Content marketing metrics are some of the hardest metrics to measure. You can write a piece of content and watch it morph into a powerhouse converter, but it might take you six months or more.
So, how do you tell if your content marketing is successful long before that happens? Content marketing metrics may not be easy to define, but there are some essential performance metrics worth paying attention to.
Interactions on Your Content
ROI might be hard to measure when it comes to specific content, but if you’re posting articles or informative pieces, the engagement on that piece matters.
This means:
- How many comments you received
- How many shares it got on social media
- The number of likes it gets when posted on your social platforms
- The reaction the content receives from colleagues and the media
If you write a stellar piece of content, but it goes nowhere, that’s a clear sign that it’s not resonating. So much of content marketing is about being part of the conversation and offering something insightful.
Bounce Rates
Great content takes time to build. While it’s gaining traction, you can track its performance via the bounce rate.
The bounce rate is the percentage of all sessions on a site in which a user views just one page and leaves.
If your readers come to your site, read just one piece of content, and leave — that’s a problem. It means they’re not sticking around long enough to see what you have to offer. Which means they’re not converting.
Conversions
Which brings us to another significant metric in content marketing — conversions. Most of the time, your bottom line as a content marketer is to convert your readers into believers and buyers.
Jon James of Integrated results told Forbes, “One thing that is key here is making sure that it is possible to always have the best ideas about how to show the number of users that were converted by a particular piece.”
If you can’t get readers to invest and engage with what you’re doing, how will you get them to convert further down the funnel?
Referral Traffic
Content marketing frequently means partnering with other sites to position yourself as a subject matter expert. But how do you measure the effectiveness of those campaigns?
In the case of guest blogging, you’d want to focus primarily on the referral traffic. Within your posts on other sites, you should provide opportunities for readers to navigate to your brand site via links. Once the piece is out in the open, you can track whether it brings traffic to your website via referral channels.
Just like most content marketing metrics, this can take time to build and show some ROI. But tracking it early will clearly show its growth.
The Obvious – Web Traffic
The most obvious way to measure your ROI is through the traffic coming to your website. If your website traffic increases, that likely means you’re doing something right.
However, LinkedIn suggests that you dive deeper into your analysis and segregate your traffic by channel. This will allow you to know where it came from and give your team insight into how they discovered your traffic.
No matter what content marketing metrics you’re using, staying on top of what is gaining traction is a great way to keep moving in the right direction. Monitoring web traffic, tracking conversions, and watching bounce rates are a great place to start.
