Archive for the ‘Chartcorps’ Category

April High Fives: Our Clients Are Doing Great Things

April 29th, 2013 by Clara

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A killer homepage from Chartbeat Publishing client Primera Hora

We’re still dusting off dried cake crumbs from our fourth birthday celebration at the Chartbeat HQ.  This has been an incredibly busy month for us as we’ve reflected on the past four years, explored new channels for sharing insights and strategies, and last but not least, released new products. 

For the past 4 years, we’ve been lucky enough to partner with a growing roster of incredible clients, who have helped us make real-time data into something that is both compelling and powerful. We’ve had the distinct privilege of building and iterating on products to help clients create some of the most dynamic destinations on the web. 

Although we tend to be about all things real-time, crossing the four-year milestone seems like a great opportunity to look back and celebrate all the awesomely innovative ways clients have been reacting to and making decisions based on data. As a Chartcorps member, part of my job is collecting our clients’ stories– both to better understand the industries we serve, but also to get insights that make our products better and more integrated into the workflows and goals of our clients.

Across countless kinds of sites, we’ve seen and heard how our clients use, adapt, and build strategies around data. From blogs to newsrooms to e-commerce sites, we know that real time data is more than a one-size-fits-all game to win. Our savvy clients analyze, react to, and create their own benchmarks with data – data that gives them hard facts to confirm what they already know about their audience. I’m happy to share some client success stories to really put this celebration into context.

Developing new strategies

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The Mirror’s Big Board looking mighty fine

Editors at the Mirror in the UK have been taking a multi-faceted approach to using Chartbeat’s real-time data. First, they analyze the data to gauge their readers’ interest in the day’s stories. Based on reader consumption trends – that is, the content that keeps readers actively engaged, editors then decide how to adapt, honing in on what stories they will focus on, repurpose and promote throughout the day. After giving a little extra TLC to the highest performing stories, editors check back in to validate their content strategies in real time. The Mirror’s strategy allows editors to surface big-potential articles and to use already top-performing stories to drive readers deeper into their site.

Writing new rules for web content

For every product, we’ve seen our clients take strategic approaches to making their data work for them. Our pals at GFR Media (home to El Nuevo Dia and Primera Hora), have been using the Heads Up Display for over a year to dynamically program their homepage. With hard data on their side, editors can easily identify their top 10 most clicked links by placing them above the fold. Those links that don’t make the cut get some extra love and attention from the editors and the links are then promoted out on social media. If the link still doesn’t perform, the editors push those under-performing links further down or drop them from the home page entirely. We’re pumped that GFR has been empowered to create new web editorial rules for their homepage based on hard, real-time data evidence.

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Creating bespoke customer profiles

As one of the largest multicultural e-commerce websites in the U.S., Telegaleria is analyzing real-time data to identify customer behavior on the site. The site uses data to confirm personas of their customers. Moments after dropping a campaign targeting a particular persona, they analyze the campaign in real time and tweak images, colors, and content to reach sales goals. They are constantly testing and analyzing customer behaviors  to tailor content to that fits targeted demographics and their overall sales strategy. Telegaleria’s site remains incredibly agile and adaptive – a huge advantage in an every-second-counts industry.

As you can see we’re fiercely proud of the great things our clients do with our data – it’s what gets us out of our beds in the (sometimes mid-) morning. Our clients’ stories are part of everything we do here – whether we’re designing a new product or training a new Chartteam member, it’s our clients’ experiences that inform how and why we do the work we do.

So cheers to four years’ of great stories, and we look forward to many more!

 

 

Zombies Attack! What to Do When Older Stories Rise Again on Your Dashboard

February 13th, 2013 by David

As a member of the Chartcorps, I have the unique privilege of walking our newest Chartbeat users – aka our newest data nerds –through their dashboards for the very first time. My favorite part of this experience is witnessing their first-look reactions to their real-time data, which often involves several “whoa, that’s interesting” moments.

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The Spiking Dead

A common “whoa” moment is when old “zombie” content pops up near the bottom of your Top Pages list on your Chartbeat dashboard. When I say zombie content, I’m referring to stories you published anywhere from three days to three years ago (and beyond) – i.e., content that’s back from what you thought was the dead. These types of stories tend to appear more frequently than you might think, and despite the scary name, they’re great strategic opportunities to keep readers engaged with your site content.

