DECEMBER 13, 2024

View in Browser

Welcome to The Tilt, the newsletter for content entrepreneurs from Tilt Publishing. Together, we're redefining what it means to be a publisher.

UPDATE: Before we get to today’s topic, we have news on an earlier article on the new US Beneficial Ownership Information filing for LLCs due this month. The courts have blocked enforcement and delayed the end-of-the-year deadline. (That doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense to file now and get it off your to-do list.) Shoutout to reader Colleen G. for the heads up!

Make an Analytics Plan

When did you last check your analytics? It’s often one of the last things on your lengthy to-do list. As the year winds down, it’s a great time to check your numbers and set yourself up to do it succinctly and regularly in 2025. To help, review these questions and pick five to 10 data points most relevant to your goals.

How did visitors get to your website? Your website analytics spell out what led a visitor to your website. Did they arrive through organic search engines like Google or Bing? Did they type the URL into the address bar or click on a bookmark? Did your paid ad campaigns motivate people to visit? What traffic comes from links on other sites? How do your emails (or other emails with your links) affect traffic?

How to assess: On your Google Analytics page, click on Reports in the left column. Under Life Cycle, click on Traffic Acquisition. Click on each channel to learn even more.

What to do with the info: Change the timeframe (upper right) to see short-term and long-term trends. Assess which channels consistently deliver the most traffic and maintain or invest more resources in them.

Identify which sources deliver little traffic. Consider spending less time on those channels. But before you do, go to that source and dig deeper into its numbers to ensure the smaller audience isn’t more valuable – staying on the site longer, converting into subscribers, etc.

When you see spikes in any channel’s impact, dig deeper to understand what worked so well during that time.

What content sticks? Engagement metrics indicate what content resonated with your audience. However, the components of an engagement rate are different across platforms. If you opt for a channel’s official “engagement” rate, learn what goes into that calculation.

For example, Google Analytics defines the engagement rate as the percentage of sessions lasting over 10 seconds, having page views/conversions, or at least two screen views. However, Instagram calculates an engagement rate based on reach – adding up likes and comments compared to the number of people who saw the post.

How to assess: Pick an engagement metric(s) that means the most to your content mission and audience-related business goals. It doesn’t have to be the standard “engagement” defined by the platform.

You might be interested in knowing how long visitors spend on a page (average engagement time). Or it could be the percentage of visitors who took the action requested (conversion rate).

Explore your selected platform’s analytics or insights section to ponder the options. If you already know which metric you want but aren’t sure how to find it, type it into the insights search bar.

What to do with the info: Look for topics and content formats that resonate best with your audience. Does an image with hashtag captions get more reactions than an image with a lengthy caption? Does a long-form blog post with graphics get more attention than one that’s just text? Does a video get more engagement than an article? Incorporate this data into your future content planning.

What do newsletter subscribers think? Sending emails produces two somewhat helpful metrics – open and click-through rates.

Click-through rates are easy to interpret. They represent the number of unique clicks on links in the email compared to the number of delivered emails.

Open rates calculate the percentage of recipients who “opened” the email compared to the total number delivered. But there’s a caveat with open rates. If you have many Apple Mail users in your subscriber base, open rates may be artificially inflated because Apple preloads their emails, which indicates it was opened even if the recipient never viewed them. (Other service providers have followed suit.)

How to assess: Each email program has its own analytics section. All should share the CTR and open rates. With the CTR, identify both the unique clicks and total clicks.

What to do with the info: With open rates, look for spikes (up or down). Then, assess the subject and sender lines as well as the previews for those emails to understand what really resonated (or disinterested) your audience. Do more of what worked well – style, topic, sender, etc.

Don’t look too hard at open rates to assess whether the content in the body of the email worked well. After all, your subscribers must open the email before they can see what you published.

Look across time to identify trends in open rates. Is there a time of year when it rises? Does it drop during other times? Is there a slow decline in open rates or a gradual increase? Does one topic do better than others?

As for clicks, explore the subject and phrasing around the links people tapped (and the ones they didn’t). Did one offer work better than the other? Do subscribers want to learn more on a certain topic? Do they prefer emails with worksheets or templates to help them?

Where else can people see my content? Backlinks occur when another site publishes a URL to your site, usually within their content. Through these backlinks, new audiences are prompted to view your content, and search engines recognize that others find your site valuable. They can help gain more attention for your content from search engines.

How to assess: You can use free and paid tools to assess. Logically, the free tools offer basic or limited information. Google Search Console, Moz Link Checker, Ubersuggest, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, and Semrush are among the options.

What to do with the info: The sites that consider your content valuable and relevant for their audience could be good opportunities for content collaborations, sponsorships, and more.

Now that you know what to track, open that spreadsheet. Add the data categories as rows and use the calendar for the columns. By focusing only on those metrics that matter most to your business goals, you can make analytics more manageable for your content business – and more likely that you’ll track and assess them on a regular basis.

– Ann Gynn

Learn from expert presenters at Content Entrepreneur Expo, Aug. 24-26, 2025, in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today for the lowest prices of the year!

supported by: What’s Your Revenue Plan for 2025? The new year is fast approaching, making it the perfect time to start building a thriving subscriber community with Memberful. Delight your audience with exclusive perks like newsletters, videos, podcasts, community chats, and gated website content — all while Memberful handles the heavy lifting, from billing to integrations and technical details. Use Memberful’s powerful built-in features or seamlessly integrate with your favorite tools including WordPress, MailChimp, and Discord. Memberful allows you to keep creating content without changing your workflow. Ready to unlock your earning potential? Start today and see how Memberful can turn your audience into a sustainable income stream. Learn more at Memberful.com

​

Entrepreneur: Anne Helen Petersen​

Tilt: Impact of culture around you

Scene: Culture Study newsletter (105K), The Culture Study podcast, books Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, Out of Office: Unlocking the Power and Potential of Hybrid Work with co-author Charlie Warzel, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, and Scandals of Classic Hollywood

Snack Bites:

• Anne spent a year as a visiting professor teaching cultural studies in English and film studies.
• After a six-year stint at Buzzfeed as a senior culture writer, she left to turn her hobby newsletter on Substack into a content business called Culture Study.
• She’s also authored multiple books and hosts a podcast, logically named The Culture Study podcast.

Why We Stan: Anne Helen is a journalist-turned-content entrepreneur who knows how to connect with her audience to convince them why paying for content is a necessity while also recognizing that newsletter models may not be the best long-term solution.

– Ann Gynn

​Read the full story.​

• Don’t stop promoting … You made it through the biggest holiday shopping days, now use that data for good. Plan now for marketing in the new year. [Lulu]
• Doubt isn’t bad … This excerpt from Amy L. Bernstein’s upcoming release should resonate with many authors (and prospective authors). Among the gems: “Doubting is not failing.” [Jane Friedman]
• Singing success … Taylor Swift’s self-published book, The Eras Tour Book, sold over 814K copies in the first week, making it the seventh bestselling book of the year, according to Circana Bookscan. [Publishers Weekly]
• Make editors happy … Don’t make these 10 mistakes in your writing. [Lulu]

• ​Your Why Is Holding You Back (Content, Inc.)
• ​Is Sora a Game Changer for Creators?​ (This Old Marketing)
• ​Finding Your Niche, Your Ideal Reader, and Your Target Audience (Publish & Prosper)
• Registration for the 4th Annual Content Entrepreneur Expo is now open. Save your seat today at 2024 prices!​
• ICYMI: Do You Know Your Target Audience for Your Content Business?​