According to a report from Content Marketing Institute, 67 percent of marketers say content marketing generates demand and leads for their business. Furthermore, 63 percent say it helps build customer loyalty.
Content marketing is a powerful strategy to help you expand your reach, build brand awareness, and boost conversions. However, if you want to understand how your plan is doing and where you need to improve, you must collect and analyze data regularly.
Not sure what to measure when evaluating content marketing strategy performance? The following are nine of the most critical metrics to start monitoring.
1. Content Marketing Social Shares
Approximately 4.9 billion people worldwide use social media. How many of these people are sharing your content on their profiles?
Monitoring social shares helps you learn a few essential things about your content marketing strategy, including the following:
- Which types of content get shared most often (blog posts, videos, infographics, etc.)?
- What kinds of messages generate the most shares (how-to guides, behind-the-scenes videos, etc.)?
You can use these insights to streamline your content creation process and focus on the types of content your audience likes and shares the most.
2. Website Traffic and Traffic Sources
The primary goal for most content marketers is to drive more traffic back to their websites. If you’re hoping to increase website traffic by sharing content online, you should pay attention to the following:
- How many people visit your website during a fixed period?
- Where are people learning about your website (clicking the link from another blog, clicking the link in your social media bio, etc.)?
If you find that many people are getting to your website from a specific platform, then you’ll know that you should focus more on that platform in the future.
3. Bounce Rate and Time on Page
As the name of this metric suggests, “time on page” refers to the amount of time someone spends on a particular webpage before clicking away. The longer someone spends on a page, the more engaging they likely find it (and the more likely they are to stick around and look at other pages on the website).
Your website’s bounce rate tells you how many people click away from your website immediately after visiting it. Someone might “bounce” and go to another website for many reasons, including issues with the content’s layout or readability.
If you notice that the average time on the page is decreasing and your bounce rate is going up, you might need to look more closely at your content and consider how it’s impacting these metrics.
4. Pages per Session
In addition to monitoring how long someone spends on your website, you should also take note of how many pages someone clicks on during one visit to your website. This metric is often referred to as “pages per session” or “pages/session.”
For example, does a visitor look at three different blog posts before they leave? Do they read a blog post and then visit your “Shop” page?
Generally, the more pages someone visits during a session, the more engaging they find your website and content. Increased engagement, in turn, can also lead to increased conversions.
5. Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate, or CTR, is an important metric that tells you how engaging and compelling your content is.
It’s helpful to measure the number of people who view or consume your content. However, it doesn’t matter how many people consume your content if they aren’t also taking action (such as clicking on a link) afterward.
Are they visiting your website? Are they visiting your Shop page to learn more about your products?
The more you learn about your click-through rate, the easier it is to evaluate your content and determine if it’s helping you achieve your larger content marketing goals.
6. Post Engagement in Content Management
What does it mean if someone leaves a comment on your blog or comments on your social media post? In most cases, it’s an indicator that they found it interesting, helpful, or valuable in some way.
Measuring post engagement (specifically the number and types of comments your posts receive) helps you understand how engaging your content is and whether or not it’s helping you achieve specific goals.
In addition to measuring comments, you can measure other engagement-related metrics like the number of “likes” a post receives or the number of times it gets shared.
7. Backlinks
As a content marketer, you’re likely familiar with the process of adding backlinks to other websites when writing blog posts or developing other types of content. However, have you ever considered how many people are adding backlinks to your website when working on their own content?
Measuring backlinks to your website helps you identify the types of content others deem worth sharing. You can then use this information to determine what kinds of content you should develop in the future.
8. Content Marketing Keyword Rankings
Choosing the right keywords is critical to writing content and achieving your specific marketing goals.
Regularly measuring keyword rankings helps you ensure you’re choosing the right keywords. It also enables you to make informed adjustments to your content so that it continues to perform well and rank highly on search engine results pages (or SERPs).
If you consistently review keyword rankings, you’ll know when you need to adjust your keywords and content to improve performance.
9. Email Opt-In Rates
Over 64 percent of small businesses rely on email marketing to connect with their audience and say that it’s an effective method for promoting their business.
If you want to see good results from your email marketing strategy, you need to know how many people are opting in and subscribing to your email list.
When someone opts in and decides to sign up for your newsletter or email list, it means they likely find your content at least somewhat valuable.
If you notice that many people are opt-in after visiting a specific blog post or another type of content, you’ll also know to focus more on similar styles of content moving forward.
How DashboardFox Can Help in Content Marketing Metrics
With all these content marketing metrics, you need a useful tool that can help you monitor, interpret, and report the data gathered in such a way that people can easily understand without the confusing jargon in the process.
That’s where DashboardFox enters the picture.
With DashboardFox, users can connect to wherever your Content Marketing metrics may be, whether they are in:
- a database;
- behind an API in the Cloud; or
- a Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet.
And once connected to the standard message we use, this makes it easy to create the metrics mentioned in this article, convert them into interactive dashboards, and share them securely with internal and external users.
You can get all of these for an affordable price point, superb VIP customer service, and an approach that is accessible to everyone.
With DashboardFox, the only thing you need to check is the fast progress of your business.
What are you waiting for? Reach out to us by setting up a meeting or trying out DashbordFoc in the flesh through a free live demo session. We’ll be waiting!