8 Metrics You Should Track + The 1 Tool That Get’s The Job Done

The purpose of Social Analytics in blogging is to track the Engagement power (or lack thereof) of your blog. It’s all about combining the typical Web Analytics data such as visits, pageviews, bounce rate etc. with data from Social Media sites such as how many retweets and Facebook likes.

If you are reading this post I’m going to assume that you are already aware of the importance Social Media has on blogging. It’s critical to say the least. Without it your super-awesome blog posts are like having a Aston Martin but no gasoline to drive it. Your blog posts are not given the “fuel” necessary to get “out there” if you will. This is why Internet Marketers are always talking about how important their social media campaigns are.

So enough of the small talk. Let’s get into this topic of Social Analytics for Bloggers and let me explain to you what specific metrics you need to be looking at in order to track, analyze, and achieve your social media goals.

The Question That Needs Answering = How Are My Posts Doing “Socially?”

Here are the metrics that answer that question…

Social Media Specific Metrics

These are the metrics you want to look at and track on a post by post basis. This data can be a little tricky to come by.

1. Tracking Retweets = the total number of times a blog post has been “tweeted”

2. Tracking Facebook likes = the total number of times a blog post has been “liked” for Facebook

3. Tracking Delicious bookmarks = the total number of times a blog post has been bookmarked on Delicious

4. Tracking Total Number of Comments = the total number of comments a blog post has received

Basic Web Analytic Metrics

This data is provided to you in two places. 1) Google Analytics and 2) WordPress CMS trackbacks feature.

1. Visits = how many total unique visits a blog post has received.

2. Page Views = how many specific times that blog post has been visited (not including your own IP address)

3. Bounce Rate = the percentage of single-page visits for each specific blog post

4. Natural Backlinks = the total number of backlinks (typically from other blogs) created as a result of your blog post. If you use the WordPress CMS you will get a notification for a new “trackback” every time this happens.

Add These Up To Create an Engagement Metric

All this data added up together and you have yourself an Engagement Metric that you can assign to each specific blog post you publish. The higher the score the better your blog post was.  This new Social Analytics data now puts you in a position of great leverage. You now can answer some very critical questions for your blog that before Social Analytics… you did not have the answers to. These are:

1. Where Is The Most Engagement Happening?

Now you will be able to know which social network is giving you the most attention. You can begin to increase your focus in the right areas. Maybe for some reason Facebook just doesn’t do well for you… but Delicious does. Who cares what everybody is saying about Facebook. Go after Delicious and develop your “clout” there.

2. Which Topics Within Your Blog Are Getting The Most Engagement?

This one often surprises many bloggers. As bloggers we think we know what our audience likes… but are so often surprised to find out that the 1 topic we don’t think they care hearing from us on, they absolutely love. I was able to find out through proper Social Analytics metrics that people on Twitter love when I write about SEO. I would never been able to find out that without looking at the right social data.

3. Which Authors Have The Most Engagement Power? (for multi-author blogs)

If you are running a multi-author blog you can use this Social Analytics data to determine who is ultimately doing the best job for you. Maybe you give bonuses to the authors who are creating the most “buzz.” At the very least you find a way to get those top engagement authors to publish more articles so that the blog can grow faster.

PostRank – The 1 Tool I Have Found That Does This For You

Earlier this week I setup a free account at Postrank.com. I was shocked to find out that it collected and reported all of this data for me for this blog and 4 others that I am tracking data on. I am currently using a free account with PostRank which gives me the ability to track all of my blog posts for up to 5 different domains. It has saved me a ton of time and has provided some very solid answers to questions I desperately needed answers with on my blogs.

Here are some screenshots of what PostRank looks like inside: (this is the free version which I am using)

Now that I am able to combine my Web Analytics (Google Analytics) and now Social Analytics (PostRank) quickly and efficiently, I can react quickly to the Social results of my blogging efforts. This is helping me to improve at a quicker pace and increase my traffic and more importantly… my readership.

That my friends is the power of Social Analytics for Bloggers!  Any thoughts on Social Analytics? Anything that you would like to add to what I’ve put together here?