I’ve used Google Analytics for a couple years now in order to monitor my sites; it’s a great tool if you know how to use it. Today, however, they released a general beta update that makes things a lot more user-friendly, and introduces a great new feature: real-time tracking.

This guide isn’t necessarily for tech-hungry people. People on Tumblr who are creative may have a hard time getting their stuff noticed among a lot of “reblog fodder” and the general busyness of people’s feeds. If you want a deeper understanding of how your readers interact with your site and figure out how you can improve, check my step-by-step below.

1. Sign up for Google Analytics. Use a Google Account that you already have, or create one.
2. Install Analytics using instructions found ON Tumblr.
3. Log in.
4. Turn on the new version, which can be found in the top-right, near the Account controls. Click the red link, as pictured below.
    
5. The new version allows you to access real time statistics about your web site. This, frankly, is kick-ass, as previously this was only available to people who were using enterprise-level software. In short, they took a feature you usually had to pay for, and made it free.
   
   In order to access this readout, click your site:
   
6. Then click on the “Home” button; strangely, this isn’t the default tab, but should be.
   
   
7. Then click “Real-Time (Beta)”, then “Overview”
   
    
8. Behold! This is the amount of people on your website at the present time. Scrolling down, you can see things like the place where they came from, the pages people are on, the traffic source and country of origin. If you really want to delve deep, click the “Standard Reporting” tab at the top, and it’ll let you look at things like what browser they’re using, or how many people are using a specific model of cell phone to browse your site.
   
    

But what does this all mean? How do I use it?

To be honest, there are millions of different ways you can use this.

• Check to see where people are coming from. If you have 2,000 Twitter followers and only 65 people are clicking through, you may need to change your strategy. If you have a Facebook page where 75 out of your 100 fans are visiting, you know you’re doing something right when it comes to engaging them.
  It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that some social networks seem to have better “weight” than others; Facebook and G+ let you have full-featured descriptions and images, while Twitter relies on links and a short descriptor. Take that into account when you’re trying to figure out where you’re falling short.
• Check the timing of visits, and how long it takes before your visitors fall off. Use this to time more content (without being spammy, of course) for publication. Also, if you find that more people are paying attention to your Twitter account (or your site in general) at certain times, you can plan to put your best foot forward.
• Are you getting a lot of mobile traffic? Start tailoring your content to easy readability, or change your layout to suit mobile screens.

Really, this is about getting to know the people that are visiting your site, and making sure that their experience is a good one. I’d like to think that people reward good content with more attention; making sure people see that good work is a skill in itself.

So please, continue to make awesome content, and express yourself: it may be difficult (especially with this tool) to not care about the hits/note count, but writing/drawing/producing content specifically to drive numbers up doesn’t do anyone any favours. It ends up dragging down the quality of work, making it bland and uninspiring; especially in a place like Tumblr (which is driven off great content), we can’t afford that.