There’s no better way to understand your site visitors and how they’re interacting with your content than than by using cold, hard data.
That being said, it’s easy to get swept up in what the marketing world calls “vanity metrics.” They can be misleading and ultimately not indicative of how your brand is performing in the digital sphere.
Be wary of these vanity metrics, and try not to get too wrapped up in or spend money on boosting them.
Twitter Followers
On Twitter, sometimes “following” people is totally random. Plenty of users use Twitter to keep tabs on a variety of interests, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are interested in making a purchase.
In fact, they may just want a “follow back” in order to boost their own numbers.
Do This Instead:
Look at the number of followers of your direct competitors.
Are they more or less?
This basis of comparison can help you understand if you can improve your content strategy and where you’re already hitting the mark.
Facebook Fans
Same principle applies, as with Twitter followers. Many users will click “Like” on a page, but never or seldom return back.
Do This Instead:
A better metric to look at is engagements; who is commenting, sharing and liking your posts, versus just liking your page.
Facebook has a free analytics tool called Facebook Insights where you can monitor your engagement levels.
Blog Views
You’re getting a lot of views to your blog — that’s great! But blog views don’t indicate where your reader came from or where they’re headed on your site.
Do This Instead:
Monitor bounce rates. Bounce rate is when a visitor visits one page, then does not click further into your site. A high bounce rate is bad because it means visitors leave your site after visiting just one page.
Also, look at shares on social sites, as search engines consider shares and tweets in their results.
If you want to know which metrics you SHOULD look at, check out our post: 5 Key Performance Metrics to Track Using Google Analytics.
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