Let’s be honest, just creating content can feel like a monumental check mark, but unless we want to operate in hope marketing, we also need to evaluate our content.
When we evaluate our content, we gain direction on what changes need to be made to see vertical growth.
For those of us who tend to be more right-brained, this may take some effort; but it’s absolutely necessary for success.
Content evaluation questions:
Process
Do you have a system for discovering relevant topics in your niche and developing and distributing that content?
For example, do you plan out your content based on keyword research and feedback you’ve received? Have you decided what type of core content (written, audio, video) you’re going to distribute and how often (1x a week? 2x a week?)? Do you know what social media channels you’re going to use to drive traffic to your site? Have you mapped out your content strategy for the next month (or more) in a content calendar?
If you don’t already have a content calendar, you can download my free content calendar spreadsheet.
Reach
Are you reaching more people with your brand awareness content? Are your unique views and page views increasing on your website or blog? Do you have more social media followers?
A few ways to measure reach:
- Google Search Console – Evaluate search terms used to find your site. Are people coming directly to your site by typing the URL of your website or are they searching by your brand or products? You can find these results in the Search Queries Report.
- Google Analytics – Evaluate site engagement by looking at the number of users, bounce rate, pages per session, session length. You can also evaluate where your traffic is coming from by looking at metrics such as organic search, referrals, direct traffic, email traffic, and social media channels.
- Moz Link Explorer or other inbound link tools – Evaluate the quality and number of sites linking to your content.
Engagement
Are you solving a problem in your niche as evidenced by a growing trend in engagement with your content? Are you receiving more comments and social shares? Are people staying on your site longer?
A few ways to measure engagement:
- Contact Record Management System/Email Provider – Evaluate the number of leads/email subscribers you have. Are more people joining your email list than unsubscribing? What is your email open and click rates? A low open rate could mean the subject line needs some tweaking or that your emails are being marked as spam.
- Google Analytics/Landing Page Builder – Evaluate the conversion rate of opt-ins to page sessions. Divide the number of opt-ins by the number of page sessions to get your opt-in rate.
- Website/Blog – Evaluate what blog posts are generating comments. Is there a post that hit the bullseye with your audience?
- Social Media – Evaluate your follower count and social shares. These metrics are certainly not the end all, be all, as follower count does not necessarily equal profit in business but it is a good indicator of how well your content is resonating with your audience.
Conversions
Are people opting-in for your freebie? If you have a landing page, how many people are visiting your page and opting in for your freebie and subsequently making a purchase? Are you seeing a growing conversion rate? What is your email open and click rates? Do you have repeat customers?
Take a moment to consider the content journey you plan (or are currently taking) to customers on. How are you going to measure progress along that journey? The three basic areas to consider are awareness, engagement, and conversions.
A few ways to measure conversions:
- Google Analytics/E-Commerce Store – Evaluate product offer conversion rate. Divide the number of purchases by sales page sessions to get your product offer conversion rate.
- E-Commerce Store – Evaluate the average customer value. Divide total revenue for a year (or time period of your choosing) by the number of purchases during that same time period. Next, calculate the average purchase frequency rate by dividing the number of purchases by the number of unique customers who made purchases during that time period. Then calculate customer value by multiplying the average purchase value by the average purchase frequency rate.
- E-Commerce Store – Evaluate retention rate. Subtract the number of customers acquired during a certain time period from the number of customers you had at the end of a time period. Divide this number by the number of customers you had at the beginning of that time period.
- Contact Record Management System/Email Provider – Evaluate open and click-through rates of promotional emails.
Tracking
Set aside time at the end of every month to evaluate your content. Even if there isn’t a whole lot of data to make meaningful content decisions, it’s never too early to get into the habit of evaluating and analyzing your data.
Of course, the idea of logging into multiple accounts in order to get the analytics to make an evaluation sounds time-consuming – cause it is! That’s why I started using a dashboard tool called Dasheroo because it syncs with your social media accounts, google analytics, and a variety of other accounts that you may want to track, even some email service providers.
Plus, they have pre-built dashboards to give you an idea of what you should be tracking. Dasheroo certainly isn’t the only dashboard tool out there, it was just the one that I liked and met my needs at the time I was researching dashboards.
Now, let’s turn that inspiration into perspiration!