Connecting Content to Measurable Business Outcomes

I recently passed my six-month mark at Contently. In my very first post on The Content Strategist, I wrote this:

The biggest challenge facing content marketing is also its greatest opportunity. How do we connect each piece of content to a specific business outcome?

In content marketing, ROI means many things to many people. The responsibility for content can reside with every team from comms to social to digital to brand. It’s no wonder then that the measures for success vary greatly. Some strive for brand awareness or lead generation or organizational efficiency. Others care about all three simultaneously. But regardless of the unique circumstances, everyone shares the same overarching objective: accountability. We often hear from passionate content professionals who struggle to evangelize the importance (read: value) of content up the ladder or across their organizations.

I’m very excited to announce The Accountable Content Series, a new program from Contently designed to explore this concept in detail. The series aims to help marketers understand how content can deliver measurable brand impact and business outcomes. We decided to focus on four key themes:

1. Strategy: The blueprint for connecting content to your goals and objectives
2. Process: How teams and technology impact productivity
3. Content: Creating breakthrough content that drives meaningful engagement
4. Results: Using data to inform decisions and drive continuous improvement

The emphasis here is on a holistic approach. Sure, there’s lots of attention given to how an individual piece of content performs, but that’s only part of the story (pun intended!). Experience working with some of the world’s best brands has taught us that it’s the combination of these elements that drives optimal success.

Over the next few months, we will begin rolling out articles, infographics, webinars, events, and more to guide you on all of these topics. We envision each asset as a piece to a puzzle to help increase your company’s efficiency and efficacy so you keep improving.

Right now, there’s still a lot of noise out there. Our customers are bombarded by mass-produced fluff and filler. But we believe there’s an opportunity to do better.

If you’d like to learn more about the Accountable Content Series and sign up for exclusive updates, please check out our resource center here. Of course, I hope you’ll join us for the first webinar in the series, where I’m joined by Shawna Dennis, AVP of Global Content Marketing at Manulife for the case study on how this global insurance provider leveraged Contently to reduce production costs and drive double-digit ROI in less than a year.

Finally, if you have ideas for topics you’d like to see us address in the Accountable Content Series, please reach out to us on Twitter or Facebook.