I’m sharing my top zombie-handling recommendations for how you can increase the engaged time on these reappearing stories, which is a quick look at the actual attention/quality time your readers are spending with that post, and how to position these stories to drive traffic deeper into your site.

Check yourself…err your links

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The first real step is acceptance – it’s pretty normal for users to be browsing older articles. If you see a zombie story trending in your Top Pages list, click over the story (you can get there directly from the dashboard by clicking the name of the article while you’re in the page view) and do a thorough review of your zombie story’s links:

Identify: Check out where your zombie story is currently linking out to – where are the story’s suggested links driving your audience?

Update: Do you need to switch out those links on this story for more recent content? If a three-year-old story is getting traffic, you want to make sure that its links are relevant to today’s audience – make sure they’re pointing your readers to fresh and engaging content.

If there’s traction, get aggressive

Great, you jumped on updating those links. But what if this zombie story is gaining some serious traction? Say a recent toy recall brings a ton of readers to your months-old post detailing your concerns about this potentially dangerous product. How do you act on this new traffic?

This would be an ideal time to dig up any extra content you had laying around that didn’t make the first cut. Got some more pictures you can share? How about some video you can quickly edit together to give your visitors what they want?

If you’ve got the time and this zombie is really attacking your dashboard hard, why not write a follow-up piece? Throw a link to the update at the top and bottom of the old article (or if you’re in Chartbeat Publishing, use the Scroll Depth tool in the Heads Up Display to figure out exactly where in the piece your audience is starting to wander off).

 Whatever you decide to do with your back-from-the-dead stories, just remember to act quickly – those zombies won’t last forever.

Have you ever successfully wrangled a zombie story? Share your strategies in the comments below. 

The Whole Point of Social Traffic

January 28th, 2013 by Doug

Chartbeat Publishing: Exploring the Social View

As a member of the Chartcorps, our Chartbeat Publishing clients ask me all the time how they should be using the Social View. What are best practices, what are the other guys using it for and to what effect, that kind of stuff. In a nutshell, the Social View helps you understand more about why readers are sharing your articles, what they’re talking about in relation to you and your content offsite, and how you can instantly spot every possible opportunity to grow your audience.

 

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Social View 101

The Social View shows you how people are sharing your content on Twitter and Facebook. You have a feed in your dashboard of everyone who’s promoting your story and how they’re doing so. You can put a face to your legions of fans. But more than that – and of course more important than that – you know who is advocating for you and can act as a content guide for you. The content that resonates with your core audience will bring them back again and again leading to not just return visits, but a loyal audience. And every article is an opportunity to build those loyalists.

Readers connecting with your content

With the Social View, you have insider access to the conversation surrounding your story – why people find it interesting, what elements of the story are compelling enough that people are sharing that link. Sure, you can always look at the comments section on your page, but with the Social View you’re not limited just to your commenting audience, which is generally a small portion of the most outspoken in the bunch – you can see everyone who’s tweeting a link to that story. This gives you a real sense of the relationships readers are establishing with your content and therefore you (read: more loyalists.) 

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It’s all about tactical insights

Knowing who loves your content, who’s sharing it, and when doesn’t amount to more than a pat on the back – unless you do something about it.

The data you’re getting from your Social View helps you execute on your content strategy. Once your story’s out in the world, it’s time for you to make some key, traffic-driving decisions. Maybe your story’s current title doesn’t reflect why your readers find that story compelling (your concurrents are lower than you know they should be), so you could switch in a new headline that relates to those specific story points that your Twitter fam is calling out most. Or maybe, in response to a specific point your readers are hung up on, you can edit that piece to add some clarification or further insights or get a followup piece up and live ASAP.

There are always ways to build on the dialogue your initial story started – the beauty of the social web means news is never finished. Chartbeat data’s just like a compass for your editorial strategy. You can’t possibly pay 100% attention to every scroll, every tweet, every share – but Social View points you to the ones you do need to see, the impact makers, the audience builders.

But share in the comments how you’ve used social traffic and to what effect. And as always, feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions.

 

 

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