Medium analytics are so fun to look at. I think most people, though, only focus on views and fans. Then they leave everything else out of it. I wanted to take five minutes and show you some underrated Medium analytics to pay attention to in the future.

And I also wanted to tell you why they’re so important. Let’s get into it.

1. External Referrals

Figuring out whether you’re getting traffic from Google is a really useful thing to do.

If you click on the “Details” button underneath any story on your stats page, you’ll see a page that looks like this..

Scroll down until you see the “External Referrals” window, which looks like this:

Here is a solid breakdown of all the places people are discovering this post from. External referrals are really great, and show that your post has a life outside of Medium. I’d check this window every now and then to see whether your post has been shared on places like Facebook, Twitter, or even LinkedIn.

2. External Views

Pay close attention to how many external views your post is getting per day. This is one of the most important Medium analytics.

Scroll down on the details page and put your cursor over the graph.

You should be able to see the external views in a pop-up.

You want to aim for a lot of external views. Writing on Medium can be a lot like running on a hamster wheel. To get more views, you need to write more blog posts. If you’re getting steady external views, though, that should help you feel more at ease with the hamster wheel thing.

I’d recommend you do some light search engine optimization for certain blog posts to get a steady stream of external views coming in.

Your Readers Interests

This gets forgotten about a lot, too. Right next to the “External Referrals” is the “Your Readers' Interests” window.

Here you can see which topics your audience wants to see more of from you. I recommend doing some “Interest” research on your top ten most-viewed articles when planning future blog posts.

Average Read Time

Have you ever stopped to read one of your blog posts that got a lot of read time? I recommend doing it. Anything that gets over a 1:30 average read time is a triumph, and you should be proud.

Now read that article and try to figure out what made it so interesting for people.

Since we’re now paid by read time, the knowledge you discover could literally make you richer.

Earnings

Okay, so earnings are something that everybody and their mother checks. I know that earnings is far from the list of underrated Medium analytics. However, I do believe that most people don’t stop to ponder why a certain post made more money than another.

Sure, it had more read time, but what about other variables, like which publication it was published in?

I think people need to take the time to think about ALL the reasons an article earned more than another on Medium. Think publications, think interests, think the time of day and which day it was published.

Take all of these into account.

That’s my list of five underrated medium analytics to pay attention to.