A big part of online marketing is content marketing. Marketers need to put together a strategy for producing content in various stages from planning to creation to the promotion and finally analysis.
Each step of the content marketing process holds great importance, but many people don’t check on their analytics as often as they should. Two main reasons for this are fear over the results or a lack of understanding what the analytics mean.
So, how can you be sure that your content marketing strategy is working and producing results that are measurable? Here are a few things to look for:
Website Traffic
One of the standard ways to measure success is through website traffic, the number of visits and pageviews you are receiving to your website. These statistics are often the first things you see on an analytics report.
Subscribers
If you issue a newsletter or have a subscription service, keep track of the number of subscribers you have on your email subscription list. Once you have a basic count or establish a modest subscriber list, you can start tracking growth by keeping a count of new subscribers each month.
Search Engine Rankings
There are certain keywords that will rank higher than others, but getting your website optimized so that you appear on the first page of search results for those keywords is the ultimate sign of a successful content marketing campaign. You can track average page placement of keywords to see how you are ranking on a month-by-month basis.
Average Time on Page
You may have a large number of pageviews, but that doesn’t tell the full story of how well your website is performing. You can triple website traffic in a month, but if visitors aren’t staying on the page, they likely are not reading your content or making a purchase. Analytics reports break down the average time on page so that you can see if people are just visiting to quickly browse your website or if they are actually reading and invested in your type of content.
Social Media Following and Shares
Social media is an essential part of content marketing as well because it provides channels for promoting content. There are two measurable ways to see how effective your content marketing is on social media. If you are building a following and getting more followers to your social media, it means that your audience is increasing and your potential customer reach continues to grow. The more shares you get on social media further extends that reach and can help increase your following and ultimately shows which visitors are impacted by your content.
Feedback
What better way to see how effective your content marketing is than by getting direct feedback. Comments, messages, social media updates, contact form submissions and reviews are just a few ways you can generate feedback to help improve the quality of your content for your target audience.
Leads
If your content is designed to generate more business, the number of leads you get as a result of your marketing efforts is another way to measure success. No matter how you receive your leads, you want to understand what draws people to do business with you and which parts of your content marketing efforts were effective.
Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate is a great tool to see what is truly effective. You can reach a large audience with social media posts or email marketing, but the only way it is paying off is if people actually click on the piece of content to learn more about your business. Click-through rate is measured in analytic reports.
Need help getting started in content marketing? Turn to the experts at VamTam for assistance. We have worked with many clients to provide various content marketing services and want to help you!
