Why Google's Penguin Update Makes Content Marketing King

How content marketing is crucial if you want to work with Google to make sure your website gets seen by your customers.

What's the brand equivalent of dying a slow and agonising death, alone in the wilderness, deprived of food, water and the most fundamental survival needs? I'm not sure, and I sure as hell don't want to find out. But I can tell you how you end up there: by relying on antiquated SEO techniques from a dying industry.

Google Penguin, a webspam algorithm designed to (you guessed it) prevent spam, was released in April this year. It's the latest move in the war between Google and those sites that try to game its algorithm. No more trumping up rankings or breaching Google's quality guidelines. If you mess with the Mountain View mafia, your rankings will be dropped. Fast.

Google updates its algorithms all the time and it can be hell trying to keep up. But it's important for anyone who wants their business or brand to receive more attention to understand what the changes mean for them ' and how they can spin it to their advantage.

Traditionally the SEO industry has been ruled by people wearing black hats (who use underhanded techniques to game the system) andwhite hats (who utilise a human-focused strategy, using keywords, back-linking and link building). I'm here to tell you about a third hat, a technicoloured dream hat that will not only improve your brand's Google results, but its overall image as well.

It's called content marketing. We're smack bang in the middle of a (potentially seismic, as far as the SEO industry is concerned) cultural shift, from (sometimes dodgy) SEO practices to well-written, well-researched custom content and brand storytelling. And you need to be informed. My work as the head of strategy at Edge means I'm familiar with the content creation process. From its earliest stages to completion, I see the potential effective content marketing has to lift any brand's status.

Jasmine Henry summed up the most relevant definitions on the Inbound Marketing Blog and you know what they say: if it ain't broke'

Sure, there are a load of other tricky steps you can take to improve your standing with Google, but nothing beats ditching the tired black and white hats for something with a bit more style. Take a look at some of the success stories over at Edge.

In a perfect world your business would be #1 on Google and every other search engine out there, right? But of course the reality is slightly different. Paradigms are changing, and if you continue to rely solely on traditional Google SEO techniques like stuffing your content with keywords or fancy internal linking strategies, you're going to be screwed.

Google is actively coming for your site, and you'll find your ranking falling before you know it, which we all know can spell doom for any brand today.

Richard Parker is the head of digital at strategic content agency Edge, where he has experience working with leading brands including Woolworths, St George and Foxtel. He previously spent 12 years in the UK, first at Story Worldwide then as the co-owner and strategic director of marketing agency Better Things.

This article is an original contribution by Edge.

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How Much Do Marketing Agencies Cost?

Are You Paying Too Much for Content?

Here's a toughy: Most PR and marketing agencies still benefit from the fact that businesses don't always track the true value that their marketing efforts are driving. They can tell their clients that they're investing in 'branding' or equally vapid terms. It confuses their customers enough that they simply accept that marketers shouldn't need to prove that they're actually driving value for the business.

For example, I recently wrote an article where I generalized that you can get good content for as low as $30-$40. One commenter ' obviously a writer alarmed that anyone would think that you could get valuable content for that price - asserted that articles should go for at least $250-$700 for 500 words. Now, the purpose of that article was to argue that the market would self-regulate the value of staff writers upwards as their value to businesses became more evident and trackable. However, her singular focus on the validity of my example data brings up an interesting question: As a business owner, how much should you pay freelance writers and marketing agencies?

Is Your Business Really Benefiting?

To walk you through the math here, the way that businesses can start to examine whether or not they're investing enough in content is to look at the amount of traffic that their blogs drive, look at the number of leads they're generating, look at the conversion rate of leads into customers, and examine what the average life time value of their customers are. If you know those four things ' traffic, leads, customers, and value ' then you can use analytics software like HubSpot to know whether or not traffic from a certain source is actually driving revenue and whether you should invest more or less.

Let's use that writer's math instead of mine: If your article costs $700, and you get 400 views per article, and you convert 5% of those into leads (20), and 5% of those into customers (1), then your COCA (Cost Of Customer Acquisition) is - not accounting for any sales reps or other pre-sales infrastructure - obviously $700. The 5% visit-to-lead and 5% lead-to-customer rates I used are really optimistic, but they make the math easy as an example. If your conversion rates are lower, your cost of customer acquisition will be proportionately higher.

