then they tailor the timing, content, layout, and images of their posts to suit their audience.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. You can be as brilliant a writer or marketer or networker as you want, but you need to know what your users are doing on your site. It’s via the analytics that they tell you what they like and don’t like. You could ask them what they want and what they think, but they might not even know it themselves.
The analytics is the most honest form of communication between the two of you.
Anyway, it’s nice to see one of the top writing/blogging sites in the land giving analytics some much-deserved love!
As a blogger and self-described creative-type, the thought of analytics makes me a little queasy. I was never good at math. I’m much better with words than I am with numbers.
With that said, I do understand that if I want to build a blog that is useful to my readers, I need to pay attention to the numbers — which posts are the most read? how are people finding my site? The problem is, I’m never quite sure how to use the numbers that are all over my Google Analytics page. The numbers are there, but I’ve been afraid of them.
I’ve already found some useful stuff here to help me decipher some things. Also, Carlos, the more I read here, the less afraid I am of the dreaded NUMBERS. Thanks! And please keep up the good work.