How to Harness the Power Within Your Stats

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Most of us know that knowledge is power and that the proper execution of knowledge leads to success. So let us apply this principle to successful blogging and measure our progress by carefully analyzing our site’s statistics.

Let’s face it you don’t have to be a statistician to understand statistical information, especially when it comes to maintaining a blog. Google Analytics makes this extremely easy and we can proactively ensure our site’s success by taking note of daily achievements and looking back at our site’s trends.

Strategies from Stats

I don’t know about you but I get a tingly, excited feeling in my tummy when I look at my blog’s stats and see that my visitor count has increased and that they spent more time on my site than the day before. It’s a truly amazing feeling especially when the numbers rise steadily and we give birth to a growing community.

The excitement is pretty cool, but are we studying those stats keenly and are we creating strategies based on what we observe in our analytics software?

Most successful blogs had a plan from the beginning of their existence. I’m sure those plans evolved and changed over time based on many factors such as: how well the site was received, user feedback through comments or no comments, the most frequent sources of traffic, affiliate sales, etc.

Get the picture?

Without a plan you’re shooting in the dark and this is not the time to be relying on luck. Where is your traffic coming from? Do you take note of where your traffic originates? Whether it’s from other websites, search engines, direct visits or RSS feeds.

For example, 60% of my blog’s traffic originates from other sites’ communities that I have contributed to. Therefore, I have made a decision to focus my efforts on building my community versus optimizing for search engines.

This does not mean that I do not use relevant keywords or I don’t have a system setup for SEO. It simply means that I now have a better idea of how and where to focus my energy and I now have useful information that will help me form strategies geared towards increasing traffic and the overall success of my community.

Seize the Opportunity for Inspiration

Be inspired by every visitor, every comment and every subscriber. Without inspiration and passion your blog will most likely fail. If your stats are getting better and better, it means you are doing something right. Ensure that you are aware of the events, or lack thereof, that affect your site’s good days and what causes those bad days. This way we will be successfully blogging in accordance with a plan rather than by chance.

If you had an extremely good day in terms of unique visitors, ensure that you are not in the dark and be sure that you know exactly what caused it. This way it can easily be repeated and that amazing feeling of success can be duplicated daily.

Appreciate each visitor

Let’s say you’ve been having a difficult time attracting visitors to your site. Only getting maybe 10 or so visitors daily, then one day you checked your stats and realized that you only received one visitor who left a comment.

Would you feel frustrated or would you seize the opportunity to connect with him or her? Rather than approving that single comment with a sigh of disappointment, send the commentator an e-mail asking him or her to retweet your post, share it on Digg or another social media site.

That single visitor may have thousands of twitter followers and your retweeted post suddenly attracts 100 visitors. So cherish every blip on your analytics radar and show your appreciation, every time, by replying and saying thanks. You never know what you will get.

Now the question is: Do you have a strategy for attracting and keeping visitors? Is your strategy working or do you need a new one? The answers may lie within your stats.