Such a phrase from the seventies, right? Am I dating myself? Maybe, but hey, I was just a kid back then. I’m all grown-up now, and gaining insights by the day.

The goal of insights are, just as they were in the seventies, when everyone was seeing the original “analysts,” better decision-making. Not much has changed.

I take that back.

A whole lot has changed. We couldn’t have imagined, (or could we?) back when computations were done by punch-cards, that we’d no longer be shrink-wrapping user manuals, but instead looking to true trends analysis to see what our users want from our writing. Now, we are in the realm of truly seeking what patterns in our content are useful and what can go by the wayside, because we know, for instance, that our users no longer need to be told to enter their credentials upon login. They get it. They are familiar with creating passwords, and the concepts that were once totally unfamiliar are now second nature.

It’s a whole new frontier.

Now we are in a new domain.

Companies ask us not to be writers, actually, but content creators, content strategists. I used to scoff at that title, because anyone could use it. There is no credentialing: a licensed content strategist is a unicorn. And yet, real industries call for those who can produce (and produce well) two types of content: structured and unstructured. Yikes!

Structured content can be found. It has a home, a place, it is text-based in the case of email and office or web-based documentation. Unstructured content may include an archive of videos, or even non-text-based things like images and diagrams. There is a huge volume of this type of content, and yet it falls still under the purview of we, the content creators.

Those of us who used to be called “technical writers” or even “document specialists” or something like that find ourselves of course wrangling much more than documentation, doing much more than writing. So the issue became: how do we know if what we are doing works? Are we impacting our audience?

That’s where analysis comes into play and matters. Really, really matters.

Why spend hour upon hour creating a snazzy video or interactive tutorial if no one will watch or, dare I say, interact?

That’s where content analytics comes in.

The whole goal of analytics is for us to know who is reading, watching, learning – and then we can improve upon what we’re building based on those engagements. It does little good to create a video training series, only to discover that users don’t have an internet connection on site to watch YouTube. Similarly, it’s not helpful to write detailed documentation and diagrams for users who prefer to watch 2-3 minute video step-throughs. It’s all about knowing one thing: audience. The essential element, always.

The central theme in Agile development, after all, was learning to understand the customer, so the essential element in designing better content, sensibly, ought to be the same thing. When we hunker down and learn what the customer really wants, we develop not just better software, but better content of all types.

With metrics on our side, our companies can identify just what content has real value, what has less, and what can really be dropped altogether. Historically, academic analysis was held to notions of things like how many times a subject blinked while reading an article. (Ho-hum.) Now, though, we can measure things like click-thhroughs, downloads, pauses during video, hover-helps, and more. How very, very cool.

Historically, content analysis was slow, time-consuming, and it was a frustrating process with limited accuracy. Now, though, we can measure the usefulness of our content almost as fast as we can produce it. Content analytics are now available in a dizzying array of fields, reflecting a vast pool of data. The level of detail is phenomenal. For example, I’ll get feedback on this post within hours, if I want. I’ll create tags and labels to give me data that lets me know if I’ve reached the audience I want, whether I should pay for marketing, whether I might consider posting on social media channels, submitting to professional organizations, editing a bit, and so on. I may do all of those things or none of them. (Full disclosure: usually none, unless one of my kind colleagues points out a grievous error. I write for my own satisfaction and to sharpen my professional chops. Just sayin’)

Believe you me, the domain of conent analysis, in all areas, will grow and grow. Striking the perfect chord between efficiency and quality is not just on the horizon, it is in the room. AI-powered writing and editing, paired with the streamline of knowing we’ve reached the proper balance of placement and need – it’s not hyperbole to say the future is here. It’s just turning to my ‘analyst’ to ask whether I’ve written my content well enough and delivered it properly.

My product teams, my business unit, and my company are all grateful. And my work shows it.