“If it can be measured, it can be managed.”

When it comes to gauging the success of your thought leadership strategy, Google Analytics can play a key role in measuring just how well you’re doing, how engaged your followers are, and how effective your content is in influencing your followers.

Google Analytics is often misunderstood as a service focused solely on website data. But when used properly, Google Analytics can be a powerful tool in measuring thought leadership.
Here’s how you can use Google Analytics to effectively gauge your thought leadership strategy.

Set Up the Right Goals for Your Thought Leadership Strategy

Google Analytics allows you to set clear goals for your website. Whether it’s visitor conversion, user engagement, or straight-up page views and unique hits, Analytics can help you gain insight on how well and how effectively your site is performing. This can then be correlated to thought leadership.

To help you nail down your goals, you need to ask yourself:

• What is the most important thing you want your visitors to do on your website?
• What is your intended outcome as a thought leader?

In the context of thought leadership, social media should play a pivotal role in the kinds of goals you create for your site (though they shouldn’t necessarily be the only ones).

Since Analytics is designed around your website, the more closely your social media channels are linked to it, the easier they’ll be to track.

Pinpoint the Important Data to Your Thought Leadership Strategy

Google Analytics aggregates a gargantuan amount of data. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of raw statistics available but that’s why it’s important to identify which ones are important and which ones aren’t.

Once you have clear goals set up, it’ll be much easier to identify which stats matter. These will be your goal targets, or the primary objectives of your thought leadership strategy. But even with goals in mind, there are a number of other important analytics you need to be aware of.

• How often new visitors visit your site (unique visits)
• How engaged your users are (time on site, page views)
• How often your content is shared (social media statistics)

On top of knowing what your visitors are doing on your site, it’s important to know where they’re coming from. Google Analytics can give you accurate data on how they’re finding you, whether it’s through social media, search engines, or direct traffic. This will give you a better picture of what thought leadership channels are driving visitors to your website.

Use Custom Reports to Sharpen Your Thought Leadership Strategy

Google Analytics can provide endless amounts of information, but it’s still up to you to sift through the raw data.

This may sound like looking for a needle in a haystack of other needles, but Analytics can cut down the heavy lifting with its custom reports feature. Custom reports allow you to create an easily viewable row of customizable data. You can make as many reports as you need, but they should include:

• All your goal target data
• All data that heavily/directly influences your goal targets

With custom reports and a solid understanding of Google Analytics, you’ll be able to track your thought leadership performance more effectively. Adjust and adapt your strategy accordingly, and you’ll draw in more followers and drive more traffic than ever before.