Meet Megan Tenney, Product Manager, Raptive Dashboard

Tell us about your job. What’s your favorite part about what you do?

I am the Raptive dashboard product manager. The dashboard is the place where creators log in to view their data and access some really cool tools that help optimize content and increase earnings. I take input from various people to decide what we’re going to do next. What other data can we show to creators? What tools can we give them? 

I’m a creator myself. I love the dashboard and feel a real ownership of it because I use it for my own sites.

It’s always fun to release a new feature, especially when I know that as a creator, I would use it, so I can’t wait to give it to other creators and get their reaction to find out if they like and use it.

What’s the goal of the Raptive dashboard?

Our ultimate goal is to create a holistic cycle by connecting the dots between creators’ data and the actions they can take. The data in the dashboard shows creators how their sites are doing in terms of ad performance, revenue, and traffic. Then we provide guidance to help them understand the numbers, and tools to help them take steps to improve. 

From there it’s a big cycle. Once creators take those specific actions, they can come back and look at the data again to see if things get better: if their traffic goes up or if a post starts earning more.

What goes into dashboard improvements?

I talk to our Creator Partnerships Managers, who interface with creators on a daily basis. They get a lot of feedback from creators who say, “I use the dashboard in this way. It would be really helpful if it had this feature,”  or “I really need to know this data point to be able to make a decision.”

I also talk to our performance team. They really crunch the numbers to identify when creators would benefit from taking certain actions, like adjusting ad density or activating email identity. We can use the dashboard to make creators aware so they can act on these recommendations.  

Does creator feedback make its way into the updates?

Yes! Creator feedback is absolute gold. When creators tell us what they’d really like to see in the dashboard, we take that seriously. I love hearing if a feature is helpful and why—what can you do now that you weren’t able to do before? I also love to hear if something misses the mark, so we can turn it around and make it better.

How does being a creator influence your perspective on the dashboard?

Being a creator myself means I know what a creator might be looking for when they go to the dashboard. It gives me a personal connection to the product. It’s not some random product that I don’t use and don’t care about. I have a personal connection to the dashboard and a personal investment in making it awesome.

If you could snap your fingers and add one feature to the dashboard right now, what would it be?

I have a travel blog that got hit pretty hard last year by the helpful content updates so I’m trying to reignite my site. I log into my dashboard every day, and I’d love for it to say, here’s a brand new keyword you should write a post on today. It’s going to do great in the search results. Go write it.

We’re working on making this a reality! We want to be able to tell a creator, “based on your unique data, here’s the best thing to do next.” Whether that’s publishing a post on a certain keyword, updating an existing post, running a new ad type, or something else. They can approach their work with vetted guidance from us and feel confident in their efforts. 

What dashboard feature do you use most often? 

I love the quick filters on our Performance by Page report. The report itself breaks down how every single page on your site is performing, and with one click you can generate a list of your top-earning pages. These are great to promote on social media and they’re good ones to emulate as you’re updating content or creating new content because they’re already doing really well.

My favorite quick filter is revenue opportunities, because it shows you a list of pages on your site that are getting fairly good traffic but have a low page RPM. I’ve used this filter with creators to help them troubleshoot why certain pages might be underperforming, and it’s often a quick fix. Once they resolve it, that page instantly starts earning more. 

What upcoming dashboard features are you excited about?

As a company, we’re really focused on helping creators boost pageviews, and that extends to the dashboard. We recently released some exciting new reports that offer information on keywords creators are ranking for, and even more is in the works to help creators understand which content to prioritize to get the biggest ROI.

We’re also going to enhance the Performance by Page report so creators can go beyond the quick filters to narrow their search even more, based on their own criteria.

And we’re planning to take big steps in the area of giving smart recommendations—back to that idea of creators logging into the dashboard and being presented with the most valuable action they can take right now.  

What’s different about working at Raptive?

I’ve been here since there were 80 employees, and now we have almost 350. Our company culture is just outstanding. We are really encouraged to take care of ourselves, take care of one another, and emphasize our care for creators. 

I’m really proud of the way that Raptive has shown up to advocate for creators.

We’ve earned our reputation as a company that cares about the people we work with. We’re really dedicated to helping independent creators maintain a business and be able to support themselves and their families.

What do you do when you’re not working?

I have a husband and four kids, and we traveled full time for four years. We spent three years traveling the United States, then did a fourth year backpacking through Europe. It was an incredibly unique experience. Now we’re settled down, but we still like to travel as much as possible and try to fill in all those blanks of the places we haven’t been to yet. And then, of course, write about them on my blog!