Numbers Count

If you don't have the ability to track this kind of data, then you have no way of knowing whether or not you're investing too much or too little. Think of it this way: If I said to you 'Give me $700 and I'll give you an average customer' and you were happy, then perhaps you should be investing much more in content. If you wouldn't be happy, then perhaps you should invest less. The point is that you've got to know. Otherwise, unsavory freelancers and agencies can charge whatever they want and you'll never know whether or not you could be growing your business faster.

Ask your marketing agency or freelance writer how they measure their success. If they say 'comments' or 'tweets', ask them how those correlate to your business's revenue. Most likely, they'll say nothing at all. The worst nightmare for many freelancers and agencies ' just like used car salesmen ' is an educated business owner armed with real numbers.

If, rather than employing a marketing agency or freelancer, you have a marketing team in-house, how are they measuring their success?

Measures of Success

To get you started, I'll walk you through how we here measure our success for our clients as well as our in-house marketing team. This isn't to say that this is the only way to measure success, but it's a way to get you started. Actually, it's quite simple:

• We start with the sales goals for the organization. Marketing, after all, is just the beginning of the sales relationship and should be as accountable to the sales organization for their performance as the sales team is to everyone else. Let's use an example here, and say that the company sales are currently at $100,000/month and the goal is to increase to $112,000/month by the end of the year.
• Second, we look at the LTV (Life Time Value) for the company ' segmented by Buyer Personas if necessary. Let's use $1,000 for this example. This means that we need 100 new customers every month in order to maintain our current performance, but we need to grow by one customer every month to hit our growth goals by the end of the year.
• Then, we look at the lead-to-customer conversion rate. If it's 5%, that means that we need to generate 2,000 new leads per month for the sales organization to maintain our current performance, and grow over the year to keep pace with our end of year goals.
• Finally, we look at the visit-to-lead conversion rate. Let's also use 5% for this number, which means that we need to 40,000 visits to maintain current performance, and again grow that number throughout the year.

All of these numbers are very trackable, and all of these numbers are re-calculated monthly so that if a client's lead-to-customer conversion rate goes from 5% to 10%, we can adjust the amount of traffic we need to drive accordingly.

Fill the Pipeline

These numbers all form what's called the 'Pipeline Revenue Service Level Agreement' (PRSLA) with our clients. The goal of our agency services team is to fill the client's 'pipeline' with enough traffic and leads that their sales organization can be successful. Of course, given the fact that there are four variables here, the formula is very fluid. The client's sales organization may miss quota one month due to holidays, or a change in pricing or a new product may cause the average LTV to go from $1,000 to $2,000.

Any one of the many possible changes may cause our PRLSA to inaccurately reflect recognized revenue in a given month, but we're firm believers in the 'Moneyball' movie idea that ' in the long run ' if you're honest with the numbers you're tracking, your success will average out to be right over the course of the year. We align our employee's incentives with the PRSLA, so that our employees are motivated to surpass the customer's actual goals and drive a higher level of actual revenue.

It All Comes Down to ROI

We love this metric, because if we ' to use the previously mentioned commenter's number ' charged $700/article for each of the at least 5 articles a week we'd love to produce for each of our clients, we'd be charging them $14,000/month just for the content writing services. I'm a believer that if you're going to charge someone that much money, you should be able to demonstrate that you're driving a reasonable return.

If your marketing agency, freelance contractors, or even in-house marketing team can't ' or won't ' track and show how much value they're driving for your organization, then perhaps it's time for a change.

Could This Be The MAIN Secret Of All Effective Content Marketing?

Zig Ziglar is famous for saying'

'You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.'

Well, the more I think about it, I think that could very well be the main secret of effective content marketing.

I'll explain more what I mean in a minute.

I'll also reveal to you the surprising way this idea is tied to 'Small Business Saturday.'

But first, I want you to hear this powerful story I heard that reveals what I'm talking about.

Two Young Doctors And A Lesson In The Power Of Focusing On Others

In the spring of 1883 two young men graduated from the same medical school.
The two were very different from each other both in their appearance and in their goals.

One of the young men was named Ben. He was short and stocky.

The other one's name was Will. He was tall and thin.

But remember they didn't just differ in appearance.

They had different ambitions.

Ben dreamed of practicing medicine on the East Coast.

Will didn't care for that idea. He wanted to work in a rural community.

Ben begged his friend Will to go with him to New York.

He told Will that if they went, they could both make a fortune.

Will wasn't interested. He refused.

Ben couldn't understand why he'd want to start a practice in the Midwest and he called Will a fool.

