What is Content Marketing?
Everything you put on the web. Everything from a Google or Facebook Ad to a white paper or a blog post, along with video and images like infographics, that’s content. But how to measure content marketing and what has ‘dark social’ got to do with it?
So, you need a dashboard (a simple spreadsheet or database will do). In the dashboard you will have a list of goals to benchmark. If they don’t work then create a hypothesis about why and generate new ideas to try.
Content Measurement
Things to measure:
- Brand Awareness
- Engagement
- Lead Generation
- Sales / Signups
- Video Measurement
Google Analytics Goals
If you can and it is relevant, say a download or a signup being the call to action then set goals in Google Analytics to get a more accurate measurement of your content and lead generation success.
The Overall Benchmark
The best way of your business being known, of brand recognition is your business name. Your business name (and the various ways it will be misspelled) acts as a shortcut. People will type it into Google.
Search Console (Brand Awareness)
Google’s Search Console traps the phrases people type into search and that brings them to your website. So, you can measure brand recognition, in a very rough way. So, if you’ve been putting out content all over the place are the searches for your brand name increasing? This is also useful to look at if you’ve attended an event.
Time on Page
This is a stat built into Google Analytics and it will give you an average time for how long that page has been in the browser. Again, very rough but if your website is all about information then you can track your article / blog post pages.
What will improve time on that page? Think about it. Is It images? Is it charts, testimonials, industry endorsement, more intriguing headlines?
Time on page doesn’t tell the whole story though. Use as a broad measurement.
Recording Sessions
With software like HotJar or Microsoft’s Clarity you can view sessions of actual visitors. What are they doing on the page, how far do they scroll down on average? In the recording is the mouse moving and clicking on elements of the page?
Feedback
Ask the visitors to your page. Do you like this article? Did It answer your questions? What would you like to see here?
You will get a load of rubbish but comments could guide you to greater engagement.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of people who have visited one page. Do the visitors go onto another page, ie is their interest peaked and have you sent them somewhere they will take action?
Call to Action
Does the content create an action like a signup or purchase? An easier way to access that is to use Google’s UTM codes which act like a tracking device and is pretty accurate. If that link is buried in a piece of copy then you’ll get an accurate count of actions / purchases.
Engagement
If you have social sharing on your website or if you have a social presence you can measure the true engagement of your content. Actions / visitors.
Actions include reactions (like, celebrate etc) comments and sharing. What type of content is getting the most reactions? Can this form a category of further content? You may have to do a manual count but it is worthwhile.
Now, with the most engaged content where else can you use it? In an ad? On a different social platform. If the content is copy then can you make a video from the idea?
Video Content Measurement
All the platforms for video, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and Wistia will give stats on video plays. Look at the video drop off, where does this happen? Ask yourself why? What if the video was edited at this point, what is causing viewers to switch off? What can you do about it.
A Word About Amplification
For organic content, ie not paid for always have a series of content thought out. If the first piece hits the mark, it will be engaged with and therefore improve your reach. Social platforms may give you a little help and boost the next piece in the series. If they don’t then you are ‘joining the touches’ that’s the amount of times a person sees your content therefore creating awareness and influence, if not sales.
The ‘Dark Social’ Thing
Dark social is word-of-mouth carried out in a non trackable manner. So visitor A sees something they like and tells person B by talking to them, on the phone, by email or text or even posting something without a link.
Can you measure this?
Well, again in another broad manner.
Keep an eye on the Direct traffic in Google Analytics. Is the traffic from this source with no obvious cause?
If you need any further info give us a shout.
About Conversion Detectives
Conversion Detectives is a full service digital marketing agency in Hertfordshire.
We find the best quality traffic for your website and convert more of that traffic into sales or sales leads.
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