- What impact has content marketing had on your business?
Having a vague sense of your progress isn't good enough.
You need definitive results you can measure
to understand where you'll invest
with your company's content moving forward.
So let's dive into the four components
of a successful measurement framework.
The first part is choosing which metrics
to pair with your content goals.
A metric is a unit of measure that increases
or decreases to indicate your progress
in achieving a goal.
For example, when the venture capital firm,
First Round, launched its own publication,
one of its goals was generating awareness
of the organization amongst entrepreneurs and founders.
Their team likely looked at metrics,
like the number of engaged users on their website,
email subscribers gained, and the social shares
each article earned to help measure awareness.
Pair three to five metrics per goal
to ensure you're only paying attention to metrics
that are important to the profitability of your company,
indicate your progress in reaching your goals,
and can help incite further action.
Next, it's important to select a mix
of measurement tools that can help your organization
measure the goals and metrics it's focused on.
Investing in a few tools to monitor your progress
is necessary, as each offers different features
and relying on more than one provides you
with a more complete picture of your progress.
The content measurement tools you decide to use
will vary based on your company's needs,
but Google Analytics, BuzzSumo, SEMrush,
and Parse.ly are all highly effective options.
For instance, if understanding the performance
of your content, both on your website
and third-party sites from the same dashboard
is important, then SEMrush is a helpful option.
After selecting the right tools,
the next part of the framework is reporting.
Create reports with these tools
on the goals and metrics you're tracking
for each campaign.
Like developing a Google Analytics report
on the content driving traffic to your website.
Each report should have a singular purpose,
like summarizing the performance of your YouTube channel
or highlighting the results generated from a white paper.
Decide how often you'll generate and review
each type of report based on its purpose
and which stakeholders need to access it.
Lastly, set aside time to thoughtfully analyze
the reporting on your content programs.
The goal of a thorough analysis
of your content's performance is to understand
what activities aren't working,
which are progressing as planned,
and which are doing better than expected.
Depending on the report, you'll be able to determine
what channels are effective at distributing your content,
which topics are resonating with your audience, and more.
To go into more detail on reporting
and analyzing progress with content marketing effectively,
watch my Content Marketing ROI course
to learn the ins and outs of content measurement.
And don't forget to embrace this measurement framework
we've discussed today to help understand
the impact of content marketing on your business.