PODCAST EPISODE
Laney Goff: Welcome back to Untamed Social, the podcast where we get real about what actually works in social media. Today we're diving into a topic that I feel like way too many brands overlook, and that's how to actually use your analytics to guide your content strategy. Not just glance at likes and views, but actually dig deep and make informed decisions and stop letting the algorithm boss you around.
So I've got the perfect guest for this one. John Webster is our, actually our marketing strategist here at Strella Social Media and someone that I've had the pleasure of working closely with for the past two years, he helps small businesses make sense of digital marketing without all the jargon. And through his company, wordpressharrisburg.com, he builds websites and marketing strategies that are smart, effective, and actually affordable for central Pennsylvania businesses. Uh, and his goal is to make modern marketing tools easy to understand, but even easier to use. John, I'm really excited that you're joining me today.
John Webster: This will be fun.
Laney Goff: I feel like we have a good dynamic, you know, we're used to meetings together.
John Webster: Correct. Yeah we're good.
Laney Goff: So, you know, it's funny because I've talked to a lot of like marketing consultants and things in the past, throughout my career, and I feel like you really do have a knack for understanding the marketing side of things, but also the analytics. So let's start with this. What do you feel like is the biggest mistake that brands make when it comes to looking or reading over their analytics?
John Webster: So you don't start with the end in mind. So the basics is what do we wanna do? Not every business wants the same thing. Not every organization wants the same thing. Nonprofits, small business, retailer, versus high ticket sales. Everybody's a little different. And if you're just looking at the numbers without having context. Then they won't mean a lot to you. So the first thing they need to really do is decide what kind of organization they are and what they're trying to do. So just blindly looking at numbers is the biggest mistake, all brands— and it's from corporations down to mom and pops. They all do it.
Uh, they, they see this dashboard of numbers and they just go. Okay, that's better. Or okay, that's not as good. But yeah, it, it's, they, they don't know what they're looking at because they don't know what they're trying to do.
Laney Goff: Yeah. Yeah, agreed. I think that's, that's really foundational in anything, whether you are looking at website data or social media data, I think that is really the core and the crux of everything that is a mistake with what brands are looking at. And also maybe like not having an understanding of what each point of data means.
Um, and, and there's a lot that goes into that, which we can talk more about, but since you have a lot of experience working on websites and also doing marketing strategy. How, when you think of like the full picture, how should social media data and website data kind of work together to paint a bigger picture for brands?
John Webster: Well, first brands have to realize that the social part of their online presence is way up here. It's at the top. It's awareness, it's engagement, it's, it's how they make people know that they're out there. It's the new way to get found and followed. So the top is where they, you get found, but the website is where you actually see the results of all the work you're doing on social and nowadays, uh, you know, all the search engines and all of your social media channels, they all have a thing called a pixel. And a pixel's just a, an easy word for saying they have a little spy on the website looking at all of your visitors.
And so what a good analytics person will do is take your social media information, apply tracking codes to it. Bring it to the website where you have a tracking pixel and that allows them to build a little, uh, breadcrumb trail to see what's working and what's not working. So you need to just integrate all these little pieces, uh, to build that breadcrumb trail so you can paint the whole picture.
Laney Goff: Yeah. I, I think it's funny too because we have some clients that, like when we bring on, on new brands. You know, we will ask for obviously, access to their social media platforms, but then we also ask for their Google Analytics.
And half of the time they're like, why? Or, or we wanna log into their WordPress and, and they're like, I don't understand why. And really it is to get that full picture like you spoke about. Because if we are doing our job correctly on social media, then we are driving traffic to the website. And if you're not doing that, then I feel like what's the point? Where are the conversions? You're, you, you've gotta get there at some point. Yes, brand awareness—
John Webster: What's working?
Laney Goff: Yeah, brand awareness is initial, but like, we gotta drive people to the actual website and they miss that a lot. They don't understand the connection. Um, so, speaking of that, and something that you touched on a little bit ago was, you know, like understanding the right analytics and what you're actually looking at that a lot of brands don't understand what each point of data means, so I feel like a lot of times it's easy to look at the surface level numbers, like the likes and the views.
