13 Social Media KPIs to Measure For Business Growth In 2022
If you use social media for business, you need a plan in place to assess and evaluate your social media KPIs. Having a digital content strategy is great, but tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) allows your social media team to understand if the content connects with the audience and helps achieve business goals.
What Are Social Media KPIs?
KPI means key performance indicators.
Businesses use KPIs to assess and evaluate a company's performance over time. This assessment helps marketers understand which goals are met and the strategies that need to be tweaked to improve business performance.
In a similar vein, social media KPIs measure the effectiveness of a social strategy or campaign on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram, where you share the brand's content.
There are several key performance indicators when it comes to social media marketing. The goal is to choose the metrics that align with your marketing campaigns and outcomes.
In this post, we list down crucial social media metrics that you can track and measure to improve engagement:
Important Social Media Metrics To Track For Your Business In 2022
Reach
Reach is the number of unique visitors who saw your post when it went live. When trying to increase the reach of your posts, it’s crucial to target the right audience
interested in your products and services. Once you have determined your target audience and the posts they like, you can create content that is engaging and meaningful to them.
What To Measure
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your post appeared on someone’s timeline or newsfeed. This doesn’t mean the person has engaged with the post. It’s possible they scrolled past it, but it counts as an impression.
Follower Count
This KPI measures the number of followers on your social media channel at a specific point in time. When tracking the follower count, looking at the engagement rate is crucial.
Suppose you have 1000 followers on Instagram, but only one or two people engage with the post through likes, comments, or shares. This can either mean the account has bots/fake followers or the content doesn’t connect with the intended audience. Either way, you need to take a hard look at your content strategy and understand what needs to be fixed.
Website Traffic
This is one of the most important KPIs that tell you how much website traffic your social media posts generate. It’s how you move the users down the funnel and convert them into paying customers.
Engagement
Social media engagement is the quality of interactions with your followers. This measures how the target audience responds and reacts to your content and how effective your brand campaigns are.
What To Measure
Likes
This KPI measures the number of times your social followers interacted with the brand by liking a post on social media. Though many see this as a vanity metric, it can boost engagement as more people are likely to interact with a post when they see others like it.
Shares
Social shares tell you how popular your content is with the target audience and help drive visibility to your brand. This is a great metric to understand the content formats that work for your brand and how you can double down on those to improve engagement.
Mentions
This social media metric keeps you up-to-date with what people say about the brand on different social media channels. It’s a great way to tap into users' thoughts about the brand, content, and products/services. You can use this data to know more about their preferences and create content best suited to their interests.
Comments
Comments are not only a great engagement metric but also tell you how a user perceives your product or post. All comments may not always be positive, but even the negative ones can help improve your product or marketing strategy. A high number of comments indicate users like your content and are willing to engage with the brand.
Clicks
This is the most effective metric to measure the success of your social media strategy. Most businesses use social media to divert traffic to an external website to facilitate the sale of a product or service. If a user clicks on the website link, they are interested in the product/service and want to know more about it. This means your content marketing strategy is effective in bringing qualified leads, which is ultimately the goal of social media marketing.
Conversions
This KPI measures how many social interactions with the followers or visitors convert into product/service sales, newsletter sign-ups, product demo sign-ups, etc. The conversion could be monetary or non-monetary, depending on the brand’s goals, but it can establish the effectiveness of a social media strategy in leading users to take the final step.
What To Measure
Leads Generated
Generating leads is crucial for business. Not every lead will convert, but it’s worth considering how many people are visiting the website through social media channels, downloading e-books, and signing up for newsletters and product demos to refine the social media strategy that suits the interests of the target audience.
Social Media Conversion Rates
You are posting on social media, and people are liking or commenting on the post, but how many users convert into customers? A straightforward way to determine this is by dividing the total social traffic from the number of social media conversions. You can also track these numbers using Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Salesforce.
Sales Revenue
This refers to the revenue generated from social media conversions. Once you know the number of people who visit your site through social media and the total revenue generated, you can assign a number or value to a prospect. This allows you to set a budget for social media campaigns and anticipate ROI from the efforts.
