Experienced media executive Robert Keenan explores the modern analytics impacting BtoB media companies

1. Editorial Analytics:
Using Data To
Enhance
Engagement
Robert Keenan
President
Keenan Media LLC

2. Meeting Agenda
• Analytics That Matter
• How Do I Use Analytics?
• Make it About the People
• Putting Analytics into Action
• Final Thought

3. Our Journey Today
• The goal of today’s session if three fold.
– Understanding the current analytics landscape and discussing what the key
analytics are today for editors and marketers at BtoB companies
– How analytics can drive engagement, site growth, and social media interaction in
your media organization
– Steps for changing your culture to be more analytics driven

4. So, Who Am I?
• BtoB Exec with 20+ years experience with 10+ in editorial.
• Most recently, VP of Online Media for Edgell
Communications.
• Lead editor at United Business Media (formerly CMP
Media).
– Last position – Editor-in-Chief of the TechOnline network of sites.
• Also held editorial positions at Penton Media and
VerticalNet.
• In my most recent roles, I’ve been tasked with turning
editorial teams into analytics-focused operations.

5. Analytics That Matter

6. Analytics Alphabet Soup

7. Which Ones Matter
• As you saw on the last slide, we have a ton of analytics that we can
look at.
• But, as editors and marketers, we have to ask:
Which are the right ones?
• The answer is: It depends!
– It depends on the medium.
– It depends on your goals.
– It depends on when you’re looking at them.

8. Core 5 for Your Websites
• For your websites, there are really five metrics that you should be looking at
everyday:
– Pageviews – Pageviews are your baseline analytic that we’re all judged on.
– Unique visitors – This is the closest number for telling a true audience on a site.
– Pageviews/session (aka pageviews/user) – This tells how long users stay on a site.
In BtoB, we look for a user to stay roughly 2 to 3 pages per stop.
– Time spent on site – This goes hand in hand with pageviews/session. The more
time we have a user on site, the more pages they are viewing and, in turn, the more
engaged our user becomes.
– Google referrals – This is your search engine optimization (SEO) health check.
Keeping track of this number can show wins and losses from an SEO perspective.
• And, when asked, you shouldn’t have to look for these. You should know
them!

9. Core Stats for Newsletters
• Newsletters continue to be a critical traffic driver, which makes tracking
analytics here also critical. Here are the analytic keys you should be
monitoring:
– Open Rate – This is a tricky one. Open Rate isn’t always the most accurate number.
But, it’s a health check. If open rates drop, it’s a sign that something is not going
right. If they jump, it’s a sign to analyze what worked.
– Click Rate – Some people look at click percentages. Others look at total clicks. I’m a
total click kind of guy and I use this as a health check to see how my newsletter
resonated. It’s also great to track engagement on a story.
– Unsubscribes – Over the years, some editors have told me they don’t monitor
unsubscribes. But, this is one that editors absolutely need to own. If you’re seeing an
increase in unsubscribes, then there is something wrong wit the product and
adjustments need to be made.
– Delivery % - This represents the difference between the number mailed and the
actual numbered delivered. Keep an eye on this on a regular basis. Significant
changes here show potential black list issues.

10. And Don’t Forget Your Click Maps
Click maps, like the one
here, can give you great
insights into how a piece
of content or marketing
promo resonated with
the audience.

11. What About Social?
• Social has added a whole new set of analytics that we need to monitor
on-site and off-site traffic.
• Specifically, you need to regularly monitor:
– Content that is resonating best in social.
– Referrals each social channel is providing.
– How many followers you have in social.
– Who are your brand advocates in social.

12. How Do I Use Analytics?

13. Practical Analytics
• It’s great to have numbers, but the key is using these numbers to guide
decisions.
• The real question I get is: Where do I start?
– Start by talking about them.
– Make it a point to check.
– Share what you’re seeing.
– Make analytics a part of all staff discussions.
– What’s working?
– What’s not?
– What’s trending?
– How are we making adjustments?
– The key here is to get started. Analytics won’t be important to your team unless the
whole team is informed.

14. Feed the Beast
• Your website is the beast and your analytics are your tools to seeing
what it’s eating.
• You can then use those analytics to understand what the audience
wants and build editorial and content marketing plans to drive the most
traffic to the audience.
• You can also use this data to guide the topics and types of content that
you feature in your newsletter.
• Then track the results and adjust.
• Wireless networking example.

15. Make it About the People

16. The Names Behind the Numbers
• As analytics become more pervasive, one of the comments that often
is said: Wow this piece of content generated XXX views.
• While a good benchmark, it’s also a bit scary.
– The focus is on volume, not quality.
• My response here: That’s great, but was it the right traffic.
• You see, as a BtoB group, we care about volume, but more important,
we care that we’re getting the right audience.
• And analytics can help you track that.

17. So How Do You See the People?
• There are several ways that analytics tools can help you see the names
behind the numbers.
– You can leverage the domain pulls in Google Analytics or another analytics tool.
– If you have a lead-gen system, see if it’s tracking your content.
– Leverage your newsletter tool to see who’s opening and clicking.
• Remember, this is a game of engagement. And, to ensure your engagement
is right, you need to take the time to see who’s reading your digital content.
• If not, you’ll never truly understand if what you’re content, content marketing,
or other efforts are truly resonating with the right people.

18. Putting Analytics into Action

19. Taking Steps Forward
• A big question from editors and marketers typically is: How do I start?
• The best part about analytics is you can start now.
– The tools are in your hands now. Take advantage of them.
• Change your staff meetings.
– Share results from newsletters and the site for the previous week.
– Look at what topics have been trending.
– Build weekly reports that give insight to the entire team about what’s working.

20. Steps (continued)Forward
• Feed the Beast
– See what topics are resonating and make shifts in your online and newsletter
content to align with the reading habits of the audience.
• Test New Things and Then Measure
– Try splitting your newsletter list and working different subject lines.
– Post content at different times of the day.
– Try different engagement techniques on Twitter and LinkedIn.

21. Don’t Wait. Adjust Today
• One of the benefits you have is that there are tools available, like
Parse.ly and Chart Heat, that can help you adjust in real time.
• With Parse.ly and ChartBeat, you can:
– See what’s trending now.
– See who’s tweeting your content.
– See what content is resonating the best in social channels.
– See what authors are resonating the best (especially if you’re using freelancers).
– Track the effectiveness of email campaigns.

22. Sample Charts
Top Posts
Top Authors

23. Sample Charts
Social Traffic
Tweeters

24. Final Thought

25. One Final Message:
Start Today, Try Something New
and Then Analyze the Results.

26. Thank You!
Robert Keenan
973-219-9508
rkeenan@keenandigitalconsult.com
Twitter: @robkeenan11
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertkeenan/

27. Appendix

28. Your Job is to Build Audience
• Editors are asked to not only keep audience today, they need to help drive and
engage new audience.
• One way to do this is by optimizing your content for Google.
• Think about it this way: If your audience is using Google to find you, then Google is a
part of your audience.
• And, if Google is a part of the audience, you need to write in a way that Google can
process.
• And, through analytics, you can see what is and isn’t working in Google so you can
make content adjustments that will increase referrals.
• One important note here. I’m not saying that you should simply write content that
drives mass volume to your write. While that would be great, we have to remember
we’re in BtoB. So, we want the write audience, not just any audience.