Use Google Analytics to Know Your Audience


You write and you tweet. But do you know your audience? Do you use Google analytics? Do you know how long should your content be? What should the grade level be? Is your well-crafted persona even correct?

What matters most in Analytics?

What matters most in Google analytics is acquisition and session duration. What matters most in Twitter analytics is profile visits.

My disclaimer to analytics is that it is a snapshot of the past. If you only post at 9:00 AM on Tuesdays, then your best time to post will always be 9:00 AM on Tuesdays. If you only use Yelp, your best referral will be Yelp. I am known to refer to Google Analytics as an autopsy.

I give a quick tour of Google Analytics in this video. Acquisition (where they found you) and average session duration (how long they are reading) matter most.

An in-depth look at Twitter analytics when Twitter showed demographic data is part of this episode with Jason Tucker.

Audience, Audience, Audience

Influencers need an audience. Businesses need an audience. The truth is that we all have audiences. We all influence someone. With the age of social media, we’re all publishers now. But who is that audience — exactly?

Do you find your audience and write for them or write and then find your audience? Which came first: the chicken or the egg?

Which comes first the chicken or the egg – the audience or the content? Share on X

It doesn’t matter. You have the audience now. It is important to keep their attention.

Let’s Spitball Here

Let’s presume you know your audience. You’ve been using Twitter or a year or more. You have a blog. You’re publishing content.

Can you use Twitter’s analytics to help shape your content? Yes. And you should.

If you see that your audience is only 33% college educated, that should shape the types of words you use. Perhaps your content should be short form and not long. Check the readability score on Yoast’s SEO plugin or on HemingwayApp.com.

Test. Experiment. Try. Test again. Try.

I test the way I cook — it’s an experiment. It’s not formal. If someone likes it, I continue. If I hate it, I fix it. You can A/B test without heavily relying upon data.

I know what you’re thinking — that a post about analytics should be data centric. But what is data? Without context it means nothing. You can waste hours in Google Analytics or Twitter Analytics studying the wrong thing.

Brené Brown says “maybe stories are just data with a soul.

For example, 57% of my audience is interested in “fresh & healthy” lifestyle. That means I could experiment with writing about how I started using the Asana Rebel Yoga App and posting some of my Yoga photos from Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWEY_vBljjm/

How will I know if it worked?

Traffic. Comments. (For example, after I started using Postmatic for email delivery and commenting, I’ve gotten a lot more comments. The comments encourage me to write more.) Comments also help give me ideas on what to write about.

You also might see those posts performing well in the Top Tweets of your Twitter Analytics.

How often should I look at Twitter’s Analytics?

I need gimmicks. So first, you need self-awareness. Then you need routine. I have Maintenance Mondays at my house. So I look at Twitter’s Analytics every Monday. For clients, I record data monthly in a Google Sheet. For myself, I go on intuition.

Start. What are you waiting for. You might be surprised.

Updated September 7, 2020


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