Google Analytics won’t provide you with a clear-cut answer as to how effective your content is. This is because the buyer’s journey is seldom as simple as performing a web search, discovering your blog article, and heading to make a purchase.
However, there are certain metrics you can track to see how your content pieces are helping. Your process for doing this will vary depending upon what you are ultimately trying to get out of your content plan.
Rather than immediately purchasing a ton of content and hoping for the best, think about what you intend to do with your content and how educating your customers can benefit you directly.
What Industries Should Use Content?
Virtually every type of business can benefit from some form of content. This is as true for small businesses as it is for big corporations.
One of the primary reasons for this is that most consumers would rather learn about your company on their own time and in a way that benefits them. For many consumers, this is more attractive than being barraged with paid ads or sorting through all the new marketing emails they get daily.
Great content should always do one of the following:
Teach consumers about your business
Give consumers the tools they need to solve a problem
Help consumers make an informed purchasing decision
Learn how a professional product or service beats at-home DIY
Offers relevant industry news that directly impacts the consumer
Offers a distinct and interesting opinion on a business-related matter
What is synonymous with all of these? The power and the tools are in the hands of the consumer. While newcomers may feel that educating a customer will cause them to lose business, the opposite is almost always true. And, your audience will trust you more and make them more likely to call and refer to your business for future problems.
Content and Social Media
Through the lens of our fulfillment services, we use content to describe the blogs we write for your business website. Content as a larger term can describe blogs, videos, infographics, and social media content.
Unfortunately, there is no recipe for success when it comes to choosing what type of content to pursue and in what amounts. There are a variety of proven marketing strategies available and it is always a matter of experimenting and seeing what your particular audience responds to.
Social media can be a great place to post short, but relevant content for your audience. It’s also a great platform to quickly share your blog articles so that readers can easily consume, like, and share your content.
Does the Amount of Content Matter?
This is a hotly contested debate, in which both sides have valid arguments. It is a no-brainer that content needs to be high-quality and informative to be relevant. However, consider that we live in a world where new content is uploaded every second of every day to the internet. If you’re new to content, it can be hard enough to get eyes on a few great articles per month let alone just one.
Studies indicate that a greater quantity of content steadily shows an increase in website traffic. Additionally, a greater volume of content grants more opportunities to measure what works best with your audience.
Decide on the amount of content you’re willing to commit to for the long haul, set a schedule, and stick to it. It can take months to a year to see results, especially if you are new to posting any type of content. In the meantime, there are ways to analyze how your content is benefitting your brand.
Methods for Tracking Your ROI
There isn’t a set, clean formula that shows your ROI the way that a paid marketing campaign might possess. Nevertheless, effective content will allow you to see a difference in various metrics steadily over time, including:
An increase in website traffic
Improved keyword rankings
Better search visibility
Likes, comments, and shares
Increase in leads and sales
As a result, these can naturally provide new leads, new opportunities, and more sales. Content works in tandem with your SEO efforts and social media. When these marketing components are humming together, you should experience the type of growth that any business wants to see.
This can also work for measuring particular business goals, as well. If you pursue content to boost attention and sales with a particular product or service, you would proactively analyze those metrics in comparison to the number of leads you are getting and the sales you are closing in that particular department. If over time, one is not benefitting the other, you may wish to utilize your resources elsewhere.
Don’t allow yourself to get caught up in simple web traffic boosts. While this metric can be attractive, it only matters if those new visits are getting you results. You can help to ensure that the traffic you are getting is helping you work toward your goals by strategizing and formulating a content calendar.
Planning a Content Calendar
Many newcomers make the mistake of posting any type of article related to the business. While this may be effective in some cases, you are likely to get frustrated when you aren’t seeing the results you want for your unique business goals. You can begin to remedy this issue by working with your marketing team to create a content calendar.
A content calendar will provide you with the following:
A list of content ideas that work toward a shared goal (Promoting a product, a service, or general business awareness)
A schedule for sharing these articles, posts, videos, etc.
Awareness to spread out your content appropriately (by date or type of content)
For example, you may wish to dedicate a period to promoting a key service. Your blog articles may address everyday consumer problems in regards to that service or how your service can help them. Your social media team can then see what content is going live and when, and work to promote that content or draw attention to that service.
In regards to our white-labeled fulfillment service, a content calendar will also prevent you from feeling blindsided by your monthly article submissions. You can work with your team ahead of time to discuss your goals and plan out exactly what content pieces will go live on set dates.
Content and Virality
A final note to end on is an answer to a very common question we receive:
“Can you make my content go viral?”
If there was a definitive way to say yes to this, every other company would be doing it, or they would be out of business. With that said, the types of things that go into good content all contribute to the chances of your content being widespread.
Here are characteristics that all viral content has in common:
The audience gets a ton of value from it (education, humor, etc.)
The audience receives social currency from sharing it
It promotes conversation or advocacy (Promoting or defending the thesis of the content)
It’s easy to digest
The audience can identify with the content
Audiences are only willing to share something for free if they are getting something out of it. The key is to create content that successfully straddles the line of granting something unique and meaningful to visitors, while also offering a worthwhile return on your content efforts.
To answer the question: it’s always a possibility if done properly. The more important thing to focus on is delivering content that serves everyone who engages with it. Stick to your strategy and the results will come with time.