Content marketing is a powerful tool for B2B businesses. But if you’re like most companies, you’re not sure how to use your content engagement metrics to create engaging content.
Content engagement metrics are the most effective way to determine your content’s success (or failure). These metrics can help you determine what works and what doesn’t to create successful content in the future.
If you’re not quite sure how your content engagement metrics can be put to work in creating powerful and engaging content, then you’re in the right place.
How Can the Right Content Engagement Metrics Help Your Content Creation?
Content marketing is a complete double-edged sword. It can be a powerful promotional tool or a time-consuming chore, depending on the industry. The best way to create engaging content is to know exactly what your audience wants and to deliver it in a way that gives them what they want. This is where content engagement metrics come in.
These metrics give you the insight you need to create engaging content.
How? By showing you how your audience is interacting with your content, for how long, and by showing you which pieces drive the most conversions.
Are There Certain Content Engagement Metrics That You Should Be Monitoring?
Absolutely!
With so many metrics at your disposal, getting swept up in information overload can be easy. The best way to avoid this is by splitting up your metrics into two categories:
- Vanity Metrics: These metrics measure how many likes, views, comments, and shares each post has received. They are important for gauging the popularity of your blog or social media account.
- Actionable Metrics: These metrics measure how your blog or social media account has influenced people and drives traffic to your website. Actions like bookmarks, referrals, social shares, etc. are all good examples of actionable metrics. These metrics help you determine what your audience wants, and how you can better meet their needs.
What are the Actionable Metrics to Be Monitoring?
When you’re looking at your content engagement metrics, you want to pay careful attention to a handful of actionable metrics that you can use to create powerful and engaging content.
A few of these metrics include:
Page Views Per Session
This measures the number of pages viewed per time spent on your website. This metric can help you gauge how many people spend time on your pages and how engaged they are with your content. This is important because it enables you to tailor your content to meet their needs. It can show you if your content is engaging them or if they are getting bored. If this metric is low, it can indicate that your content isn’t connecting with them.
Bounce Rates
This is a good metric to gauge whether a page is helpful to your audience. A low bounce rate means that people are clicking around your pages, which means they are looking at and reading your content. A high bounce rate means that people are leaving your website too soon, indicating that your content isn’t fulfilling their needs.
Conversions
This is the ultimate metric. It tells you whether your content is working. Conversions are any metric that shows your content is converting visitors into new customers or fans. This is important because it helps you gauge how effective your content is. It can show you if your content is driving people to take an action, like making a purchase.
Share Ratio
This is a good metric to gauge how much interest an individual piece of content has generated. If a piece of content has generated a lot of shares, this indicates that it is valuable and is driving much traffic. Otherwise, a low share ratio can indicate that your content isn’t generating much interest.
Putting These Metrics to Work: 3 Tips for Turning Your Content Engagement Numbers into Engaging Content
For B2B marketers, the shift to Digital Marketing is part of a long-term strategy to better connect with their target audience. But once they get into the online content creation process, many struggle to know where to start.
Here are a few tips to put your content engagement numbers to work for you:
1. Use Bounce Rates to Determine What Content Needs to Go
Bounce rates give you an indication of whether or not your content is useful. If you notice that certain pieces of content are receiving higher bounce rates than others, then you have two options:
- Revisit/edit the content: If a certain topic is technically in your wheelhouse and should be beneficial to your audience, yet you are still seeing high bounce rates for it – then you may need to take it down and revamp it with new information. You may be able to add a new section to the page that addresses what your audience isn’t seeing. Or you could do a complete overhaul of that page. Either way, you can show the value of your content by re-examining and editing your content to better connect with your audience.
- Replace it entirely: If a certain piece of content isn’t resonating with your audience and it’s not serving the purpose that you intended it to – you may want to simply replace the piece entirely with something new.
2. Use Conversions to Determine What Content Needs to Go
If your goal is to drive more conversions, then the content that is driving the best conversions is the content that should receive the most attention and focus. The best way to accomplish this is to look at your conversion metrics.
You can use these metrics to determine what content your audience is the most interested in. If you notice that a particular topic is driving a lot of conversions, then you have the option of writing more pieces of content that address that topic. Anything that isn’t driving the conversions you want should be removed, and your attention should go towards researching something new.
3. Use Share Ratio to Determine the Value of Your Content
If you notice that particular pieces of content are generating many shares, you can be confident that those pieces of content are valuable to your audience. If the share ratio isn’t high, then it may indicate that you need to reevaluate your content and see if it’s still of value to your audience.
Make Sure You’re Tracking the Right Content Engagement Metrics
You can’t make informed decisions about your content if you aren’t tracking the right metrics. If you aren’t tracking the right metrics, then you will never know which content is driving the best conversions, which content is the most valuable, and which content needs to be removed.
Not quite sure which content engagement metrics you should be monitoring? Check out this helpful guide to get you started!
