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Analytics is the Main Essential Thing for a Publisher
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It’s 2020 and you know what analytics is. We’re not going to start this blog post with a bunch of bologna trying to introduce you to a term that is used almost as much as SEO in marketing speech. What this article will however do is dive into what makes analytics the most essential element a publisher can use when building and delivering content to an audience.
There is one thing analytics isn’t. Analytics isn’t just page views and traffic - it is so much more. A publisher or editorial platform’s key to understanding engagement and what their audience wants to read is in the data that’s already in existence; an analytics tool only translates that data into information you can use when crafting future content and building relationships with your audience.
Analytics, once interpreted and translated, can give your digital publishing platform insight into where to post as well. You could be curating amazing content, but if your audience isn’t finding and reading it, then it’s basically meaningless.
How can my publishing/media platform incorporate analytics?
Thankfully, analytical tools are accessible in user-friendly formats across the internet. You no longer need to rely on expensive, specialized analysts or engineers to begin mining and interpreting the data on your website, app, and social media platforms. You may already have a digitally native person on your staff who can help implement analytics into your software - the number of these savvy individuals in media fields has increased by 80%.
According to What’s New in Publishing, the most important method of incorporating analytics into your media organization is to develop the right attitude to change. In many instances, when a company can see that they need to change to be successful and avert consequences, so many are so resistant to change. And, to WNIP, it’s the fear of uncertainty.
“Failing to accept new challenges in terms of connecting with audiences and building online communities doesn’t bode well either for today’s media organizations. In fact, no one can take their audience for granted these days – partly due to trust in media being compromised – and partly due to the fact that relying on simple, quantitative metrics does very little to ascertain where that relationship currently stands.”
Your platform can begin to adjust to the change - and the benefits that come with it - by ensuring that staff, journalists, and everyone who matters are versed in understanding data. We don’t mean the surface stuff either, we mean having at least one member of your team (hire someone if you need to) who can read and analyze data in their sleep. That person can begin training the rest of your team to recognize important data points and how they relate to your content and audience.
Implementing analytics into your content is only the first step to fully incorporating and benefiting from its uses. You can also gather data from other sources on your website, most especially with native ads. Placing native ads requires a lot of analytics to track, and the entire website monetization is also subject to big analytics data. If you’re able to harness that information for your benefit, the rewards are limitless.
AdStyle offers a clear and easy dashboard for these analytics, as well as import/export and integration to third-party platforms. To learn more about our analytics and the rest of the AdStyle platform, reach out for a conversation today.