What should they be paying attention to, whether that be on social media or on their website? What kind of analytics do you feel like they should actually be looking at if they want true growth?
John Webster: Well, the first thing that you need for true growth is good visitors and, and a good visitor is engaged with you. Engagement means different things on social media than it means on a website, but on social media, engagement is a comment, it's, it's coming to your content more often. On a website, it's time on a page.
It's the number of pages that they visit. All of these are signals that your visitors are engaged with your content. You know, having 5,000 clicks to your site and everybody just lands and goes somewhere else, is nothing. But having maybe 50 people that spend 10 minutes on your website reading things, looking at your blogs, looking at your about page, learning about your company.
That means a lot more just the number of clicks and obviously form fill outs, phone calls. All of those things that, that convert a visitor into somebody that you can sell to or that you can communicate with are important. So you wanna look at engagement and then conversion. And if you have high engagement and low conversion, that's a signal you need to change something.
And then you also wanna look at if, if your business is appropriate or your organization is appropriate. Do these people come back over and over again? Now, not every business, you know, if you are a local plumber, somebody's just looking for you when they got a problem.
Laney Goff: Yeah.
John Webster: So they're not gonna engage you over and over and over again.
But if you are a nonprofit that is fundraising and doing good for the community, you want returning visitors. You wanna consistently tell those people your message and, and let them have more buy-in so that your organization can grow.
Laney Goff: Yeah. And well, it's funny because we actually have been going through this ourselves at Strella exactly what you're talking about. Um, we're finding that, you know, we are getting a lot of traffic and, and engagement on a certain landing page, but then that conversion isn't there. Um, and so.
John Webster: Well, let's talk about that. This is is a great, so we had a, we had a landing page and we were, we were asking people to book, um, a free phone call that where we were gonna just go over some strategy with them and we were getting a ton of people that were visiting a landing page and then clicking once more to book the phone call and then not following through with the phone call.
And what we deduced over about a month of tracking the data is just the actual booking of a phone call without some more trust factors built in was too much of an ask. So now we've adjusted and we have a lower bar and we're gonna try that and see if that works. But that's, that's a great place where looking at your analytics following the breadcrumbs can lead you to a conclusion.
Now, a conclusion is not... a hundred percent accurate all the time. We are, we're kinda like detectives. We're looking at the evidence and then we're saying what makes sense with the evidence in front of us and how can we adjust based on that? So that's when you're looking at the good, the real data. The data that's important to what you're trying to do, that you can adjust and overcome.
Laney Goff: Yeah. So that's great that you, you mentioned that, you know, we tracked it for a month. Um, and I think one of the questions that people have, especially on social media, but even our example here with our landing page and booking a free call, do you think brands are too quick to pivot when something doesn't perform well or are they not quick enough to change things up?
What, do you know what that like perfect timing is for that.
John Webster: It depends.
Laney Goff: No real answer.
John Webster: Well, I'm not filibustering, but, uh, it depends on what the sales cycle is for your product or your service or your organization when you should pivot. If you are selling a low end product, and, and it could be a widget, a t- shirt, a, a hoodie. Something like that where there is not a big decision.
It's either I'm buying it or I'm not buying it kind of thing. And if you are seeing people come and not buy, you want to pivot quickly, you're not getting the right people there. The, the greater the decision factor in the purchase or the further engagement, the more you have to let, let things breathe a little. Relax.
Remember and remind yourself that you are building credibility with a person and you need a lot less credibility to sell 'em a hoodie than you need to sell them a $5,000 consulting.
Laney Goff: Service. Yeah, definitely.
John Webster: So, so you just, you have to, and also with letting something breathe, there's a lot of information that's happening in the background that you can start playing detective with.
For example, we'll just keep playing with the Strella, uh, situation that we're, we're working through the puzzle is that were, we were getting display, our ads were getting displayed to people that weren't necessarily the optimal person for us, but had we not let it breathe a little. Let Google show us who they were showing the ads to so that we could tell Google, that's not exactly who we're looking for without, without that, uh, feedback loop.
We can't get better.
Laney Goff: Yeah. That, and I think also, like not testing too much at one time, picking one thing. And because it's easy to like see something not working and think that you need to completely shift multiple things and then you're not able to detect like what the problem is, in my opinion.
