A to Z Challenge - Day 9: I is for Information!

I'm participating the this crazy challenge on 2 of my blogs. This one and Paranormal Lounge. The A to Z Challenge is a blogging event that takes place every April. The challenge is to write a post for each letter of the alphabet and post nearly every day during April, omitting Sundays.

My theme for this challenge is: Marketing is like war. I'm going to try to stick to that theme as much as possible, but I may have to deviate. Today's letter is I, and I is for Information.

In order to see what kind of results you are getting with your marketing ventures, you need information. How many people saw your blog post? How many people clicked on the link in your tweet? How many people saw/liked/shared your post on facebook?

So, the first one is easy. Most blogs will tell you have many views your post got. How will this help you? Well, take a look at the posts with the most views. What is special about it? Are there images in it? Does the title have any key words that would grab the attention of your readers? Is it on a certain topic? Is it a special post like a cover reveal, book review or new release? Use that to your advantage.

If you use Triberr, you can also see how many people shared your blog posts and how many people clicked on the links to your posts.

As for the number of people clicking on your tweet links, I like to use Hootsuite for that. You can set up a free report through Hootsuite. This will help you see what links are popular, what times of the day are best to tweet (although Hootsuite also has a nifty scheduling tool that automatically schedules tweets for the busiest time of day).

As for Facebook, well, it's nice to know how far your reach is and what kind of posts from your pages get the most attention. When you are on your Facebook page, you'll be able to see at the bottom of each post how many people saw it. If you hover over it or click on it, you can see how many views were organic and how many were viral. That means if someone shares your post, it goes viral and people you don't know can see it because of the person who shared it. (That's a good thing since the post will lead back to your page)

There are so many other places to gather statistics and information. Keep you eye out, because any information you can gather could help you in some way. Statistics are important, so don't pass up an opportunity to read up on the data you have access to.