To capture an engaged audience, content marketers must first figure out how to get them interested in what they have to say.

The three “secret” steps for engaging an audience are:

• making content eye-catching
• making content useful
• making sure content is properly promoted

Headlines are king

Engaging an audience starts with interesting, informative content, according to a new infographic by BlueGlass. The most important part of the content, the company argues, is the headline. It points to research that found that “80 percent of people will read your headline,” while “20 percent of people will read the whole post.”

Headlines that work include:

• “What Everybody Out to Know About…,”
• “Little Known Ways to…,”
• “Get Rid of…[problem] Once and for All.”

The actual content should include:

• bulleted lists,
• line breaks,
• compelling subheads.

Social media is not the end

Although social media is seen as an end all be all by some companies, it is just the start for smart content marketers. BlueGlass says Twitter, Facebook and similar sites should be used to leverage new blog visitors, to “stroke people’s egos” by retweeting followers, posting comments on content, sharing links to other blogs and mentioning the names of authors.

“In doing all of this, your social relationships and connections will grow,” it says.

To increase the size of an audience, marketers can ask for subscribers, write guest posts on related blogs, and offer free content for followers such as ebooks, e-courses, audio series, and reports.

Following these three steps has the potential to expose the brand, showcase its content, grow its audience, and, eventually, result in more sales.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Seventy-four percent of chief marketing officers “believe they’ll tie social media efforts to hard ROI this year,” according to an infographic by MDG Advertising. Looking past web metrics and sales goals, 96 percent of CMOs are trying to “identify the value of social marketing efforts.”

A large majority of marketers, 72 percent, reported that social media assisted them in closing a sale. Forty-five percent who use social media said it helped cultivate new partnerships, and over time, marketers who take the social approach see “significant drops in marketing costs.”

The most popular metrics measured by marketers include site traffic (68 percent), number of fans/members (63 percent), conversion (66 percent), and number of positive customer mentions (63 percent).

When brands decide why exactly they want to use social media marketing, they will be able to more accurately pinpoint successes and failures.

An infographic by Pagemodo says that marketers should see how customers react to content and figure out a way to track the number of website visitors who become customers.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

So far, social media has been regarded as a tool for impacting campaigns rather than directly influencing sales.

A majority of marketers, 64 percent, believe that “social marketing is a promising tactic that will eventually produce ROI,” according to an infographic from Pagemode and a study by Marketing Sherpa.

A survey by Chief Marketer found that 60 percent of marketers measure their social media achievements in terms of likes and followers and 39 percent through sharing, forwarding, and retweeting branded content on Twitter.

Pagemodo suggests measuring social media sites separately, tracking how many site visitors become customers, and seeing how customers and visitors respond to certain content.

Before trying to find out any ROI, marketers need to determine why they are measuring certain aspects of social media campaigns. Benchmarks must be set, and goals should established.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

The following steps provide an outline to help plan and implement a content promotion strategy.

1. Define Objectives

Even the most well-written blog posts and social campaigns need a goal. At a high-level, content should add value to your company’s business model. Examples of concrete objectives include product promotion, visitor recruitment and audience development. The goals might be something else entirely: for example, leveraging a blog as a platform for educating existing clients and prospective customers.

If pursuing more than one goal, the trick is to stay as focused as possible. Chaos is best avoided when plans are manageable, so companies should keep objectives as straightforward and compartmentalized as possible.

The Content Marketing Institute recommends thinking about content strategy and social strategy as two separate pieces. Marketers should know what type of conversation they want to have before they have it. Then, they can generate the relevant social buzz.

2. Create a Timeline

In promoting a blog post, a company might set a goal to get 20 shares or 200 pageviews within a week as a means to quantify success. Setting this type of timeline is important because it will help streamline the company’s goals into results that can grow and be tracked over time.

A timeline can also help refine the overall strategy. Leyl Master Black recommends that content marketers brainstorm topics ahead of time. This type of idea generation is important for helping organizations remain on track and adapt to time-sensitive trends.

Depending on the project, a longterm timeline might be valuable. If a brand is launching a blog, for instance, it may want to establish time-driven milestones for traffic growth and social media shares.

3. Set Benchmarks for ROI

After a company knows what it wants to achieve, it needs to create a budget for it. For long-term content promotion projects, benchmarks will help gauge performance immediately and over time. By tracking strengths and weaknesses, companies can create an adaptive strategy that can evolve in a cost-effective way.

The 5 basic metrics to measure the ROI of a content promotion strategy include social media shares, time spent on site, unique visitors, return visitors, and eventually, blog related revenue. Content marketers should focus on the numbers that enhance content quality.

