How do I get rapid insight into how content is performing?
Content is created for a reason. Companies create content for a variety of reasons, for instance, to extend their reach, to get more leads or to promote their thought leadership. Good content has never been more important than it is today, but content creation takes time and money. It is therefore important to look at the outcomes of content production. They aren’t always obvious. UK research shows that 33% of communication managers experience a lack of content analysis because they do not have the tools or skills to do it (The Pulse Business, 2019).
Budget
Creating content costs money. Producing a lot of content brings with it the hazard of losing oversight of the budget. Especially when many parties are involved in your content production. For that reason, it is vital to ask your agency or suppliers to be as transparent as possible and to update you about budget status at least once a month. Make good, clear agreements before you start creating content. Nothing is more annoying than unforeseen costs or projects that turn out completely different than expected, financially speaking. And dare to negotiate with your suppliers, especially if you want to create a lot of content. Make sure you give them enough margin so that they remain motivated to work for you. Good content creators are in short supply, so you should be happy that they want to work for your brand.
Data
There are lots of ways to gain insight into how your content is performing. How many visitors has a particular social media post had? How many people have read a particular blog post?
These days, most content marketers have several tools that give them the data insights they need. But collecting it usually involves consulting several different tools to get all the data they require. Moreover, most tools are complicated and not easy to customise. That is how data insights end up distributed across a variety of dashboards, Powerpoint or Excel documents. It would be more convenient to have all the data concerning how your content is performing on one platform.