Ethan Meikle's Blog

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

How to Write on the Go with Cloud Storage

Writing on the go is a favorite of many professional writers. Those who like to spice things up will know that the best way of doing that is to zone out in extremely hectic areas. That’s why writing in a coffee shop is often very effective: your brain functions at peak efficiency once you get a change of scenery.

Yet, how does cloud storage come into play? Believe it or not, you need the cloud in order to write anytime, anywhere.

Spreading words upon a white canvas is far more complicated than some would think. You have to twist the phrases to best convey what your mind makes up. You have to keep in mind the reader, the writer, and, let’s face it, Google as well.

Why not take your tablet out and go write in the coffee place downstairs?

Step 1: Always Save Your Files to the Cloud

There are a lot of cloud services for writers that work incredibly well. Browsing through these tools will help you find the right platform to suit your needs. Most of them have respective Android and iOS apps. All you have to do is install their desktop apps or use their online platform to save your articles to the cloud. And the best part is that you only need a free cloud storage account to do this.

–If you’re going to use Dropbox. Dropbox is a very useful tool for writers. The track changes features makes it incredibly easy for the supervisor to see what team members are working on. Installing Dropbox is recommended since you will have instant access to it from your file explorer. Do this for all the devices you usually use for writing. You can read here a

–If you’re going to use Google Drive. Google Drive is slightly friendlier for writers because you don’t need absolutely anything else to continue your writing. You simply have to leave your files inside the Drive and you’ll be able to edit the documents directly with the Google Drive document viewer.

–For any other clouds. If you’re planning on using some different type of cloud storage service, such as OneDrive (another great free cloud storage service), it’s advisable to make sure that your devices have the necessary app and that they can read the documents that you’re using for writing.

Step 2: Writing on the Go

Now it’s time for the actual writing process. For this you need to secure the following things:

-A good place to write. Find a spot where you think you’ll be able to concentrate. The greatest advantage of using cloud storage when writing is the freedom it provides. Write from a coffee shop, a public library, a public park, or even from home.

-A small and easy-to-carry device. For this, you can use a small laptop, your MacBook, iPad or your Android tablet. We don’t recommend writing on your phone. For professional writing, use professional tools.

-A really good keyboard. If you choose to work on an iPad or Android tablet, my personal favorite, you need to get a good compatible keyboard. You can choose whichever you want, as long as you make sure that it suits your writing style and your fingers.

-All the necessary apps up and running. Double check that you have the cloud storage app installed. The documents you work with on a daily basis should work properly. We recommend installing Microsoft Word for Android or iOS.

Step 3: Uploading to WordPress

What happens when you finish your post and you’re still sitting so cozily in that armchair at the corner café, gently jiving to that background West-side jazz? You do need to post the article, but no worries! Here’s how to make sure you don’t have to get up from your chair (make sure you do this steps before you go out to write):

-Download the WordPress app. Yep! There’s an app for everything these days. There are even two versions, for Android and for iOS respectively. Be sure to complete the installation properly.

-Add your blog to the app. This one’s easy. If you already have your blog linked with your WordPress.com account, you should see it pop up on the screen of your tablet.

-Post your article. Now, we’ll admit, editing your article prior to posting it is a bit more difficult on the mobile version of WordPress, but it will work. As long as your typical plugins are not too complicated, you should have no problem. Both All-in-One SEO and Yoast SEO work fine.

-Optimize your website for mobile devices. In order to see how your blog post looks, you need to have your device optimized for mobile devices. Check out how to do this over here.

Important: We don’t recommend writing your post directly into the WordPress Android or iOS app. In fact, we strongly advise against this. Many reviewers have complained about losing everything they’ve written when the screen timed out. We don’t have to tell you how frustrating this could be.

Do you like writing on the go? Now cloud storage can make your dream of keeping all your whimsical ideas alive! Never forget a brilliant line ever again. Pen it on a blank page and send it to the clouds!

As a tech-savvy and freelance writer, Christopher spends his time reading, researching, and writing about everything worth knowing in the digital age. He is always up to date with the newest gadgets and strives to share his knowledge of what’s the top app to use. His efforts can be noted on CloudStorage101.com where he keeps himself in the know with what are the best storage services online.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

This post is courtesy of: http://www.dailyblogtips.com

How to Solve 5 Barriers to Implementing Content Marketing Programs

Solving content marketing barriers

Over 90% of CMOs agree that their organizations must develop a publishing function to execute their growth agenda and manage the rising cost and complexity of content operations, according to a Forbes 2015 report Publish or Perish.