Will told Ben, 'I want first to be a great surgeon'the very best, if I have the ability.'

I don't know what happened to Ben, but I can tell you what happened to Will.

Years later the wealthy and powerful came from around the world to be treated by Will at his clinic.

Maybe you've heard of it?

Will Mayo's clinic is today called the Mayo Clinic.

The Main Secret Of All Effective Content Marketing

Will Mayo's desire was to help others, not just himself and that led to many being attracted to his work.

That is the main secret of all effective content marketing!

It's content that is focused on helping others.

That's the kind of content people want, they share, and that will endear them to you.

If you create content focused on yourself, you might as well just write it in a private journal somewhere, because no one else is going to want to see it.

I can teach you how to create engaging content (and I'll be doing that in a webinar called '21 Types Of Content We Crave' on 12/6 at 10 PST), but I can't choose the topics or the focus of your content.

Only YOU can do that.

If you create content focused on helping others, then you'll leave them thankful that they've come across you. And they'll reciprocate that thankfulness by sharing your content with others.

But if you focus your content only on yourself and your business, then you'll leave them wishing they could get back the time they just wasted consuming your content.

And if they even bother to spread the word about you, it won't be to share your content.

It will be to warn others not to waste their time.

What This Secret Has To Do With 'Small Business Saturday'

Have you heard of 'Small Business Saturday'?

If you haven't heard of it, then let me give you a short explanation'

Small Business Saturday is an American shopping holiday that's held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving (November 24th this year).

It hasn't been around very long.

It was only first celebrated two years ago on November 27, 2010.

It's basically a take-off of the concepts of 'Black Friday' (encouraging retail spending) and Cyber Monday (encouraging e-commerce).

Instead, Small Business Saturday encourages people to shop at their small, local brick and mortar businesses.

So what does this have to do with the main secret of effective content marketing?

Simple.

It's proof that focusing content on helping others works.

Why do say that?

Because of how 'Small Business Saturday' got started.

You see, its origins might surprise you.

The origins of 'Small Business Saturday' from Wikipedia:

'In 2010 the holiday was conceived and promoted by American Express via a nationwide radio and television advertising campaign. That year Amex bought advertising inventory on Facebook, which it in turn gave to its small merchant account holders,^[1] and also gave rebates to new customers to promote the event.^[2][3]'

Did you catch that?

'Small Business Saturday' was originally conceived and promoted by American Express!

They came up with the brilliant idea to help small business owners in this way (wish I did!) and then got others to promote it!

The Result For Small Business Owners?

Last year, over one hundred million people* came together to Shop Small® in their communities on Small Business Saturday®.

The Results For American Express?

They have 3.1 millon 'likes' on their 'Small Business Saturday' Facebook page.

They received tens of thousands of tweets under their #smallbusinesssaturday hastag.

Are their' motives in doing this purely to help others?

I honestly don't have any clue.

But even if they're not purely to help others, their motives at least include others!

And the content they have created and that they've encouraged others to create (tweets, likes, articles, and posts like this one) have all had MUCH more influence and inertia than if they only created content about themselves.

Examples Of Content Marketing Focused On Others From American Express

Check out all the types of content they've created for this on their site:

• They provide an explanation of what 'Small Business Saturday.'
• They have a section to help small business owners promote their business.
• They have a section on how to rally support in your community.
• They include a map with qualifying small businesses in your area.
• They provide editable tweets, posts, and emails that can be used to spread the word.
• They provide videos that explain what it is, give case studies, and more.
• And mixed in with all of that content are offers from Amex

Go to the special section of their site dedicated to this to see these examples for yourself.

If you understand this concept and want to know how to effectively create content that will engage and help your prospects and customers, then read on'

My Upcoming '21 Types Of Content We Crave' Webinar

I did a webinar recently for the Society for Technical Communication called '21 Types Of Content We Crave,' which was based on a popular infographic and post I did for ContentMarketingInstitute.com.

The webinar went really well. I was really glad to get such a positive response from the participants and the Education Coordinator who hired me. (I'll be posting some of the responses from them soon.)

*Because of the response I received, I've decided to teach the webinar again to the readers and subscribers of BayBusinessHelp.com and RecessionSolution.com.

The webinar will be held on Thursday, December 6th at 10am.

The recording will be sold for $99.

Special Cyber Monday Offer

I will put up a special low priced offer to the public on Cyber Monday (11/26) that will allow people to be a part of the LIVE webinar and Q &A at the end.

