Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Ultimate Content Strategist Playbook No. 5:: Measuring and Optimizing Your Content Marketing
The Ultimate Content Strategist Playbook No. 5:: Measuring and Optimizing Your Content Marketing
CONTENTLY
By Joe Lazauskas
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
21
28
V. Conclusion
34
VI. Appendix
36
CONTENTLY
to optimize.
CONTENTLY
marketing forward.
for all the talk about big data, many marketers still
CONTENTLY
else later.
Brands need to put distribution thinking ahead of
content development, which sounds completely backward. The history of the content industry is make
something greatand that bars going up by the way
and then think about how you distribute that great
thing, he said. What BuzzFeed and others have taught
us is that you need to think about all of the different
pathways that people take to find great things. You need
to identify what those brands do, and what those content creators do, to get their content out there. It should
not impede your creativity, but it should inform it.
CONTENTLY
of publishing.
AT E
CRE
EN
TI
GA
OP
GE
CONTENTLY
2. W
hat to Measure:
The Pageview Problem
For the past two decades, the pageview has been
the dominant metric of success on the Internet. This
makes sense: Publishers have largely generated
revenue from display ad impressions delivered through
sheer mass of pageviews. As brands have slowly
embraced online publishing this decade, many have
adopted pageviews as their primary metric for success
as welldespite the fact that it has little to do with
their ultimate goal.
CONTENTLY
what they did when they got there. Did they stay
the whole day and tweet about how is was the #Best-
CONTENTLY
barometer of health.
ENGAGEMENT RATE:
lead sentence.
pretty compelling.
CONTENTLY
Did a story actually get people to pay attention, or did they leave
immediately? How much time did they spend clicking, scrolling,
and highlighting the text?
SOCIAL ACTIONS:
How many times did someone share your content with their
social networks?
NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS:
10
CONTENTLY
quarterly affair.
value and that you trustand thats the magic wordthat some portion
of customers and potential customers will reward you for that eventually. But trust and eventually are the big words there.
Therefore, while it makes sense to measure and optimize for your
relationship metrics frequently, ROI metrics are more of a monthly
or quarterly affair.
11
CONTENTLY
PR SCORE
quantifying it.
worth calculating.
12
CONTENTLY
Rambo-style.
SEO
or not. The results are quite striking: BuzzFeeds sponsored content typically generates a brand lift of between
13
CONTENTLY
14
CONTENTLY
LEAD GENERATION:
First Name:
Last Name:
Business Email:
Select...
Job Title:
Select...
No
DOWNLOAD
15
CONTENTLY
Then the net value of the deal is $5,000, and the value
16
CONTENTLY
Then, two days later, she came back again and read
then she got on the phone with our sales team and
scheduled a demo.
total to produce.
17
CONTENTLY
MCDUCK ENTERPRISES
DEAL BREAKDOWN:
CONTENT ROI
REVENUE:
DEAL VALUE:
$82,000
$41,000
COST:
$2,650
INITIAL INVESTMENT:
$9,150
DEAL BREAKDOWN:
Between the time she came in the door and the time she was
SALES ROI
ready to sign a contract, Webby read five articles and two case
studies. She visited seven pages of our website, and spent
a total of about five hours on the phone with our sales team.
Attribution is tricky, and theres no set standard, but heres
a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation:
REVENUE:
$41,000
COST:
$6,500
of the credit).
18
CONTENTLY
BREAKDOWN:
TCS ARTICLE
CONTENT ROI
TCS ARTICLE
TCS ARTICLE
12 Best Content
Marketing Blogs
12 Startup Blogs
Killing the Game
20%
12%
12%
REVENUE:
$41,000
COST:
$2,650
TCS ARTICLE
TCS ARTICLE
TCS ARTICLE
TCS ARTICLE
These 4 Companies
Prove Content Marketing
Is Essential to Startups
Case Study #1
Case Study #2
12%
12%
12%
20%
19
CONTENTLY
20
CONTENTLY
21
CONTENTLY
AT E
CRE
EN
TI
GA
OP
GE
22
CONTENTLY
1. The types of stories you tell. For reference, this is how our suite of story types looks:
QUICK HITTER
VIDEO
WEB-SOURCED IN-DEPTH
COMIC
E-BOOK
23
CONTENTLY
BRANDS
SOCIAL
content movement.