With near unanimity on the need to drive strategic content marketing, many companies are looking more seriously into what building a content publishing function into their organizations would look like, and how it might function.

A number of companies have done this well and developed a thriving publishing model, creating new paths that keep customers thoroughly engaged. Red Bull, Adobe, and Deloitte are three powerful examples. But for each of these it took some energy to get where they are.

Obviously, organizations cannot just flip a switch and give birth to a healthy publishing function. It takes considerable planning, a strong coalition of the willing, and a significant amount of outflanking stubborn obstacles.

If you recognize the five forces working against a content marketing mindset, along with some ideas about how to deal with each, you’ll be in a much better position to build the publisher model.

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Five forces against content marketing

1. Process friction

Organizational processes often create more friction than they reduce, grinding the time it takes to get content to market to a screeching halt. In fact, process is probably the No. 1 killer of successful content marketing.

Setting up new competencies and processes is difficult, especially when they are already established. Research shows that content marketing (a new competency) can be 62% less expensive while driving more than three times as many leads than conventional brand advertising supported through conventional outbound marketing (incumbent competencies).

Quick win: First, you need to visualize a more efficient process. Create a map illustrating all the steps needed to make the publishing model work inside your organization. Take some liberties and map out what you think you would need to make more efficient processes work. Compare this visualized new process to your existing processes to see the impact of bypassing the old way in favor of a new path. Let the core process of existing marketing work continue. As you bring content planning, creation, distribution, and measurement processes out of your visionary plan and into reality, make sure each works in your new processes on their own before you change the incumbent processes.

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2. Technology decisions

Technology decisions are typically surrounded by politics. A lot of organizations have strict and rigid protocols for the introduction of new technology so you might need to get other departments involved in the decision-making.

Quick Win: Set up a meeting with your IT group early and share your ideas for getting more strategic content into your marketplace. Ask them if they know of any basic technology solutions that correspond to your content marketing process (supply chain) and won’t add another full-time job to their roster. Getting their early buy-in will help you spread the coalition into the tech side of the house by surveying their expertise and keeping them close to your operational objectives.

3. Measurement

The No. 1 problem with measurement is that organizations rarely communicate what needs to be measured, how it will be measured, and why to everyone in the content marketing supply chain so everyone shares common objectives.

Once you set up your publishing process map, make sure you have measurements at each point. For example, at the publish stage, measure how well each piece of content has performed relative to the goals set for it. Then evaluate that data to find patterns that emerge of what’s successful and what’s not – that information can help you adjust your content production time and resources to focus on the content meeting your goals.

Quick win: Get your agencies to design what they believe is the most powerful measurement agenda for your organization’s content marketing program. It’s likely that they have put numerous measurement programs together and know details from an objective viewpoint. If you are handling measurement in-house, do some internal and external research to identify the best measurement points in your publishing process.

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4. Buried expertise

As organizations adopt a publishing mindset, the content marketing pioneers have to tap into the organization’s institutional knowledge outside the marketing department. This information is typically found where a company’s key value is entrenched. For example, at a manufacturing organization, it might be the engineers who know the most about the value of the innovations. These are the people who can lend the most authentic and interesting voice your customers will find most valuable.

The act of liberating that knowledge is difficult. Once you have identified the best sources and asked them to get involved in the company’s content publishing, you may hear responses like, “You’ve got to be kidding me! I don’t even have time to do the job I am supposed to do and you’re asking me to create content?” Or, “We’re not a news publisher, we’re a manufacturer. I need my employees to do their jobs, not write a puff piece on why we’re smarter. Go ask marketing to do their jobs.”

It’s hard to get people to see value when there is no precedent. Don’t ask these sources to help without first stating transparently what a content publishing model is, what it can do for an organization, and how it can benefit the source. The more invested your internal sources are, the more valuable they feel. If they know their value to the company is more than their core task, that alone can move you much closer to liberating their rich knowledge.

Quick win: Focus on setting precedent with one key piece of content. Secure a friendly internal expert to be a part of its creation. Make a big deal about that initial piece of content. Share widely the success it creates. You’ll find more and more people will be more willing to share their genius.

