What analytics data gives you the most actionable advice to improve your blog?

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Someone asked on Quora: What analytics data gives you the most actionable advice to improve your blog? so here’s my answer:

I have been blogging about Analytics for past few years and this question is at the intersection of both so let me give it a shot:

It depends on two things: 1) Your goal for running the blog 2) Age of the blog

#1: Your goal

why blog analytics

First let’s talk about your goal for running the blog. It’s important to define this as this would help set the metrics that you will monitor and take actions to improve it.

Let’s say that the goal of your blog is to earn is to monetize using ads. So your key performance indicator (KPI) will be monthly ad revenue. In that case you can improve by one of the three things: Number of People visiting the blog x % of visitors clicking on ads x average revenue per ad click. You can work on marketing your blog to increase number of people visiting the blog. Then you can work on ad placement on your blog to increase % of visitors clicking the ad and then you can work on trying different ad networks to see which one pays you the most per click.

let’s take one more example. Like me if your goal is to use your blog for “exposure” which helps me build credibility in the field that I work in. In this case, the KPI i look at is Monthly New Visitors. I drill down further to see which marketing channels are driving that change. That helps me identify channels that I can double down on and reduce investments in other areas. For example: I found that Social is not performing that great but Search has been working great — I started investing time in following SEO principles and spent less time on posting on social.

So first step: Define your goal and your KPI needs to align with that.

#2: Age of your blog:

  • Early: Now at this stage, you will need to explore whether you can achieve what you set out to using blogging. So let’s say you wanted to earn money online. In first few weeks/months, you need to figure out if it’s possible. Can you get enough traffic to earn what you wanted? yes? Great! If not, blogging might not be the answer and eventually all your energy is being wasted. Figure this out sooner rather than later — and take first few weeks/months to make sure blogging helps you achieve your goal.
  • Mid: By this stage, you should know how blogging is helping you achieve your goal. So it’s time to pick one metric that matters! So if your goal was to earn money using ads then go for Monthly ad revenue and set up systems to track this. Google Analytics will be a great starting point. Also, at this stage, you should be asking for qualitative feedback. Ask your friends, ask on social, get comments, do guest blogging on popular platforms and see if you get engagement — basically focus on qualitative feedback since you won’t have enough visitors that you can analyze quantitative data.
  • Late: In this stage, you have the data and the blog is starting to get momentum. Don’t stop qualitative feedback loops but now start looking at quantitative data too. Figure out the underlying driving forces that move the needle on your KPI. Focus on improving those!

TL;DR: Define your “why” and then pick a metric— then use combination of qualitative and quantitative data to improve the underlying driving factors to improve the metric.

VIEW ON QUORA

Nice series on WordPress Blog Statistics:

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WordPress recently did a good series on how to analyze the data that’s available to you via WordPress Blog Stats tool. This series is great if you’ve a WordPress.com blog PLUS it’s a good read for any one in the data analytics role to learn how to write-up content like this.

1. Stats Wrangling I: Digging into Your Data
2. Stats Wrangling II: Days, Weeks, and Months
3. Stats Wrangling III: Top Posts and Pages
4. Stats Wrangling IV: Referrers and Clicks
5. Stats Wrangling V: The Words that Bring You Traffic

Along with WordPress Stats, I also use data from the Google Webmaster Tools. It’s a great way to see Keywords, Top posts & pages from a search engine point of view. It’s always good to have a healthy number of people searching for your content on search engines like Google.

I hope you take a look at how Data Analytics can help your Blog Grow. The series that WordPress ran focused on their platform but if you run your blog on other platform, this should give you a good sense of how to analyze the blog statistics.