Measure Social Media KPIs To Drive Business Performance
Tracking social media metrics isn’t easy, but it’s worth the time and money. It helps to improve marketing strategy, calculate ROI from social media efforts, and improve long-term customer standing. Not all businesses need to track all KPIs. Depending on the campaign goals, social media managers can choose to follow some metrics and ignore others. Measuring the correct KPIs can help you understand the best way to communicate with your target audience and the strategies to help you achieve business growth in 2022.
Average Social Media Marketing Costs in 2022
Social media marketing costs depend on several factors across platforms and industries.
According to the Search Engine Journal, 84% of the US population use at least one social media channel. The active number of users worldwide stands at 57.6%, which means at least half of the population uses one social media channel a month.
Brands are monetizing social media more than ever, making it an essential part of their content marketing strategy. As a result, companies are spending more on social media ads, with a projected ad spending of US $0.23 M in 2022.
This leads to the question: How much should you expect to spend on social media marketing?
This guide will help you uncover the typical social media marketing costs, the amount organizations spend on it, and the factors that can affect the spending.
What are the Average Social Media Marketing Costs?
Social media marketing costs vary based on what services you need and how frequently you need them. Here's what you can expect to pay local US professionals:
- Average cost (per month): $400 - $650
- Minimum cost (per month): $295
- Maximum cost (per month): $1000+
- How Much Do Organizations Spend On Social Media Marketing?
The marketing spend is influenced by several factors such as the company size, the industry, the services offered, and the total revenue.
On average, businesses invest $4000 to $7000 per month on social media marketing, which includes advertising on one or more channels. If outsourcing, the social media cost ranges from $900 to $20,000 per month and $75 to $500 per hour for a consultant or freelancer's services.
What Changes The Cost Of Social Media Marketing?
The amount you'll pay for social media marketing depends on the following factors:
1: Taking It In-House
Average cost: $30 - $100 per month
If you're planning to create and manage everything yourself, set aside a minimum amount to get started. You can use this to build knowledge or purchase tools to help you get started.
As a one-person team, you must create content, keep up with posting on social media, respond to mentions and comments, and track the critical KPIs.
There are affordable subscription-based services that can help to automate social media marketing. Tools such as Buffer have a scheduler to create and schedule posts in advance. Hootsuite tracks all the social feeds together, so you don't have to open activities in different tabs.
If you're looking to take your social media in-house, consider investing in free or paid tools to help you ideate, plan, and manage content marketing, so you have time to look into other business areas.
2: Outsourcing on a Smaller Budget
Average cost: $500 - $1000 per month
Small businesses have tight budgets, but it's possible to outsource social media marketing to an agency on a limited budget.
Agencies have different packages and pricing models that you can choose from depending on your budget. In addition, each agency charges differently depending on expertise since there is no standard industry pricing for social media marketing.
Seven Oaks Consulting offers outsourced social media post creation and adding posts to scheduling tools at prices within this monthly range.
3: Outsourcing on a Larger Budget
Average cost: $1500 to $5000 per month
If you have a larger budget, the world is your oyster. You can opt for a superior, more expensive agency with a faster turnaround and more resources dedicated to your account.
But hiring an expensive agency might not always translate into results. You want to hire an agency that is credible and has significant achievements to show. A good marketing agency will ask you about your niche, industry, current marketing strategy, and previous marketing failures. Make sure the agency you choose can deliver consistent results while staying true to the brand vision.
Hiring a Social Media Expert — Is It Worth The Investment?
If you lack the resources and expertise to manage social media channels, getting an expert on board is worth the investment. They can plan the content for social media channels, schedule them, and monitor the performance.
Maintaining an edge via social media can be tricky, but experts can help to streamline content based on the target audience to get the most from your buck. A dedicated social media expert can help you determine what works for your brand on different platforms and how you can maximize the revenue with current strategies.
If you need help with social media marketing, Seven Oaks Consulting can help. We are a full-service marketing agency specializing in social media marketing and content creation. Contact Jeanne at (434) 574-6253 or email jeanne@sevenoaksconsulting.com for more information on our social media post creation and scheduling services.
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Where Should You Focus Your Social Media Campaign - and Why?