5. Agency relationships

It’s possible that you work with a content agency, a measurement agency, an SEO agency, and someone’s nephew who is an aspiring videographer/editor. You have them all working to help pull together the most optimal content marketing program. But in almost every case a lack of coordination kills that multi-partner effort – or at least slows it down to a crippling speed.

The fastest and most effective way to fix this problem is to get more out of fewer agencies, with a core focus on unified performance and quality metrics. It’s imperative that all your partners share a carbon copy of what you say success and quality look like.

Quick win: Hold a biannual agency day where you invite the agencies that contribute to your content marketing supply chain to share what they are doing with you and the other agencies. Then tell them your objectives for the forthcoming period and see what ideas they have to simplify your efforts.

Conclusion

Even if your company is fortunate and doesn’t have to overcome all five inhibitors to a successful publishing model, you likely have to overcome one or two. Knowing how to spot them — and how to implement valuable ideas to make sure they won’t bottleneck your progress — is a big part of the battle.

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To overcome your content marketing challenges or to thwart new ones, subscribe to CMI’s free daily or weekly newsletter with insight, tips, and more.

Cover image by FlashBuddy, Morguefile.com via pixabay.com

The post How to Solve 5 Barriers to Implementing Content Marketing Programs appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Digital Con-Men: Threats from Social Engineering

From snake-oil salesmen to over-the-phone crooks, con-men have manipulated the habits, behaviors and emotions of people to capture their attention, information and money. These days a new type of con artist has risen to prominence. Digital con-man, online fraudster, techno-crook. This type of criminal goes by many names, but the one thing they do have in common is that they utilise meticulous social engineering to worm their way into the lives of their victims.

Instead of using brute force hacks and tactics, these fraudsters use subtle methods to make you part with key pieces of information and hard earned money. Instead of attacking your digital system they go after your ability to discern friend from foe. If you ever received an email from a “Nigerian Prince” looking to share some of his wealth with you, then you’ve seen a digital con-man in action. “I’d never fall for something like that”, you may say. But many have, and it has become such a problem that Foreign Agencies such as Interpol have a dedicated taskforce for these types scammers.

Social engineering attacks are not limited to the Nigerian Prince scam or those like it. Other types of attacks like phishing involve impersonating family or friends and then asking the victim to lend them some money. Many a grandparent has fallen prey to this, believing that they are sending money to a grandchild that is in dire financial straits. Criminals will use email addresses that appear very similar to the legitimate email, or they may just hack the family members email account outright.

Along the same lines, digital con-men prey on people’s niceness and willingness to help by pretending that they are a charity and are looking for donations or to raise funds for some cause. But, once the victim enters their credit card information to make the donation, the digital fraudster will run off with the card information and either use it or turn around and sell it on the digital black market.

Baiting schemes, in particular, depend on correctly reading the tendencies of their victims in order for them to be successful. Unlike other scams which are proactive in asking for money or information from the victim, this scheme uses “baits” – content, often downloadable, that users covet or want. Once the content has been downloaded onto the victim’s device a trojan or worm is usually activated and will start uploading information from the device.

The types of schemes and attacks are numerous. The tactics and strategies of these criminals are ever changing as well. However, one thing they all have in common is they require the victim to make quick, irrational decisions. A lot of these scams can be foiled by simply slowing down, reading everything thoroughly, fact checking and actually engaging the person who you think the email is coming from. Does your child or grandchild need that money right now? Does Brian from the Accounts Department really want me to send £25,000 to that bank account number? I’m sure that a quick phone call to them will not hurt. Does that free download seem too good to be true? Most likely it is but perhaps it’s not. At the very least run it through a couple layers of anti-virus before installing.

This article was contributed by David Share from http://amazingsupport.co.uk.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

This post is courtesy of: http://www.dailyblogtips.com

The Blog Post Checklist for Cranking Your Search Ranking

SEO has hit the fan, man. Hmm. What?

I mean, if you think you have foolproof tactics up your sleeve and magic linking techniques in your back pocket for optimizing your content, I’m sorry to inform you that your sleeve and pocket are see-through.

In 2016, you can’t hide your tricks. The search gods see all. And they don’t look kindly on your 2010-era SEO.

The search gods see all and they don’t look kindly on your 2010-era #SEO says @FeldmanCreative
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Google and the other search engines you care about are now good at sniffing out evidence that shows readers get value from your pages.

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Focus on 3 tactics that work

I learned most of what I know about optimizing web content for search from (1) listening to my mentor and friend Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media, and (2) practicing his lessons.

