Content marketing can attract customers, build brand loyalty, and create overall engagement. But how do marketers know if their content — blog articles, videos, social posts — archives those goals? There are ways to analyze and measure the performance of content beyond sales. In this post, I’ll review basic metrics to gauge the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.
To begin, classify your content by type, such as product related or listicle-type content — “10 Tips” or “8 Trends.” Then analyze the number page views, social shares, and comments for each classification. This can help determine the type of content to publish.
- Page visits or impressions. For blogs, simply look at the number of visits you receive on each article. However, if the content is a tweet or a Facebook post, measure the number of impressions.
- Social shares. Track how many social shares your content has received. If you have posted your content on social media sites, use the native analytics to track sharing.
- Comments. Record how many comments per content piece. To get the most out of your content, read and classify the comments.
To analyze the overall metrics, create a simple pivot table in Excel. This should tell you the content that resonates with your audience.
Beyond the basic analysis, keep track of the publish dates for your content. Depending on your products, seasonality can greatly impact the content’s popularity. To analyze by date and type, create a simple line or bar graph for the year and compare against the previous year. Do this for every type of content you have.
Mining Comments
If you are fortunate enough to have many comments on each content piece, that data can be gold for your business. A customer or a prospect took the time to express their opinion — good or bad. If you hear them out it could change your perspective on your content and even your store.
You do not need to be a data scientist to analyze comments. Simply read and classify them into categories that are useful for your business. For example, “Love the style, but wish they make it in blue color” could be classified as “color options.”
Moreover, by studying the comments, you could identify the products your customers desire but you don’t offer, or products you do offer but they don’t want.