So, which I think is a, a good strategy that we've had this time is like we're just tweaking one small thing to see if it moves the needle. And a lot of brands miss that. They just wanna completely throw the strategy to the wall and say, let's start completely over, like we see it in social media 24/7. 24/7.
So one thing that we like talk to you a lot about is actually, which is some might think, okay, well that doesn't make any sense. You're social media consulting and marketing company or management company. You know, we actually go to you sometimes to talk about our content strategy and the type of content that we are sharing.
So can you walk us through how you would typically, for a client, use analytics to inform their content strategy? Like what's that process look like?
John Webster: Well, number one, we'll go back to question number one is start with the end in mind. So know what the goals are, that your goals direct everything. And then we're gonna look at, at content that's performing well for you. Like what is that content? We always want to, uh, repeat the, the things that are viral.
You want to do it again. Uh, look in the data for things where we dropped off and, and we're always looking for trends. Trends are everything in analytics. Um, you know, if you have a consistent 5,000 click a month, uh, but you're not achieving your goals, then we want to trend that number up, or we want to trend one of the other numbers up. And as a small business owner, the greatest thing that you can do when you're looking at your analytics, if you don't have a consultant, is just start looking for peaks and valleys and on the peaks, figure out what happened that peak repeat it and in the valley, avoid it. Uh, and I do that with, with you guys.
We, we look at your analytics and I'll say, hey, what did you guys post on March 24th? Because three times as many people came to the website on that day as any other day. And then you will go, oh, we did a blog post about such and such and it's kind of a controversial topic. And we were like, well, let's do that again.
Not that exact same thing, but we'll try and recreate the fire. And as you start finding out what works, and it's the funniest thing because just because you can be on social media doesn't mean everybody should, and that's an unpopular opinion. But if you're gonna be there, be interesting, be entertaining.
Uh, you are against bunch of people doing silly stuff and you might not be doing silly stuff, but if you want to break through in a stream of silly stuff, entertaining things. You need to be entertaining as well. You need to be interesting. So I challenge people when we're looking at these numbers.
They're not where they want 'em to be. That they'll look internally and say, how can we be entertaining? How can we be worth following? How can we be worth visiting? Because people are busy.
Laney Goff: Mm-hmm.
John Webster: And you need to break through busy you need to capture their attention. Even, C-suite level executives to be entertained, need to be engaged, and if you are not there, then you need to look at the basics.
Like let's just be entertaining.
Laney Goff: Yeah, definitely. And you know, like thinking about, okay, you talked about the, the peaks and the valleys, and when you do have those peaks, like really I think what people miss is, you know, not even just like the understanding what each analytic means, but really when you have those peaks, reviewing the content and understanding from a consumer's perspective.
What actually got their attention, but then also what kept it, um, because I think that's missed so much. They're like, oh, we had a good month. Let's do another video like this. But they don't understand exactly what it was about that video that performed well. So when they go to look at the next month analytics, it's not the same.
And it's because maybe they missed that one piece of having a really great hook or something that was extremely relatable to their audience. Um, so I think that's missed a lot, a lot too. Um, but with that, I also wonder, and maybe you have more perspective on this, do you feel like brands even really spend the time to review their analytics.
John Webster: If they don't have somebody like your team or my team. Often not, or they might get some report sent to them from either GoDaddy or Google. Like they might talk to a Google representative they, they set up a report, but I don't know that they're really seriously looking at it.
Laney Goff: Yeah. It's like the basics. It's like the skim over. Right? And I can get that that like, it seems like a daunting task and like, is it really gonna move the needle for you, but I don't think people understand that it, it truly does when you understand what you're looking at. So I think the first step is you have to consistently look at the data.
So in your opinion, how often do you feel like brands should be reviewing their analytics? And what type of cadence should that be? So that you can like, review your strategy?
John Webster: Uh, just like a household budget, uh, if you're not tracking it and you're not reviewing it, you're not going to improve it. It will rule. If you're not ruling it, it will rule you. And that's the same with your social media, your website. So if you're not taking control of those digital assets. They will just do whatever they're gonna do.
