Course Correction and DIY crafts

There are a number of roadblocks when it comes to wrapping one’s head around analytics, most of them stem from the fact that as a field of study, it is new to most of us. It is also held as a precious commodity to those who have figured it out. Through discussions with my peers, I’ve come to realize that the best way of understanding analytics is to treat it as a tool with which to answer the question “did that work?” Thinking of it this way will save you money. There are lots of beautiful, information rich tools on the market purporting to help your track the numbers, get all of the data, use all of the right SEO search terms, see exactly what the competition is getting. But those tools are only as useful as the metrics and goal setting behind it. To this, I introduce the concept of data segmentation. If you’re going to start collecting reams and reams of data, it is best to:

-lay out what you need to learn from it-give the numbers context

Is an average the best way of determing whether your latest vlog was the reason for all of your latest Twitter followers in the past 3 months? Or would it better to look at the raw data of Twitter followers in the last 6 months?

In the case of my project concept I determined that tracking loyalty & recency, visitors, and referrals were top priority. From there I decided to segment the data into groups, DIY vs Cooks. And from there it was easier to break down the type of monitoring I would do. Specifically, which trends need to be monitored for a 12 month duration, and which need to be monitored on a monthly basis? Once I got that out of the way, it was easy to prioritize data visualizations. Ideally I’d want an infographic containing the patterns of a DIY user vs a Cooking user. The infographic would be culled from pie charts and line graphs. Pie charts measure raw data based on community trends while the line graphs focus on duration. In addition to the infographic, after a years worth of data I’d like to be able to predict what the community needs. If there was a sudden influx of snowmageddon DIY tips last November and December, you better believe we’ll have a social media campaign and our SEO aligned for the upcoming snowy season.

from diy « WordPress.com Tag Feed http://ift.tt/1E7DSKg

from jammco.us and http://ift.tt/1COg4GQ