From Newbie to older bloggers, to hobby or pro bloggers, everyone agree that that growing your traffic is essential, but there are so many ways to do so!
Free, Paid, but always guaranteed growth tools and tips flood the Internet. But where to start planning and creating growth strategies? How do you give your audience what they want?
Today's post is an in-depth look into how you can analyse old Blog Post Analytics in order to target the right audience for your content!
I'll be exploring how to better target your social media channels' audience in order to drive free traffic to your blog!
Put simply, I'll be showing you what information to take away from your analytics in order to pin point your audience's interests and how to incorporate that into your Blog Strategy.
Like in last week's post about Planning Content, we will be going through old published content, and looking at our analytics (views per post, social media interactions) to decide what works and what doesn't in your Blog - however, instead of focusing on creating or brainstorming new content, we are going to draft out our audiences main interests.
You can read all my posts on Blogging and check out all related freebies here.
BLOG POST ANALYTICS
It's no secret I am blogging on a free platform and as such, my statistical options are narrow. Different platforms and providers can offer you a different range of statistical data that might suit your needs better.
For me, the data Blogger provides wasn't enough to help me understand my audience. Here's an overview of what they provide:
♥ Number of page views (per post, page or date range),
♥ Number of referrals per website
♥ Where and how my audience is reading my website (country, browser and OS).
It's not bad, but it is not enough if you want to turn your blog into a business or closely monitor certain aspects of your blog. I've ran hobby blogs with a good engagement level based solely off blogger analytics and I was super happy with my results - but the dimension of a blog and it's purpose will change it's statistical needs.
Good thing you can sign up entirely for free for Google Analytics.
This free Google Tool is your best option right now for free analytics that truly help you comprehend your audience.
Here's some of the data you can track through Google Analytics:
♥ User demographics
♥Session Time
♥Session Number per website referral
♥Page Value
♥Etc.
This is only a small fraction of all the reports and tools Google Analytics provides. The big variety of options and factors make it seem a bit of a seven-headed-monster sometimes but my honest advice is:
Explore the several types of reports and truly understand wether or not they will serve you at this time. If not, prioritize more valuable reports for your present situation over worrying about how reports might serve you in the future. The only way to learn is by practising and studying, but it can be overwhelming to learn everything at once!
For The Pyjama Editorial, I am at the moment tracking Social Media Performance more heavily, as I am trying to build up my following in both Pinterest and Instagram and am monitoring my content's performance in those platforms.
MONITOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PERFORMANCE WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS
The Blog is at a point where my strategy for traffic growth is to gather a loyal following on Pinterest and Instagram while growing my content slowly and working on my foundations. As such, I'm interested in learning about my content's performance on Social Media.
Through the Aquisition Reports you can have a quick look into which pages were referred and how often during a specific time window, see their session times, number of different sessions, and so many other interesting statistical factors.
To access a rank of which posts receive more referrals simply click
Aquisition➨Social➨Landing Pages
By Clicking on each individual page you can see where the traffic originated from!
Or, if you want to group your pageviews per Social Network Referral,
Aquisition➨Social➨Network Referrals
You can also check different "dimensions" - which are basically different types of data you have available. These dimensions unfold into sub-dimensions and you can choose from the different types of reports Google Analytics provides (e.g. Aquisition, Behaviour, Asvertising, etc.) which truly makes this tool essential for anyone trying to grow their traffic and conversition rate!
TIP:
Make a list of your best performing content ! What does it have in common? What niche was it wrote for? What main topic does it relate to?
By identifying your best performing content you are onto your audiences interests! Analyse where that post performed better and why! Take note of that information - something about your post adds value to your audience, take that to your advantage and explore it. You can:
➨ write a more detailed post on the same or a similar/related topic
➨create a content upgrade to direct your traffic to your newsletter
➨create an ebook
➨do an email course
➨The possibilities are endless!
I recommend that you do several keyword researches to find specific keywords and phrases that people in your niche are looking for - so, for example, if you had concluded that your best performing content was “5 Time Saving Products for Bloggers with Full Time Jobs”, and other posts directed at making blogging easier for busy people, you might’ve then gone and search for keywords related to “bloggers with full time jobs” - and thus building up your blog by developing content that your audience enjoys.
PIN THIS IMAGE SO YOU CAN REFER BACK LATER ON!
Of course, not all content should be based off Popular Published Content. If you are starting out, you might want to develop your foundational content first, the content that really interests your niche and that will be bringing people to your blog for years to come - and for that, you need to know your audience - and now you have the tools to do so!
Now that you know HOW to get the Analytics you need, you can start growing your traffic by writing targeted blog posts that add value to your audience !
