November 2, 2016
Analytics aren’t just for IT teams and senior analytics directors. Editors should also have a knowledge of and expertise using web analytics, because it can give them deeper insight into their audiences and enhance their publications. Analytics are important to editorial teams because they gave editors a deeper insight into their audiences, into who audience members are, when they visit, what they consume, like and dislike. Editorial analytics can inform reportage, editorial decision making, and strategy. Analytics help set editorial priorities when editors have lists of what is popular, trends, headlines, story formats and frameworks. And, analytics can also be used by editors to determine what doesn’t do well, as well as things that could be cut back. The analytics Fortune outlined that she cared about included data on audience size, geography, preferences, likes and wants. “What you look at is determined in part by the business goals of the company and what they tell you to monetize or what is important to your site,” she said. In the past, Fortune said, publishers and editors would get insight from experts running focus groups or doing research. Now, analytics data provides editorial teams with much quicker, more in-depth insight and can provide brand-specific benchmarks of performance. Through this, editors can determine whether an article is successful or whether it underperformed, using data specific to their publications. “It allows us, and this is something we don’t always like as editors, to challenge our assumptions,” she said. “We might think a certain topic is a perfect fit for our audience, but the data could tell us otherwise.” Analytics help set editorial priorities. For Fortune, this means doing deep dives into the analytics of the Chatelaine website and social feeds, to gauge past performance of editorial packages and content pillars. For example, in her most recent deep dive into the site analytics, Fortune said there were definite learnings from year to year, especially when it came to holiday gift guides. “The thing that was most surprising was how well articles on stocking stuffers did,” she explained. “Double or triple what other types of gift guides we were doing. So, this year, there will be more stocking stuffers.” Fortune’s deep dives are an annual occurrence, where she takes a couple of days to study the results of the last year’s traffic. These deep dives inform Fortune about how well the site content matched audiences needs, wants and likes. For editors who have never done a deep dive into analytics data, Fortune suggests first to discover whether site traffic is growing or shrinking. “And, by how much?” she asked. “Where does it come from? What are the pathways to your content? Search engines, social media, other sites? What are the most important topics or categories on your site? And, what percentage of the site’s overall traffic does each category get?” With Chatelaine, she explained, content pillars include health, style, living, news, home décor and food. “I look at the traffic each is getting, and I rank