MEDIA
VOICES
media business.
future of content.
ROI
24
CONTENTLY
this year.
25
CONTENTLY
People
WRITER PERFORMANCE:
Engagement Rate
SHANE
JOE
SHANE
JOE
1,477
760
78%
77%
Per Story
Attention Time
Avg. Finish
SHANE
JOE
SHANE
JOE
SHANE
JOE
4,922m
2,617m
2m 17s
1m 59s
62%
63%
Overall
PEOPLE
SHANE
JOE
26
ATTENTION TIME
75,000
160,000
SHANE
259Km
SHANE
3m 28s
JOE
682Km
JOE
4m 15s
TOTAL STORIES
51
191
and I are both free to cover a big story, its going to him.
27
CONTENTLY
4. O
ptimizing the
Engagement Process
After optimizing the kind of content you create, its time
to optimize how you distribute that content. All too
often, new publishers spend an incredible amount of
time and resources pushing content out through a
specific channel even though its driving pitiful results.
Thats why you absolutely need to keep a close eye
on how each channel is performing so you can focus
on what works.
28
CONTENTLY
is performing.
To see how this works, lets dive into The Content Strategists April
data for our five major distribution channels: email, Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, and Google+.
29
CONTENTLY
OVERALL
OVERALL
PEOPLE
ATTENTION TIME
PEOPLE
ATTENTION TIME
25,000
158Km
16,000
45Km
6m 11s
2m 45s
71%
2m 47s
OVERALL
PEOPLE
ATTENTION TIME
4,605
12Km
2m 37s
OVERALL
OVERALL
30
PEOPLE
ATTENTION TIME
PEOPLE
ATTENTION TIME
33,000
93Km
175
538m
2m 50s
3m 04s
TOTAL
33,000
ATTENTION TIME
6m 11s
EMAIL
LINKEDIN
GOOGLE+
SPONSORED POST
DRIVEN
ORGANIC
READERS
CONVERT TO
EMAIL SUB
22,000
11,000
1,650
31
isnt optimal. Its something Ill dig into with our social
32
As you can see, the data isnt always blatantly prescriptive, but it can give you a very good idea of where
Google+ is driving an irrelevant amount of traffic for us.
priority for us because of the low engagement. However, signs point to Google+ still having a huge impact
on search ranking, with a few dozen engagements
capable of rocketing you halfway up the page. Considering our audience of online marketers is probably
the only demographic still using Google+, and since
search remains the biggest traffic driver to The Content
Strategist, we either need to figure out a strategy that
works or abandon it altogether.
33
Conclusion
Way back in our first playbook, we kicked off this
activated it now.
over time.
34
CONTENTLY
Over these last five playbooks, weve run the gamut, covering how to
evangelize your content, create a killer strategy, launch an effective and
innovative content marketing program, build an audience, and optimize
every aspect of your content marketing. Its an exciting and arduous
journey, but one that pays off in spades when you succeed. The blueprint
is in your hands.
Unlike the hero of this playbook, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, you
wont be left scrambling to pick up the pieces if your MVP leaves in free
agency. After all, there are only a handful of 68 athletes who can fly
through the air, but writers and other creatives? There are tons of us out
there, and were ready to help you build something great.
35
CONTENTLY
Appendix
To help you keep track of your content goals, we created this basic
handy scorecard. Happy optimizing!
36
CONTENTLY
SAMPLE GOALS
Readers
48% returning
YOUR GOALS
Social actions
month
37
800K attention
time, 66%
avg. finish
CONTENTLY
SAMPLE GOALS
Content costs
High
1/3 of total
YOUR GOALS
budget
Leads
Higher
3/4 of all
marketing leads
Revenue
38
Highest
75% of revenue
CONTENTLY
contently.com
39
CONTENTLY