Content is a way to your audience’s hearts. Your content should show what you, as a brand, are all about. That’s why sharing the content that is engaging, interesting, and relevant is crucial to business success. But what is this business success and how should it be measured? To make it simple, we break it down into two categories—short-term wins and long-term victories. Short-term wins can be seen instantaneously and reflect engagement and insight into the audience preferences. Long-term victories are the ones that will affect the bottom line.
Short-Term Wins
- Social shares – If your audience shares your content – it’s a win! All the people in their circle that you might not have considered targeting will get to see it. Plus, it is a personal recommendation – if someone they know felt compelled enough to share your content, then it must be worth a read. As a result, you get more traffic, more subscribers, and more backlinks!
- Audience growth – Who do you publish the content for? That’s right, your audience. Growing a loyal following starts with giving them the content they want.
- Traffic – More traffic on your website allows you to gain insight into who your visitors are, how they got there, and what pages they visited. Additionally, it gives you an opportunity to convert those visitors!
- Views of videos and the view length – Simply put, the more videos are viewed for a longer amount of time, the more successful your video content is! Tip: compare your high-performing videos to your videos that might be under-performing and identify the areas that may need improvement.
- Engagement – Measures the interactions with your content, such as likes, comments, or favorites.
- Unique visits – How many individual people have viewed your content
- Bounce rate – When a person opens a page and then closes it, they “bounced.” The bounce rate shows you the quality of your content and engagement, you will typically have a high bounce rate if your visitors come to your website and find nothing else of value stemming off their entry point onto your webpage. Good content will decrease the bounce rate because people will want to stay on your page to find more useful information rather than leave.
- Time on page – If your content is engaging, then the visitors will spend their time viewing it.
- Pages per session – The average number of pages viewed while being on your website. In other words, this is a good indicator of how easy it is to navigate your website and how interesting your content is.
- Reach – How many people your content is reaching. This shows you the total audience viewing your content.
- Exposure – Measures the number of your followers plus the number of their followers. If your content is shared by someone, their followers can see it too.
Long-Term Victories
- Lead generation – Leads are people that are interested in what you have to offer. The more leads you generate, the more opportunities you have to close sales.
- % of returning visitors – If someone is returning to your website, it means that they were interested in your content enough to come back!
- Conversion rate – How many people completed your goal – i.e. downloaded content, signed up, or bought an item. For more information on how to optimize conversions, visit All You Need To Know About Converting Visitors Into Buyers.
- The growth of content subscription database – Your subscribers can always stay updated with your latest content. Additionally, email marketing is one of the fastest ways to drive sales!
Know what you are looking for. Set goals before you create content and measure it accordingly. Your short-term wins will always lead to long-term victories which, in turn, will lead to new clients and more sales.
Learn more about How to Develop Content for Your Brand to help you ensure that your content is successful.