5 Key Content Marketing Metrics

Every Business Owner Should Track

Content marketing has become an essential type of digital marketing used by all types of businesses today. Content is king – on your website, on social media, and in emails.

But content marketing can only be successful if you know how to organize your campaigns. And more specifically, which metrics you keep an eye on. Hence, here are the five key content marketing metrics every business owner should track.

#1 Traffic Sources

First of all, you need to track your traffic sources. This is mostly necessary for your website, but you can also track traffic sources on your social media accounts. By understanding where your traffic comes from, you can make better assessments of the way your efforts influence your marketing outcomes. At the same time, you should expect specific sources to dominate depending on the types of marketing you use.

For instance, if you highly rely on social media marketing as a part of your content strategy, then you should expect a lot of your traffic to come from social media. On the other hand, you might be combining other types of digital marketing with your content strategy which means you will see different types of traffic sources. For example, if you launched a paid ad campaign, it could help you bring more traffic to your website.

If you see that a particular traffic source is showing consistently good results, you might decide to double down on it and aim to generate more traffic from that source specifically. On the other hand, if you notice that you are trying to generate traffic from a particular source and it’s not working, then you should probably change your methods or focus on other sources.

#2 Engagement

Engagement is another important metric you should track, or more specifically, a group of metrics. Engagement can be measured in different ways which is why tracking several metrics will give you more accurate results. Pay attention to:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – This is the rate at which people click through the links you place in your content that lead to other pages on your website or other related content.
• Comments – What is the number of comments you get on posts? Moreover, what types of comments do you get? And which types of comments would you like to get (e.g. questions about upcoming sales)?
• Shares – This is the number of times your content is shared on other platforms or on the same platform (if the content is posted on social media). You can also track how people interact with your content after it is shared.
• Mentions – How and how often is your brand mentioned online (whether by being tagged or name-dropped)? Mentions can also be useful for tracking brand awareness (more on this later).
• Inbound Links – Inbound links and backlinks can be a good way to get traffic from more sources, but they also show how people engage with your content.

If you notice that your engagement levels across different metrics aren’t satisfying, it might mean that your content isn’t valuable or engaging enough. To solve this issue, you can hire a professional writer from the writing agency Trust My Paper who will help you improve the quality of your content or even create it for you from scratch.

#3 Time on Site

The time each user spends on your website is another metric you should be tracking. By tracking average session time, you will have a better idea of the way users experience browsing your site. Besides, if the average session time is short, it may signal that your website requires major changes and improvements.

Additionally, it’s a good idea to also track your bounce rate. This is the rate at which users go to your website and then leave after viewing a single page. If you notice that specific pages have worse bounce rates, then you probably need to improve the content on them. But if your overall bounce rate is quite bad, then the issue may be with your website itself (e.g. not mobile-friendly, poor UI, etc.)

#4 Conversions

One of the most obvious metrics you should pay attention to is your conversion rate. The conversions you track can range from sales to email opt-ins to any other types of conversions you deem relevant. Conversions are critical for your business because they determine how successful your marketing is and how much revenue you make.

Like with engagement metrics, conversion metrics can be improved by improving the quality of your content (as it is often the reason for poor results). In this case, you can work with an experienced writer or editor from a writing company to decide how you can make your content more effective in generating conversions.

#5 Brand Awareness

Last but not least, you need to track brand awareness. Just like engagement, brand awareness can be tracked with multiple metrics that will give you a complete picture. Keep your eye on:

• Users – How many unique users visit your website every day, week, month, and year? In the case of social media, how many followers or subscribers do you have?
• Page Views – How many views do your website and social media profiles get? Even if your follower count on social media isn’t particularly high, the number of page views can be a good indicator of your company’s brand awareness level.
• Impressions – Some social media platforms have a metric called impressions (e.g. Twitter). While it is not a particularly important metric, it can help you understand how many people see your content vs how many engage with it.

As mentioned earlier, mentions can be a metric that will help you track brand awareness. Simply put, if people are mentioning your brand online while discussing it, then there are more people aware of your company which helps with brand recognition and word-of-mouth marketing.

All in all, tracking specific content marketing metrics will help you understand which types of content perform better and how you can maximize the results of your campaigns. By tracking at least the metrics listed in this article, you will already have a good understanding of your marketing strategy and will be able to improve it.