Running a social media campaign is one of the best ways to reach new customers and grow your brand. But it is easy to waste time and energy if you do not know where to focus. In addition, you are likely spreading yourself too thin by establishing a presence everywhere you can think of. As a result, you have less time to engage with followers or post consistent updates. Instead, by identifying exactly which platform is best for your audience, offerings, and budget, you can use social media to skyrocket your business.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Don't Blindly Choose a Social Media Platform
Social media is a crowded space. Avoid getting lost in the noise by learning where your audience hangs out. Focus your efforts there.
Do not choose a social media platform simply because it is popular. Instead, consider which platforms would be best for reaching your audience and growing your business. Having a plan in place will make you successful with social media marketing.
Do Determine Which Platform Is Best for Your Business
The power of social media is impressive, especially given that it is free to use! You can reach a large audience of potential customers with the right strategy.
Common social media platforms that businesses use for content marketing include:
- YouTube
- TikTok
While each platform has something unique to offer, not all businesses benefit from each one. For example, if you are a fashion brand trying to sell trendy clothes and accessories, you may have better luck on Instagram than on LinkedIn. This is because Instagram has built-in shopping features that make it easy for consumers to buy items as they see them on their newsfeeds. On the other hand, LinkedIn may be more suitable for freelance writers looking to connect with businesses that may need their service. At the end of the day, we are all selling something, but where we focus our social media campaign matters.
When determining which platform is best for your social media campaign, ask yourself:
- What are you selling?
- Who is my target audience? Where do they like to get information?
- What kind of content does my audience prefer? Short-form or long-form videos? Infographics or blog posts?
- How often do I need to post content?
- How does this content fit with my overall content marketing strategy for reaching customers?
- What is my budget? Is there one platform that may be more budget-friendly? (i.e., Let's say you feel video content is best for reaching new customers. But you don't have the skill set to create quality videos efficiently. You may need to spend extra money to outsource the work.)
- What are my long and short-term marketing goals and social media KPIs?
Be a Master of One... Or a Master of None
Having a presence on all popular mediums is great for letting people know you exist. But maintaining quality content on every platform is not sustainable for most businesses. If you spread yourself too thin, it will show in the quality of the work you put out. Your scattered efforts will be ineffective in delivering results.
Want to get people talking about your product or service? Don't try to be everywhere at once. Instead, focus on mastering one primary platform. Once you decide which to move forward with, think of creative ways to encourage discussion around your brand.
Reach New Heights With the Right Social Media Campaign Strategy
Social media is an excellent way to reach new customers. You can get your brand in front of them without investing a ton of money. But it is crucial not to jump on the latest social media bandwagon just because everyone is doing it. Every social media campaign needs a thoughtful strategy behind it to be effective.
Still not sure which platform is best for your business? Seven Oaks Consulting helps small and large companies execute successful social media campaigns. Contact us at 434-574-6253 - we would love to help get you on the right track.
How to Track Blog Performance: Blogging KPIs
A blog is an integral marketing channel for any business, so it is important to know how to track blog performance. A blog is where you can showcase your expertise and share knowledge with the world. But how do you know if yours is successful? In this post, we will cover 8 key metrics that every blogger should track to identify trends and measure their performance against set benchmarks.
Why Is It Important to Track Blog Performance?
Tracking your blog’s performance is crucial because it helps you understand how well it is performing. You can use this data to guide future strategic decisions about what types of content to create for continued community engagement. For example, if a certain type of post does much better than others, then it’s your cue to focus on creating more like that. If people are commenting, social sharing, and reading something to the end, it shows they found value in that piece of content.
How to Track Blog Performance
Many know the importance of having a blog but don’t know how to track blog performance. Make sure the metrics you track align with your business objectives. Most businesses blogs fail to increase website traffic or email subscribers. If that is the case for you, then focus on the key metrics to improve and measure blog performance:
- Engagement Rate – The ratio of likes, shares, and comments divided by total views
- Bounce Rate – The percentage of visits that last less than 30 seconds before leaving your site
- Time Spent on Site – How long visitors stay on a page (the longer they stay, the more engaged they are)
- Referrers – Where did they come from? Google Analytics will tell you what keywords drove traffic to each article so you can optimize future posts based on these findings.
8 Blog KPIs to Evaluate for Measuring Success
One could evaluate many blog KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure a blog’s success. Let’s go over eight main ones:
Organic Traffic
This is the number of visitors that came from search engines. Google Analytics (GA) tracks organic traffic by measuring how many people visit your website through a Google search, then visit one page on your site and leave without going any further.
