3 Metrics To Measure Content Marketing Success. After producing carefully thought out content and distributing it to your audience, the next step is to measure the success of your efforts. So put on your data hat and step into your conversion-trousers, because it’s time to get down and analytical. As for measurement, keep an eye on these three things: Shares: The higher the share count, the more your audience believes your content is valuable and worth spreading to others. You can also keep track of social shares, schedule posts and find relevant followers using a platform like Hootsuite. Consider using these metrics: Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) A MQL is a lead for your business that is ready to be handed to the sales department. Do you notice more leads from your email marketing versus website downloads? Click-through-rates shows the percentage of your audience who not only opened your email, but also clicked on the link to your landing page. By using a data-based measurement approach, and analyzing the campaign at multiple points the process, you can make the smartest decisions for your brand. Go forth and measure.
Creating content is only the first step of the content marketing process. After producing carefully thought out content and distributing it to your audience, the next step is to measure the success of your efforts. Why? Because data is necessary for continual improvement. And if you don’t see results you want, you need to change the status quo. By including a measurement strategy into your content marketing initiative, you can adjust your approach, delivery and determine all possible paths to customer conversion.
There are dozens of metrics for measuring your campaign, but we’ve narrowed down the most important tools into three main groups. So put on your data hat and step into your conversion-trousers, because it’s time to get down and analytical.
User Demographics + Behavior
At the onset of measuring your efforts, look at your readers: Who they are? What channels do they use? How often do they visit? Understanding your audience is the starting point for success. Key words here: Starting point. Don’t let your measurements end here!Google Analytics will be your home base for measuring user demographics and behavior.
Here are a few guidelines to get you started:
- Pageviews: This metric shows you which and how many pages are viewed on a site. Any time a page is loaded (or refreshed), that counts as a page view. This is a basic KPI, but it’s oh-so-important in monitoring specific content performance particularly for key landing pages.
- Unique visitors (UV): This metric shows you how many individual people visit your site. It is determined by a user’s IP address and cookie on the browser they are using, so any repeat visits from that same user won’t be counted. UV’s help you understand the size of your target audience.
- Demographics: Google Analytics gives insight into your audiences’ ages, genders and general interests. You should keep an eye on these stats to ensure that your content is consumed by the appropriate audience for your brand.
- Geography: Now that you know who is viewing your work (and how many times), find out where they are coming from. By determining audience geography you can decide to allocate resources to a specific location and, if needed, adjust your budget and targeting strategy to market to a certain geographic area.
- Average time on page: This metric provides insight into the engagement of your audience. If you post a 5,000-word essay and the average time on page is 20 seconds, you can assume your audience is skimming, or not really reading at all. The longer the time spent on a page, the more likely it is that the reader is truly consuming your work. Heads up: Google Analytics doesn’t account for those times when users accidentally leave your site open for hours. That’s distraction, not engagement. In general, this is a good indicator of the effectiveness of your content.
- Bounce rate: This metric tells you the percentage of visitors who…
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