How to Use Data to Drive Your Writing Choices

Did you know that you can use data to help you create ideas for writing on your blog, website, or even for a book?

Combing through user data and feedback can be very helpful for reviewing and changing the direction of your content. For example, every few months, I use WordPress insights to review the data for this blog. I look at what posts performed the best and got the most engagement. I also take note of what posts were barely read. I then take that information and use it to help me decide on what posts my readers might enjoy most in the future.

Similarly, I view reviews of my book as qualitative data and my marketing reports, or sales reports, as quantitative data. When my book sales start to fall, I might consider a marketing push over social media.

Whether you own a blog, write books or do creative writing, here are ways you can use data to help drive your writing choices:

For Blogging

Review your website’s stats frequently. Use your insights to see what posts are the most viewed, have the most likes or have the most comments or shares. Think about what content you might create that is similar to those successful posts.
Use insights to see which of your website pages are most visited. If a page never gets views, maybe it doesn’t need to exist.
Go on a data hunt with other peoples’ blogs. See if any blogs you follow share posts about their data or follower count. Review their thoughts and see if they have any tactics you might copy.

For Writing Books and Articles

If you are already published, review your marketing reports. Use that data to adjust your marketing efforts.
If you market online, use the appropriate channels to view your engagements. For example, social media channels include impressions, shares and profile visits.
When brainstorming book ideas and topics, check out what ideas are trending by tapping into popular threads on X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.