The #1 Content Marketing Strategy
Do you want to know the #1 content marketing strategy? Here is a clue – how do you know whether your content marketing efforts are paying off?
The only way to truly know is to track it with metrics. If you want to have strong content marketing you have to know what is working! Then follow it up by regularly checking in to see how you’re doing.
Why Tracking Is Essential
The only way to know whether you’re reaching your business goals is to use objective data. It’s not enough to simply trust your intuition.
You might have an excellent piece of content that you think is your best work, but once you post it, it falls flat with your audience.
On the other hand, a piece you posted may outperform all others. Your data can tell you that this is the biggest hit with your audience. It’s getting people to do what you want. You can then examine this piece and figure out why it works. This is exactly why tracking your content is the #1 content marketing strategy.
How to Create an Effective Tracking Strategy
There are many metrics available but not all of them will help you assess your efforts. The steps for creating an effective strategy are:
- Identify a specific business goal.
- Choose a metric that would tell you whether or not you’re making progress toward that goal.
- Find a tracking tool and implement.
- Regularly review this metric and analyze.
For example, you decide your goal is to build an email list of engaged subscribers, so the metric you need to know is the number of sign-ups. Your email service provider will give you this metric. You can then create a lead magnet and check your analytics each Friday to see how many new subscribers you have.
Metrics to Check
Which metrics to check depends on your business goals, but here is some key data that marketers often track.
- Website Visitors. This metric shows how many people are visiting the pages of your website. It shows whether or not your SEO efforts are working to build traffic.
- Social Shares. If your goal is to extend your reach on social media, this data shows how people are engaging. It would track whether they’re liking, commenting, and sharing your content.
- Follower Growth. Metrics can track how many people join your list, start following you on social media, start reading your blog, or subscribe to your YouTube channel. This data shows how you’re growing your audience.
- Visitor Behavior. You can track what people do on your site. Tracking which pages visitors spend the most time on can tell you what content is keeping them there.
- Returning Visitors. This metric tells you how many people are coming back to your site.
- Click-Through Rates. “Click-through” shows how many people are clicking the links on your site. This shows how effective your calls to action are.
- Profits. This is by far my favorite metric! If your profits are increasing, take the time to analyze the specific reasons why. Was it a certain product that sold well – create more of the same. Perhaps it was a social media post that went viral bringing in more traffic – keep sharing the posts or pin!
Choose a few key metrics that align with your business goals, and you’ll be able to better understand and refine your content to make it work more effectively for you.
Want to learn more? Check out my new course –
