If you are blogging and don’t have Google Analytics installed in the footer of your blog and don’t have your feed URL wrapped by Feedburner, you are missing out on great information that will help you to understand your readers better.
In my own personal case, I used to blog Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at Web-World Watch and only on Tuesday on Blog-World Watch and only on Friday on Design-Wold Watch. After watching my Feedburner stats, I found out that Blog-World Watch was my most popular feed and changed my writing schedule for increased writing frequency to feed my audience. With these great free tools installed what could you find out about your own readers for your own blog to help you blog more effectively?
Lots! Feedburner used to charge a monthly subscription charge to have PRO level stats. Since being purchased by Google, Feedburner PRO stats are free. If you are already using Feedburner, you just need to click the PRO link in the control panel to be able to get more information about your readers like how many are subscribed, what pages the aggregate audience has viewed, how many have clicked in. Don’t worry, there is no personally identifiable information just summaries. But the summaries can help you to identify is your audience growing, shrinking, and what do they like to read.
Knowledge is power! If you want to grow your reader base then you need to understand why people read your blog. Once you know, take concrete action to improve your writing for your audience.
So, as in my case wrap, your feed with Feedburner, enable PRO tracking, and make sure to install Google Analytics, and then you to can blog for your audience more effectively.