With Andy’s permission, I’ve revisited his remarkably helpful post, Web Content Checklist: 21 Ways to Publish Better Content, and produced an infographic based on it.

As you’re about to see, Andy delivers 21 tips to cover the three ways you can optimize your content and crank your rank.

Indicate the relevance of your article to the search bots.
Tap human psychology to increase clicks, reads, and social shares.
Feature compelling media to improve the quality of your content.

3 ways to optimize #content: Relevance, tap human psychology, & feature compelling media says @Crestodina
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With a huge thank you to Andy, a 2016 Content Marketing World keynote speaker, and my partner in design, Visme, I present the 21 Point SEO Blog Post Checklist: Cranking Your Ranking.

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21 POINT SEO BLOG POST CHECKLIST

Conclusion

As you can see, the first five tips focus on the more technical (traditional) tactics around SEO. Six years ago, that list would have been longer, referencing keyword frequency and much more. Today, though, search engines are smarter – they look for content that truly fulfills what searchers are looking for. That’s why it is equally, if not more important, to ensure that you focus on the 16 other tips that relate to content quality.

Search engines look for #content that truly fulfills what searchers are looking for says @FeldmanCreative #SEO
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Make plans today to hear the originator of the 21-point checklist, Andy Crestodina, and other insightful experts at Content Marketing World 2016 this September. Use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post The Blog Post Checklist for Cranking Your Search Ranking appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Top 6 Ways to Generate More Mileage from Your Content

There are triggers that are guaranteed to make your content perform well on the web. In the online world, there are several million pieces of content added each day to the already billion pages of content that already exists on the web. In order for your content to stand out, it needs to have compelling elements that will allow it to break through the noise. Most web marketers struggle to execute this with their campaign.

Deliver content for a specific audience.

By addressing a core topic for a specific audience, your content will have a much better chance of gaining traction on the web. Don’t try to develop a content piece that appeals to everybody. Instead, find out the needs, wants, desires, problems, frustrations and fantasies of a specific audience group. For example, WordPress developers that want to use plugins that will improve their website’s performance. Or basketball players that want to know how they can improve their vertical leap ability.

Use compelling headlines.

Powerful headlines should be used to sell your content to the audience. They need to sell the worthiness of the content to be clicked, liked and shared on the web. Epic content will fall short if the headline fails to convince a potential viewer to engage with it. Upworthy content writers are required to write 25 headlines before publishing their content. As a result, they create unique and compelling headlines that allows their content to perform well across the web.

Use compelling images.

People love to engage with image content. The featured image that you use for your content can double the amount of traffic to your website. When the content is supported by more compelling images, it will create more opportunities for your content to get liked and shared across the web. Spend time creating good quality images that have a high-resolution and that tell a compelling story to your audience.

Make sure your content delivers value.

No matter what type of content you publish, it must deliver value for your target audience. Take the time to support your content with value by providing:

-Quotes from credible sources.
-Statistics from primary sources such as surveys.
-Embedding valuable content such as infographics, videos or audio files.
-Linking to other credible websites that support your content.

Keep your content interesting by telling a story.

People love stories. So it is important that you find an angle that will allow you to develop a compelling story for your content. Consider telling a story that:

-Captures the human-interest angle.
-Highlights major announcements.
-Marks the passage of time (such as a 5, 10 or 25 year anniversary)
-Reacts to a current story, event or trend.
-Solves a problem.
-Is honest.

Promote your content on platforms where your target audience hangs out.

Implementing the right promotional strategy will allow your content to gain exposure, traffic and shares from your target audience. It is important that you identify where your audience hangs out online. Some methods for finding your audience online include:

-Searching for discussion threads on forums.
-Searching for question and answer websites like Quora for relevant discussion -topics.
-Searching for blog posts and adding to the commentary.
-Searching for topic groups on social media platforms.
-Searching for influencers on blogs, media or social media platforms and sharing -the content with them.

You can even use tools like BuzzSumo or Buzzstream to find people that have engaged with similar content and promote your content directly to them.

These are proven methods that will get your content likes and shares across the web. Amplify your website’s content by implementing these tactics today!

This post was contributed from SoulDigital.com.au, a digital marketing agency in Australia.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

This post is courtesy of: http://www.dailyblogtips.com

The Secret to Content Marketing ROI

content-marketing-roi

Questions about content marketing ROI are probably the ones I hear most from marketers who are struggling to build their own business case internally.

