Making sense of stats

Posted Tuesday, June 6, 2006 at 9:56pm in Blogging, Business, Technology  | 

UPDATED

I’m increasingly becoming a statistic addict. Yep, I’m Stephen and I’m addicted to stats. Not a bad addiction I suppose but I now find myself quite regularly checking the various statistical measures I have set up on this blog via Google Analytics and FeedBurner. Is it vanity or is it curiosity? Probably a bit of both. But, you see, I don’t mind admitting that one of the reasons I blog, along with numerous others, is for self promotion. Hello! I blog partly for self promotion. There, I said it.

I do, however, think with the increasing shift online it is becoming more and more important (and apparent) for PR pros to be aware of statistical analytics for various online PR campaigns and activity. If we are rolling into what some are calling the ‘New PR’ then being able to make sense of these numbers can only be of benefit for the PR profession and its clients.

Take, for example, FeedBurner. My opinion is, every PR blogger should be experimenting with some kind of RSS feed management provider like FeedBurner. For one reason primarily: To know how many people are reading that particular blog, or more specifically, how many people have took the time to subscribe that blog to their RSS reader because they think your content is interesting.

I know, I know. Some people will say it doesn’t matter how many people are subscribed to a blog as long as the right people are subscribed. Which is true to some extent, but come on, how do you measure if the right people **are** subscribed?

When this blog went through a redesign its standard WordPress feed was fed through FeedBurner and integrated as the only feed that a person can subscribe to. In other words, whomever subscribes to this blog I can track. Which, again, is another feather in the WordPress hat compared with other well-known blog services which don’t allow you to do this. Even if you put your feed through FeedBurner the blog’s standard feed is still available to subscribe to. Thus, not receiving a true subscription measurement.

My FeedBurner stats tell me that this blog has an average of 200 subscribers - sometimes a little more - sometimes a little less, with the majority using Bloglines (can you blame them?). A-lister I am not, but quite happy sitting in the D-list category. But thanks to WordPress I have a good (if not perfect) idea how many people are reading.

Then there’s Google Analytics. Now, this is a little more technical than FeedBurner and, indeed, I’m still trying to fathom all of the various stat reports it gives, but slowly but surely I’m figuring it out. Goog Analytics gives off some very interesting data - particularly as it allows you to see which organisation networks have paid a visit. Not to name names, but staff from a number of PR agencies and universities, a major sport manufacturer (think swoosh), two major search engine portals and the Houses of Parliament. Yes, you read correctly, staff from the Houses of Parliament have visited this blog.

I can also see which blogs are referring visitors to this site, so thanks Tony, Richard, Stuart, Matt, Drew and others. Weirdly, a lot of referrals are coming from Google Images! But again, always good to know. Just like it’s good to know which countries people are visiting from. Not surprisingly, most of this blog’s visitors come from the UK and US. Primarily California and New York in the US, and, London and Leeds in the UK. Shame there aren’t many stopping by from the North East. But hey, maybe in a couple of years.

And if you’re concerned about SEO, Goog Analytics allows you to see which keywords are leading people to your blog. Two of my posts so far have proved pretty favourable with people’s search queries. This post of me asking some random questions and this one about Bluesecurity.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, prior to social media, web stats haven’t been an important factor in the PR profession, but perhaps increasingly they will. Part of the PR pro’s role will be to make sense of these stats for his/her client, hence why I’m dipping my toes into **trying** to make sense of them. There’s another thing on the ‘To Learn’ list. It just keeps growing!

UPDATE

No sooner did I speak so smugly about WordPress allowing you to track all your subscribers via FeedBurner, TypePad is partnering with FeedBurner to allow users to do just that.

You may note in the post that I say ‘well-known blogging services’, but what I really meant was TypePad…just didn’t want to offend my TypePad using buddies that’s all.

Sidenote:

Here’s a video I found of my mate, Tommy, from when he was playing for Ipswich Town which has been created by a fan. What do we call this? Fan Generated Media (FGM) as opposed to Consumer Generated Media (CGM)? Watch one or two of the goal celebrations. Probably the worst I’ve seen in my life.

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