How do I measure the effectiveness of my content?
It’s easy to fall back on soft metrics like “page views” and “shares” or anecdotes about how your content is working by way of feedback from the sales team. There is a better way. Each of these metrics can be measured across several content channels, such as websites, blogs or social media.
- Consumption metrics look at the number of users who interact or “consume” your content. They identify which channel they use and there frequency and depth of their consumption.
- Retention metrics look at how effective you are at holding you audience’s attention beyond the initial point of contact.
- Sharing metrics examine what content is being shared, by whom, and where or how they are sharing it.
- Engagement metrics are key to understanding whether your content resonates with users. Does your content inspire the users to take any particular action and if so, how often?
- Lead metrics focus on the marketing portion of the sales process. As usersadvance through your sales funnel, some will reach the lead metrics phase (middle of funnel). This is the point where you will want to see new leads generated and existing leads touched through your content.
- Sales metrics apply to customers at the bottom of your sales funnel. This is where you’ll want to look at how your content is driving revenue and if you content is successful at filling the pipeline.
- Production metrics (Performance) are internal metric used to assess your content operations. How long does it take for your editors to turn around content ideas into a published piece of content? How many pieces of content do you regular publish in a given amount of time?
- Cost metrics (ROI) are among the most important since they help you calculate a return on investment or ROI for content marketing. What does it cost to produce and distribute each publication? How do you calculate the total cost per piece, including all of the underlying resources, including time?
Measuring these areas will help you improve your content marketing and demonstrate the value to your organization.