We know our customers are turning out advertising. And we know that as consumers, we are all consuming more information online. We are looking to get informed and we are looking to be entertained.

We don’t care where the content comes from. But we aren’t sitting around waiting for it. And we won’t go too far to find it.

But building the business case is often a tricky proposition. We can’t point to the advertising guy and make it all about him. It is also important to remember that everyone inside the business creates content. And creators love their content like a mama loves her baby. Although the content may stink, we can’t call anyone’s baby ugly.

How do we build the business case for content marketing and answer the ROI question before we even really get started?

It starts by building a strong business case that doesn’t just directly attack people, their teams, or their budgets.

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What is the ROI of content?

Let’s start with how we answer the ROI question before really even getting started. I point out that content marketing ROI is higher than the average marketing ROI in every place I’ve looked. At Content Marketing World, Julie Fleischer, former senior director for data, content and media at Kraft, said content marketing ROI was four times greater than their most targeted advertising.

At @KraftFoods, #Contentmarketing ROI was 4X greater than their most targeted advertising says @jfly
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The first step in responding to the content marketing ROI question is to ask for the baseline: What is your company’s average marketing ROI?

Then address each of these three components of ROI:

Cost
Utilization
Performance

Content cost: Conduct a content audit, or at least a sample of the content you produce. Apply some average costs and extrapolate to really gain a sense for how much your content costs.

Consider factors such as the cost to create the content including copywriting fees, design services, and don’t forget to estimate the cost of the time for project management.

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Content utilization: Sirius Decisions has reported that as much as 60 to 70% of content goes unused. Any content that never gets used is 100% waste. You need to not only track content production, but also usage.

As much as 60 to 70% of #content goes unused according to @siriusdecisions #contentmarketing
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If you use an agency for your content creation, look at a sample of the content it delivered and then audit your external channels for any metrics of usage. If you use internal resources, ask the campaign managers for usage reports.

If you’re like most companies, don’t be surprised at how challenging it can be to track content usage.

Content performance: Most people start by talking about page views, social shares, and clicks. But it’s important to first tie your content performance to the business case that got you started in the first place.

For awareness and thought leadership content, it’s important to go beyond traffic metrics to look at engagement rates. Anyone can buy traffic. But engagement is the key in today’s attention-starved world filled with so many choices.

Anyone can buy traffic. But engagement is the key says @BrennerMichael #contentmarketing
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For lead-generation content, it’s important to look beyond leads to measure both the quality of the leads (conversion rates) as well as engagement.

How do you answer the content marketing ROI question:

Ask for your overall or average marketing ROI.
See if your business understands the cost of the content it produces.
Find out how much of it gets used. Ever. I’ve never seen any business over 50%!!!
Promise to build a business case and measure the return.

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Build the content marketing business case

If you’ve survived long enough to want to learn how to build the business case, there are a couple of ways to create it.

Goal: Reach early-stage buyers. Most marketing content is overly promotional (and we tune it out) and is pushed just too early in the buying process. Your business needs to get people to know your brand, like your brand, and trust your brand enough to want to buy from you. That starts with a significant amount of early-stage “dating” content. It needs to be non-promotional and not overly creepy. You don’t want to push too hard at this stage because you want to get to a second “date.”

Most companies have a significant opportunity to reach more early-stage prospects. You can use these concepts to build the business case for content marketing in the early stages:

Your fair share of the conversations – What percent of online conversations on your product category are branded? What percentage of those conversations is from or about your brand? How different is that from your market share? If there’s a gap, it means your competition is wooing your prospects before you. For example if you have 25% of the sales in a product category, but your digital content only represents 5% of branded conversation online, you are not reaching your online fair share. Your SEO agency or even some of the SEO tools like SEMrush can provide you with your online fair share.

Unbranded search traffic on your website – How many of your early-stage prospects find your company website? You can identify this by looking at search traffic from brand terms vs. unbranded search terms. If you’re like most brands, you promote too much on your website and you need to build a brand publishing capability. If you write more about the trends in your industry, you will not only be seen as an authority, you will attract more unbranded search traffic.

Banner effectiveness at driving brand visits – If your company spends marketing budget on digital display (banners), test the effectiveness of this approach at delivering traffic to your website vs. content marketing.

