Engagement Metrics: The Keys to Content Marketing Success
Engagement metrics to track your content’s success
Content marketing plays a big part in the success of any modern business. It's about reaching your audience, increasing brand awareness, and keeping potential customers engaged. Content creators spend tons of time developing impressive campaigns destined to captivate the masses. There's a huge amount of effort that goes into content planning, but how do you know if your plan was successful in the end? Can you definitively say that your content marketing is paying off? Even better, can you prove that it provides a positive return on investment?
Putting content out there can feel like a shot in the dark, but it doesn't have to be. User engagement metrics give you concrete data about how your content is performing. It's the thing that measures your success and ultimately proves whether your campaigns made an impact. With those metrics in hand, you can fine-tune your content to reach your full marketing potential and maximize your ROI.
But what kinds of metrics should you track?
Don't worry: We have you covered! Read on to learn more about using engagement analytics and the types of data you can use to your advantage.
What are engagement metrics?
First things firsts, what are engagement metrics? At the risk of sounding too obvious, this type of data measures how your intended audience engages with your content.
In the world of business, we're used to seeing all kinds of data points to represent corporate health. From annual sales revenue to qualified leads per month, that information is about measuring the overall performance of an organization. It can all feel overwhelming when you're not actively using that data, but engagement metrics are something that you can use to your advantage as a content marketer.
Engagement analytics is about providing you with quantifiable measurements that mean something. It's not about hearsay or guesstimates. When you use metrics, you're gathering measurable data you can look at and say, "That content resonated with our customers, and here are the numbers to prove it!"
In the long run, the goal is to use that information to see how well your marketing campaigns align with the needs and interests of your target audience. Use it to guide your efforts moving forward, and your can laser-focus your content to leave a lasting impact.
What qualifies content marketing success?
Here's another question that can leave many scratching their heads: How do you define success in content marketing? Is it overall social media reach or more sales? The content you create has a high value to your company and brand, but it's not easy to define and pinpoint. The impact of your marketing efforts is far-reaching, planting the seeds that will, hopefully, boost the brand's bottom line.
So, what does it mean to be successful in this field? That all depends on what you're trying to achieve. The best way to understand success in content marketing is to determine if your efforts helped reach your company's goals.
Some brands put a lot of money into content marketing to improve brand awareness. A business is only successful if people know about it! In that case, your content's sole purpose is to get the brand in front of potential customers and build trust.
For other companies, the goal is to move a specific product or service. So, your content would be successful if it helped create more sales.
Here's where keeping track of relevant user engagement metrics comes in handy. The engagement metrics you'll use for the second example aren't super helpful if the goal is to improve brand awareness.
To truly measure and understand content success, you have to know what engagement metrics to track and how they relate to your company goals.
Website metrics to track
Now that you understand the basics of customer engagement metrics let's move on to the specifics.
Here's where you get to learn more about just how much your content resonates with your audience. As mentioned earlier, the exact metrics you'll use to gauge success will depend on your goals. That said, here are some of the most crucial engagement metrics to keep your eye on when analyzing website content performance.
Traffic website metrics
Of course, traffic information can provide a ton of insight into how your content is doing. If your work generates substantial growth, it's pretty clear you're doing something right. Traffic is crucial for any form of success. You can't expect to make an impact if no one visits your site!
A few key performance indicators, or KPIs, give you more in-depth information about how users are responding.
Pageviews
Pageviews reflect the number of people who visited a specific page. It's is the most basic KPI to monitor. It can give you a quick look at how many impressions your content makes. If you want to go even deeper, look into the unique page viewers to separate repeat visitors from new ones.
Unique visitors
This figure shows how many new people visit your website versus those who've already been to your site. It's a good way of measuring growth.
Source
Source refers to how your visitors got there. Was it through an organic search or a referral? This figure can paint a picture of your SEO efforts and how often others mention your work.
