Every webmaster wants to know how effective their content marketing efforts are. Why put in the effort to create, publish and market content if you’re not going to crunch the numbers? The Internet makes it possible to share content with a large audience and few limitations, but you probably want to know how far your content is reaching, which formats are most engaging and what channels are most rewarding.
Four components make it possible to measure your content marketing efforts and adjust your strategy as needed. The interesting point is that all four of these components are equally important, so if your content marketing strategy isn’t working, it’s hard to know which element is to blame. The best approach is to ensure that all factors are equally perfected.
Let’s dive right into the four components you should understand and master.
1. Content Message
Your content’s message is a hard thing to analyze, but it’s an important feature to look at. The best way to test this element is to send out two separate texts with modified messages that speak to a different audience. Is there one that performs better? Knowing the tone and message that resonates with your audience will make your content most engaging in the future.
2. Content Format
Testing the format of your content is a bit tricky as well, but nothing impossible. The best approach is to have the same exact promotion for both files. For instance, you may send out a PDF and a podcast file, and as long as the promotional efforts are the same, you can measure which format is best suited for your audience.
3. Distribution Channel
Once your content is created, where should it go? On your blog? Social media? Social bookmarking sites? Before you answer that, you should have your long-term content marketing goals in place. If you are trying to create awareness and reach more people, your content is best distributed on larger channels. If it’s SEO and brand credibility you want to achieve, posting on your blog is sufficient.
Testing this area is much easier since you can publish the same piece of content on multiple channels and see which one performs best.
4. Promotional Efforts
To test which promotions are most effective, apply multiple marketing campaigns to the content and see which one does best. Keep in mind that you’re testing the efficacy of the promotion, which doesn’t exactly pan out to the overall performance of the content. Therefore, if a campaign fails to deliver, you’ll want to take a step back and evaluate all four components.
Testing content marketing efforts is an integral piece to the puzzle, especially as budgets need to be allocated more wisely with so many marketing efforts available.
