When your words count: Article analytics

Online content gives us a direct and, in many cases, real time link to when, how and where the content is being consumed.

By: Jomar Reyes

Chances are that if you are reading this article, you are a person who uses storytelling as a key part of your profession. Perhaps it’s even something that you are passionate about.

As many of us know, telling a story is one thing; telling a great story is another. It is the great stories that move our audiences; they are informed, inspired and compelled by our words. But, as storytellers, it has sometimes been difficult to gauge the effect of our words. How stories impacted the greater audience may have been a mystery – or at the very least, unquantifiable. Like so many things, however, technology is now changing the storytelling game.

Blogs, online magazines and news sites not only give the producers of content a direct delivery link to their audience, they now also have a direct and, in many cases, real time link to when, how and where the content is being consumed.

A decade ago, I worked for one of the world’s leading marketing research companies, ACNielsen. I became fascinated with how data was turned into statistics, and information turned into insight. What that meant for a brand was that the product manager could see how their product had performed in the real world, when it sold, how much it sold for and where.

ACNielsen built a multimillion dollar global business empire in processing an inconceivable amount of data, then refining it to give its customers the insights that would make them (or save them) millions of dollars.

Now, this power is in the hands of the individual. The technology available online gives producers of content not only instantaneous reach to a global audience, but also instantaneous data about how the content is consumed.

I visualize it being similar to a patient who is wired up in the intensive care unit. His pulse, blood pressure and other vital signs are there for the doctor to analyze to make better on-the-spot decisions. As writers we can now watch this data, learn how to better reach our audience and even assist in developing new ideas for our next story, article or campaign.

Google Analytics is becoming the default currency from this ‘do no evil’ company. And from Google, as a company that does a lot of good, it is a free product available to anyone with an online presence. The amount and impact of this data is mind-blowing, particularly for someone who has seen the insights and implications that ACNielsen data had on product performance.

A product like Google Analytics is essentially a new generation of tool for the wordsmith, creating an ‘industrial revolution’ scenario for many word-based industries.

Let’s take a look at some of the key data from Google Analytics.

Pageviews:  This is the number of viewed sessions of your article, or commonly referred to as “traffic.” If one article is getting more traffic than another, it might be time to review the subject text line (also known as the title or header). Your opening paragraph, or “teaser,” for some websites can also have a big impact on how many people hit the “read more” button.

Time on Page: This is how long people are staying on your page, reading your content. If an article has a short time on page (one to three minutes), we would hope that it is a short article. If you have a 500 word article, my simple rule of thumb is that you should expect to see an average time on page of five minutes. An article achieving or exceeding that result has more than likely been read by your audience.

Map Overlay: This is a globe with a heat map (shades of green) reflecting where your traffic is coming from. Is your story being read by your targeted country, region or even city? Your words could even be resonating with a country or region that you never expect.

By no means should the data be the only thing that drives our stories, and I’m not advocating that we create articles purely to gain traffic. But all of this information puts us one step closer to offering the kind of content that our readers want. It helps us refine the stories we create and tell.

Of course, even as technology changes the landscape of storytelling, perhaps forever, it’s also important to keep in mind that no matter how sophisticated our tools, the world will always require that human element: a great storyteller.

Online media insights and ramblings: www.twitter.com/jomarreyes