User behavior
User behavior is about what your customers do when they visit a website. It doesn't do you any good if someone stays for a few seconds before clicking out. These metrics are about learning what users do once they see your content.
Time spent on page
This figure shows how long a potential customer stays on a page. The longer, the better!
Duration and pages viewed
The duration reflects how long they stay on your site as a whole. You can refine this KPI further by looking into how many pages they visit. If they go from one piece of content to the next, your content is a huge hit.
Returning visitors
New unique visitors are always welcome. But your returning readers show that your content is leaving a lasting impression.
Bounce rate
The bounce rate is a figure that shows how many people visit your site and only view a single page before leaving. Ideally, you want readers to keep looking through your content rather than clicking out after a single article or blog post.
Conversions
Having people visit your website to view your content is fantastic. But how many of them are actually converting? What do they do after consuming your content? These website metrics give provide you with that answer.
Sales
If your goal is to increase sales, this KPI is an obvious choice. Measure how many sales your content produces and define the relationship between the two to understand success.
Email signups
Even if readers don't make a sale, providing an email address for future correspondence is a big win for future lead generation!
CTR
The CTR, or click-through rate, is an important metric that shows how well your content convinced readers to act. It could be clinking a link to a signup page or just viewing a product. Either way, data about the action goes a long way.
Social activity
You can't forget about social activity! While they're on your website, users can spread the word and make your content a viral sensation.
Backlinks
Backlinks are a great way to show the value of your content. It reflects the number of times other sites link to a specific page. A decent amount of backlinks can boost your authority, increase SEO rankings, and expand your reach.
Social shares
If you don't provide social share buttons, you're missing out. This number shows you how often readers share the content with their social circle.
Social media metrics
It's not enough to have great content on your website. Social media is king, and any brand that wants success needs to participate. It doesn't matter whether it's on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or a host of other platforms. These are the social media metrics you should use to track content success.
Social media reach
Social media reach is about getting in front of as many people as you can! A few KPIs can give you a good how your content is performing.
Impressions
Impressions refer to the number of times your content appears to users. It could appear naturally on someone's timeline or through sharing. Either way, higher numbers reflect a more significant impact.
View counts
This engagement metric is similar to impressions, but it's about total views. People can see your posts in passing as they scroll through their feed. But how many actually stop to view it?
Shares
Social media is all about sharing! Here, a more significant number of shares indicates that viewers thought your content was impressive enough to share with their social circles.
Share of voice
This customer engagement metric directly compares you to your competitors. Of all the brands in your niche, how many people are talking about yours?
Direct engagement
Social media is the perfect place to interact with your audience directly. User engagement metrics reflect how your customers respond to each piece of content you publish.
Comments
There's no better way to see what others think than diving into the comments! A high comment count can lead to great things. It indicates an ongoing discussion about your brand, leading to even greater social media reach.
Mentions
How many people are mentioning your brand? Once again, this user engagement metric shows you how your content fits into social media discussions.
Applause rate
The applause rate refers to how users acknowledge your content. We're talking about likes, favorites, and other virtual "thumbs up." A high applause rate shows that your content resonated well. Plus, it could lead to greater spread.
Growth social media metrics
At the end of the day, growth is a top priority for social media. You want as many people following and consuming your content as possible, right? Here are user engagement metrics to get a better idea of your progress.
Follower count
Here's the most basic KPI to monitor. Keep track of your follower count and watch how each post leads to change.
Growth rate
The growth rate reflects how quickly your numbers climb. You can determine this rate over a defined reporting period and see how content influences your social media growth.
Virality rate
Going viral is the dream! The virality rate is the number of people who shared your content versus the number of unique views. Monitoring this engagement metric will help you see what content had the most impact in terms of virality.
What engagement metrics will you track?
There you have it! Those are just some of the engagement metrics you can use to gauge success. Choose the most relevant ones to your brand goals, and understanding how your content contributes to the bottom line is a breeze.
Start incorporating metrics into your content marketing endeavors and see what kind of a difference they can make!