Cost of advertising / search landing pages with low organic and social traffic – While advertising landing pages are built to deliver on the advertising message, measure the bounce rate of these pages and the amount of organic search or social traffic these pages get. Consider building a content marketing experience to serve as the landing page for your advertising. This will deliver “free” search and social traffic on top of your paid ad traffic.

Cost of organic and social website traffic vs. paid – Content marketing allows you to gain additional reach, engagement, and conversion without having to pay for it. You can literally earn your audience’s attention without buying it. One simple way to calculate this is to look at your average cost per click from paid search. Apply that number to your organic and social traffic to get the value of these visitors.

Cost of content that goes unused – While this business case applies to any buyer stage, it is often one of the biggest marketing expenses. And any content created and not used is just pure waste.

Goal: Engage new prospects with your brand: If you are not connecting with potential customers at the top of your funnel, there are a few ways you can quantify the opportunity to reach and convert them:

Time spent, bounce rate on content- vs. advertising-landing pages – This comparison should reveal how content marketing helps your brand reach early-stage visitors, engage, and convert them to sales.

Repeat visits, and time engaged with your brand – Repeat visitors came to your site once and then they came back for more. Measure the impact of these visitors by looking at their conversion rates vs. first-time visitors.

Value per subscriber – Quantify how many prospects you literally bring into the brand fold so you can start to market to them. You can quantify their value by looking at revenue or lead value from your email list divided by the number of emails you have in your database.

Goal: Conversions you would have never reached: Finally, you need to be able to measure content marketing in quantifiable ways that your business can understand such as leads, sales revenue, and retention:

Leads and sales from subscribers – Every lead you generate from content marketing can be valued. Anyone who registers for one of your white papers or events can be valued. Every subscriber you generate to build your list can be valued.

Content marketing ROI vs. overall marketing ROI – Once you’ve identified the previously detailed data, calculate the ROI of generating these subscribers, leads, and sales vs. the brand’s overall marketing ROI.

Retention and lifetime value – Measure customers who engage with your content marketing and determine if they spend more or stay longer as customers. Content marketing can serve to deliver more engaged and profitable customers.

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Conclusion

To answer the content marketing ROI question for your business, you need to build a solid case based on a deep understanding of your business.

What is your business’ average marketing ROI and how can content marketing achieve a higher return? The answer comes down to understanding your content costs, usage, and performance.

From there, you have a few paths to building a solid business case that will allow you to reach new customers, engage them with your brand in a meaningful way, and then convert them to new sales and long-term relationships that provide real ROI.

Learn more insights and practical tips from Michael Brenner in person when he presents at Content Marketing World this September. Register today, using the code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post The Secret to Content Marketing ROI appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

How to Match Key Metrics With Your Content Goals

Matching Key Metrics with Content Goals

If your goal is to lose weight and you want to measure your progress, you use a scale to track pounds or a tape measure to track inches. You would never measure your weight loss by tracking your height.

If you did that, you’d never know how far you’ve come — how many pounds or inches you’ve lost — and you wouldn’t be able to objectively see whether something you’re doing to lose weight is working. It’d be nearly impossible to hold yourself accountable, and it would be a waste of your time, energy, and resources.

It’s common sense. You wouldn’t record your height to measure how much weight you’ve lost. Unfortunately, some content marketers lose that common sense when it comes to tracking the success of their content efforts.

Some marketers aren’t clear from the beginning about what their goals are or what success looks like, and others mistakenly track the wrong metrics. Too often, we hear fellow marketers set lead generation as the No. 1 goal of content, yet they can’t seem to look past the number of social shares a piece of content earns to measure its effectiveness.

And it’s that confusion that leads to ineffective content marketing and other challenges that keep you from achieving your organization’s content marketing goals. In fact, in its 2016 B2B content marketing research, Content Marketing Institute found that only 30% of marketers say their organizations are effective at content marketing.

Only 30% of marketers say their organizations are effective at #contentmarketing via @cmicontent #research
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Now, this goal-tracking confusion could very well be a simple misunderstanding on the part of marketers – after all, many factors play into content’s success, and just as many metrics exist to measure it. But this misunderstanding, as simple as it is, has serious consequences for your content efforts.

The trick is uncovering your team’s key performance indicators and matching those goals with specific, measurable metrics to ensure that the content you’re creating and distributing is effective. The following guide will help you match metrics to goals, measure success, and become a better, more effective content marketer.

