Do You Know Where Your Posts Have Been? Basic Analytics for Authors

It’s Friday. Do you know where your posts have been or where they’ve been seen? Do you know who your target audience is? Your website and social media analytics can help you hone in the demographics of people who visit your sites.

Website - Your website should have an analytics tab or page. (Mine just came out with a mobile app that I can track the information on my phone.) You should be able to see things like what posts (blog) or pages are getting the most attention, what countries are visitors coming from, what days/time are most popular for viewing, and how are they getting to your site (e.g. browser search, from another social media site). This is all helpful information. . It shows you how they’re getting to you. This lets you know if promotion or advertising on a social media site is working (or not).

Facebook Business/Author Page - After your likes increase on your business page, Facebook gives you access to Insights. There is an overwhelming amount of information on this page. I monitor likes and performance of posts. It shows how many people liked, commented, or shared. This gives me an idea of what my readers are interested in or respond to.

If you drill down on the Posts link, you can see what time of day people visit your Facebook page. Pre-pandemic, I had a lot of after midnight visits from other parts of the world. Now during the stay-at-home orders, I have a lot of US visits during day hours.

Click on the People link to see demographic information on your visitors (e.g. gender, age, language, and country/city of origin). This gives you detailed information on who is visiting your page.

This information is helpful if you plan to boost your FB posts or purchase ads. It can help you target countries, days, and active times.

Twitter - Their analytics are buried under the More link. They show a dashboard of each month’s performance, and the information is updated daily. The current month’s numbers may look off if it is reporting on a partial month (meaning it’s only tracking days or weeks for the current month to date). Keep scrolling to see previous, completed months.

You can view your most popular tweet and most popular mention. There are totals for followers, tweets, and mentions. You can also see totals for impressions.. An impression is how many times a browser has showed your content (in this case, your tweet). This doesn’t track clicks or shares; just the number of times it was shown.

Other Tools - There are lots of apps you can use for free or buy for your computer or mobile device to track analytics on your social media pages. There are also plugins and Google Analytics that you can add to your website for additional visitor information.

It’s a good idea to track your posts and followings at least at a high level to ensure that all the hard work that you’re doing on your website, blog, and social media sites is reaching your intended audience. I wouldn’t get too hung up on likes and unfollows. They do tend to fluctuate daily and weekly.