There’s much more to content than witty blog posts and informative website pages. Granted, it’s important to master the art of writing great content, but if it’s going to be successful, you need to apply a little science to the mix. Content analysis is a valuable technique that lets you know how well a website is achieving your marketing goals.
Always Room for Improvement
No matter how well your inbound marketing campaigns are doing, there are always ways to up your game. An essential part of digital marketing is learning how to track successes and failures. Businesses need to know how their content marketing activities are helping – or hindering – their goals and objectives. Don’t let improved metric numbers keep you from mining data to discover just what is making those numbers rise. Along the way, you’ll also figure out how to make adjustments to those approaches that aren’t performing as you hoped they would.
When you scrutinize the information your content analysis reveals you can:
- Understand what draws an audience in to engage with your content.
- Learn how to motivate them to take an action, such as a click, download, or share.
- Identify which content they share and what they don’t engage with it at all.
Here’s how to use content analysis to improve your marketing strategy.
Website Content Analysis
Your editorial calendar reflects your overall content marketing strategy and dictates the data you should choose to study. Blog titles, content categories, authors, tags, publication date and times, and more all need to be analyzed to see how they’re performing. Key performance indicators include site/page visits and conversions (available from Google Analytics) and social media engagement, shares, and likes.
Analyzing these metrics lets you see how people are utilizing and absorbing your content, whether they are sharing it, they ways in which they engage with it, and how many new leads were generated.
Social Media Content Analysis
Social media is a vital part of many people’s lives. It affects and reflects their beliefs, values, and attitudes, as well as their intentions and behaviors. It takes more than posting links or videos on social media sites to reap the benefits they offer. Social media content analysis and distribution tools can help you understand what your audience wants and ensure your content gets the attention it deserves. Here are three tools you can use to streamline your online marketing strategies and increase your reach.
- Sprout Social is the perfect tool for small and medium-sized businesses looking to grow their social media presence. This popular software lets you track the performance of your content across all platforms and uses advanced analytics to generate reports based on social content and keyword research. It features a built-in CRM, is compatible with iOS and Android, and integrates with Feedly.
- If you want to understand and manage the deep relationship between your customers’ needs and your business goals, Adobe Social is a feature-rich management and content integration tool that lets you moderate content, track social trends, and measure the impact of your social media campaigns.
- If you’re new to content analysis, Simply Measured is a great tool for learning the ropes. It offers in-depth analysis of all your social networks, including hashtag tracking, as well as paid campaign performance. It has an easy-to-export dashboard and gives you the insight you need to create, connect, and convert with your social media followers.
Related: 5 Content Analysis Steps You Should Be Taking
The Content Results You’re Looking For
An attractive website will only take a brand so far and, on its own, does not guarantee high search engine rankings or increased traffic. It’s a site’s optimized content that delivers those results. Content analysis helps you see how well a website is performing and gives you the information you need to fine tune your content marketing strategies.
Finally, taking a data-led approach allows you to identify new opportunities. When you put data at the heart of your content marketing strategy, you can implement real change and become a better content marketer. To learn more, check out our white paper, "What is A Digital Content Strategy? And Why You Need One."