Things I shared on Social Media Networks during Noc 12 – Dec 31 (2012)

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Big Data: The Coming Sensor Data Driven Productivity Revolution http://bit.ly/TQAPsW

Check out some nice getting started tutorials at beyondrelational site: http://bit.ly/RVVHRV

Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple – Richard Branson

— via Paras Doshi – Blog http://on.fb.me/WAQ5ky

The success of companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix, not to mention Wall Street firms and industries from manufacturing to retail and healthcare, is increasingly driven by better tools for extracting meaning from very large quantities of data,” says Tim O’Reilly

— via Paras Doshi – Blog http://on.fb.me/WAQ5ky

Nice collection of about 20+ videos around the topic of “Data Science”: http://bit.ly/WMkZqc

Nice collection of videos by Berkeley school of information: http://bit.ly/Tf1yAD #Information #Data

Just found Facebook’s data team’s page: http://on.fb.me/ToYILO

via V Talk Tech – A Parth Acharya Blog – Nice HeatMap of stocks! http://on.fb.me/SfBbvF

what’s the biggest fear about cloud computing? via Windows Azure http://on.fb.me/VjIiHR

Resource: Presentations from the Sentiment Analysis Symposium http://bit.ly/VtPH3B

If I switched to the newest “holiday” theme on WordPress, this is how it would look: http://on.fb.me/UEuyFr

Nice! Code School now has R programming language! I have been playing with R for a while now and definitely want to learn more – here’s the link to learn R: http://bit.ly/VEAnkZ

Interesting tool from Google to optimize and analyze web page speeds: http://bit.ly/HTubNC

Performed #sentiment #Analysis on #starbucks twitter data using #R ! It was fun! http://on.fb.me/Z3qLo8

In 2002: The Data Warehousing Institute estimates that data quality problems cost U.S. businesses more than $600 billion a year. And of course, over the past 10 years, this number would be bigger. http://bit.ly/TPT9r3

Reading: Business Analytics vs Business Intelligence? http://bit.ly/YUtJwx

Big data is a nickname for the recent increase in largely external and unstructured business and consumer information. How are businesses across industries harnessing traditional enterprise information management functions and systems to translate big data into useful business intelligence? http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Services/additional-services/deloitte-analytics-service/217c19e69249b310VgnVCM2000003356f70aRCRD.htm

For business analytics professionals: 12 webcasts on Jan 30th 2013 http://bit.ly/RUFsZ3 #sqlpass #analytics #24hop

Some nice insights about how to build an Internet platform, from the founder of Zipcar: http://bit.ly/Yco6IP

Let’s connect and converse on any of these people networks!

paras doshi blog on facebookparas doshi twitter paras doshi google plus paras doshi linkedin

[WordPress.com Tip] How to add author information for your content being searched via Google

Authroship Markup Wordpress.com
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Recently, Google announced something called authorship markup. Basically what it does is that it shows the author information (Only Google Profile) along with search results. I found it interesting. Here’s why:
Authorship Markup WordPress.com Now Notice that the first result is “Normal”.

Now Notice second result. It has:
1) Author’s photo (Via Google Profile)
2) Author’s Name
3) Link to G+ profile
4) Number of Circles the author belongs to

And so I thought I would do that for my WordPress.com Blog (Not a self hosted WordPress blog but a wordpress.com blog). But challenge for me was that I didn’t get all information at one place. I had to watch three-four videos and read three-four blog posts before I was able to “figure it out”. So I thought I would share how I did it. So here we go:

Now the basic concept is that:
– Your Content should link to your Google+ Profile
– Your Google+ Profile should link back to your content

Authroship Markup WordPress.comHow to go about doing that in WordPress.com?

So I have an “About me” page on my blog. Now if you do not have a about me page – please create one. (Now there are others ways but i found this approach to be best)
Now Go to WordPress Admin Page > Appearance > Menu > Screen Options (Top Right corner) > Check the “Link Relationship” in advanced settingsAuthorship Markup WordPress.comNow you need to add the word author in the Link Relatonship Text Page, Like shown below:
Authorship Markup WordPress.comSave Menu”

Now Go to your About Me page and Go to Edit
Here you will need to add a hyperlink like this:

<a title=”Paras Doshi” href=”http://plus.google.com/105010538932095629627″ rel=”me”>+Paras Doshi</a>

Now, Here the href has the link to Your Google Profile
And Edit the “Title” And the Hyper-Link’s Text to your Name. Keep ‘+’ in Hyper-linked Text.

