The key to reporting on content marketing is to have a quality reporting software in place. Let's face it: the business world has become very oversaturated, and is developing at rapid speeds. If you don't have proper tech and software in place to help increase efficiency within your business, then you'll get lost in the shuffle. One of my favourite reporting tools for content marketing Tableau, which creates comprehensive visual dashboards that help organize and clarify your marketing analytics. Tableau pulls data from multiple different channels, like Google and Salesforce to make sure your reports are as comprehensive as possible. Data is nothing if it isn't accessible, so the key to reporting on content marketing is to use softwares that make data easily-ingestible for all departments within your business. Data visualization is a critical part of making informed marketing decisions. How are you supposed to improve your content marketing tactics if you can't understand your reports?
Google has great tools to use to keep track of your site\'s performance, like Google Analytics or Google Search Console, but sometimes nailing down performance for specific content on your site can be difficult. In Google Data Studio, you can easily create a report that tracks the pages on your site and the performance of those pages. You can even specify date ranges and set the report to update daily for real-time metrics. I find it most useful to report on content at least monthly. This cadence is long enough that content has time to gain traction online and short enough that you can catch any alarming trends in time.
Content marketing reporting clearly depends on the goals you\'ve set for your business - is it brand awareness or organic traffic or business sign-ups or demo bookings? All these metrics are to be reported in your content marketing report. For example - I worked with a B2B automation app and we wrote extensively long-form content on our blog. Our main goal was to attract users to the TOFU bucket and push them down to the funnel to try our product. I\'d also love to understand which content was working the best, so I\'d report on content-wise metrics too. So my main metrics were: - avg. users per month to my blog - blog reporting the highest number of users - sign up button clicks across each blog - sign-ups completed from each blog - avg. time spent on the blog post page The tools I used for reporting were: - Google Search Console - Google Analytics - Google Data Studio
How to report on content marketing? It is very simple. First, we set ourselves a topic. In order to determine it, we use GAP analysis or Antisnapshot analysis. The first is to understand what your competitors are writing about. The second is to understand what kind of content would bring keywords that already rank somewhere in the top100 into the top ten. Then we create a scope and have a professional write the content. The content should not be shorter than 1,500 words. Next, the keywords for which the article was written are placed in the keyword tracker (e.g. Wincher, SEMRush or Accuranker) with the appropriate tag and the article is published on the website. Once the article is indexed, we observe how it climbs in the SERPs and (thanks to Search Console and Google Analytics) how much traffic and conversions/leads it has generated. Finally, we repeat the process over and over again. Lukasz Zelezny https://seo.london lukasz@zelezny.co.uk
Founder at Repeat Earner
Answered 4 years ago
Reporting on content marketing can be tough because results are not always immediate or timely. I use tools such as Google Analytics, Search Console, Accuranker, and Ahrefs to track metrics such as sessions, rankings, conversion rates, and backlinks. I stagger my reporting to give my content time to mature. For example, I will report on Q1 content at the end of Q2, and Q2 content at the end of Q3.
Our company, site, and content is brand-spanking new. As a product-led growth (PLG) organization, our content exists to attract a high volume of traffic to our site, and convince as many users as possible to sign up for our free product. Because of this, our content is measured in only two ways: entrances and conversions (ie: how many people showed up to our site because of this piece of content, and how many people signed up because of this piece of content). We measure traffic through GA4, and then use Google Data Studio to report on our top of funnel efforts paired with conversion data that comes directly through Segment/our product.
We report on content marketing at a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Our primary tools are: Knotch (for understanding what content is driving to conversions and mapping/optimizing the audience journey), Google Analytics (as a secondary layer for additional data points), a mix of Shield and native analytics on social media channels, and Elate (used as a planning and BI tool). Top tip: The most valuable reports indicate what content is actually influencing customers to convert. Typically this isn't first or last touch content, which don't adequately reflect middle touch content that is often the catalyst, and it isn't the content that drives the most traffic or has the most page views (easily inflated with paid ads). Whether you build a good data model or leverage tech tools (like Knotch as mentioned above), you want to measure and report on the most influential content that drives customer action.
Reporting is probably the most important aspect of content marketing for us as it allows us to actually show progress and wins with the customers (and with our internal projects). We use GDS and Google Analytics for standard traffic reporting, Airtable to report on content (and where we are in terms of production and projections for the future), and Slite to pack it all up nicely and make it digestible. We track all our sprints in Airtable and analyze them in GDS so we always know where we stand for each project, and we tend to send these reports each Monday. At the end of each month, we make a master report breaking down everything that happened in that month, and this allows us to better project our capacity for future work.
As an SEO Consultant I use more tools to track metrics than most, that said, SEMRush and Ahrefs are my go to tools as well as Google Analytics when it comes to content marketing reports. An effective content marketing strategy will drive traffic to your site and it's important to understand where that traffic originates from to concentrate your efforts. To assess the relevance of your content to your audience and whether you are answering their questions, you should monitor the duration visitors spend on your site, the click through rate, and what content engages them the most. By tracking these metrics you can adjust your strategy to create more attractive and engaging content that not only attracts visitors but holds their attention and ultimately results in sales.
