Big Data has been the fashionable business trend for years now. However, many organizations are literally swimming in huge silos of data, so much in fact, that they have no idea how to make use of it all. Where to begin? What’s important and what’s insignificant? Even more importantly, how do I distill all of this down to find value in it?
Analytics is the answer these organizations are looking for. It is a process of studying past business performance to gain insight and help drive future initiatives. Future business performance can indeed be predicted, and new business insights derived from analyzing past statistical performance.
Statistical analysis and predictive modeling can segment any part of your operation. Valuable insights can be unearthed, driving performance improvements. For example, if you would like to know how to improve the performance of your shipping and logistics, historical data can be analyzed, looking for trends that you may not have otherwise been aware of. This can be done to virtually every aspect of your operation from sales to manufacturing to customer service. Analytics can even be used to measure the success of each piece of content marketing creates.
How Analytics Benefits Marketing
Analytics will let us know about reader activity on our website. It tells us how many people visited the website and what they did when they got there. Analytics can spotlight the content the readers spend the most time on, and direct our attention to areas we need to work on.
Content analytics are a study of reader behavior, tracking their journey through our site. Particularly close attention is paid to reader behavior on the various pieces of content. This generates questions such as:
- Which pages did they linger on?
- How long did they stay on each page?
- Which ones did they visually scan & which did they move on to?
- What path did they take through the site?
- Which page was the last one before “X-ing” out.
We look to analytics to tell us if our content is building our base of customers and increasing sales. The metrics generated help to answer questions such as:
- Our bounce rate – customers leaving within the first minute of landing
- Time on the site
- Number of pages visited
- Number of email and blog subscribers
- The conversion rate of each content pieces’ number of sales
This information hopefully will lead you to better manage your content marketing campaigns. In this age of personalization, analytics will help you understand your customers much better. Always remember, information is power.
Famous Last Words
“What gets measured, gets managed.”
― Peter Drucker
The Hank Moody School of Creative Writing
Write the story you’d most want to read. Think about the books you love, the ones you really lose yourself in. If those are mysteries, then don’t try to write an historical romance or a quiet literary novel. It might not be anything genre-specific that you love, but a certain voice, or type of story, or kinds of characters. Write what you love.
The Big Kumbaya in CyberSpace
Sharing and discussing content posts brings us together as one. Sharing ideas, answering and asking questions makes us all strong. Please take the time to share what works for you.
To hear the rantings of other voices on the same subject:
11 Ways to Put Your Business Intelligence Analytics to Work Growing Your Company by Cyfe Blog
Why Data + Analytics is a Match Made in Heaven by Michael Goldberg, D&B Data Mgt & Analytics
