TOTD: Dig through your analytics to create a Q4 strategy

Planning your content strategy for Q4 can seem daunting. Where does one start? Before brainstorming and jotting down out of the box ideas, take the time to go through your analytics and reports on your affiliate network. These numbers and information will give you insights on what merchant programs did the best and provide helpful metrics from impressions and clicks to the amount of sales driven and how much you earned. While diving into last year’s stats in order to plan Q4 content strategy, here are a couple of questions to ask yourself:

What type of content showed the most traffic?

Q4 may not always be the best time to start heavy content projects. There may be a value in finding what content worked last year and re-purposing it. Analyze your results and find out what blog content received the most views and clicks. Based on what type of content it was, such as gift guides, reviews, how-to’s, etc, look at the conversion rates. You can also take a look at what each post contained. Did the blog posts with more images perform better than those that had none? You can also go a step further and discover what topic received the most views. By looking through past content and identifying patterns in your content that generated the most traffic, you can use these past posts as a blueprint for your upcoming Q4 strategy.

What merchant programs or categories drove the most transactions?

While we always encourage affiliates to create content first, sometimes transaction results can guide your content ideation. By looking at what brands or niches of products performed the best over the year or during the previous Q4, you can use that knowledge to choose topics that would include those merchant programs. The reporting numbers speak to your audience interests. They are clicking and buying products that they are attracted to, so keep their interests peeked by catering your content schedule to them!

How many posts did you create last Q4?

Look through the amount of posts you published last year. Did your blog traffic increase due to your posts or were you overwhelming your readers with so much that you lost subscribers? It’s helpful to create a calendar of when and what you will be offering throughout Q4. This will help you recognize if you’re posting too much or not enough.

It takes time, organization, and creativity to grow a successful Q4 content marketing strategy. While numbers and data aren’t always everyone’s favorite topic, take the time to go over your past analytics and use the information to build a strong content foundation that will increase your affiliate revenue this year.