You don't earn the reputation as the top dog in town without good reason. Ahrefs is one stop when it comes to evaluating your website's metrics. The success of your content marketing is no exception. The Content Gap feature tells us what content we need to put in our post to compete with people beating us in the SERPs. Also, the Rank Tracker gives us a report on how our content is doing in the Search Engine Results Pages. In addition, the Content Explorer reveals content ideas and tells us how many links we need and who we have to beat to be a contender for a strong ranking position in the SERPs.
We use Google Analytics to report on our content marketing, which allows us to see how many people are clicking on links, how long they are staying on the site, and where they're coming from. This helps us make sure that we're reaching the right audience with the right message. We also use Google Search Console to track which keywords are driving the most traffic, so we can optimize our content for those terms.
Content marketing can be reported in a number of ways, depending on the desired outcome. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, then metrics such as web traffic or social media engagement is where you need to turn your attention to. Alternatively, if the goal is to generate leads or sales, then measures such as conversion rate or cost per lead might be more relevant. There are a variety of tools that can be used to track progress against content marketing goals. Google Analytics is a popular choice for website data, while social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter offer their own insights tools. Other options include specialist software such as BuzzSumo or web analytics tools like Chartbeat. Content marketing should be reported on regularly, in order to track progress and identify any areas that need improvement. A good rule of thumb is to check in at least monthly, although more frequent reporting may be necessary for larger campaigns.
When it comes to content marketing, the reporting is done regularly; sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly. We use Google Analytics to track traffic and see how users engage with our site. We also use Mixpanel to track how frequently people make purchases, how long they stay on our site and other engagement metrics.
The tip for good reporting on content marketing is putting specific pre-determined KPIs in place prior to a content marketing campaign or project, and then using search-engine tools such as Google Analytics or Semrush in order to identify the extent to which said targets were achieved. For example, if the aim of your content marketing strategy was to increase top-of-the-funnel engagement in the form of increased impressions, platforms such as Google Analytics are able to tell you concisely whether or not such an aim was achieved. Likewise, if you were looking to achieve more bottom-of-the-funnel traffic, with the hope of increased sales conversion, data such as the customer orders or enquiries can subsequently be measured. Pre-set targets for content marketing are crucial, and search engine consoles such as Google analytics are crucial in allowing an assessment to be made regarding whether or not said targets were achieved.
Kred is a platform that monitors your influence. It analyzes your Facebook and Twitter accounts and identifies your most influential friends. Moving forward reaching out to said influential friends will then assist in building your credibility and status. Kred gives users an influence score and an outreach score as well, both of which will rise as you engage more online with those the platform reveals will best serve your brand. Overall the platform offers a plethora of tools to both grow and keep track of your influence.
In 2022, using a content marketing analytics tool is a no-brainer. We get far richer data than we’d be able to gather and analyze manually, and we save our team countless hours of unnecessary work. Buffer is our tool of choice, as it gives us incredible report customizability. Though we measure all the traditional KPIs like click-through rate and conversions, our content reports focus on one particular metric - backlinks. We aim to become our industry's authority, and backlinks measure our content’s quality more accurately than anything else. You can still get click-throughs and high pageviews with poor-quality content if you write a catchy headline that draws in users. We want users, colleagues, and other brands to be engaged enough with our content that they want to reference or link it on their website. Backlinks are the ultimate community proof of a brand’s growth in thought leadership, so it is our main focus and measure of every content report.
We use Google Search Console to measure the success of SEO keywords used in our business website content. For example, when crafting blog posts, we research which keywords have high volume and low competition. After the article is published, we report how many organic visitors, clicks, and impressions we have achieved using Google Search Console.
Cyfe offers a TV Mode that allows the whole office to see real time data on any monitor. Additionally the tool works well with Ecommerce platforms and social media to uncover a comprehensive analysis of your content’s ability to engage with audiences/customers, as well as other performance metrics. At just $19 a month and 14 day free trial Cyfe offers a lot of bang for your buck.
We report on content marketing once per month, and we track three things: 1. Total leads/clicks from content (+breakdown per article) 2. Total organic traffic to content (+breakdown per article) 3. Rankings of keywords we're trying to rank for The tools we use include: - Google Search Console - Google Analytics - SEMRush My main tip is to make sure you're reporting numbers that the other person cares about. All too often, they won't care about backlinks, DA and other SEO specific metrics. Ask them what metrics they want to see, and then strive to keep it simple and easy to understand. For example, some clients ask us to break down these metrics per continent.
President at Cabrella
Answered 4 years ago
Having a dashboard that provides real-time updates, as well as generating full reports daily, weekly, and for the month or period is essential to gauging content marketing performance. Monitoring changes helps us adjust our activity as we go so we can be more effective and understand which approaches work best for our brand and audience. Examples of dashboard metrics include comments, shares, overall engagement, clicks, site traffic, lead generation, and sales conversion to name a few. Reporting on content marketing isn’t always the same across brands or industries, nor is it always cut-and-dry; a new company may aim to increase brand awareness, whereas another platform may be focused on other KPIs tied to their goals, such as email-list or subscription-building. Identifying which data reporting and frequency is relevant as a part of creating a strong content marketing strategy so instead of creating irrelevant busy work you can direct all efforts to achieve clear outcomes.