Most viewed blog posts

[SLapinsuo]

I'm trying to save time by creating HubSpot native reports on #1) Top-10 blog posts by number of views last month, shown as a grid of blog post featured image + view count + blog post title underneath, 2 rows 5 posts per row; and #2) Top-20 all-time blog posts by views, shown as a column chart. So far I've done this manually using PowerPoint, looking at stats via HS OOTB analytics reports on blog posts.

a) It seems like it's not possible to use the analytics space to produce a column chart of #2, let alone produce #1.

b) I've tried the HubSpot-provided post_listing.module, but the output differs from the HS traffic analytics default blog post analytics view: Traffic Analytics --> Pages --> Page type: blog posts, order by views). And, as written under #1, I'd like to modify this to include featured images and the view count.

c) HubSpot custom report building doesn't provide variables such as "view count" for blog posts. I can only see the "count of blogs" and "count of campaigns" default measures

d) I can use the "blog_popular_posts" to produce #2 and those seem to oddly be ordered by the view count, but I'd like to make it a column chart. And, even as a list type view, i cannot add view counts to each row. Here's what I've tried:

{% set pop_posts = blog_popular_posts("default", 10, [], "popular_past_month", "OR") %}
{% for pop_post in pop_posts %}
<div class="post-title">{{ pop_post.name }}, {{pop_post.views}}</div>
{% endfor %}

(I realize the pop_post.views doesn't exist, was a best guess)

e)  I found this page:
https://legacydocs.hubspot.com/docs/methods/analytics/get-data-for-hubspot-content

and understood that one can issue an API call to fetch the views per one blog post like this:

"GET analytics/v2/reports/blog-posts/content-group/:blog_id/sources/:time_period"

...but i) this seems a bit more complicated as I'd need to fetch info on all posts, sort them using a self-built sorting function (?), then display the results to at least get to #1, but not sure if I can produce a column chart for #2.

Am I even close to the right answer? Is it possible to get to what I'm trying to achieve? I'm tired of the manual process of:

a) Fetching top 10 blog posts last month from HS traffic analytics

b) Snipping featured images from each of those blog posts, adding title + view count manually to a powerpoint slide.

Any help much appreciated!

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@SLapinsuo I don't know a way to create what you're looking for with the grid of featured images, etc. but when I manage blog content I use the analytics report to export all of the blog data to a spreadsheet - this gives me all the critical details for performance and also let's me do my content planning all in the same place. 

Depending on the blog posting frequency, I update the data either weekly or monthly. Then I can just sort to see the most popular posts.

You can do this whether you're wanting to look at all time or for a set period of time.

The native reports in HubSpot can do a lot of this for you, the major benefit of this method is that you can do your planning and tracking for your republishing schedule all in one place - I like to be able to highlight the data using conditional formatting, etc. so it's just a little more robust than the native data.

Maybe someone else like @Teun or @Anton would have suggestions for the API and I'm sure @danmoyle can provide better insights on how to manage the blog data and reports direclty in HubSpot.

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@SLapinsuo I don't know a way to create what you're looking for with the grid of featured images, etc. but when I manage blog content I use the analytics report to export all of the blog data to a spreadsheet - this gives me all the critical details for performance and also let's me do my content planning all in the same place. 

Depending on the blog posting frequency, I update the data either weekly or monthly. Then I can just sort to see the most popular posts.

You can do this whether you're wanting to look at all time or for a set period of time.

The native reports in HubSpot can do a lot of this for you, the major benefit of this method is that you can do your planning and tracking for your republishing schedule all in one place - I like to be able to highlight the data using conditional formatting, etc. so it's just a little more robust than the native data.

Maybe someone else like @Teun or @Anton would have suggestions for the API and I'm sure @danmoyle can provide better insights on how to manage the blog data and reports direclty in HubSpot.

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

Thanks for thinking of me @Jnix284 🙌

@SLapinsuo like Jennifer, I'm stumped on making the exact look of the report you want, happen. I know of no way to create something that custom with featured images. 

I wonder if it's possible with HubDB and custom properties from analytics, but I suspect that's not out-of-the-box-standard funcctionality, so it would take talking to the developer team I work with to see if they've ever encountered this request. @Kevin-C is this something you've seen or do you think HubDB might help? 

[SLapinsuo]

Thanks Jnix284 for your insight! For #1, routing via Excel gives no extra value (as I can just view the top 10 performing posts via HS analytics and create the "grid" on a slide manually). 

For #2 (all-time top 20) I actually do exactly what you're doing. I export to Excel and sort by raw views. I then copy-paste the rows onto a PowerPoint-embedded chart to get the column chart. Granted, for #2 it isn't much extra work to go via export-sort-copy-paste... but if there's a way to improve and cut out unnecessary extra seconds/minutes, I'm happy to try 🙂

[Jnix284]

@SLapinsuo completely agree - we definitely need more blog reporting capabilities and would be great to have this natively in reporting (add the idea here).

Hows this for another workaround...

You could use a blog post preview module on your website (or private page) that has the top 10 posts with the criteria you need, then just snapshot it and add the view count data each week?

There are a lot of free themes in the marketplace and a lot of themes have blog post preview options and it looks like you have the code experience to get what you need out of a module vs a report...

As an example (not a free theme unfortunately), Power Pro has a blog post preview module that has an option to filter by "Popular Posts" (currently the most you can show at once is 4, not 10):

so it could definitely be achieved via a custom module or modification to an existing theme module. 

I'm not sure if you can surface the view information, but could be worth trying?

If you add the idea, share the link back here and I'll be happy to upvote - we definitely need more capabilities with custom reports like this 🙂