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There are two famous aphorisms about online marketing. “Content is king.” and “Money is in the (email) list.”

Both expressions have a point. They summarize the decade long experience of online marketers. Content and email lists are critical components of online marketing.

There is a third component that doesn’t have its own aphorism yet. That component already became the most critical part of many online marketing businesses.

I’m talking about data. We all heard about big data. The term big data sounds like something that can only be used by multinational corporations. That’s not true.

You can make use of data in your small business, even in your personal social media account or blog. I already explained how I use Medium stats to improve my blogging. However, there are two pitfalls for beginners when working with data.

Pitfall #1. Data as Distraction

I published a blog post about possible pitfalls for the first time bloggers called Read This before You Start a Website or Blog.

In essence, when you first start a website or blog, there are a lot of things you can do. One of those things is to install Google Analytics and AdSense to your website.

Then, you hit the refresh button every five minutes to check the number of visitors and the money you made. I know this too well, because I’ve been there too.

Using Data as Entertainment

Google Analytics and AdSense becomes a slot machine for the first time blogger. They hit the refresh button like they’d pull the lever of a slot machine.

Those tools become a tools of entertainment. The first time blogger expects a prize from those tools. As a result, they waste their time and attention on them, instead of working on their blog.

If this sounds like you, I recommend you read my post The Only Tip You Need to Grow Your Audience as a Blogger.

How Do the Professionals Use Data?

I’m a full time software developer. Sometimes, we come across performance problems in our software. When that happens, we use a specific type of software called “profiler.”

A profiler shows us which code parts consume the most resources. Then we optimize those code parts for resource consumption. Our goal is to eliminate those bottlenecks.

Can You See the Difference Between How a Professional and an Amateur Uses Data?

A professional uses data for a specific goal. They use it to make a certain decision. They use it to take a certain action. They use it to learn something valuable that they can use later. They use data only, when it is needed.

An amateur sees data as entertainment. They expect the data to make them happy. They see it as a playground or casino. They keep playing with it without any specific goal.

Data is either actionable or useless. If you can’t use it to make a decision, take an action, or learn a lesson, it’s useless.

Pitfall #2. Lack of Big Picture

How does your data serve your overall goals? If you don’t have the answer to that question, you might be misusing data.

By improving some parameters in your data set, you might actually worsen the overall performance of your business. I touched upon this issue in my post Measuring the Contribution of My Medium Posts to My Content Marketing Goals.

How to Avoid the Pitfalls When Using Data?

If you want to avoid the pitfalls when using data, start with writing down what your objective is. Then, write down which information you need from data to serve that objective. Coming up with a relevant set of questions is the first step to success.

An Example

My goal is to improve the conversion rate of email newsletter subscriptions in my blog. Here are a few questions that would help me with that goal.

• Which pages are the landing pages of my blog?
• What is the performance of each landing page?
• Which landing pages perform better or worse than the average?
• Why?
• What are the exit pages of my blog?
• Why do the visitors exit from those pages without subscribing to the newsletter?

These are just a few of the many more questions that I ask myself. When I have the answers to those questions, I’ll come up with a set of action items based on those answers.

• Improve the performance of landing pages.
• Plug the leaks in the exit pages.
• Promote the pages that perform better on social media.

Conclusion

Data is the gold mine of the day, but you need to know how to use it.

You can use it as entertainment. You can use it to optimize specific parameters without seeing the big picture. Both usages are pitfalls.

If you want to make the best of your data,

1. Start with a big picture, your overall goal,
2. Ask a set of questions that would serve that goal,
3. And take action based on the answers you get from your data.

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Yesterday, I published a post about CoSchedule Headline Analyzer. CoSchedule is a paid online marketing management platform. They offer the headline analyzer as a free tool to promote their main business.

The Need for a Marketing Management System

Even though I have a single author blog, I could make use of a marketing management system. Today, I want to write down my requirements for such a system, so that I could compare my requirements to what they offer.