For instance, spending thousands of dollars on blog posts that have generated fewer than 10 pageviews in a year is likely a poor return on investment and should prompt a company to consider changing its strategy or spending less.

4. Leverage Key Networking Channels

Content promotion and networking go hand-in-hand, as even the most high-traffic blogs need to make an active effort to connect with an audience.

Before a company starts reaching out to people, it needs to take a step back to determine where it would like to create connections. If it is interested in reaching businesses, LinkedIn discussion groups, for example, provide a great starting point for reaching prospective readers.

It can also join real-time conversations by promoting content through relevant Twitter #hashtag channels. For media exposure and additional blog coverage, it’s worthwhile to connect with reporters and other bloggers.

Of course, the business can also connect with existing social media followers and encourage them to share content as well. Creating a solid networking strategy will help ensure that the message doesn’t flounder in the midst of a mismatched audience.

5. Track Results

The metrics that a company follows will depend on the needs of the business and the intended goals of its campaign.

A company should be creative when it looks at data to measure any unintended consequences of its campaign, and of course, keep its data in a place that its team members can access as a learning tool. It should think about data in human terms to better understand the relationship between its content, readership, and ROI.

6. Be Creative

A company should think of its content promotion strategy as a living, breathing, and evolving project. It should combine the best of its favorite examples, articles, and sources to find a strategy that is unique to its brand.

Images courtesy of shutterstock

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Image by attercop311 via Flickr

By tracking metrics that measure the results of your content, you can quantify the time and money spent and also help determine which types of content bring the most results.

The first step is to understanding overall how to measure the return on investment on your content strategy. And then make sure you that you are tracking the right metrics.

The Content Marketing Institute says that there are 21 Real Blog Metrics that you should be tracking. But not all of the metrics listed pertain directly to the quality of content and certain measurements more accurately show the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of your content marketing strategy.

Here are the five easiest metrics to measure if you want to increase the ROI of your content:

1. Number of Social Media Shares

When someone likes something they read or watch, they share it with their friends. By tracking how many times readers share your content through Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you get a good picture of how many times readers are intrigued enough by your content to recommend it others. You are also getting a higher ROI on your content when someone posts your content on social media because your readership and exposure is exponentially increased without you investing another minute or even a dime.

2. Time Spent On site

Content Market Institute specifically recommends tracking the average time people spend on your site overall and also how much time they spend on specific pages. If someone is not engaged in your content, then they will click to another site pretty quickly. When your readers are spending a significant amount of time on your site overall or on a specific topic then you know that you are delivering the content that they want.

3. Visitors & Return Visits

While it’s important to know how many people are visiting your site, it is even more important to track the trends in the numbers. Has the number of visitors risen with your increased focus on content marketing? Are your numbers higher when you post on a certain topic? Or do you see spike in visitors when you promote your content on Twitter or Facebook? By tracking the trends of visitors in relation to your content and marketing, you can continue to focus your efforts in the right direction.

4. Blog-related Expenses

If you don’t know what your investment in content is, then you can’t determine the ROI. By having a baseline of what you have spent, then you can begin to determine the ROI using the Blog Related Revenue metric. And if the expenses are too high for a large return, then these numbers can help you trim expenses to increase your return.

5. Blog Related Revenues

One common mistake is not building mechanisms into your site that track revenues that come directly from your blog traffic. The simplest way to do this is to add Google Analytics tracking code to your site and set “goals” and “funnels”, so Google can track when your visitors convert to leads or sales, and whether those conversions came through your content or some other source. While some of the ROI, especially in the beginning, is not directly related to revenue, the ultimate goal of a content marketing strategy is to increase revenue.

Other Content ROI Metrics

One goal common among brands and other content marketers is to increase “brand awareness”. Beyond traffic and shares, metrics like mentions and reblogs can act as proxies for brand awareness, especially when viewed over time. We’ll blog more about that in an upcoming post.

You may wonder why “number of comments” was not included in the top five metrics. While comments are tangible and an ego boost, they often don’t provide a good illustration of the ROI of your content. Many people who become customers may not ever post a comment and oftentimes the most prolific posters have no intention of purchasing.

By following these five metrics, you will have good start to monitoring results and knowing where to focus your content marketing strategy.

Related articles

• How To Measure ROI on Your Content Strategy (contently.com)
• How To Get Millions Of Pageviews With Your Content Marketing Strategy [Minnesota Vikings Case Study] (contently.com)
• 5 Fashion Companies That are Crushing it With Content (contently.com)
• Buddy Media’s Enormous Growth Underscores Brands’ Uptake Of Content Marketing (contently.com)

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently