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.

Who is Your Target Audience? Analytics Tips for Authors

Who is your target audience? When I started writing my answer was, "Everyone who likes mysteries." That is a broad category. To be effective and to know your audience, you need to narrow that down a bit. You need data to see who your primary readers/followers are. And you can glean that information from your social media platforms. All of these bits of information will help you put together a picture of your readers and their likes. 

How do you know who's interested in your type of book? You can use analytics and demographics from your followers.

Facebook - The amount of analytics you have access to on Facebook depends on the number of followers you have. Every time you reach a follower milestone, you'll be able to see more details. On your author page, click Insights. You will see information about page views and page likes. You can click on any of the information for more details like age, gender, and city/country of origin. This information helps you to target readers in certain age or gender groups.

Click on the Posts link to see how well your posts do. You can see the number of interactions, time of day when people visit your site, and which posts get the most/least attention. This will help you if you decide to do Facebook ads or boosts. This information helps you target the right groups and times for posts/ads.

Twitter - Twitter also has an Analytics link. There is a dashboard that will show you your top followers, top tweet, and number of follower mentions. If you click on the Follower Dashboard, you can see high level interests, occupations, buying styles, gender, and household income of your followers. It will also show you the top language. This gives you insight into who is following you and what type of tweets get the most attention.

Your Blog/Website - Check the analytics on your website. I get numbers on visits and comments. I also get yearly, monthly, weekly, or daily data about popular posts, who's visiting, what browser they use, and what country they are in. If you know when people visit your site, you can target posts on other platforms to drive traffic to your site. I get a lot of overnight visits when I'm sleeping. I use an app to schedule tweets in the early morning hours.

Goodreads - Use the information on your Goodreads author dashboard to view your followers. Each of your books has a wealth of statistics on the page. Also there is a link (far right) for See Top Shelves. This shows you who has saved your book and what keywords they used to find you. This is helpful if you're trying to build your keyword lists or to see how others view your book.

This is like an Easter egg hunt. Each site gives you different information that is often platform specific. But if you look at it holistically, you will get a better picture of your average reader. Mine is female between the ages of 35 and 65 from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. It can also help when planning your marketing campaigns. 

Best wishes with your writing and book marketing efforts. There are no hard and fast methods that work every single time, but your data will help you make decisions and provide you information on who's visiting your social media platforms.

Social Media Analytics And Why Numbers are Important to Writers

When you reach certain milestones on Facebook fan pages and other sites, you gain access to analytics, insights, and other metrics. Your website should also have this information. Even if you are not a numbers geek, this data is valuable to you. It shows progress and gaps in your marketing efforts.

While you shouldn't fixate on numbers, followers, retweets, and likes, you should use them as a measure of the post you're creating. Writers also need to remember the social part of social media. You need to build relationships and followers by interacting with each other. If you only use these sites to dump announcements about your reviews and sale items, you're not going to be that successful.

Facebook and Twitter offer a lot of good information. You can see things like which day you get the most traffic. Target those days for posting new material. You can also see which posts get shared or commented on the most. This can help you figure out what type of content works for you. Facebook gives you a lot of information, including the age group/ demographics of your audience. Twitter tells you your reach for the week. You can see which tweets get the most action, and how many lead to link clicks. You should use Twitter and other sites to drive traffic to your blog or website.

If you boosted a post or ran an ad campaign, you can see the results. This can help you decide which types of posts to pay for next time.

Your website should also have metrics you can use to track visitor patterns and what types of content are most popular. I use Bitly to shorten my blog URLs for posting on social media. It has an analytics page that lets me know how many people have clicked on that link and on what days. My website visits were up and down until I committed to post a weekly blog and post links to it on Google+ and Twitter. My Google+ numbers aren't as high as my Twitter ones, but they do help me with my placement in Google searches (SEO).

The charts, graphs, and information can be overwhelming. Start with one item like your reach or the key days of the week. If you need help, Facebook and Google have good help files that explain what the numbers and different charts mean.

All of this information should help you decide what's working for you. If you're scheduling tweets, and you're not getting a lot of retweets, replies, or favorites, then you probably need to look at the content, frequency, and timing of what you do. You're doing a lot of work for not much reward. Also know that if others looks at your recent tweets, they can see the action or inaction too. Mix it up and see if your numbers improve. Make sure to add a couple of relevant hashtags to get the attention of interested readers.

Also note that Facebook changes its algorithms frequently, and this affects what your friends and fans see. I wouldn't depend on it as my only marketing method. To date, I haven't paid to boost any posts, but I'm working on a marketing campaign for my first solo mystery for next spring. I'll let you know how that goes.

Finally, there are way too many social media sites to have an active presence on each. Pick what your readers like and focus your time there. Don't let it overwhelm you. Make small changes and see if your numbers improve.

Happy marketing! And let's connect so we can build our reaches and resources. 

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