We wanted to understand how different types of content affected the amount of traffic that came to the Sound and Music website. All the content created was for a particular series of events so as to be able to draw comparison.

1 Minute Summary

• Content was most popular when hosted on an external platform with similar content — for example: the video hosted on the Sound and Music YouTube channel, surrounded by other videos
• Different content types drove differing levels to the target webpage
• Traffic sources can be tracked at a granular level to understand what triggered the visit to a webpage
• Traffic to the website primarily came from Google search but the total views across all the content were much higher indicating a level of awareness

Trials

What if we could use content (both created by us and co-created with our audience) to increase traffic to our website?

15 Feb — Improvised music playlist on Spotify with tracks chosen by @soundandmusic followers
16 Feb — Storify of how the playlist was generated
9 Apr — 3-minute interview video published on YouTube
17 Apr — Soundrop listening hour with artist
19 Apr — Listening hour blog page with embedded playlist
23 Apr — Tour began

Traffic

Through Google analytics it is possible to see the where the traffic to your webpage is coming from. For the content hosted on external platforms, it means it is possible to quantify how successful the content was at driving traffic. ‘Tagged’ URLs were also used when content linked back to the webpage to enable categorisation of the traffic sources. This meant that it was possible to understand that Twitter was much more efficient at driving traffic than Facebook, and within this tweets that were concerning the event itself (as opposed to the playlist) were most successful.
Finding — Tag all links posted externally to measure the track back into Google analytics. Here is a spreadsheet that will auto-tag your links and create shortened bit.ly URLs.

Location

Content that was hosted amongst similar content, such as the video on the Sound and Music YouTube channel performed much better and both driving traffic and generating awareness of the event. This was also true for groups on content on the website. The Features on the Sound and Music website have much higher viewing figures when grouped together as collections. This could be that some of the traffic will then become accidental rather than planned and considering the content was aimed at aiding the discovery of improvised music it’s very fitting.
Finding — Use external platforms to host content but ensure that the content is linked to your webpage correctly.

Type

The most popular content created was the video; this was also the most shared and viewed. It is difficult to assess the value of the other content created due to varying levels of metrics available but assumptions can be made. It is not possible to see how many times the Spotify playlist was listened to but given the size of the Sound and Music twitter account (roughly 16,000 at that time) it is clear that there would have been a sizable amount of awareness created.
Finding — Use the metrics available on external platforms but bear in mind that direct comparisons will be difficult to draw.

Awareness

The Google analytics information shows us that the greatest source of traffic to the webpage was through Google with over half of the overall traffic. However, by using the analytics on external platforms it is possible to see that the amount of awareness created through the content (measured through impressions, views, etc.) is much greater. The playlist blog created the least amount of traffic with the video creating the most, both through being embedded on Facebook and YouTube.
Finding — Integrate online platforms with Google analytics where possible — for example: YouTube

After having trialled these different types of content the following areas have been identified to investigate further:

• How effective is blog content in driving traffic?
  - Include blog post within other relevant content on the Sound and Music webpage and compare
• What platforms are most effective at promoting content outside of a specialised platform?
  - Use tracking at post level (through bit.ly and tagging URLs) when promoting content through social media
• How can we affect where people go to next?
  - Trial different page layouts within the Sound and Music website and use clear call-to-actions from other platforms

Download the toolkit here