Why We’re Building the Next Era of Content Marketing Tech

Perhaps it’s part and parcel of being a stereotypical nerd, but I have been fascinated with comics for as long as I can remember. There’s a lot to like: the clever illustrations, the complex story lines, the fantastic worlds, and, of course, the characters. There was one character in particular that resonated with me: Captain America.

Although a brilliant tactician, he was a normal soldier until he was injected with “Super Soldier Serum.” The serum transformed him, raising “his strength, endurance, agility, speed, reflexes, durability, and healing [to the] zenith of natural human potential.” That bit about natural human potential was what really captured my imagination. Unlike his well-known counterparts—Superman, Hulk, and the Silver Surfer (to name a few)—Captain America is bracketed by the limits of natural human potential. A quirk for sure, but something that made him much more real.

But what does ol’ Cap have to do with content marketing analytics? When I think about what our analytics product needs to look like, I think of analytics on Super Soldier Serum. In other words, what is the zenith of potential value that can be added by a content marketing analytics product?

When we started the analytics project more than two years ago, we realized that the pageview era was on its way out. We thought about the limits of technology and our understanding of successful content, and with some help from the geniuses on our product team, built a system that measured what was the outer limit of effective analytics at the time: engagement.

Engagement gave us a window into reader behavior. It let us see which pieces of content were actually read or watched. It gave us a more accurate view of which pieces of content were holding people’s interest and building audiences for a brand.

But for all its upside, it was a proxy, and it wasn’t perfect.

That was 18 months ago. Many teams would have been content to rest on their laurels and make incremental improvements. We are not that team. To borrow another comic book trope, the needs of the content marketer continue to mutate, and we continue to apply the Super Soldier Serum.

So it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the next generation of content marketing analytics. Whether content is intended to grow an audience, build thought leadership, convert readers into buyers, or really anything in between, this product enables the creation of content that truly works to accomplish those goals.

That’s because we’re making a commitment to analytics that are all about goal-driven results, rather than pageviews or simple engagement. In other words, we’re building our analytics around what’s important for content marketers, rather than traditional websites or publishers. Everything will feed back to a larger content ROI umbrella so that content marketers will know—really know—what’s working and what isn’t.

We’re doing this through six core product innovations:

• Contributor analytics: With contributor analytics, you can filter by type, length, goal, and other parameters to find and optimize creative talent–from both your own team and from Contently.
• Conversion tracking: Business results have taken a back seat in content analytics for too long. With conversion tracking, Contently Analytics allows marketers to easily customize and track conversion events with their content.
• Integration with Marketo: By integrating with Marketo, the Contently platform allows clients to intuitively leverage Marketo’s data to better report on ROI and optimize their content creation process.
• Return visitor and visitor frequency tracking: No matter how engaged your readership is, it doesn’t matter if they’re not coming back. Contently Analytics is able to track deep metrics like return visitors and visitor frequency so marketers can see just how much loyalty their content is creating.
• Attribute tagging: Without content attributes, it’s nearly impossible for sophisticated content marketing operations to keep track of what’s working and what’s not. Sophisticated attribute tagging allows Contently users to tag their content based on its form, length, goal, and other key attributes.
• Automatic, custom metric dashboards built around your goals: Different content marketers have different goals. Contently allows marketers to easily input their goals—such as lead generation or brand awareness—and our metrics dashboard automatically customizes around them.

Over the next few weeks, our product manager Michael Enriquez will be outlining these new features, explaining both how they work and why we’re implementing them. By the end, we hope that you’ll see that our technology is entering a new era of content marketing analytics.

Contact the Contently media team at press@contently.com.