To increase your organic search rankings, make sure all of your content is written with high-quality keywords. This will help customers find you when they search those terms online.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a popular metric used to measure the effectiveness of your content. It refers to the percentage of visitors who land on your site but do not visit any other pages. Bounce rate is a good indicator of how well you can engage your visitors and keep them interested in what they are reading. The lower this number, the better.
Time Spent on Page
Time spent on page is the amount of time a user spends on your site, which can be broken down into two parts:
- How long they stay (time spent)
- What they do while they're there (actions taken)
As you might imagine, the more time people spend with your content and the more actions they take while browsing it, the more likely they will become engaged with your blog.
Page Views Per Visit
To calculate page views per visit, divide your total page views by the number of visits. Use this metric to understand how your readers are engaging with your content by comparing it to other metrics. For example, do readers who read more pages have higher conversion rates? Or do they usually bounce right away?
Pages Per Session
Pages per session is a metric that measures how many pages each visitor views on your blog. It gives insight into which stories are resonating most with readers.
A high average of pages per session shows that your visitors are reading through multiple posts and spending time on your site. The more they read, the greater their chances of seeing ads or clicking through to offsite links.
Exit Rate
Exit rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site from a given page. It can be calculated by dividing total exits by total visits to that page. Exit rates are used as an indicator for content engagement.
The higher the exit rate, the more likely it is that people aren't finding what they came looking for. They are leaving quickly instead of scrolling through your content library, looking for something to keep them around.
Social Media Shares
Social media shares are a great way to measure whether your blog content is thought-provoking to your audience. People tend to share the posts they find interesting, so it's a good indication of how much engagement the post gets.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate refers to the number of people who convert your desired action divided by the total number of visitors. This can be a monetary conversion, like when someone makes a purchase on your site. It can also be an action that doesn’t involve money, like filling out a contact form or subscribing to your newsletter.
Measure Your Blog’s Impact by Studying Its Data
What is the best way to measure a blog? That depends on your goals and how you define success. This article looked at eight KPIs that can help you manage your blog and track its impact on your business. In addition to keeping these KPIs in mind, always prioritize quality content output. It builds brand trust, increases website authority, and improves engagement.
Ready to level up your marketing game? Get in touch with Seven Oaks Consulting to discuss your business goals and how we can help you achieve them!
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How to Improve Email Metrics
Understanding email marketing metrics is more important than ever before, given that the email marketing industry is growing at a rapid pace. Today, around 90% of all adults have an email account. As a result, businesses of all sizes have the opportunity to reach this massive audience!
As you continue to learn more about content marketing KPIs, consider these email marketing metrics as part of your overall program to measure and monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns.
What Are Email Marketing Metrics?
So you’ve grown your email list and sent out emails as part of your business marketing efforts. But do you know how well they are performing?
Email marketing metrics help businesses understand how effective their email marketing is. Email opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounces are all examples of email metrics. Businesses use these metrics in Google Analytics (GA) or other analytics software packages to better understand how well your emails performed over time.
How to Elevate Your Emails
Here are some sure-fire ways to take your email marketing up a notch… or two.
Personalize Your Message
Personalization is a must in email marketing, and it's an easy way to stand out. You can gain trust, get your message read and opened, and create positive experiences for your customers.
Provide Value to Your Potential Customers
The best way to improve email marketing metrics is to provide value for your potential customers. If you can present something helpful, entertaining, and informative, you will skyrocket your open and click-through rates!
Produce Compelling Copy
It would help if you made your audience feel something while telling a story with your landing pages and emails. Be mindful of your target audience's tone, word choice, and headlines. This is crucial because different audiences prefer different things. For example, young adults will likely respond better to conversational language than senior citizens.
Write a Catchy Subject Line
When it comes to successful email marketing, the subject line is the first thing that people see, and it is what draws people in, so you want it to make an impression.
You need a good subject line that:
- Is relevant to the content of your email
- Is short and concise (no longer than 15 words)
- Personalizes each message sent for maximum engagement
- Factors in when your customer sees their email (e.g., don't send emails during peak hours if possible)
Craft a Well-Designed Email
Your email should look good no matter the width of the screen. People viewing it on mobile or desktop should be able to enjoy the same aesthetic. Use a responsive design that works across all devices and browsers. This way, the email will resize according to its available space. If you use a service like MailChimp, you won't have to worry about this—the platform does it for you!
