A Look at 2011 and the Metrics that Matter Most

As I wrap up the end of the year (and my Christmas vacation), I thought I’d offer a post on my Top 20 posts for the year! NOT. What I’d really like to do is offer some insight into what defines success, the metrics we use to measure that, and what matters most.

Let’s just say that 2011 was certainly a year of lessons and thankfully, full of lessons that I could survive.  When I look at my year in blogging and navigating in social media (yep, it’s been just over a year), I’ve had an evolution in understanding what indicates success and what doesn’t.

It’s the Comments, Stupid

Early on, I equated my blogging success with comments and visits. If I got people to visit my blog and comment on a post, I had hit a home run.  Then, I realized if I got people to visit, comment and then share that post that was success.  Continually, and rather quickly, my understanding of success began to change. Why? Because I began to measure success based on where I wanted to go, not where I was at that moment in time.  More importantly, my road map for the future was grounded in business goals and not just blogging goals.  I identified goals for my blog that would support and further my business goals.

If my blogging and social media efforts generate more leads and those leads turn into contracts, voila, a level of success has been achieved.  If not, then I need to adjust what I’m doing until it generates the results I want.

So, let’s take a look at those metrics, shall we?

Google Analytics (Traffic)

If you look purely at the top traffic generators in Google Analytics (which many people do – and which I do not recommend), then you would be sorely misinformed. You’ll miss bounce rates, which are very telling when it comes to landing the right content for your audience.  You’ll miss time on the site and you might miss key words that got the person to that blog post.

My top post based on Google Analytics? A post about that guy – the bug exterminator. My worst lead generator? That guy. The bug exterminator.

Don’t get me wrong; GA did indicate a few winners. There were two posts that were consistent among all metrics.

PostRank (Engagement & Top Posts)

PostRank is all about Engagement.  According to PostRank,

Engagement refers to the attention other people pay to your published content, like blog posts, news & articles. They see and read a post, and then because it’s interesting, inspiring, or controversial, they get “hooked” and decide to take further action.

Traffic is great for getting eyes on your website and your blog, but it’s what someone does with that blog post after they read it that matters even more.  Take Billy for example. His post on branding got lots of eyes on my blog, but not for the reasons I had hoped. People were looking for his sunglasses, him, new episodes, but NOT a discussion on branding. As a result, that post had a very low engagement score.  All those eyes that came to see it didn’t share it far and wide. As a result, it was a stinker according to PostRank.

My best post according to PostRank? Looking purely at engagement, a little post about Climbing Out of the Social Media Rabbit Hole took top awards. Looking at engagement and page views, which PostRank factors in its score generation, it was my post advocating against the often touted ‘freemium’ model.

Word Press (Comments)

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, comments were a huge measure of success for me early on.  They are still awesome to have, but I’ve come to realize that they don’t always indicate success.  Take Billy again (he’s really a great case study- on so many levels), even though he was a heavy hitter when it came to traffic, he was on the low end when it came to comments, coming in with a total of 11 and a low engagement score…well, he’s sort of like All Hat and No Cattle.

The post that generated the most comments wasn’t even one of my own! Nope, it was a post written by the #RockHot Jayme Soulati. Ironically enough, it was all about how we should focus less on scores and metrics and more on relationships. I love Jayme and her aversion to metrics. She reminds me often of what matters most.

Goal Conversions (Services and Contact Us)

Sometime this summer I found religion Goal Conversions in Google Analytics. It is a powerful tool to use if you’re interested in digging deeper than traffic and key words. If set up properly, you can actually see what content inspires action on your website.  For me, that’s the best type of engagement.  That’s the Holy Grail. I want to write content that makes the reader check out my services and then take it a step further to contact me.  Even better? Click contact immediately upon reading the post.

When I looked at all of my metrics and then compared them to my Goal Conversion history, noting which posts inspired the desired actions, there was only one that got the desired outcome:  Business Smacks Down Klout. If you had asked me to guess, I would NEVER have said that one.  Really. But, that’s because I also look at another metric and that’s the actual email in my inbox and the phone call that leads to a new contract.

Emails and Phone Calls = New Business

Looking at the email/phone call metric, alongside the conversion history, I was able to pinpoint two more top hitters.  Both, interestingly enough, were about social media.  However, only one was considered a ‘top post’ based on the metrics mentioned above.  The other post, the Big Secret to Success in Using Social Media for Business, wasn’t even in the rankings. It was successful however, in that it garnered a comment, led to an email, then a phone call, a meeting and soon, a contract.  Now that’s a good metric!

Another Kind of Metric: Relationships

It really is all about relationships…old ones, new ones, ones we don’t even know about or understand.  I would be one big douche canoe if I overlooked the most important of all in my blogging world and one that I will admit, I lose sight of from time to time in my quest to understand my numbers, grow my business and kick some bootie. That one, is of course, my relationship with you.

Thank you for showing up. Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for sharing. And thank you most of all for supporting me and this blog this past year. We’re not going anywhere and I hope you won’t either.

Happy New Year to you and Cheers to an Awesome 2012!