How Authors Can Use Analytics - Marketing Mondays

Guest Post by Nicole Rodgers:

Analytics provide tools to help writers maneuver the waters of public relations. Developing an understanding of analytics and putting that knowledge to work can help you with your author platform.

Understanding How Analytics Helps With Platform Building

Analytics will:

Come from information gathered by software on your website that tracks what your visitors do while on your website and even where they come from when getting to your website.

Provide you with feedback for the level of success content has in attracting visitors and even in making sales.

Give you information about trends on your site so that you can then make the most of those patterns with content creation and release timing.

Help you view the growth of your platform which can make it easier to sell your writing or approach publishers and agents.

Choosing the Right Analytics Software

1.    Know your budget. There are a number of different analytics programs that are available at no charge. These can be the perfect place to begin understanding the numbers games.

2.     Make a list of what you want to track. Not all analytics software is created equal. Some of them will only show you the number of page visits and other basic information. Others will show where you visitors come from and where they click when they leave. 

    

    Keep in mind that as you learn more about analytics your needs may change. Keep that in mind when considering signing up with a program that requires a financial investment.

3.    Realize your limitations. Some software will have a higher learning curve than others. Think about the time that will have to be invested to learn the software when weighing the different analytic programs.

Using Analytics as an Author

The term writer platform has become a common phrase in the industry. Authors need to be seen and known in order to sell their products. A platform is any reason that people would know the name or the face of the author.

Analytics provide a measuring stick for how many people recognize the author online. Knowing the number of unique visitors gives you a negotiation tool when approaching stores, publishers or editors.

·         Knowing the keywords that draw visitors to your site can guide the content that you create in the future.

·         Understanding the way your visitors click around your site can help you create a website that is easier for them to use.

·         Seeing the path that brings visitors to your content can help you create relationships with other websites in your niche.

·         Learning the timing of visitors can help you discover the optimum time for releasing new content or new products.

·         Being able to determine which topics receive the most traffic can help you use linking techniques to draw visitors to more places on your website through those articles.

Building a presence on the internet – just like in real life – requires understanding the traffic flow of potential visitors. Measuring the way visitors interact with your website can give you the information needed to chart the flow of your visitors. 

Analytics programs provide you with the tools to gather the information you need.

There are a wide range of programs available that can help you maneuver through the streams of information. Understanding analytics, finding the right program and putting them to work for your advancement as an author will help you immensely.

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Nicole Rodgers has been blogging about the tech industry for 3 years.  She blogs about a variety of topics ranging from using a heat map for sites to ways to create a budget for your business plans. 

Photograph by Search Engine People Blog.

How To Create A Twitter Following - Guest Post

If you go back in time just a decade ago, you'll see people going to college to learn marketing skills that have absolutely nothing to do with the reality of the modern media. 

Today, being able to waste a bunch of time on Twitter is really more useful from a marketing standpoint than any college learning regarding demographics and market trends. 

In other words, having a strong Twitter following is really one of the most important aspects of running any kind of successful business on the web today. Here are ten tips on creating that following.

Follow Everyone Back

If someone follows you, follow them back. No exceptions. Even following back a spam bot can be helpful if a dozen other people followed them back, too.

Design a Great Avatar

Your userpic is the reader's first impression of you. If it looks dull, people are less likely to read that tiny little snippet of text sitting next to it.

Follow the Big Names

Even if you don't care what they have to say, follow the big social media people, the "opinion leaders" you can find listed at Twittercounter and other social media ranking sites. Even if you could care less, Twitter is all about big numbers.

Send @Messages to the Big Names

Ninety nine percent of the time, they're not going to answer you, but that doesn't matter, because here's the trick: people will see that you're sending those messages to some famous person and think "This person must be big, they know (insert celebrity name here)." It's total baloney, of course, but it works.

Link, Link, Link

Don't just say "this a hilarious video", link to it. Link to interesting articles, pictures, videos, songs, everything. If sixty percent of your Tweets are just links, you're doing something right.

Be an Expert

People are a lot more likely to look for Twitter accounts focused on a subject they take an interest in than a Twitter account simply dedicated to your own personal thoughts and ramblings. If you know a lot about video games, movie news, antique furniture, whatever, milk that knowledge, and once you've made a name for yourself, don't be afraid to have controversial opinions. Nothing doubles your followers like a controversial 

Tweet.

Tweet and Tweet Again

Most people who use Twitter check their accounts at the same time every day. If they're following a hundred other accounts, then there's a good chance that your Tweets will be pushed off their page by the time they sign on. Post your best Tweets a couple extra times throughout the day to push them back to the top for those who haven't seen them yet.

Use Multimedia

The more pictures, videos and mixed media you link, the better.

Use Easy Tools

There are all kinds of apps you can get for your phone and your web browser to make Tweeting incredibly easy, keeping you in the loop and letting you text tweets in half the time.

Be a Twitter Junkie

Don't be afraid to be one of those people with their nose constantly buried in the phone, it helps.

We can say what we will about Twitter, but the bottom line is that it's one of the most effective marketing tools ever created, and if you're looking to develop an audience or get your piece of the market share, you'd be crazy not to take advantage.

Nicole Rodgers has been blogging about online marketing for 3 years, she blogs about a variety of topics such as ways to heat map a website to how businesses can utilize a budget worksheet.  

Photograph by Rosaura Ochoa.