Use Striking Images & Colors that Complement the Text
Images and colors can highlight important information, illustrate your message and break up the text. They also create a sense of urgency and add charisma to your email.
Images should have a purpose in helping you to deliver a point. If an image does not match the topic of your email, it will distract subscribers from what is most important.
Include a Call-to-Action
You should always include a call-to-action (CTA) and conversion triggers in your email marketing campaigns. A CTA is a request for action from the reader, while conversion triggers are actions the reader takes after reading your email. These can be as simple as clicking a link or as complicated as filling out a form. It can also be a purchase if you sell things online.
Clever Email Campaigns Get More Conversions
We have all seen generic email blasts go out to a large group of people, hoping that a few customers will respond. Unfortunately, this strategy is ineffective and can result in lost money and wasted marketing efforts. So, create personalized emails that are more likely to yield positive customer responses.
The first step in personalizing your email campaign is understanding your customer base and what makes them tick. Once you know their preferences, it's time to create an email campaign with those preferences in mind.
The second step is making sure the content speaks directly to each recipient as if they were having an actual conversation with you. For example, use text like "Hi [name]," rather than "Hey there." Studies and tests have shown that personalized emails can increase email open rates by 23% and click rates by 57%!
Measure Email Performance to Meet Your Business Goals
Email marketing is a strategic and effective way to reach customers, build relationships, and get people to buy more. Businesses that can effectively leverage email marketing find it easier to close deals with new customers while maintaining their existing base.
Today, many companies still struggle with getting the most out of their emails. They do not know what metrics are important or how to use them to measure their success. If this sounds like you, get in touch with Seven Oaks Consulting to discuss your business objectives and how we can help elevate your email marketing!
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Content Marketing KPIs: An Introduction
The first step to ensuring that your marketing efforts are successful is understanding content marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and how they can help you assess your progress towards business goals. In this series, Seven Oaks Consulting's writing team will help newcomers to content marketing KPIs better understand:
- What content marketing key performance indicators are, and how can they be used
- Metrics to measure for specific content types
- Specific metrics for blog posts, social media posts and more
- How to assess the significance of your metrics against KPIs
What Are Content Marketing KPIs?
Content marketing KPIs are measurable data that indicate the success of your content marketing strategy. If you have an effective campaign, it will populate positive data, which means you can replicate and scale that strategy.
But what if your content marketing campaign is not working? The negative data will help you understand where it is falling short so that you can fix the problem and improve ROI.
Key Performance Indicators Explained
A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a quanitfiable measure that businesses use to gauge the success of your content marketing efforts. KPIs can be specific and narrow, like "increase conversion rates," or broad and wide, like "generate leads."
As you're defining KPIs, keep in mind that some are better than others. While it's important to have goals, they should be realistic and measurable, so they can tell you whether your content strategy is working.
Measure performance at different scales: micro-level (keywords), macro-level (posting cadence), competitive level (benchmarks for competitors), as well as intermediate levels between these three extremes. This allows for a more granular analysis of how different types of content perform under different circumstances based on your audience size and industry type (B2B vs B2C).
How to Create Good KPIs
To come up with solid KPIs, businesses must determine and decide:
- The goals of your content marketing campaign.
- What success looks like.
- Which metrics to measure.
- A frequency for measurement (i.e., daily, weekly).
- A period for measurement (i.e., monthly, quarterly).
- The source of data and how often you will update it (i.e. social media channels).
The Different Types of Metrics
Metrics are a powerful way to measure the performance of your content marketing. There are two distinct metrics:
- Attribute Metrics measure the power and authority for specific actions. These include click-through rates, bounce rates, conversion rates, and more.
- Outcome Metrics measure how well your content has performed against its goals. They can be used to determine if it was successful or not, which is useful for determining future actions based on that information.
How to Pick Which KPIs to Measure
As you begin to measure the success of your content marketing efforts, it is crucial to choose KPIs that are appropriate for your business and audience.
