In the previous article we discussed the importance of checking website and social media analytics for the public campaigns we run, especially for writing monitoring or evaluation reports. By analogy, writing reports is like cooking, while analytics is like the market. Just as it is important to shop at the market before cooking, it is also important for us to visit an analytics platform to collect data that we will process into interesting, meaningful and contextually appropriate reports.

Still using the cooking analogy, there are three things we need to pay attention to when checking analytics, namely determining the cooking menu, making shopping notes, and exploring while still limiting ourselves. This second article will discuss determining the menu before starting shopping.

Before cooking, a chef needs to know who he is cooking for and for what purpose, so he knows what to cook. When writing a report, we also need to know who this report is for and in order to make what decisions. Is it for your boss, clients, donor agencies, government, or others? Is it to determine whether or not the campaign will continue, see whether the funds they provide are not wasted, decide whether to adopt this program on a larger scale, or something else? From here, we can know what we need to include in the public campaign report. See an example below.

Starting an analytical analysis of the website
Latih Logika site is one of C4C's programs in the form of free online courses, the aim of which is to train young Indonesians to be able to think critically in everyday life. The lessons that Latih Logika creates are available in the form of a series of videos on YouTube and on its own website. I once wrote a Latih Logika performance report for a donor who needed to decide what kind of paid advertising could increase Latih Logika's audience beyond the growth rate brought by organic content.

Because Youtube is the main media for Latih Logika, I started by checking Youtube Analytics. I observed traffic sources , namely sources that direct viewers to the Youtube video Training Logic. There I found that most of the viewers came from suggested videos and YouTube search, so I can assume that they have often watched or even actively looked for videos like Latih Logika. So it can be concluded that the viewers of the Latih Logika video are indeed people who already have an interest in learning to think critically.

To confirm this, I checked the Google Analytics of the Latih Logika site. There I saw acquisition, namely from what media channels our site's audience comes from. I also looked at more detailed data, namely audience behavior from each channel. For example, bounce rate, which is the percentage of the audience who immediately leave the site after opening one page without interacting further (the lower the better). Apart from that, session duration or the duration of the visit, and pages per session or the number of pages opened in one visit. This data is important in determining media channels for advertising.

From this, I can confidently conclude that YouTube is the channel with the most potential, plus Twitter. These two channels bring the most audience to the Latih Logika site, and also have a lower bounce rate and higher session duration and pages per session than other channels. Therefore, I recommend that Latih Logika use advertisements on YouTube and Twitter.

I also look at the demographics of the audience across all media channels that will be used, how old they are, what gender they are, what their interests are, where they access the content from, and even what devices they use. This information then helps to determine targets for advertising, as well as how advertising materials should be created. From these data, I can conclude that Latih Logika's audience is dominated by men, so to eliminate this gap, there needs to be advertising that is more relevant to women. Apart from that, advertising also needs to focus on reaching audiences aged 18-24 years in big cities in Indonesia, especially those interested in education and media. The advertising material also needs to be kept simple without a lot of small details, because almost all of Latih Logika’s audience are mobile phone users.

Understanding more about the social media analytics
Golongan Hutan is one of the campaigns that C4C has run to encourage young voters to care about forests. I once wrote a campaign performance report for a civil society organization that would continue the campaign. The purpose of the report is to see what went well and what could be improved from this campaign. So when checking social media analytics, I focus on content, for example which content has the highest impressions, reach and engagement . Impression is the number of times our content appears in front of the audience, while reach is how many audiences see our content, and engagement is the accumulated number of likes , comments, and shares or retweets. Then look for similarities in the content, both in substance and format. This information is important for seeing content patterns that appeal to your audience.

From this analysis, I found that audiences are less interested in complicated content, for example using lots of graphs and numbers, as well as explanations that are not easily understood by the public (for example "corruption in the natural resources sector"). Audiences prefer content that is simple, funny and familiar. So I recommend relating the Golongan Hutan's message to current topics that are familiar to netizens, and using humor and simple language.

Find out what else you need to pay attention to by reading the fourth article on limitations of data exploration. I recommend that you read this entire series of articles in full and in order to get complete and coherent information. If you need a more comprehensive analysis of communication performance in your organization, both in digital and other media, you can also contact us by clicking the banner below.