Now Next step,
Go to your Google profile > About > Edit Profile
So note that i have added the Link:

http://parasdoshi.com/about-me/

In my Google Profile. You should add the Full URL of your “about me” page in the contributor to section of the Google Profile.

DONE!
So Summarizing:
1) Add About me Page (If you do not have one)
2) Edit the About me Page’s Link Relationship To Author (From Menu)
3) Add the rel=me hyperlink in your about me page that points to your Google Profile
4) Edit the Google Profile’s contributor to section with the Link to your “About Me” Page.

Does it work? Verify it via Google’s Rich Snippet Tool:
Here, Enter your Blog URL and click on Preview. Here’s Mine:
Note the Message:

Authorship Markup is verified for this page

You should get such a message too!

A shout-out to top commenters in 2011:

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

 

And shout out to Top 4 Commenter’s on this blog:

1. Pini. Link to his blog: http://www.sqlazure.co.il/

2. Dhwaneet Bhatt. His twitter profile: @dhwaneetbhatt

3. Simran Jindal. Link to her blog: http://simranjindal.wordpress.com/

4. Patrick Wood. He maintains an amazing list of SQL Azure resource.

[I had pointed to the resource that Patrick Wood maintains here: http://parasdoshi.com/2011/07/28/link-amazing-list-of-sql-azure-lists-on-gainingaccess-net-managed-by-patrick-wood-check-it-out/ And the URL of the resource is: http://gainingaccess.net/SQLAzure/AccessAndSQLAzureLinks.aspx ]

I gave back at Dallas GiveCamp – And why I think every software professional should consider doing so too!

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Dallas GiveCamp

Couple of months ago, I stumbled upon a blog that had a logo of GiveCamp and the title that said “I support GiveCamp” – And curiosity got better of me and i clicked on the logo. And I landed on a page whose tagline “Coding for charity” was all I wanted to read. And I understood I would be developing a software for NGO – I was in! And (Lucky me!) there was one GiveCamp scheduled to happen in Dallas and so I signed up!

From my perspective, this is why I think it’s one of the best platforms for software professionals to volunteer:

I have volunteered at places where I paint, teach, serve food, etc – things that does not leverage what I do best.For instance, I volunteered at a place where I got to paint few walls. And since I had never painted houses before, it took me little time to figure it out and yes, I was not optimal in using paint. Now, Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy volunteering in any form – But a volunteering opportunity like GiveCamp that directly leverages what i am good at, is a Win-Win situation for me as well as the charity. So kudos to the person who came up with the idea and actually executed it. And kudos to organizers of various GiveCamp’s who must have put in countless hours to give a platform for volunteers and charities to connect and work together to create a software in short span of 48 hours!

I know! it’s an Amazing concept! Now, After my first GiveCamp – I am definitely going back next year [Update 2 Nov 2012: I volunteered at Dallas Give Camp 2012 too!] but five reasons of why I think every software professional should do so too:

– Make an impact

– Have fun

– Meet amazing campies!

– Learn things. Yes, i learned few things about WordPress that i didn’t knew before

– bag Goodies! Like books, computer hardware, magazine subscription, XBOX! etc..

And so if you have not been a part of GiveCamp, consider doing so. Even if you develop software’s on weekday’s – i bet, this experience of developing software for charity over a weekend is not just about “developing a software”. It’s much more than that…

Also don’t worry much if you are traveling from far – you can just sleep under the desk! Yes, people do that – and guess what, that is what camping is all about, isn’t it?!

And so, I had fun at this GiveCamp – And I bet you would too!

GiveCamp Site: givecamp.org

Dallas GiveCamp Site: DallasGiveCamp.org

And since this blogpost was not about what i did at GiveCamp – i leave you with our presentation:

View more presentations from Paras Doshi
And Thanks to my Team mates – i had a great time with you all!
And Twitter List of Organizers, Charities, Volunteers and Sponsors:
Group Photo: [Courtesy: @t_burger ]
Give Camp Paras Doshi Dallas TX