Content marketing can be challenging. It's important to know which metrics are the most important to monitor.
If you watch these critical metrics, you can quickly adapt to what folks are responding well to. It even allows you to split test your content and see what's working and what's not. In marketing, no one has a crystal ball. The best strategy is to split test and see what works with REAL data. That's why using the best metrics to measure the success of your content is absolutely critical!
Let's take a quick look at some of the most important metrics:
1. Traffic
Traffic is typically the #1 leading indicator on how much value your content is offering. However, if you aren't using good sharing strategies, then traffic will be low. This is pretty obvious, so we're assuming you already have a decent sharing strategy and audience.
2. Shares
The next metric is how many shares is your content receiving. Today, you can buy shares cheapy. Don't. This is pointless. Let your content speak for itself. If it offers value, people will share it. If it "hits the spot", it will go viral. Let reality provide feedback. Buying shares will not encourage people to share it more. In addition, it will only cloud the real metrics and prevent you from doubling down on great content ideas.
3. Engagement
Another important metric is engagement. This is simply how many people are leaving comments. In addition, you can analyze positive vs negative comments. If most of the comments are negative, that might indicate the content is bad. Or it might mean it's good if your strategy was to create controversy.
4. Links
This metric is a bit obvious: how many people are linking to it? You need specific tools to determine this (for example, ahrefs or semrush). However, the number of links your content has is a good indicator of how value-added it is. If you have no links, don't fret. If you aren't using a good strategy to share your content, then most likely you won't have any links to it. It's possible nobody even knows it exists yet.
5. Time on Page
This one is less obvious. However, it's important to watch how long people spend reading your content. If the time on page is low, then people are "bouncing". In addition, you can look at the bounce rate to see if people hitting your content are not clicking through to additional content. Keep in mind, this should be your strategy with all content you create, and that is to get the reader to click through to even better content.