What Makes Valuable Content?
While the concept of content marketing has been around since the late 1800’s, the dawn of online marketing has presented new challenges in determining ROI. According to Arnie Kuenn of Content Marketing Institute, the ability to see the full return on your investment rarely happens overnight, but it is still important to measure its benefits.
Before deciding whether your SEO content marketing strategy is working for your business, you must first evaluate your marketing efforts. Asking yourself the following questions can help you determine whether you are producing valuable content:
- Does my content reflect the personality and vision of my business?
- Does it add value to the lives of my followers by addressing their interests and concerns?
- Is it both search engine-friendly and reader-friendly?
Types of Content Metrics
After you have confirmed that your content marketing efforts are indeed sufficient, you are ready to consider a few different content metrics. These metrics must be analyzed in order to get the full picture of the success of your strategy.
1. Consumption
This metric includes a few simple data points, which can help you gauge brand awareness and website traffic. Troels Kjems of Think! Digital recommends considering several consumption metrics, including:
- Content views (page visits, downloads, etc.)
- Time spent on site
- Cost per visitor
- Bounce rate
2. Sharing and Social Media
Sharing and social media metrics can help you understand your content’s reach by seeing how it is shared across social media platforms.
3. Lead Generation
This metric can help you determine how well your content marketing strategy is addressing the needs of your customers. This metric covers:
- Form submission
- Conversion rates
- Mailing list or blog subscriptions
4. Sales
The sales metric can show you how your SEO content marketing strategy impacts customer acquisition and promotes growth.
Practicing Patience
For most businesses, content marketing isn’t rewarded with instant results. Clear ROI data can take a while to become fully apparent. Ultimately, your marketing goals will be achieved through proper planning, tracking and consistency. While success won’t happen overnight, your returns will generally increase over time as you continue to consistently publish valuable content.
