When I started this series, I said that I had originally intended to set some goals but then I read an awesome blog post about creating systems instead of setting goals. Thing is, in my mind there are still some goals there, whether I like it or not.

I’d like to get to 1000 page views a day, which I’m making progress towards, write more regularly drastically reduce my bounce rate. While I’m doing a lot better on regular content and my page views per day are rising, the bounce rate is still and an issue, mainly due to the fact that I attract a lot of reader with tutorials.

The Problem With Tutorials

Tutorials are a great way to bring people to your site, as they provide an immediate answer to a user’s problem. The problem, for you as a I site owner, is that once their problem is solved, the reader is ready to implement the solution, and not likely to stick around on your site.

So, while I have made a lot of progress so far, as I’m now getting more page views on a “bad” day than I ever did on a good day, I still have guilt over not getting enough content out. Of course, I will never be happy about not reaching some nebulous, undefined goal about how much I should be posting. So instead, I’m refocusing on systems.

Staying Focused On Systems

The article that inspired the systems not goals approach stressed the importance of using analytic information to trigger action. My technical tutorials are still getting the most page views. But, my how to set up your email list tutorial is the second most popular of them, so cross-over works.

So one way, I’m putting this information into action this week is planning more “how to” and tutorial articles that tie in directly with this content strategy series. Another way is I will be redoing one of my most popular articles–on adding mobile slide-out sidebars. Soon it will be an overview of the articles I’ve written on the subject, and theme’s I’ve written that use slide-out sidebars. The goal is to turn an attention-getting article into something that sends traffic to other parts of my site  and highlights some of my other projects.

I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes. After all, the goal is to shape my content strategy to simultaneously better serve my readers and better highlight my skills. Letting the analytics guide my strategy, instead of guilt over goals I never actually set, is a smart system for success.