Eventually, I could decide whether I want to start using their system or not. Or I could look for another system.

A Startup Idea

If you’re looking for an idea to start a tech business, you can also use the requirements in this post to start your own online marketing management tool. If you do so, let me know, so that I could give your system a try.

My Daily and Weekly Blogging Routine

At this moment, my daily and weekly blogging routine isn’t clearly defined. I have it vaguely defined in my mind and I follow certain patterns.

I can benefit from defining a daily and weekly workflow. That would eliminate the guess work of what to do at a given time.

The Daily Routine

• Create content.
• Publish a post in my blog.
• Import my blog post to Medium.
• Answer blog comments.
• Answer Medium responses.
• Answer Twitter responses.
• Promote previous blog and Medium posts on Twitter.

Requirement #1. I’d like the automation tool to create daily tasks for each step of my daily routine with the priority list I wrote above.

Content creation. This is more complicated than a single step in the daily routine. But I want to keep things simple at this moment. I’ll return to this in another post.

Publish a post in my blog. I don’t see any requirement for the automation tool for this step.

Import my blog post to Medium. At this moment, I follow the steps below to import my blog post from my WordPress blog to Medium. Even though the ability to import your blog post is great, there is some room for improvement.

• Copy and paste the blog post link to the Medium import page. Hit the import button.
• Add the pictures to the Medium post.
• Correct the formatting of the quotes.
• Remove the related posts section at the end.
• Add the signature I use for Medium.
• Add the tags of the post.
• Submit the post to the Startup Publication.

Requirement #2. Obviously, all the steps above could be automated. I’d like the automation tool to execute all the steps above as soon as I publish a post on my blog without me interfering. I’d like to receive a confirmation email with a link to the imported post.

The steps above could eventually be implemented by Medium. Or I could hire a virtual assistant to delegate them.

Requirement #3. I want the automation tool to create three separate lists for my blog post, Medium, and Twitter comments and responses.

A task with a link to the related comment and response should be created for each of them. The task should remain open unless I mark it complete. An option to auto-delete complete tasks after X days.

Promote previous blog and Medium posts on Twitter. There’s a lot of value in this step.

At the moment, I log into Twitter around once a day. I do all Twitter work at once. Sometimes, I publish more than one tweet in the same session. I don’t think this is optimal.

I know that there are tools to schedule tweets. I used them ten years ago. Back in the day, Twitter blocked my tweets scheduled by a third party. For that reason, I am reluctant to use them. This might be the time to change.

Fig. 1. Medium highlight card

Requirement #4. Medium has beautiful highlight cards (Fig. 1). I’d like to be able to send those cards to the automation tool, instead of tweeting them immediately.

When I send those cards to the automation tool, it creates a new task for me to schedule it. Then, I’d like to be able to schedule those cards to be published on different platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and so on.

The Weekly Routine

• Publish the weekly email newsletter.
• Write and post the weekly online mastermind group report.
• Process ideas and come up with a content plan for the next week.
• Check the new followers, highlights, and claps on Medium.

I’m probably missing some steps in the daily and weekly routine, but this is the first version anyway. So, let’s move on to the last requirement.

Requirement #5. Create tasks for each step of the weekly routine. Integrate the weekly tasks in the main task list.

The daily and weekly tasks have to be merged and sorted according to the priority of each task. For example, the weekly email newsletter has a higher priority than responding to the daily comments.

Conclusion

There are two types of improvements in my blogging routine.

• Automating existing steps such as importing posts to Medium and promoting existing posts on social media.
• Creating a workflow and a to-do list based on my routine and the signals received from different channels.

Future Work

There are two tasks in my routine that require separate, detailed workflows. Those tasks are content creation and processing stats for the weekly reports. I’ll discuss them in separate blog posts.

Your Turn

• Do you know a marketing automation tool that could satisfy the requirements above? At least partially?
• Do you have any experience using marketing automation tools?
• Are you inspired to develop one?