As we should, we go through the proper steps of maintaining a website and social media accounts; blogging, sharing posts, ensuring proper SEO throughout and staying engaged as much as possible. But, how much is all of that worth if we aren’t monitoring the metrics behind them? How can we be sure the actions we are taking are working? How do we know if we should continue on with our posts as we have been or if something should change? This is why tools like Google Analytics and social insight reports exist. They are intricately detailed metrics designed to help us track our progression and efforts to ensure we are optimizing our accounts to the best of their abilities. Most importantly, they are FREE!
Minimally, you should utilize the following tools.
Google Analytics
If you aren’t utilizing Google Analytics on your site you should be. This is a tremendously insightful tool providing valuable metrics behind your site. “Google Analytics gives you the digital analytics tools you need to analyze data from all touchpoints in one place, for a deeper understanding of the customer experience. You can then share the insights that matter with your whole organization.” It’s free and easy to use with a basic knowledge of the platform. From user behaviors and data collection to the devices they are using, it helps you see where your traffic is coming from and what they are doing once they are there.
Below are just a few of the many reports you can track and monitor through Google Analytics.
New VS Returning – How much of your traffic are new visitors and many are you able to keep coming back? Determine what kind of content and news you should be sharing on your site in order to gain new users and maintain a following.
Bounce Rates – Do you have a high bounce rate? Meaning, visitors are coming to your site but quickly leaving. Determine what pages they aren’t finding useful. Are you not sharing the content that’s expected on any given page? You need to give the users what they are looking for.
Referring Traffic – Where’s your traffic coming from. Is it direct searches, social media, referral links? Understand what outsourcing links you are using that are successfully working for you in return.
SEO – Review the search engine optimization for your site. Find out what keyword terms you are being found for in Google searches. What landing pages are providing the content viewers are searching for? Gain valuable insight to the content that exists on your site and how useful or not it is to searchers.
Demographics – Where is your traffic generated, geographically? Determine the demographics of where your traffic stems from, what areas have a larger market pull and which could use more marketing attention?
Read More On Utilizing Google Analytics Here
Social Media Insights
All social media from Facebook to Pinterest offers a metrics reporting system. Insights via social media accounts are extremely valuable. Monitor post activity. View what posts are gaining the most impressions, audience reach and profile views to determine the types of posts your followers enjoy. Gain insight into your followers, demographics and more to broaden your target audience and keep their interest. Gain knowledge of your page Impressions, showing the total number of times your posts are seen. Research the correlation of lost followers with what you had been sharing or not sharing to avoid the same mistakes.
Keep track of your followers through Instagram. Learn their patterns like the average times and days they are on.
View how many times your Pinterest board is being followed and the gain you receive from the number of times your pin has been “repined”. Knowing each click-through links directly back to your site, determine what content attracts the larger click-through rates.
Understand the patterns your Facebook followers tend to follow by looking at post engagement, what kind of reach did you get and out of that reach how many actively liked, commented or shared. Know if you gain a larger audience on given days or times.
Continue Reading: