Today we’re going to be discussing stats in a really easy sense…you don’t even need a special statistics calculator, I PROMISE.  This is going to help you immensely with the type of content you want to be posting to your social media profiles, blogs and any other web property you own.

Why Stats Are Important – Read This Part Especially If You Are A Lazy Marketer

Stats are important because the main goal is to do as little “throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks” as possible.  We want to get to the point where we know what our readers like and want to see. Knowing this will give our lazy asses the ability to be even lazier! YAY!! LOL.  For real though, knowing our stats will allow us to post less of what our readers don’t want and more of what they do.

Do This Stat

Calculating stats is truly the easy part. BUT, the only way you can even think about studying your stats, is that you must have content first to even have stats. Now, I don’t mean 2 articles or 2 Facebook posts. Have about a month’s worth of content before you really start to dive in to see what is working. Don’t worry, we can be lazy all we want later on, but we need data to go by in order to determine what’s working.

3 Stats You Want To Look At

Once you have enough data to start to gather some stats, here is what you want to look at:

1) Where your traffic is coming from

We’ve talked about this before but you should have more than one traffic source – don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you are only marketing in one place that’s not a good thing because your customers are everywhere so you have to be as well. We cover this a lot in this post about tracking conversions with proper links.

If you have a massive presence, then there is going to be a clear winner as to where you get most of your audience and visitors from.  Now, this doesn’t mean you neglect the other traffic sources when you’ve found your winner, it just means that you need to be focusing more time, energy and effort on the places that sources the most traffic for you. This might be off topic, but only neglect a site if it is doing absolutely nothing for you. If you are posting to Pinterest and none of your traffic is coming from there, then perhaps you shouldn’t spend as much time posting content there.

If you neglect to pay attention to where most of your traffic is coming from, then you are really just guessing and assuming and that’s not a way to run your business. You could be spending time in the completely wrong area and you will be missing out on tons of great traffic because you are not looking closely at your traffic sources.

2) Track Your Feedback

The one great thing about social media is social interaction. Just by scanning your Facebook Page and Blog, you will be able to notice quickly the topics that got the most interaction and feedback. Compare your likes, comments, and shares. This also holds true for emails.  Go back and look at the topics and subject lines that got the most opens and clicks. This will help you with future emails!!

3) Take Note Of Your Content

Once you’ve found what your audience liked and responded to, well, now it’s up to you to turn out more of the good stuff and leave out the less popular content you posted. Don’t be sensitive about this and don’t take this personally. Leave your emotions at the door! You might have written something that took you a lot of time to put together and you might have thought it was the best content ever…but your audience might have thought otherwise by not giving it as much love as you might have hoped! It’s OK. Don’t make excuses and don’t try to force something to work if it’s just not working. Move on. Sure, you can try things again and in different ways but don’t waste too much time. Social media content is hard to manipulate – either your people love it or they don’t.  You can always buy fake love, but who are you fooling?

Also, take note of the length of your content. Does your audience like short punchy tips or meaty articles? This matters too.

By doing internal research about your audience and audit of your past content, it will give you insight as to the type of content you should be posting. You will find out what makes your audience tick and what makes them respond. Knowing this will make you a better marketer.

=> What kinds of stats help you in your business? Please share with us what you do to gain more of an understanding of what your audience wants to see.