You developed a content strategy, created unique content and disseminated it to your target audience. Now what? Many companies get caught up in the actual implementation of their content marketing efforts and forget that the end stage of content analysis exists. Do you want to make your entire content marketing strategy more effective and focus your efforts where they are really needed? Then you need to take these content analysis steps.
Look at the Clicks
How many clicks your content generates is an important piece of information to know. Analytical data on social media websites and Google will tell you how many engagements and clicks are associated with a particular post or link. If you notice that some content gets little or no views, you have two choices. You could decide to either remove the content from your website or take your social media and blog posts in a different direction. If you feel that the reason for the low interaction has to do with lack of visibility, the solution would be to find ways to put the content front-and-center.
Make It Easy to Understand
One of the problems with analytics is the fact that the data can be difficult to understand for people who are not familiar with what it all means. If you can find a dedicated person in the company or a consultant who can translate analytics into plain English, this can help you make an action plan for improving your content marketing efforts.
Take a Peek at Your Competitors
If you're struggling with whether or not your content is appropriate in relation to your particular business, a great solution is to take a look at the content that your competitors are generating. While you won't have access to their analytics, you will be able to analyze the types of topics that they address. If your competitors are active on social media, light analytical information including the number of likes, shares and comments can be accessed publicly.
Make Content Analysis a Part of Your Day
Companies that do recognize the importance of content analysis do not always take this step as often as necessary. If you are looking at the data just once a week, or even worse, once a month, you're not going to get an accurate picture of when and why people may not be paying attention to your marketing strategy. Analyzing the performance of your content can be as easy as doing a quick check on the pulse of your social media posts and published content. Even if you take just 15 minutes a day to review how your content is performing, you have the opportunity to find out whether certain posts prompted people to sit up and take notice or head for the hills.
Take Action
All of these steps are great, but they won't produce results if you don't take action. When analyzing content, it is important to take away some key points about performance and convert those points into a plan of action. For example, if you notice that a particular topic related to your business is trending, you will need to have unique subjects, images, text or videos related to the topic generated.
Content analysis is an often-overlooked component of a comprehensive content marketing strategy. If you're wondering why your content isn't producing the traffic, leads, and conversions that you anticipated, try taking the steps outlined above to find out where things are going wrong.
