We recently wrapped up our quarterly analytics and content planning meetings with our Marketing Machine clients, and it has me thinking… do we really understand how content and analytics are connected? Of course, we know that all strategy should be based off the analysis of success and unsuccessful content, but what specific statistics are we using to generate your content plan?

At Orbit, we break your social and web analytics into three main themes: your audience, your referrals and your previous content.

Understanding your audience

The top aspect of creating a social strategy is understanding the exact audience you wish to attract. This could be broken down by location, age, income, interests and more. Gearing your content toward your audience and creating paid ads targeting that group is step one. Now we have to see if it’s working.

As your business grows, you may realize that who you thought was your target audience is not who is actually following you. This could lead you to switch your target audience or switch your content.

It is important to determine what actions you want your audience to be taking. Do you want them to like or follow your page? Do you want them to engage on posts? Or are sales and conversion your top priority?

Understanding referrals

Referrals are any location that your audience is coming to your site from. This could be organic search, paid search, referral traffic (clicking from another site), direct traffic (typing in your URL to the search bar or clicking from email), or social traffic (clicking from any social platform).

Once we understand where your audience is coming from, we can either focus on the successful platforms or work on increasing referrals from other platforms. Many times, Google Analytics and show you the flow of traffic from each referring page (ex. Most traffic from social platforms could be going to blogs, while paid search is ending in a shopping cart). This is determined by your business plan and long-term goals.

A key part of understanding referrals from social traffic is using paid advertisements. Paid ads on Facebook and Instagram is one of the best ways to increase your traffic to both your social profile and website or landing page. These ads can also give you another level of analytics, allowing you to fine tune your audience and content even further.

Understanding successful content

Wrapping up your analytics, you need to look at past posts and what has been successful. Again, before looking into this data, you need to determine how you interpret “successful.”

Look through old blogs. What blogs have the most pageviews? Did they click internal links? What was the flow of traffic like after the blog? Were audiences moved to contact you or purchase? Set goals on your site through Google Analytics and see exactly the statistics that are interesting to you.

Look through old social posts. What posts have the most likes, shares, or comments? Did followers click through to your site? Are audiences engaging at optimal times for certain channels?

An additional step to creating engaging content is analyzing keywords. On social media, keywords can easily be used as hashtags, but be sure to do your research. Keywords optimization can give insight on what your audience is searching for and increase your SEO.

Before switching strategy, make sure that each change in direction still lines up with your business plan and long-term goals. If you need assistance reviewing your analytics or creating a digital marketing strategy, contact our content strategists here at Orbit Design.