These tips will help you decide which KPIs are right for your business:
- Be sure the KPI is relevant to your content strategy. For example, if you are focusing on converting visitors into leads and/or customers, then conversion rate as a KPI isn't right for you because it doesn't measure this. Instead, consider analyzing page views or click-through rates as KPIs.
- Focus on what matters most to customers—not just what matters most internally at a company (i.e. revenue). If visitors are not finding value in what they are seeing online, they will not convert even if a company sells its products at a discount price point!
Determine KPIs Before Starting a Marketing Campaign
Before you can set up a content marketing campaign, identify your business goals and how they align with those of your target audience. Then, decide which KPIs will help
you gauge whether you have achieved these objectives. Without these metrics in place and organized by category—for example, social media engagement and lead generation—you will not be able to determine what is working in each area of your marketing strategy.
The first step is determining which metrics are important for measuring success (and failure). Determining this requires some structuring and evaluation of the following:
- What is the desired result from running a content marketing campaign?
- How much traffic should we get?
- How many leads should we aim for?
- What kind of customers do we want?
- What content tactics do we need to achieve our marketing goals?
- Which content marketing statistics should we focus on and why?
These answers should come from research before starting a new campaign, so there is no guesswork later when it is time for analysis.
Why Content Marketing KPIs are Necessary
Content Marketing KPIs are necessary for every business because they clearly show whether campaign goals are successful over time. Businesses can track if they are getting their desired results. This measure also lets you know if your target audience is seeing, engaging, and resonating with what you are putting out there. Finally, content marketing KPIs help brands understand if they are using the right channels to reach people.
Content Marketing KPIs are Integral to Business Growth
Many businesses are still hesitant to invest in content marketing. Without any kind of metric on which to base the success or failure of a campaign, it is tough to justify the investment.
But the truth is that content marketing KPIs can be extremely beneficial for businesses of all sizes and industries. They provide an understanding of what consumers want from you and how they perceive your brand. By showing what is and is not working, content marketing KPIs guide future marketing efforts so you are not operating in the dark.
With various content marketing KPIs available, it is essential to choose the ones that are right for your business objectives. Not sure where to start? Seven Oaks Consulting is here to help. Contact us to talk about your goals and how we can assist you with content marketing needs.
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The Dangers of Article Spinners and AI Content Generation
There are many dangers of article spinners that the average small business owner may not realize.
Article spinners are artificial intelligence or AI platforms that imitate the techniques of human copywriters. Instead of creating fresh content, article spinners copy work from another source. They change words, sentences, paragraphs and even a whole article with synonyms and similar phrases to make it look like another person’s work is technically a new copy. For instance, a sentence like this, "I was extremely exhausted at the end of the day,” could be interpreted by an article spinner as, “I was very depleted by the day’s end.”
Dangers of article spinners - Bots Can't Write
From the above example, it’s clear that the quality of article spinners doesn’t compare to well-written human copy. These AI-based tools produce work that doesn’t read naturally due to poorly constructed sentences and lots of grammatical errors. But that doesn’t stop content creators from using the multiple rewrites from article spinners to try and build as many backlinks as possible and outrank their competition in SERPs.
Reduced Visitor Conversion Rates
Article spinners look like the perfect shortcut for people who'd rather not put in the work and develop unique content for their websites. But these AI software tools create low-quality articles that are often unreadable. With such poor quality, spun content can increase the bounce rate on a website and reduce conversion rates.
Spinners Are Automated Plagiarism
Using article spinners is like duplicating another person’s material, which is unethical.
Free article spinners heavily plagiarize original content. That’s because these tools pull existing work rather than creating content from scratch. Plagiarism is a serious red flag in copywriting. Once your audience discovers you duplicate content, their trust in you and your brand quickly goes down the drain. And so do promising leads for your business. Worse still, it’ll only be a matter of time before Google catches up with you.
Google penalties for duplicate content include burying your search rankings. Given that most internet searches happen on Google, it’ll be hard, if not impossible, for customers and prospects to find your business online. And with your sudden online disappearance, consumers looking to purchase the goods or services you provide won’t hesitate to go to the competition.
Why Article Spinners Can Never Replace Actual Content Writers
Understandably, there’s been concerns that AI will fully replace human writers at some point. AI can do incredible things, such as mimic copywriting skills and churn out content fast. However, it can’t master the art of emotional storytelling. Article spinners are simply unable to create conversational, funny, engaging, and relatable content. These, among other limitations of artificial spinners, make them less effective than real copywriters and gives humans a huge edge.
