The 5 Most Valuable Metrics in Content Marketing
Tracking metrics is just as important as creating high quality content.
Creating written content is one of the most effective ways to generate brand awareness. By directing visitors to your website through valuable and engaging content, you raise your credibility and establish your expertise in your industry. People who read your articles, blogs and other offerings, trust you as a result and are more likely to purchase goods or services from you. Indeed, consumers who regularly visit your page to read blogs and other new content are more likely to browse the rest of your site and make a purchase.
See also: How to Measure Your Blog Content's Success
It's important to set specific goals and objectives and examine metrics to see whether your content marketing campaign is meeting those goals. And to that end, here are some of the metrics you should be tracking regularly.
1. Consumption Metrics
These refer to measures of how many people actually viewed the content. You'll want to examine general traffic to your pages: Unique page views and downloads of any content such as PDF files or videos. You can get these statistics through Google Analytics or similar software; some blogging platforms, such as WordPress, have built-in tracking of consumption metrics as well.
2. Click-Through Rates
If the goal of your content marketing campaign is to get people to visit another page on your website, you'll want to monitor your click-through rates. Your click-through rates refer to which links people are clicking after reading your content. If people are not visiting links embedded in your content, you need to change your call-to-action to make the link more compelling. One way is to link to relevant articles in the body of your content. You can also create a more direct call-to-action and include "see also" links (that link to relevant articles after a specific paragraph) to increase a visitor's time on site.
3. Social Interactions
In addition to tracking who is engaging with your content on your website, you should track who's sharing your content over social media. Social interactions are important because they extend your reach and demonstrate reader engagement with the content. Most social media sites have built in statistics for your business pages, so you can check the amount of traffic on your Facebook or Twitter page and align it with the number of sign-ups or purchases on your website.
4. Visit Duration (Time on Site)
Determining how many people are visiting your website is important, of course, but you'll also want to track how long each visitor spends on each page of your site. If visitors are clicking through to your website from a blog post or a targeted ad but they aren't spending much time on the site, then your content isn't sticking; revise it to make it more compelling to customers. Similarly, if customers are spending a long time on the site prior to making a purchase, you may want to examine why.
5. Revenue Per Customer
Once your content marketing campaign begins driving leads to your business, your next step is to calculate how much revenue is being earned per new lead. This helps you see how cost-effective your content marketing campaign is as well as ensuring that you meet your sales and revenue goals.
These five metrics can give you a lot of insight into how well your content marketing campaign is going. Examine these statistics to ensure your campaign is making progress towards its goals and to help you make changes as needed.
What metrics are most valuable to you? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
To Read More on Content Creation, Click the Links Below:
Content Planning Resources for 2014
Ash Davies of Tablo: Empowering Writers to Self-Publish Through eBooks
Alexis Grant of Socialexis: How to Grow an Audience Through Content Creation
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