by Randall CraigFiled in: Blog, Blogging, Make It Happen TipsheetTagged as: Advertising, Google, Technology
Have you labored over your blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter for years, only to suddenly find a huge drop in your traffic?
As leaders begin to probe the Return on Social Media Investment, an unexpected reversal is frustrating – and can have direct impact on the organization’s brand… and those responsible for it.
Determining the reasons for an abrupt change requires some detective work. For a blog, here are just a few of the possible reasons for a drop:
Key to determining the source of the change is a review of the analytics. For blogs, the key tool is Google Analytics; Facebook, YouTube, and other social platforms provide their own analytic tools as well. Some questions to ask: has the drop occurred because one particular source no longer providers users? Or one particular browser is no longer supported? (Or screen size?) Is there less click-through to secondary pages? And most importantly, did the drop happen all at once, or gradually over several months. Pinpointing the precise time that the change manifested itself – the inflection point – is key to diagnosing the source of the problem. And when the source is found, a prescriptive fix can be applied.
There are a number of situations when a drop in traffic may be expected. For example, if your strategy calls for a change in the blog’s focus, then it is perfectly natural – and even desirable – for non-target readers to quit.
If you are not reviewing your analytics on a regular basis, this is the week to start: 10 minutes is all it takes to quickly scan the numbers and charts. Not only does this provide an early warning of potential problems, but it also is the first step in measuring ROI.
“Oops” Insight #1: In many organizational blogs, the writing may be done by more than one person. If there was a change in writer, the new writer’s style or content might be turning off your readership.
“Oops” Insight #2: Despite the big list of possibilities, is it possible that no one is interested in your content? An extreme example: No one was interested in reading a blog about Y2K in 2001. If this may be the case, maybe consider a change…?
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