If you’ve decided to increase content creation by 2x, the next question is, are you in a position to know if you attain this goal? Is the proper analytics in place? Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Do you currently track content creation metrics at all?
Do you track content creation by cohorts or just in aggregate?
Do you track metrics around the content itself
(file size, length, views, shares, etc.)
Do you track the devices that are used to create and consume the content?
Do you track the referring URL’s which are most responsible for content creation?
Without analytics, goals are empty. If you can’t definitively say when a goal has been reached, then you have not completed the requisite requirements before moving ahead. Furthermore, analytics will give you valuable data which can change your goals. Your analytics and your goals create a reflexive equilibrium, where they actual inform, refine, and shape each other.
As an example of a reflexive equilibrium, consider this. If your goal began as “increase content creation by 2x,” but then you realize that there is something more important than just content creation in general as it relates to retention, then you might restate your goal. If content over three minutes is the only kind of content which improves the retention of the creator and the consumer, then your goal might need to be refined.
One of the great things about implementing specific analytics to track goal progress is the effect this has over time on your overall analytics. Once you’ve spent a few years on a business, attacking one goal after the other, you’ll realize that the amount of historical data you have to work with has become very powerful. Eventually, when you create a new goal you might already have the relevant metrics being tracked, and now you have past data to look at which predates even the goal creation.