Are you aware of one of the most overlooked aspects of your content strategy? You might think it’s getting on TikTok or producing content daily, but it’s not.

Analyzing and measuring the results of your content is fundamental to your success. Data will help you identify a broken content strategy, and allow you to create a plan of action to fix it.

Let’s talk about how you can do this with your current content strategy.

Start Measuring Your Metrics If You Haven’t Already

Not everyone measures their metrics. A 2018 study showed that 65% of B2B marketers don’t measure ROI.

If you don’t have any benchmarks for your content strategy, it’s time to set goals for your content and measure its success.

When you create your content marketing strategy, you should establish which metrics make the most sense to track to help determine if you’re meeting your goals. Anything from an email open-rate to how many comments you received on a blog post can help you figure out if you are reaching your target audience successfully.

You can keep metrics in a spreadsheet and update it on a weekly or monthly basis—every quarter, you can take a look at the data and see if there are any trends.

Trends can help you find what is and isn’t working for your content strategy.

 

Identifying and Fixing Your Content Strategy

Gathering and analyzing data about your content allows you to identify if something is wrong with your strategy. For example, you might notice that some blog posts earn a lot of engagement, but others aren’t doing so well.

If that’s the case, you might want to take a closer look at the under-performing blog posts to determine why they aren’t working. Is it the headline? Or is the topic not interesting to your audience? Were they never promoted in your email newsletter? We’ll discuss this more below.

Figuring out what gave those posts low-engagement can help you determine what to change to maximize your results and continue to create content that delights your audience.

 

Tips to Ensure That Your Content Strategy Works For You

You’ll want to evaluate your content strategy periodically to identify and fix any issues. Besides looking at metrics, there are a few other tips to help keep your content strategy in line with your goals.

First, you can ask your audience their opinion and always keep them involved in your content creation process. Feedback is vital to create content that matches what the audience needs.

One easy way to find out what your audience may want is to send out a survey via email. You can also engage with them directly on social media and blog comments to find out what they want to learn more about from you.

If you are consistently missing the mark, then you may want to consider revising your overall message. There’s a chance that you’re not addressing the core problems or desires of your audience persona.

A common mistake with company messages is that they tend to be completely about them and not their audience. Take the time to reevaluate your message and ask yourself if it aligns with your audience’s and your overall business goals.

 

Don’t forget to consider the way you distribute your content

You can’t expect to have raving reviews of your podcast if you never bother to share that you published a new episode on your email list, social media, or your website. Poor promotion strategies can inhibit your growth.

If you find that you’re inconsistent with promoting content, then you can create a new tactic to streamline and organize how you distribute content. You could assign this to a teammate in marketing or create a project management system to keep track of your content. Consistently distributing your content may help increase awareness and get your audience more involved.

 

What Now?

Content strategy is more than pumping out new content all the time. You also need to consider if it’s getting you closer to your business and marketing goals.

Here are some action steps to consider:

  • Create content marketing goals and determine metrics to evaluate ROI
  • Start keeping track of your metrics, if you haven’t already
  • Evaluate why some content is performing better than others
  • Gather audience feedback on what content they want to see
  • Determine if your message resonates with your audience
  • Develop a plan for promoting your content on different platforms

Evaluating your metrics can help you identify any issues with your content strategy. Finding problems may be scary, but it is ultimately going to help you create a plan of action to fix them.

Remember, it’s more than just looking at metrics. You also need to consider your audience persona, your message, and your distribution channels. All of these elements ensure that you’re successfully reaching your potential.

How often do you assess your content strategy?