How Forbes uses data to understand its content

Rachel Bartlett of Journalism.co.uk writes about how Forbes uses data to examine how its online content is attracting readers.

Bartlett writes, “It was three years ago when Forbes Media first introduced its own analytics platform. This powers, among other things, a public page view counter on online articles which is refreshed regularly, but at the beginning, this was not something everyone was happy about.

“‘When we started to do this, staffers would come into my office and ask me to stop counting the data in public because they were a bit embarrassed that maybe a post wasn’t viewed that many times,’ D’Vorkin told Journalism.co.uk.

“‘And I said no, we’re going to continue it, because you need to know how you’re doing and it’s transparent for the public as well. That’s very important.’

“The media outlet made the decision to build its own platform in an effort to support the production and publishing of content by its army of around 1,200 contributors, in addition to Forbes Media’s own journalists.”

Read more here.