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Assessing Readership:

Now that your blog is available around the world, it is important to gain knowledge of who is reading your blog, how often it is viewed, and which blog stories are garnering the most readers. Assessing your blog’s readership data will help you fine tune and tweak your writing style to gain even more traction.

The Tools:

You will need to have access to at least three of the following tools:

• Google Analytics (free)
• C-Panel Access for Awstats on your server (free)
• Alexa (free)
• Google’s Urchin (paid)
• ComScore's Digital Analytix Suite (paid)

There are an additional twenty or more web tools to help you track your blog user results.  MatterMax Media recommends that you use at least three tools and calculate an average score from among the three tools for each category you are analyzing.

What you should analyze:

You can start your analysis by deciphering the following stats:

• Number of unique visitors
• Number of visits per visitor
• Number of pages viewed per visit
• Top 25 host referrals
• Visits duration
• Top 25 pages viewed

The most important stat that you can extract from the above list is the top twenty-five pages viewed. This area will tell you exactly what your site visitors are reading the most. You will now know, at the very least, what types of blog posts attract the most attention.

The Alexa tool will give you demographic stats on which age groups are visiting your site and how your site ranks against the average internet age group activity on the internet as a whole.

Performing the above comparative analysis on a weekly basis will greatly aid you in your quest to measure and assess site readership.

Moving Forward:

Let’s assume that after the first thirty days you have noted the following:

• Unique Visitors = 1,000
• Number of visits per visitor = 2.5
• Of the top 25 pages blog topics read – A, T and Z were the top 3
• Alexa demographics = mostly adults 35-54 (note: you may not be able to receive data if your site ranking on Alexa is over 100,000, so this could be a moot point)

For the sake of this example, we are going to assume your site has a ranking of under 100,000. While there are only four statistical areas being used in this example, a number of important facts can be gathered. In a nutshell, these adults aged 35-54, visited the site on average at least 2.5 visits each and gravitated to the A, T and Z blog topics, pushing them to the top three most read blog posts.

If these results are trending in the direction that you desire, then you are off to a great start. You should begin to model your writing style and topic choices after blog posts, A, T and Z.

On the other hand, if these results are not trending in your preferred direction, then you will have to look at particular statistical areas from this same month highlighting activities from different demographic groups you wish to target. At this juncture, you should begin tweaking your blog posts to capture that particular audience for future posts until you are gaining traction.

This process will take some time; however, in the long run you will begin to garner readership from your intended target market.

Tip of the Iceberg:

Using data analysis tools to assess site readership and demographics is just the tip of the iceberg. These procedures will also help you monetize your site via advertising interest generated by your blog posts, once you have built up your numbers of readers.

Understanding Your Readers:

When a company truly understands the needs and desires of its target market, makes the adjustments to deliver an excellent product, and takes the time to update that product as its target market evolves, the profits will be forthcoming and continuous.

When you consistently track and analyze your stats against your most popular and least popular blog posts, you will understand how to make adjustments and where to make those adjustments.

Time Spent on the Site:

Another crucial statistic is how long are visitors staying on your site. If 75% of your visitors stay less than 30 seconds, then depending on what type of blog posts you are creating, i.e., a quick less than 500 words blog, versus a 2000 word blog, then you will have to make adjustments - especially if your blog type is the latter.

MatterMax Media recommends that a good average visit time to shoot for is from 3 to 5 minutes being best, and at least 1 to 2 minutes being acceptable.

Video blog visitors should average 3 to 6 minutes time spent per visitor.

Now that you have a basic understanding of how to assess readership, you can confidently pursue tweaking your blog voice using the data tools presented in Today’s Marketing Blog to grow your blog and generate revenue.

Next week, Today’s Marketing Blog’s Thursday Edition will present the “Facebook Timeline” series, “Part 1.”

As we blog about those subjects that matter to all of us, we will continue to demonstrate the “Maximize What Matters™” concept and hope you are enjoying this series offerings. See you here next week for “MatterMax Media’s Today’s Marketing Blog – Thursday Edition.”

MatterMax Media is a full service integrated marketing agency located in Stone Mountain, Georgia. MatterMax Media provides strategy, technology, marketing and training for individuals, businesses and government. Today’s Marketing Blog focuses on Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Web Matters. When you require assistance with your branding/marketing strategy, feel free to contact us.