Be on the look-out for it this Monday!

Why Businesses Are Missing Out on CRM Returns

Some invaluable research from Nucleus has pointed out that CRM customers are missing out on 80% of the potential benefits. While some of these figures appear to be 'plucked out of the air', there is a large element of truth about them. Nucleus picked out several key areas across with organisations could find greater ROI, but underlying that is one crucial factor: management.

Before we get to management, let's look further at what Nucleus have highlighted, and the potential impact for any business running CRM.

Collaboration

The truth of many organisations, despite their best intentions, is that they operate in silos. Marketing, Sales, Customer Support often end up divided if not geographically, then figuratively. They operate in different spaces of the CRM, independently of each other, unaware of the data they share and of the power they share.

And this is cultural. There is a stereotypical distrust between marketing and sales, while customer support hover in the background, holding invaluable data that both marketing and sales should be acting upon each and every day. This cultural background is what needs breaking down. The example in the infographic below highlights the potential for one single tool to create ROI through improved productivity.

A near 12% increase in sales productivity thanks to one tool (Chatterbox) indicates that simple tools are enough to break down historic cultural barriers and increase productivity. If anything, the approach we need to take is almost risk-free ' we're asking employees to apply their day-to-day behaviour (social media, interaction) to the workplace. Traditionally, workplaces have been slow to adapt social networking. We now have the proof that they need to move on. There are plenty of alternatives ' MS Dynamics has bought Yammer, and Salesforce brought in Chatterbox. There's more to come.

Extension

The idea of siloed information is carried over into the area of Extension, but it's the application of that information beyond the three main groups of CRM users that can bring significant benefits.

It's one thing to have great tools, such as Adobe's Echosign, for internal sign-off. Now it's integrated into Dynamics CRM for one, its extension out into the universe of suppliers and partners is a must. This brings CRM into the world of billing and invoicing, and applies those time-saving tools that we use internally into the wider business.

ROI can be obtained not just through saving time and integrating into the overall customer view (which according to MS Dynamics partner, Preact, is one of the main selling points for the integration of Adobe Echosign), but through reduction of the number of applications being used. Many organisations are using independent applications, which could not only cause conflict, but could be costing the business.

Integration

As CRM vendors have traditionally harked on about greater integration, it's a surprise that CRM owners aren't integrating as well as they could be. The research shows potential benefit for integrating front and back office applications, but perhaps the most significant aspect is within desktop applications

The many interactions between employees and customers can take place in many places ' by e-mail, by social media, over Skype ' or through documents such as Word with mark-up comments. Organisations are simply not bringing these interactions into one single place, or at least, they're not making it easy for themselves. Far too many rely on people jumping through hoops in order to get these interactions into the CRM.

It should be seamless ' it should be automatically integrated, so that a 360-degree view of the customer includes not only the traditional contact and product purchase data, but interaction data from e-mails and social media.

But underpinning everything, management & leadership

What underpins every attempt at achieving ROI from CRM implementations is management & leadership. While Nucleus define management as a 'sales management' problem, I see it as having an overarching view of the value CRM is bringing. Rather than allowing each silo to cast itself off and hold data & applications for itself, it's about having someone with that single vision of delivering ROI.

It's about having a distinct voice, whether that be a steering committee or one individual.

Find that distinct voice, that overarching ambition of finding benefits from your CRM implementation, and you'll go a long way.

This infographic, courtesy of MS Dynamics CRM partner, Preact, underlines the key areas where businesses can get more return on their CRM implementation.

This article is an original contribution by Gareth Cartman.

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Stupid Titles and Lame Topics Don't Create Great Content

Blogging is difficult work. Creating content that resonates and gains traction on the web today is even harder. 2 million blog posts are published every 24 hours, so standing out takes more than just showing up to publish every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You've got to create great content, because no one has room in their RSS feed for mediocre.  Even high-quality might not be enough to get noticed unless you're connecting with individuals with digital influence and distributing on the right social media channels. We've compiled some ways that you can stop wasting time on content creation that no one reads and create great content that earns social media shares, inbound links, devoted fans and drives some new revenue for your business:

