Knowing how to measure content performance is essential as managing and measuring your content’s performance will allow you to analyse how your content is engaging, or losing, consumers and customers.
Our content planning series has looked to explore the ways in which you can create engaging content, where to put that content and the tools you can use to simplify the process. This four-point list sets out how to measure your content’s performance, because after all, it’s only worth it if it’s working:
- Set brand goals
- Audience engagement
- Know the back-end of you website
- Be patient and set realistic goals!
1. SET BRAND GOALS
It’s impossible to measure content success without knowing what successful content looks like for you and your organisation.
Be honest with yourself here – what are you trying to achieve with your content? Do you want to increase your Instagram followers? Do you want to drive audiences to your website? Is your main goal to promote a specific product?
If you’re not sure, or you want to achieve all of the above and more, you might find it useful to set one goal per month to track and measure and let that be the driving focus of your marketing. Allowing you to work smarter and not just harder.
2. AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
The most obvious way to measure whether your content is hitting the right performance mark is to track your engagement levels.
The majority of social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, have built-in analytical tools that can show you the age, gender, and location of your audience and how they found you, whether that’s through hashtags, their feed or location tag. These analytics provide you with key data that you can use to measure content performance and audience engagement. You will also be able to track likes, shares, comments and saves directly within your apps, and compare with previous months’ engagement levels. You can also spot which piece of content best resonated with your audience (received the most likes/shares) and which piece of content received the least.
If you want to dig a little deeper into the engagement levels of your audience, there are a variety of online tools that will help you to do so. At Millrace, we like to use Hootsuite – a scheduling tool with built in analytics that intricately breaks down each piece of content for you and lays it out in your desired format.
Outside of social media marketing, you can track your engagement levels for mailshots and email marketing campaigns by dissecting your click rates, open rates and unsubscribes.
3. KNOW THE BACK-END OF YOUR WEBSITE
The back-end of a website sounds scarier than it is. You don’t need to be a coding connoisseur to understand how your website works and how you and your brand can benefit from its measurable content data.
The back-end of your website can let you in on:
- User’s average session duration
- When users are visiting
- What pages they’re interested in
- What pages they’re not interested in
- Average scroll duration
- When they’re leaving the site
All of this information is vital in order to get to know your audiences’ habits, likes and dislikes.
To gain access to it and start benefiting from it, head to the analytics of your website or look at installing a plug-in if the data isn’t easily accessible to you.
4. BE PATIENTAND SET REALISTIC GOALS!
As consumers, industry-folk and well, people – we have a habit of wanting to see results instantly. Rome wasn’t built in a day; you won’t get rock hard abs after one forty-minute workout (though it would be nice) and you won’t reap the benefits of a solid content marketing strategy one hour after hitting ‘publish’ on your first post.
It would be delightful if every piece of content you posted went viral. If you’re using social media purely to increase your exposure, then the ultimate goal is of course to go viral.
However, if like the majority of us, you’re in the social media game for the long-haul, you’ll understand that overnight stardom isn’t the definitive factor. What is more important is understanding your audience, creating content that does your brand justice and ultimately, increases conversion rates.
Social media is a tool that needs to be nurtured and worked at through endless hours of content planning, editing, scheduling and interacting with customers and other industry folk. Consider it a means to an end and not a miraculous tool that will boost your brand to digital glory at the click of a button (or the like of a thumb.) Believe in your brand, commit to your strategy and listen to your audience.
Want to find out more? Contact Millrace Marketing about what we do on 02922 801280 or email Hello@millracemarekting.co.uk
WE ARE A CONTENT MARKETING AGENCY (BASED IN CARDIFF) AND THIS IS THE FOURTH AND FINAL PART IN OUR CONTENT MARKETING SERIES
FIND PART THREE HERE:
How To Plan Content
