How WordPress Makes Social Media Metrics Easy for Bloggers

Social Media Metrics can be used to benefit virtually any business, but are even more beneficial for small businesses and those in the early stages of growth and establishing themselves. Metrics help to illustrate and clarify which aspects of the business are gathering the best response and most traffic over various social media platforms. This allows marketers to select and focus more attention on the platforms that are getting the best response rate, to keep doing what’s working, and to improve upon what’s not.

Freelance writing is a business in itself, and Social Media Metrics can be especially useful for freelance writers. The tools to maximize success in this field of work are offered on the very platform from which I currently write – WordPress. Users can set up a WordPress account and access an array of different performance statistics entirely for free. On their own, these statistics can only track the general traffic to the site, but still provides valuable information to help the owner build a following as well as measure their reach and engagement. Some examples of the data it collects include: total views, visitors, most popular day and hour, number of comments, number of followers, and even which countries your visitors are reading from. For a casual not-for-profit blog, this information can be relatively useful and certainly very interesting. For those looking to turn their blog into a profitable enterprise, there are more in-depth statistical applications that can augment and monitor site traffic. 1 Many people write travel, fashion, or food blogs for example, and do it as a hobby, but this hobby can easily be turned into a profitable venture with the right tools and marketing strategies.

First, and arguably the most useful, is a free Plugin titled Social Metrics Tracker. It collects and analyses social media interaction across a variety of networks such as Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and more. 2

For blog authors, this can help to illustrate which posts are gathering the best response so that they can continue to write about similar topics and appeal more heavily to their readers.

Advanced bloggers might also take advantage of Easy Social Metrics Pro, which comes with a $29 price tag. It tracks performance across 12 of the most popular social networks including Facebook and Twitter. If you’re being paid to write, investing a small amount of money into helpful metrics trackers can be entirely worth it.

ExpertVagabond, a professional WordPress blogger, dedicated one post to tips on how to become a successful travel blogger. He outlines the importance of downloading WordPress SEO, which integrates Google Analytics and optimizes the chance of blog posts turning up on a Google search. He also points out the benefit of a paid webpage host in conjunction with WordPress, and stresses that WordPress is the king of all blogging sites. 3

John Donnelly III, VP of sales and marketing at Crimson Hexagon, says “metrics are critical” in an interview with DM News. 4 He also points out that the key for any marketer however, is to be sure that you’re tracking the metrics that actually matter.

Lessons for Others

Once you as a freelance writer have used Social Media Metrics to work out which networks are best suited to your business, managing your pages will become a lot easier. After some patience and diligent trial and error while experimenting with different metrics applications, you should find that your business and following begins to grow.  Just get out there and keep writing!

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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