Analytics.
“Most of the world will make decisions by either guessing or using their gut. They will be either lucky or wrong." – Suhail Doshi, CEO, Mixpanel.
A few weeks ago, I shared a staggering statistic on Instagram about Netflix. A view is counted if someone watches a show at least two minutes—resulting in "Bridgerton" claiming that the show received 82 million views. Not gonna lie. I binged the whole series and consider myself a raving fan. But wouldn't a more accurate measurement be:
How many people actually finished watching the show?
How many people actually felt satisfied or liked what they watched?
What parts of the show resonated most? (I know, I know, Regé-Jean Page, obviously)
Of course Netflix has way more data than we will ever know, but my point is that simply counting likes and views are not enough to know if what you're doing is working. If you dive a little bit deeper, you can use your analytics as a road map to figure out what is resonating with your audience and what you should do next.
No matter what you're trying to measure—social media, website traffic, email campaigns—analytics can feel like such an unsexy thing. They are as confusing and misleading as that great date you had and then never had again. But let me break it down.
Below are five things you need to know, so that you can stop going coo coo trying to beat the algorithm.
Channeling my inner geekdom,
Molly
1. What is your goal?
Is your goal to build a community? Is it to sell a product? Is it to appeal to brands so that you can get paid deals?
If the answer is yes to any of the above, the first thing you have to do is figure out how you can add value to your audience. Are you offering up business tips and resources that have worked for you? Are you giving them fashion or interior design inspiration with ways they can shop? Are you talking about challenges you have overcome or lessons you've learned?
If you are stuck on content, I challenge you to look at your Instagram analytics or Google analytics or the analytics of whatever it is you are measuring and find one piece of content with a high engagement rate (shares, saves, comments). Then analyze it. What type of content was it? What day of the week was it posted? What was the tone of your caption? What did your followers gain from this post and how can you apply that to more content?
Speaking of Google, an update is coming in mid-June and this is what you need to fix on your website to make sure your traffic doesn't drop when the algorithm changes.
2. It's no longer about your likes.
Sure, getting a like still gives you that little shot of dopamine that makes your brain feel really good. But nobody else can see how many likes you get. It used to be that likes would beget likes because there is something in our human psychology that told us to like things that were already popular.
Especially with the rise of video content, hitting the like button for most people has become an after thought. It's no longer a good measure of what they really think. My point? Don't worry about your likes.
3. So what actually matters?
YouTube cares about long-term satisfaction, which is what we should all care about. If you're talking about video, watch time is a better measurement than a view, but it's still not a perfect measurement. YouTube uses surveys to poll their audience to find out what is highly satisfying.
You can easily utilize the polls feature on Instagram to gather data. I have found that giving your readers a choice of answers has a higher engagement rate than asking open-ended questions. Most people don't know what they want. But they know it when they see it.
If you're looking at analytics for an email campaign, open rate is ok. Click rate is better. If someone responds to the newsletter or shares it, you know you've hit on something.
4. Shareable content is where it's at.
Think of your shares like the modern day word-of-mouth marketing. The more your content gets shared, the more people you will reach. The more it gets shared, the more it's resonating. The more it gets shared, the more of that type of content you should be creating.
This is an example of our most saved and shared Instagram post. But for The Storied Group, our goal on Instagram is more to show proof of our work, which next to never gets saves or shares. Remember, it always needs to come back to your goal. Vanity metrics are for chumps ;).
And remember, you have to test out different types of content. Not everything will land every single time. (I'm honestly a tad devastated my call to restaurants didn't go viral yesterday, but whatever. Onward!)
5. Analytics without action.
As Seth Godin says, "Don't measure anything unless the data helps you make a better decision or change your actions. If you're not prepared to change your diet or your workouts, don't get on the scale."
Getting on the scale is scary. But once you do it, you will have a much clearer path to get where you're trying to go.