1. Ensure Your Blog Title is Stellar

People don't always read what they Tweet. In fact, Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella found that out of a sample of 2.7 million blog titles, over 16% had more social media shares than clicks. Would you have started reading this content if the title was 'How to Blog?' Probably not, and it wouldn't have gained much traction in an era where there's over 5.8 billion search results for that same phrase. Your blog title needs to be actionable, specific and intriguing enough to really stand out. Let's examine the basic benefits of taking the time to fill your title with powerful words and original ideas:

• More People Will Share Your Content
• Your Click-Throughs and Website Views will Soar
• The Likelihood of Influencers Taking Notice Will Also Soar

2. Write for Real, Smart People

I sincerely hope you're not keyword stuffing or employing sketchy SEO tactics like cloaking, doorway pages or adding text in the same color as the page background to your website anymore. Not only is it ineffective, it's likely to get your page hit with negative SEO. As the Google search algorithm is updated hundreds of times each year, it becomes gradually closer to thinking like one of your consumers. In the words of Google's anti-spam team lead Matt Cutts, 'quality content is the key to Google rankings.' That's why SEO is no longer about how many long-tail key phrases you've managed to pack into 600 words, it's a matter of how many social shares and inbound links you've generated (see what is Topicjacking for some ideas).

Quantity matters, but quality matters much more. Your on-page SEO efforts only account for about 25% of your website's total ranking in search results.  Keyword research, connecting with influencers and taking the time to truly create great content are the most effective SEO tactics in 2012.

3. Don't Isolate Yourself

Catching the attention of people with digital influence in your niche can be the difference between gaining an inbound link from the New York Times and just a few dozen page views, as leading marketing blogger Jeff Bullas found following the unprecedented success of his content How to Look Stupid in 140 Characters. It doesn't matter how great your content is, if you're not identifying and creating a 'short list' of high-octane influencers, you're not going to do very well. The stereotype of the isolated artist who can gain fame through sheer brilliance is now virtually a myth. You need to identify the topics and social media that can make your content appear relevant, and continually network.

If you've committed yourself to a strict blogging schedule and you're writing well, you're probably on the right track to moderate success. To create great content that will explode your bottom line requires much more attention to original blog titles, quality and the topics and people that matter.

How Your Content Marketing Can Ignite a Movement

A charming film

If you haven't seen Nirvan Mullick's short (10-minute) film called 'Caine's Arcade,' watch it now. You'll be glad you did ' and the rest of this inaugural ContentVenn post is going to make a lot more sense. (If you have seen it, read on!)

The power of great content marketing

Caine's Arcade is unbelievably powerful content. It is emotional, heart-warming, and inspired. Caine's Arcade is so powerful, in fact, that it has spawned a movement. When Nirvan posted the video on April 9, 2012, viewers immediately began donating money towards a scholarship fund for Caine Monroy. Ten days after the release of the film, Caine's scholarship fund hit the $170,000 mark. That's powerful content. And it all could have ended there. But it hasn't.

Creating a movement, creating content opportunities

Six months after Caine's Arcade became a 'viral success' it has become a real movement. It's more than just a Vimeo success story. Today, that 10-minute film has spawned a full-fledged nonprofit with a real mission, real corporate underwriters, and tons more content. Go ahead, check out the Imagination Foundation, whose mission is to 'find, foster, and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in kids.'

On the Imagination Foundation's website, you can find a list of its corporate partners, which include Crayola, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Adobe, Echoing Green, Nokia, and art supply store Blick.

Now here's the problem: None of those brands ' literally, not one of them ' seems to be creating valuable content in direct support of Caine's Arcade, Imagination Foundation, or even Caine's recent Cardboard Challenge. (Please, if you have created some valuable content ' not a Tweet or meaningless Facebook post ' let me know.)

Capitalizing on a movement without destroying its authenticity

I'm not inviting these brands to create meaningless, self-serving content marketing efforts that depict kids using Crayola markers to make their own arcades. I'm actually wondering why not one of these brands has decided to create a weekly YouTube show showcasing the ingenuity of one classroom and their kids each and every week? Why hasn't Saran Wrap donated money to Nirvan (who's obviously a talented filmmaker) to profile one new arcade game from around the world? Why hasn't Staples (which sells cheap calculators) or Uline (which sells billions of boxes) or Waste Management (which recycles stuff) embraced the opportunity to create powerful content that started with viral video success?

What if'

These brands, and many more, are passing up an opportunity to make a real difference. What if all these brands partnered together (that's a 'Brandscape') to create an educational movement in elementary schools around the world? Instead of seeing their sponsorship as an exploitative campaign, these brands could create real content marketing that continues to build on the success of the original Caine's Arcade.

