Is Your Content Marketing Strategy Working?
Across the online landscape, content marketing is being used by small businesses to increase reach and drive sales. A few years ago, publishing a blog and calling it a day was enough, but this is no longer the case in today’s marketing environment. Now there are blogs, social media, emails, photos, infographics, videos, and more. Simply producing more content isn’t enough. More isn’t always better, nor is it particularly effective.
Given that almost all companies are at one point or another trying to execute a content marketing strategy, it can be challenging to determine if your content marketing efforts are providing the desired results. The metrics covered in this post are the ones you should be tracking to determine if your content marketing strategy is working, or whether you need to change your strategy.
Increased Site Traffic
An increase in your monthly web traffic is one of the indicators that something you are doing is working. For instance, if you produce multiple types of blog articles on a consistent basis and do not see an increase in your overall traffic, it will mean that you need to make some changes.
The total increase in traffic is also determined by the competitiveness of your business niche, as well as the amount of energy you have invested in marketing the content. Tools such as Google Analytics make it possible to determine where your highest amount of traffic is coming from, which will then allow you to optimize these channels properly.
If you don’t see an increase in web traffic, perhaps you aren’t promoting your content enough. You may be spending a lot of time creating, but little time promoting.
Growth Ranking for Specific Keywords
It is vital that your content marketing strategy overlap with your SEO strategy. If your website has risen to rank for the keywords that you have been targeting, then this is an indicator that the content marketing strategy is working.
If there is no change, it means that you should spend more time and energy optimizing your web content.
Increase in the Number of Links to Your Website
If you are creating content that has a high value, then you should expect to see a change in the number of links linking back to your posts. When you produce high-quality content and promote it using the right channels, then you should expect to see an increase in the backlinks as well.
If no change is seen in the number of backlinks, then you need to consider creating content that is longer in form, and which is highly relevant to your target audience.
Growth in Social Media Shares
There exists various platform-specific metrics that can help you know whether your content marketing strategy is working or not. First and foremost, make sure your content provides the style and and type of content that resonates with your target audience. The media metrics you use should focus on the style and type of content that you publish. Likes, followers, retweets, shares are some examples of the metrics that can be used.
Remember, it’s important with any strategy to be able to monitor its effectiveness. With a content marketing strategy that spans a number of channels, it’s important to monitor the metrics appropriate to each channel. After all, don’t you want to know if all your time and effort is paying off?
