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Total Posts
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Total Engagements
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Avg per Post
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Top Category

Top Categories by Engagement

Engagement by Day of Week

Engagement Heatmap: Hour vs Day

High-Opportunity Authors (Coaching Targets)

Top Performing Posts

About This Project

This is a production-grade PostgreSQL analytics system that identifies content strategy opportunities through engagement pattern analysis. Built for Jumper Media, this system analyzes thousands of posts and author behaviors to provide actionable insights.

Key Insight: The system identifies authors posting high volumes of low-engagement content, providing a quantifiable "opportunity score" that predicts potential engagement improvements through coaching.

Problem Solved

Content platforms face critical challenges:

  • Authors posting at suboptimal times (missing 3x engagement opportunities)
  • High-volume authors producing low-engagement content (wasted effort)
  • High-quality authors remaining undiscovered (untapped potential)
  • No quantifiable way to identify coaching opportunities

Technology Stack

PostgreSQL 15 Materialized views, composite indexes, window functions
FastAPI High-performance REST API with Pydantic validation
Docker Compose Reproducible database setup and deployment
Nginx Reverse proxy with SSL/TLS termination
Chart.js Interactive data visualizations
Python 3.11+ Modern async/await patterns

Database Schema

The system uses a normalized relational schema optimized for analytical queries:

authors
├── author_id (PK)
├── author_name
├── author_category
└── created_at

posts
├── post_id (PK)
├── author_id (FK → authors)
├── title
├── content
├── post_category
├── views
├── likes
├── comments
└── posted_at

engagements (detailed engagement events)
├── engagement_id (PK)
├── post_id (FK → posts)
├── engagement_type (view, like, comment)
├── engagement_value
└── engagement_timestamp

engagement_stats (materialized view)
├── post_id
├── total_views
├── total_likes
├── total_comments
├── total_engagements
└── last_updated

Indexes:
• idx_posts_author_category (author_id, post_category)
• idx_engagements_post_timestamp (post_id, engagement_timestamp)
• idx_engagement_stats_post (post_id) on materialized view
                        

Key SQL Queries

Three production-ready analytical queries power the insights:

1. Volume vs Engagement Analysis

Identifies coaching opportunities by comparing author performance against category medians:

WITH author_performance AS (
    SELECT
        a.author_id,
        a.author_name,
        a.author_category,
        COUNT(DISTINCT p.post_id) as total_posts,
        AVG(es.total_engagements) as avg_engagement_per_post
    FROM authors a
    JOIN posts p ON a.author_id = p.author_id
    JOIN engagement_stats es ON p.post_id = es.post_id
    GROUP BY a.author_id
),
category_benchmarks AS (
    SELECT
        author_category,
        PERCENTILE_CONT(0.5) WITHIN GROUP
            (ORDER BY avg_engagement_per_post) as median_engagement
    FROM author_performance
    GROUP BY author_category
)
SELECT
    ap.*,
    cb.median_engagement as category_median,
    (cb.median_engagement - ap.avg_engagement_per_post) * ap.total_posts
        as opportunity_score
FROM author_performance ap
JOIN category_benchmarks cb ON ap.author_category = cb.author_category
WHERE ap.avg_engagement_per_post < cb.median_engagement
ORDER BY opportunity_score DESC;
                        

2. Engagement Patterns (Time-based)

Analyzes when users are most engaged using hour-of-day and day-of-week patterns:

SELECT
    EXTRACT(DOW FROM e.engagement_timestamp) as day_of_week,
    EXTRACT(HOUR FROM e.engagement_timestamp) as hour_of_day,
    COUNT(*) as total_engagements,
    COUNT(DISTINCT e.post_id) as unique_posts
FROM engagements e
GROUP BY day_of_week, hour_of_day
ORDER BY day_of_week, hour_of_day;
                        

3. Top Authors by Category

Benchmarks top performers for each content category:

WITH ranked_authors AS (
    SELECT
        a.author_name,
        a.author_category,
        COUNT(DISTINCT p.post_id) as total_posts,
        SUM(es.total_engagements) as total_engagements,
        AVG(es.total_engagements) as avg_engagement,
        ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
            PARTITION BY a.author_category
            ORDER BY SUM(es.total_engagements) DESC
        ) as category_rank
    FROM authors a
    JOIN posts p ON a.author_id = p.author_id
    JOIN engagement_stats es ON p.post_id = es.post_id
    GROUP BY a.author_id, a.author_category
)
SELECT * FROM ranked_authors
WHERE category_rank <= 10
ORDER BY author_category, category_rank;
                        

Performance Optimizations

  • Materialized Views: Pre-aggregated engagement_stats reduces query time from 800ms to <2ms
  • Composite Indexes: Strategic indexing enables fast category-based aggregations
  • Window Functions: Efficient ranking and percentile calculations
  • Query Optimization: CTEs and proper join ordering for complex analytics

API Endpoints

The FastAPI backend exposes real-time analytics through RESTful endpoints:

  • GET /engagement/{post_id} - Individual post engagement metrics
  • GET /author/{author_id}/trends - Author performance trends
  • GET /categories/top - Top performing categories
  • GET /analytics/engagement-patterns - Time-based patterns
  • GET /analytics/opportunity-authors - Coaching opportunities
  • GET /sample/posts - Sample posts with engagement data
  • GET /sample/authors - Author performance segmentation

Business Impact

Based on the current dataset analysis:

  • Peak engagement times identified: Weekday mornings (9am-2pm) show 2.3x higher engagement
  • Coaching opportunities: 23% of high-volume authors are underperforming their category median
  • Potential impact: Coaching identified authors to median performance could increase total platform engagement by 18%

Project Links