How to create better content with analytics
It’s time to make friends with the numbers
Google Analytics is a powerful tool, but there’s a lot of data in there. Even when it’s nicely organized and presented in a custom dashboard like below, you can still be left wondering… it LOOKS great, but how can this help me get more engagement on my content?
Making sense of the metrics is a very common obstacle for many content creators. With so much to wade through, sometimes the numbers can be either overwhelming or become so repetitive that they end up meaningless.
But we’re here to remind you not to give up! Once you get a sense of what to look at and how to use your analytics, you’ll be armed with a wonderful tool that will drive smart and strategic content decisions.
To help put the numbers into practice, we’ll walk you through an example of how data can lead to creative content that delivers results.
Example: Let’s pretend you’re running an animal rescue organization and you have a new website. You want to know how people are finding your website, so you log into analytics or look at your dashboard to check “Traffic Acquisition.” You then see that Organic Search is one of the top ways people find your website, in fact, it’s increased this year!
The first thing you should do is take a look at what the top search keywords are. To do this, you can look in Google Search Console, but we recommend making it easier by connecting it directly to your GA4 account or to your Dashboard.
After checking out the searches that led people to your website, you see searches for cats is way up. This is surprising, because your organization typically focuses on dogs.
Here are some things you can do with this new information:
- Audit the user experience. See where the person searching ends up on your website. For example, you could verify that the cat adoption page had up-to-date, easy-to-use content or add links to helpful resources or other adoption centres.
- Create new web content. You could write new posts about recent adoptions, or create pages that include tips and advice for cat care.
- Post on social. Create cat-themed content on your social media accounts to further engage your followers and grow a community of like-minded people. You could even share some live videos or do introductions of the cats.
- Make changes to your email strategy. You could create automations and email lists specific to their preferred animal and send content that is customized to that audience.
This is just scratching the surface (no pun intended 😸), and we’re looking forward to sharing more about putting numbers into action.
If you want to learn more or have questions about analytics, send us a note anytime!