So weekly, I would say you need to take a quick check in, and that's great for that report that Google is gonna send you or, or GoDaddy will send you. And just look at the basics, look at the clicks, look at the trends. Are, am I getting more people to the website? How many people are returning? Maybe if you have a gender based business.
How many of this gender, how many of that, if you have an age-based business, how many from this age and, and, and those things and, and know that those, that information is not perfect because people can turn on privacies and things like that. But with all of the knowledge that especially Google has, it makes pretty good models of what your content is doing.
So just, just look at those basics weekly. That will get you familiar, that will, um, have you seeing a positive trend or a negative trend quickly. And then monthly, uh, have somebody build you a dashboard. Because just the, the free things that somebody are gonna, that an organization's gonna provide you is not going to let you get where you need to go.
But monthly you wanna look a little deeper. You're gonna look for those peaks and valleys and then backtrack from those and say, what was I doing? What was going on in the world? What I, you know, if I'm an electrician and we just had a major storm in our area. And you see a peak of traffic to your site, you can pretty much assume every other electrician had a spike in their site as well.
And you just, you gotta factor in all of those things and be open to those things. And then quarterly, this is where you wanna hire somebody to at least be a sounding board, and it'd be just for an hour to talk about your goals. Help you with a strategy of we're gonna work on this one thing this quarter.
Laney Goff: Yes.
John Webster: And, and have that person that you, you don't have to be spending them, you know, $5,000 a month on somebody to SEO your site and do all of that.
You just need an hour or two of their time. Let them see your reports and, just talk with them and, and they will kind of be a sounding board for you. If that's not an option for you, you don't feel comfortable with that, grab one of the AI engines. AI engines are great for having a conversation with. You may feel weird about that, but it will ask you to upload a report.
It will, it can, if you ask it to, dumb that report down, and I hate to use that word, but simplify the report. Pull out the key pieces of information that are important to you, and then you can ask questions. Uh, to me, AI is the new search engine. It's not the replacement that everybody says it's going to be.
But it is a great place to learn and, and it's a good sounding board. The only drawback to that is you don't get a gut. Um, you know, you and I, sometimes we make a call that is like, I'm just getting feeling here of, of this is what people are doing and AI's gonna be by the numbers. Sometimes a human being will try something that doesn't make sense by the numbers, but it'll work. And, one of the things that I bring that, I mean, I'm a math nerd. I love math, but I also took psychology in college. A lot of psychology, and part of all of this social media website analytics, it's all buyer behavior.
Laney Goff: Mm-hmm.
John Webster: I spent many years as a commission salesperson. You learn a lot about psychology in commission sales, all of that comes together to help you understand the numbers.
If you're an organization that has a sales team, bring them into the conversation because they know why people are buying and why they're not, and they can help you make sense of your marketing data. Uh, we live in a time where it used to be sales and marketing were like these two enemies in a company.
Uh, but now more than ever with all of this data, the two departments can really work well together.
Laney Goff: And they should, in my opinion.
John Webster: Absolutely.
Laney Goff: They definitely, definitely should. I think that's all really great advice and something that, you know, we do ourselves when we have full management clients and also even with consulting. It's something that we teach to our consulting clients as well, is number one, of course, how to track, you know, analytics, what matters, but also like the consistency of it is important too.
Um, so I like that you said, not just monthly, because a lot of people think, okay, if I'm gonna look at analytics, it's gonna be monthly, but instead you're talking weekly, monthly, quarterly. And then we even at Strella will do an annual end of year review of everything. Um, and so I think that that's such great advice and, and really that's the best way to guide your strategy, whether that is looking at just the social media aspect or combining that with the website data as well.
And it's, it's missed a lot, but you've got some great advice, John Webster.
John Webster: I've been doing a while.
Laney Goff: You're a smart cookie. Well, thank you so, so much for joining me today. I think you've really given a ton of wisdom, um, and every brand really needs to know more about analytics, but a lot of times they're just too busy chasing the vanity metrics.
Um, so if today's convo got you thinking differently about your numbers. Good. Great. That's the goal. Um, so if you're ready to stop guessing and to start letting the data lead, don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and share this episode with a friend who thinks that likes equals ROI. So thank you again, John, for joining, and we will see you in the next episode.
Bye.
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