This article was originally published on Authory’s blog.
Holly Landis is not your average writer. Besides her creativity, she brings something to the table that doesn’t come naturally to many other writers: Holly has a lot of analytical skills. Besides being into words, she is very into numbers, too. So much so that she recently graduated with an MA in digital marketing and data analytics.
Given this background, Holly has always been very interested in the performance of the articles she wrote for her clients. How often did they get shared on social media? How many comments, tweets, and likes did they receive?
My whole work life is very art vs. science! I love being able to see how a piece of content is performing and if it's being shared.
Having this kind of information helps Holly in two major ways:
- Besides being a writer, Holly is also a consultant. Knowing the metrics gives her the chance to apply her analytical skills and help the client with strategic decisions.
- The number of times a piece of hers has been mentioned on social media is a good proxy for its success. That’s why knowing about these metrics is a great way to prove her worth to future clients.
I also use data to promote my own freelance business and use this alongside testimonials as proof points for knowing what I'm doing!
The problem: How to get metrics that tell Holly about the social media performance
Holly is interested in all the interactions that her articles have triggered on social media. Getting this kind of data from her clients isn’t easy. Holly says that for clients she regularly works with, she usually does a “quarterly ‘how's content looking?’ follow-up email as not everyone publishes immediately after I send over a post.”
It’s even more tricky for one-off clients.
I've tried to check back in with previous clients to gauge performance but many either don't respond or don't know what they're looking for.
Even if clients are happy to help, they are often small businesses that, according to Holly, “don't really understand their own data.” Asking a client too many questions can become awkward, as no freelancer wants to put pressure on their business relationships.
To make things even more complicated, what Holly really wanted was the total social media interactions that her articles trigger. Knowing about the response it received when her client posted it on their social media accounts is great, but what if other accounts picked it up? If, in other words, there was a real viral effect going on?
This kind of data, the true reach that goes beyond the social media accounts owned by the client, is something that even fewer clients have at the ready.
The solution: An independent platform that provides up-to-date social media data on all of Holly’s past and future articles
After Holly started using Authory, checking her articles' social media performance became a breeze. In the Analytics section of her Authory account, she has a table listing all the articles she has ever written, regardless of customer.
And this table comes with lots of search, filtering, and sorting options. Holly can easily sort her articles by the number of total social media interactions it has received.
Holly's articles ranked by social media interactions
Alternatively, she can sort by specific channels (e.g., how often my articles get shared on Twitter) and filter the results by time, publication or keyword. Thanks to the table view, the performance of different articles is easy to compare.
Besides by total interactions, Holly can also rank her articles by individual social networks
The data that Authory provides is totally independent from Holly’s clients. Let’s say a client of hers shares her article on Twitter, and it receives 2 retweets and 3 likes. Authory would count that. Let’s say somebody who is not her client shares the article (which is what Holly and her clients would definitely like), then Authory will count these shares and all the social media interactions that result from it as well.
With Authory, Holly has reliable data on the true social media performance that her content generates. And this without having to bug her clients for any details at all. It’s all coming from Authory.
Plus: Evergreens are covered!
There is one more thing that makes Authory’s analytics feature very helpful for Holly: Authory updates the social media shares continuously, not just for her most recent content but for her entire body of work.
It's great to be able to see what's popular that week, especially when old posts suddenly come back up again. This week, for instance, my most shared content was a post I wrote for a client nearly a year ago. That's always fun to see!
And Holly receives an email report every week detailing how her most recent content AND her older content have fared in terms of interactions. That’s how Holly is notified whenever older pieces of hers are gaining traction again.
Holly receives a weekly email report summarizing her articles social media performance
Authory offers much more
Holly’s use case highlights very nicely how Authory can help content creators save time and nerves when it comes to finding out how successful their content is on social media.
The good news? That’s only part of what Authory does.
In fact, Authory is a real all-you-need solution helping content creators automatically handle everything that’s important after their content has been published. Besides amazing analytics features, Authory also offers:
- A beautiful self-updating portfolio page
- Automated article backups of all your past and future content
- Extensive search and filtering options
- An integrated newsletter system
- … and much more!
Join Holly and thousands of other content creators and be on top of your content game while saving countless hours of manual work every month: Try Authory for free!
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