How Content Queen measures content marketing
They say you can't know what you don't measure, right? It is almost this feeling of unknown.
You might relate to this.
You create your weekly social media content, maybe a podcast or a blog. You send out an email. Done. Tick that box. You do the same thing over and over again. But do you know what works? Do you know what your audience likes and doesn't like?
You might from the vanity. The likes and comments on social media. But do you look deeper? We do it at Content Queen! So I am going to show and tell you how we do it. You can take what works for you and implement it straight into your business ahead of Q2!
Content Queen’s experience with content measurement
Believe it or not we never used to look at the stats - I know, crazy to think right?
But, at one stage, metrics and analytics weren't really something we had a second thought about, it was kind of expected that we would just see the changes throughout our content. However, that wasn't the case.
So our founder, Mariah, decided that a course in Google Analytics was something that would be of value for the business and the team. From here we started tracking the numbers, how our content ebbed and flowed and learnt so much about what each of the statistics meant.
This made such a difference in how we approached our content creation and even our planning from quarter to quarter. We could finally see, and more importantly comprehend, what was working and what wasn't, the content that was resonating, where our website traffic was coming from and so much more.
After learning and understanding more about analytics, we even started a measurement template (which you can get your hands on in our Content Queen membership!) to help others navigate their own numbers in their business!
At the end of the day, taking the time to understand how to read statistics and comprehend analytics will save you time in the long run. When you know what works it can lead you in the right direction and help you create successful content.
How Content Queen measures content and marketing
While there are many ways to measure the success of your content, at Content Queen, we have a few ways we like to do this in particular so we wanted to break it down for you a bit. Feel free to use this as inspiration for your own business measurement!
Don’t be disheartened if it takes you time to learn how to look at all of this - it’s a lot of information! Just have patience with yourself and break it down, and if you need some more guidance have a listen to our podcast episode here about how to see if your content is working (these are the exact metrics that we look at and use!)
It took time and practice to get a good measurement strategy down at Content Queen! But everyone has to start somewhere, so maybe give this a try!
Weekly: Dive into Google Analytics, Instagram and Email Marketing. Just tracking high level stats and looking at what happened that week that can impact increases and decreases.
Monthly: Deep dive into all the content (podcast, blogs, socials, emails). What posts worked, what didn’t. What needs to be altered or changed (slightly). What do we want to try? See if the data helped towards the overall goals.
Quarterly: High level. What worked. What didn’t. What goals were reached for the quarter, what ones weren’t. What are the next quarter goals and what needs to be changed in the strategy. This is where bigger changes are made!
What about you? If you do some of this, that’s great! Try and build a measurement habit! Remember, you don’t know what you don’t track so it’s important to look at all the data collectively and then create actions off the back of this data.
We know how repetitive we sound when we talk about testing, trialing, and measuring but it’s true! While it’s important to look at all of the data, it is also essential to make assumptions and test them as well, and if you need another opinion on what you find, send the analytics to your team and get some other thoughts on it!
All of this will help you get in the groove of looking at the numbers and, of course, understanding them.
The measurement tools we use
The best way to not fear the numbers is to make sure you’re comfortable in the tools you are using to look, understand, organise and reflect on them. So as a bit of inspiration, here are some of the tools we use at Content Queen to keep track of the analytics:
Google Analytics - to look at the numbers
Google Sheets - to keep track of all of the analytics for different platforms
Instagram insights and all the insights of the platforms (we use Anchor for our podcast, Facebook insights, Pinterest insights, LinkedIn insights and Kartra for email marketing)
Clickup - to note down all the assumptions
Journal - to reflect - we love this as writers!
Final Thoughts
Analytics is not something to be scared of, they can actually be quite simple to comprehend if you know what you’re looking at. All it takes is patience, practice, and getting into a habit of looking at the numbers. Once you are able to work it into your weekly, monthly, or quarterly strategy, it’ll become second nature.
Try any of the tools or our formula above and see how you go, if it doesn't fit your business style 100%, that’s okay! You can adapt it and mold it to your own preference, just play around and see what works for you.
