It’s probably not the most glamorous part of your job, but watching over your metrics is an essential task for all marketers. The numbers tell the story behind your content: whether it’s generating qualified leads, who’s sharing what and where site traffic is coming from – among many other things. Perhaps most importantly, content measurement key metrics give you the data you need to help your boss understand how well your content is performing for purposes of ROI. Here are the top indicators to point out.
- Page Views: Measuring Consumption. One of the more common content measurement key metrics, Page Views tells you how many people are hitting your pages, where they came from and how often they’re stopping by. The number of views is huge when you want to measure the popularity of your content and whether it’s attracting attention; it’s not so good for informing you if your content is reaching the right audience. Page Views is all about volume, but it won’t tell you how long visitors hang out, whether they checked out other pages on your site or clicked through on an offer. That’s why this metric is best for building your audience – and perhaps persuading advertisers to partner up.
- Returning Visitors: Keeping an Eye on Retention Rates. When you want to know how effective your content is at encouraging your audience to stick around beyond the initial contact, look to Returning Visitors. This metric tells you how well your material resonates with your audience, which is key for building your brand. It’s also important for figuring out what topics and types of content appeal to the people checking it out. Returning is one of the best ways to measure content ROI – something your boss watches closely. You don’t want to sink a fortune into infographics and images when your community prefers videos, or vice versa.
- Social Shares: Reach Your Audience on Social Media. There are various sharing metrics to let you know what’s being shared, who’s doing it and what channels they’re using to spread the word. Social Shares is another of the content measurement key metrics that’s ideal for determining audience response. Shares by content length and type help guide your future content creation efforts, telling you not just what your audience wants to see – but what they want others to see, too. Plus, Social Shares tell you who is promoting your assets within their own networks, which is especially useful when you want to amplify content through the best influencers.
- Comments: Assessing Numbers and Quality. Comments and similar actions (Likes, Retweets, +1s, etc.) are crucial to understanding engagement. You’ll want to know comment volume so you can identify what content is hitting the mark, and what’s fizzling out. Comments about your brand on other content are also important from a PR standpoint. If other sites and influencers are talking about you, they’re acting as advocates to build your community.
- Search Metrics: Driving Traffic. SEO is inextricably tied to content marketing. After all, great content is nothing unless your audience can actually find it. You’ll always want to know what impact you’re having upon those searching for your content. If you’ve launched a blog, you’ll want to review Search Metrics to see whether you’re generating more traffic over time. You’re probably using content, at least partially, to improve your rankings on certain keywords; therefore, you want to know how your content affects the rankings and which of your competitors is outdoing you on SEO.
Your boss may not know the specifics behind content measurement key metrics, but you can be sure he or she wants to know you’re getting the most from your marketing buck. It’s up to you to make sure your boss understands the critical metrics that impact bottom line. These five critical metrics are some of the best ways to measure content ROI and justify your marketing efforts.