Stop Hating Data

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Most social platforms give you tons of data about your audience: age, location, gender, time of day they're engaging, watch time by time of day, clickthrough rate on each thumbnail by demo, segmentation on a per asset level, and cohort analysis.

Some...don't (*wink wink LinkedIn!*)

But most creators, respectfully, aren't 'mathy'.

We can't all be TabletClass Math.

The idea of diving into data and making it actionable can be a nightmare for creators.

So, how do we make this simpler?

I have a simple framework for this:

?? Make broad assumptions based on your analytics

Feel free to generalize. Is your audience mostly 13 - 17 years old? Post after school hours or on weekends. Is your audience mostly female? Don't try to sell them Axe Body Spray. Is your audience primarily in Mexico? Have Spanish subtitles.

?? Test those assumptions

And you can use historical data for this too! Have you tried posting during school vs. after school? Which performed better? Did you try to sell Axe Body Spray vs. Clinique perfume? Which sold better? Did you have videos with no subtitles vs. Spanish subtitles? Which helped you achieve the reach you wanted? If your history doesn't tell the story, try experiments with your future posts.

????♀? Use findings to define future strategy

What do you care about? Views? Conversions? Subscribers? Whatever strategy gave you that result better, do more.

Notice there's no math beyond 'greater than or less than'?

That's because you should only get into the nitty-gritty analytics once you fully understand your broad strategy.

This is also called 'building a customer persona'.

Effectively, you're using a generalized version of your viewer to figure out how you should test assumptions within your strategy.

Then, once you've tested all of your assumptions and optimized the heck out of your strategy, you can crack the spine on those math books and dive in deeper.

My mission for you: write down a few assumptions based on your audience demographics.

A few prompts that could be helpful:

• What time of day are they free to consume and engage with your content?
• What are they broadly interested in?
• What is top-of-mind for them in this moment?

Once you answer a few of these questions, it's time to start some small experiments to test your theory!

That took 2 minutes. You have 8 minutes left. Create some theories and grow 1% right now!

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About the Author

Phil Ranta, is the COO of Fixated, a content and gaming studio building IP around creators, a LinkedIn Top Voice in Innovation & Tech, and has been creating content for the internet and building internet businesses professionally for nearly 20 years, starting on MySpace and riding trends to the present. He was the Head of Gaming Creators, North America at Facebook, the first network lead at Fullscreen, the COO at Studio71, and spent 10 years as a working comedian (including 2 years on cruise ships). He's a husband, a dad of two littles, and an insufferable digital media wonk.

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