What if you look at all the nonprofits you and your company contribute to and commit to creating valuable content for those nonprofits once a month? What passions can you embrace? What movements can your brand ignite?

Ask yourself'

What content can your brand embrace to create a movement or tap a trend?

For more insight and examples of brand storytelling that can increase customer interest, read Andrew Davis' book, 'Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships.'

6 Content Marketing Performance Metrics You Need to Track

If you're not evaluating your content against these marketing performance metrics, how can you ever improve?

Performance improvement expert H. James Harrington once said, 'Measurement is the first step that leads to control and, eventually, to improvement.' For anyone trying to take their content marketing efforts to the next level, his words certainly ring true.

For content marketers, marketing performance metrics provide deep insights into how our content is doing. They tell us how many people are consuming our content, what they are doing with it, and whether or not they like it. Metrics alert us to which ideas we should replicate and which we should look to improve. They're also what give us credibility within our companies by demonstrating that content marketing is both a powerful and worthwhile investment.

Content Marketing Performance Metrics: What to Track

To measure and, ultimately, improve your content marketing efforts, you need to know which metrics to track and analyze, and how to do so. The best place to start is by gathering some data from your company's website, including your:

1. Unique visitors: The best indication of your site's overall traffic, unique visitors refers to the number of individuals who visit your website during a given period of time, where each visitor is only counted once. This number will vary dramatically depending on the size of your company, your industry and, of course, the amount of content you're producing.

2. Page views: The cumulative number of individual pages that your visitors click on during a given period of time. If your page views are higher than your unique visitors, that may be an indication that your audience is finding your content engaging because individuals are clicking around to multiple pages.

3. Search engine traffic: The amount of traffic being referred to your site through search engines, such as Google or Bing. This number will give you a clear indication of how effective of a job you are doing at optimizing your content for search.

4. Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who come to your site and then immediately 'bounce' or leave before clicking on any other pages. A bounce rate of less than 40 percent is considered good. If it is any higher, it may be an indication that visitors to your site don't like what they find there.

5. Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors to your site who take a specific action that your content encourages them to, such as signing up for your newsletter. Conversion rates vary considerably based on industry, but tend to hover around 2 and 3 percent on average. That said, aim for a conversion rate of approximately 5 percent, or even higher if you are creating specific landing pages for specific audiences.

6. Inbound links: The number of external links to your site, an indication that other people have found your content important enough to link to it. Importantly, the more high-quality inbound links you have, the higher your content will rank on search engines.

How to Start Tracking

One of the best ways to track your content marketing performance metrics is by setting up a free account with Google Analytics. A powerful tool, Google Analytics will allow you to monitor your website(s) and analyze a huge amount of data at both the aggregate and individual page level. That way you can find out how specific pieces of content are performing, as well as the overall performance of your content marketing efforts. Signing up is easy and takes just a few minutes. Within a matter of days, Google Analytics will have collected enough data to allow you to start analyzing trends and looking for new insights.

Because Google gives you access to so much information, it can be very helpful to create your own custom dashboard that isolates the metrics that you find most relevant and allows you to compare them over time. Here's an example of a basic dashboard I've created using Microsoft Excel:

To make things even easier, Google Analytics also gives you the option to compile and download reports that will give you a snapshot view of the information you need. Here's how you can do this:

• Simply click on the custom report tab.
• Select the new report option.
• Specify the metrics you'd like your report to include.

No matter how you do it, if you have the discipline to look at your key metrics for content marketing performance metrics on a weekly basis, you will be much more in tune with how your content is performing. Once you've mastered this, then try putting some of the data into chart form to make it easier to identify trends.

The example below displays page views for OpenView's corporate site, content site, and this blog for a span of six weeks. Displaying the data this way makes it easy to see, for instance, that there were significant spikes in page views during the weeks of September 13 and October 11, and that in both instances, much of the increase was isolated to a single site. Being able to easily see trends and outliers makes it easier to identify what's working and what isn't so that you can replicate or adjust as needed.

In addition to the basic marketing performance metrics noted above, there are two other important things to take note of: the number of comments and the number of shares your content gets ' both are strong indicators of engagement. Any time that people are taking the time to post a comment about your content or to share it with others, it's a great sign.

So tell me, what marketing performance metrics do you track to evaluate your content?

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on the Content Marketing Institute's website.

photo: hoshi7

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