Uncover KPIs & match goals to measurable metrics for effective #contentmarketing via @Kelsey_M_Meyer
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If your goal is lead generation

When lead generation is your most important organizational goal (85% of marketers say it is), measuring social shares isn’t enough. To appropriately measure how your content is working for lead generation, you need to head to the bottom of the funnel to check out these metrics:

85% of marketers say that lead generation is their most important organizational goal says @Kelsey_M_Meyer
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Click-throughs: Every article should include a clear call to action. If your content is published elsewhere as a guest contribution, the desired action could be a click-through to your site or blog. If it’s a blog post on your platform, the desired action could be a download of gated content. Either way, the action should be clear and compelling, and measuring the click-through rates on those links is critical to understanding how your content is generating and converting leads.

Conversions: Take this a step further by comparing how many of those leads are qualified and can be converted into clients. We have a team member whose job involves combining information from our marketing automation system with her own individual research to learn more about each lead who comes through our site. She looks at everything from a lead’s LinkedIn account to his company website and even his Twitter account to determine whether he would be a good prospective customer. From there, she reaches out to the most qualified ones to advance the sales process, and our marketing team compares leads generated to qualified leads generated to better understand our progress toward achieving our goal.

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If your goal is sales enablement

While lead generation is a fantastic goal – one that my team sets for itself each month – it isn’t complete without sales. Using content in the sales process is incredibly valuable, and to track how your content is affecting your sales enablement, you should monitor sales for leads who receive your content versus those who don’t. In particular, consider:

Sales conversion rate: Ideally, you’ll find that sending content to leads builds trust by directly addressing their objections, pain points, and questions. As a result, they should convert at a higher rate.

Sales cycle length: If your content is working, it should help your team decrease the length of your average sales cycle. If leads who receive content continue to close at a faster rate than those who don’t, you’ll know your content is effective.

Contract size: Because each piece of content should help overcome or minimize a barrier, it should be easier to sell more to the lead. Compare the contract size of clients who were nurtured with content against the contract size of clients who weren’t.

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If your goal is brand awareness

Despite a 7% decrease since last year, brand awareness remains a top-level organizational goal for 77% of marketers. While I wouldn’t consider brand awareness a KPI (it’s difficult to accurately measure without performing an expensive brand-lift analysis), it is a goal that content marketing can help achieve. To measure your progress toward this goal, track the following:

Social shares and following: Measure your social following and average shares per article by benchmarking where you are and tracking your progress. Our marketing team uses HubSpot to schedule and track social media engagement and consistently reviews it to see what types of content, formats, times of day, days of the week, etc., work best for us and our audience.

Article views: This is easier to measure if you only focus on owned media because you can access your own analytics. It becomes a bit more difficult when you contribute content to external media, especially if the publisher doesn’t list the number of views on the page itself. The more people are viewing your content, the more they are aware of your brand.

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If your goal is audience engagement

Beyond awareness, though, lies engagement. Many marketers — my team included — lean more toward genuine engagement and interaction than general brand awareness. To track your progress toward your goal of audience engagement, monitor these metrics:

Social shares: Look beyond the number of social shares, and closely examine who is sharing your content. It’s great when a piece of content goes viral or earns lots of shares, but if no one in your target audience or no one who influences your audience is engaging, those numbers aren’t as meaningful.

Comments: Ignore trolls and spam messages. Identify the individuals who are contributing to your content and who care about your industry, and look for the types of content that engage them most. You can reach out to them personally or on social media to continue the conversation and engagement.

Click-through rates: Sharing and commenting are solid metrics, but when your content prompts a reader to click, you can find out more about how and why he or she is engaging. By tracking the number of people who click and what kinds of content they’re clicking to see, you can learn even more about your audience members and how to engage them.

We know that 79% of marketers with the most effective content marketing know what success looks like for them. But we should also recognize that content’s effectiveness doesn’t rely on the clarity of our content goals alone.

79% of marketers w/the most effective #contentmarketing know what success looks like says @Kelsey_M_Meyer
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Part of the effectiveness of our content depends on our ability to identify the correct metrics and measure our progress toward achieving those goals. It’s not enough to simply set those content goals. Without a system to track and measure them, you’ll never know whether you achieve the goals you set. Or worse, you’ll never be able to improve ineffective efforts because you won’t know what works and what doesn’t.

As content marketers and consumers, we all benefit from better, more effective content, and it all starts with clear goals and effective measurement.

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The post How to Match Key Metrics With Your Content Goals appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.