JUNE 27, 2023

Welcome to The Tilt, a twice-weekly newsletter for content entrepreneurs.

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Google Analytics Deadline Looms

Expert creators always love a good deadline – it motivates you to finish something you intended to do for months or even longer. This Saturday, the deadline arrives for converting from Google’s Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

As advocates for entrepreneurs operating from owned media (and websites are the No. 1 channel to do that), we think the data provided by websites – the who, what, why, and how of your audience – is necessary for any successful, sustainable content business. That information also can help address the two most common challenges of content entrepreneurs – growing the audience (64%) and making sure my content gets found (51%) – in The Tilt’s 2023 Content Entrepreneur Benchmark Research.

So it’s time to get your website metrics in order.

If your website was created after October 2020, you likely have always used GA4. If not (or you don’t know what GA4 can do), read on.

What does the July 1, 2023, deadline mean? Google will stop collecting data under the UA format. Though you can still use the format to get historical reporting, no new data will show up. Google will allow access to your pre-July 1, 2023, data until 2024. However, you shouldn’t wait for another deadline. Download your UA data history now. (Here’s some help from Google on how to do that. Scroll down to the Answers section.)

Do I need to do anything to convert to GA4? No, and yes. In March, Google set up most UA users with GA4 as the primary measurement solution. But you’ll need to set it up in a format customized to your measurement needs. (Google walks through step by step how to create customized detailed reports.)

Is GA4 better than UA? Yes, says Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media. He’s spent a lot of time figuring out how to do what he was doing in UA with GA4.

The user experience can feel wildly different. Andy says what could be done in UA with one or two clicks now takes more configuring. But, he explains, “In GA4, everything is there and more.”

Check out this side-by-side comparison of UA and GA4 from Andy.

Andy shares four metrics that every creator wanting to learn more about their audience’s behavior will appreciate:

Engagement rate: Instead of a bounce rate (a fairly meaningless metric for one-page visits), an engaged session is any visit that’s longer than 10 seconds, includes a conversion, or is more than one page.
Video engagement: Though embedded YouTube videos have grown in popularity, their impact wasn’t easy to assess in UA. In GA4, you can learn if a visitor played a video, which ones, and for how long.
Scrolling: GA4 can let you know if the visitor scrolled down to the 90% page depth.
Outbound link clicks: Including outbound links is an SEO strategy. Now, you can more easily see what visitors click to leave your site and from which page. GA4 has a standard “click” event with a “link URL” parameter.

If you do nothing else about GA4 this week, download your UA historical data. But if you have a few more minutes, take a look at the new dashboard and start to explore. Identify what data is most valuable to your business, and begin setting up your custom reports.

– Ann Gynn

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we stan Family Fun Pack

Entrepreneur: Kristine and Michael of Family Fun Pack

Tilt: Life in a two-parent, seven-kid family

Scene: YouTube (10.1M), TikTok (621K), Instagram (286K), merch

Snack Bites:

Kristine created the public YouTube channel by accident. She intended to share videos of her kids with relatives, but the channel was set to public, and her family became an instant hit.
After about five years, she and her husband Matt turned it into a full-time business. (They don’t share their last name publicly.)
The Family Fun Pack channel has produced 2.4K videos in its 11-year history.
The audience has turned into a devoted fan base because they’ve followed the children growing up. Now, their 17-year-old daughter operates her own YouTube brand, Always Alyssa.

Why We Stan: With a fun origin story, the Family Fun Pack has become a business involving two parents, seven kids, and a staff of six. They recognize the importance of building a brand as a family unit and as individuals. We’re not a fan of some of their video thumbnails that sometimes feel a little like clickbait, but their audience doesn’t seem to mind.

– Leo Bonacci

All the Story: To learn more about Family Fun Pack, check out the longer story.

things to know

Money

Go SMEs: Adobe’s Stacy Martinet says, “The future of advertising is creator-led because that is what is resonating. People are looking for subject matter expertise from their peers.” (The Female Quotient)
Tilt Take: Expert creators bring both their audience and knowledge to their brand deals. That’s a smart partnership.
High and low: Spotify is expected to soon launch a premium monthly service with hi-fi sound and better book audio. (Music Business Worldwide; h/t Creator Economy Law)
Tilt Take: Pay attention to your platforms’ business models. Spotify is keeping its lower-priced subscription, and it’s $1 less than other audio platforms.

Audiences

People like your fans: Almost half of Gen Z (47%) say they’ve watched content created by fans of specific content, artists, or public figures in the past year. (YouTube)
Tilt Take: Get your fans involved in content creation on your channels even if they aren’t Gen Z or you’re not on YouTube. It can propel other fans to join your content creation efforts, too.
Paid without promotion?: Business Insider sometimes publishes an ad taking up half the screen of an article being read by a paid subscriber. (Simon Owens)
Tilt Take: Treat your paid subscribers differently than you do free consumers of your content. Otherwise, they may convert to the free side of things.

Tech and Tools

A+ move: YouTube is testing a thumbnail A/B testing cool called appropriately Test & Compare. (Mashable)
Tilt Take: Given the thumbnail’s importance, it’s about time for this tool.
Download now: Instagram now lets US users download Reels published by other accounts so they can share them outside the app. (Tech Crunch)
Tilt Take: Creators can switch the default settings to restrict public downloads.

And Finally

Which are you?: The creator economy isn’t the same as the reputation economy. The creator economy emphasizes the value of creativity, personal brand, and the ability to attract and engage an audience. The reputation economy focuses on the value of an individual’s reputation and online presence in the broader context of their personal and professional life. (The PR Warrior Report)
Tilt Take: An interesting perspective, though, we would argue content businesses can belong to both economies.
Still hate: GLAAD’s annual Social Media Safety Index found all major social media companies still fail to enforce their own policies against anti-LGBTQ harassment. (Axios)
Tilt Take: Even if the social platforms won’t do it, you should on all of your channels.

the business of content

The Content Change that Turned Seth Rogen Into a Success (Content Inc.)
The Elon Zuckerberg Ultimate Cage Fight (This Old Marketing)
Should you go fishing? (Forbes)
Dos and don’ts of entrepreneurship (Next Shark)
What do you do when you get a no? (Startup Daily)
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New World Metrics – June 27, 2023