Marrying Editorial Intuition and Data with Christian & Carson of US News
February 14, 2012
Editor’s Note: This is the second post in a new Q&A series with Parse.ly Dash customers. Every other week we’ll feature an awesome publisher that’s using Dash and dig into how they’re making use of freshly grown insights.
Parse.ly recently interviewed Christian Lowe, Managing Editor at US News & World Report, and Carson Smith, Web Analyst at US News & World Report, to gain a better understanding of how they’re using Dash to inform editorial decisions. Data has long been at the foundation of US News, and as is such we were eager to learn how our publishers-built tools and data insights performed in the hands of data-hungry infromavores. Read on to see what Christian and Carson have to say about data and editorial intuition, the analytics playing field, and specifically how they’re leveraging Dash at US News.
The Thoughts of Christian Lowe, Managing Editor
Parse.ly: What type of advantage does Dash give you?
Christian: Easy UI, ability to check immediately what content is doing well–both internally and externally—and why it’s doing well.
Parse.ly: What are some of the primary use cases for Dash at your publication?
Christian: Check trending stories and past story performance. Chart referrers. Make editorial decisions based on global story trends.
Parse.ly: How often are you and/or your team using Dash on a typical day? Are you in the system constantly? Do you check on an case-by-case basis? How is it integrated into your workflow?
Christian: I have Dash running all day from the moment I log into my workstation to the minute I leave. I’m near constantly checking the performance of our content and am benchmarking against past performance. I also have started to look at Macro trends like overall site traffic etc.
Parse.ly: What’s your favorite story (crazy, funny, surprising, etc.) about using Parse.ly?
Christian: Using Dash’s “Worldwide Trends” function, we noticed midway through the day that the search terms Vladimir Putin and McCain were trending high. Within 45 minutes from assignment to posting, our story on the controversy was the top result in Google search on the subject.
Parse.ly: What new features would be most useful to your business?
Christian: I would like a more accurate way to dig down into the referrals. For example, I can see that a story had traffic from, say, Yahoo News, but I can’t see whether that traffic came from an internal link within a previous story in Yahoo, or just a stand alone URL on the Yahoo News page.
I would also like a more robust realtime metrics page which shows which posts are trending and where the traffic is coming from. I don’t care so much about topics or keywords.
Parse.ly: What are some tips you would give to a peer about using data and analytics to make editorial decisions?
Christian: Let the data inform your editorial decisions, don’t let them drive your content.
Parse.ly: Do you use Dash more for getting more value out of existing content, help determine what new content you should create, or to evaluate performance of authors, topics, posts, etc?
Christian: Again, I don’t really use the topics data – we already know what topics we’re going to write on. We need to find out what sorts of stories within those topics are working or not and why. I also find the ability to input URLs and evaluate specific stories very useful.
Parse.ly: Do your writers use Dash at all? How has it affected the way they choose, or find, stories they want to write?
Christian: Not yet, but I am going to selectively give access to some of them. I’d like there to be a way to customize how much data each sign in can get.
The Thoughts of Carson Smith, Web Analyst
Parse.ly: Why did you choose to use Dash at your publication? What were the pain points or opportunities you were trying to address?
Carson: The learning curve for enterprise analytics solutions can be steep. While basic information like top pages were accessed frequently by editors, more advanced features often went ignored.
Dash gives our editors the power to easily access insights that were either not available or required an analyst.
Parse.ly: I’m sure you use or considered using other products. How did you decide on Parsely Dash?
Carson: At first I compared Dash directly with some other real time analytics products. But I realized it’s fundamentally a different tool. In addition to real time, it’s both backward and forward looking.
Parse.ly: What type of advantage does Dash give you?
Carson: Dash’s focus on action-oriented insights over data dumping gives it a big advantage over traditional tools. Our editors want to know why something happened and what will happen. Dash helps answer both questions quickly.
Parse.ly: What are some tips you would give to a peer about using data and analytics to make editorial decisions?
Carson: Don’t throw intuition out the window. Use analytics data to hone your instincts so your intuition becomes more reliable.
Parse.ly: A lot of people are talking about different types of data journalism, but few people are really doing it. As one of the early movers on this trend, what is the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Carson: Data has long been a foundation of US News’ journalism, but not until recently have we been inundated by so much of it. An important lesson is to identify what data really matters for our business and readers. Analytics tools help to sift wheat from the chaff.
Thanks to Christian and Carson for providing their insight!