Given all the dangers of article spinners mentioned in this article series, what's your take on AI content writing and AI writers?
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Why Article Spinners Will Never Replace Writers
AI-generated content is increasing in popularity, as more companies are now using article spinners to create content faster and in a shorter amount of time. This number is bound to grow, as per Statista, and the global AI software market will reach $126 billion by 2025.
Various software programs in the market can help you create content quickly; some can even rewrite or paraphrase text, such as article spinning tools.
Are Article Spinners Useful For Content Marketing?
An article spinner is a software tool that rewrites or paraphrases the input text while keeping the original meaning intact. This results in a distinct article with the same meaning as the existing text.
While article spinners can be helpful to ramp up content production and meet the continuous demands, they don’t come close to the original, research-backed, and comprehensive pieces that are written by a demonstrated expert.
Here are three reasons why article spinners will never replace creative content writers.
Article Spinning Tools aren't creative
Creativity is inherent to us. It comes from our experiences, memories, and emotions and cannot be replicated and automated by software. Content written by humans has the power to inspire, motivation, and entertain, which is difficult for AI.
At best, the automated software programs can take a chunk of text and convert it into a semi-coherent and legible piece of writing. Still, they cannot duplicate the way writers process the language and come up with ideas or words that strike resonance.
Article spinners Cannot Write A Lengthy, Coherent Piece Of Text
Article spinners can do a decent job producing short-form pieces, but they cannot create cohesive, engaging, and meaningful long-form articles that are often used in content marketing strategies.
A good long-form strategy involves neck-deep research, laying the groundwork, composing sub-sections, and ensuring structural flow in the article. AI struggles to connect the dots and often does not have the required knowledge on various topics to build a solid, valuable piece of writing.
Definition: Article Spinner
An article spinner is software that paraphrases or rewrites the original text often by substituting synonyms for words.
Article Spinning Tools Cannot Add Variety
Sometimes short sentences work better. Sometimes longer sentences establish a better flow and rhythm to keep the readers hooked. The automated rewriting tools cannot vary the sentence length or change the flow to make the article engaging.
Of course, you can program style guides and tone into AI tools, but for that, too, you need a professional writer.
AI Cannot Replace Marketing Writers
While AI has come far and is now integrated into all spheres of our lives, it still has a long way to go in replacing the originality and creativity of experienced writers.
Rather than looking at AI as a replacement, it’s more useful to look at it as a guide or aide that can help marketing writers to research faster, structure sections based on SEO suggestions, and automate repetitive tasks in content marketing as and when required. But the actual job of writing should be left to the experts in the field.
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A Creative Content Writer Is Irreplaceable
Nothing can replace a creative content writer, a marketing writer who hand-crafts unique content.
In a world where we are used to shortcuts, it’s no surprise that article spinners exist. While they can save users time writing fresh content from scratch, they don’t come without drawbacks. Even with innovative technology coming out in efforts to make life easier, creative copywriters are here to stay for the long haul.
How Do Article Spinners Work?
An article spinner repurposes existing content without paraphrasing. For example, you may have an article for your company blog that you want to publish on other mediums to increase traffic to your website. Using an article spinner to recreate a similar piece is an inexpensive way to achieve this. If not done right, though, it can get you into big trouble.
Search engines punish websites with cross-published identical content. The problem is, most businesses don’t want to spend time rewriting articles. They want a shortcut - and an article spinner is just that.
Article Spinners Ruin SEO Efforts
Though made to be time savers, article spinners come with a host of problems. They produce low-quality content that is difficult to understand. The whole point of search engine marketing is to provide quality content with which visitors can engage. Article spinners do the exact opposite. Low-quality spun articles will not hold a viewer’s attention, resulting in increased bounce rates.
The Verdict: You Need a Creative Content Writer
Marketing writers are here to stay, no matter the AI-driven technology. Creative, relevant content is irreplaceable because:
Every Brand Is Unique
Article spinners don’t take personality into consideration when refreshing articles. In contrast, a skilled copywriter produces content that is natural and conversational, rather than robotic and monotone. This is crucial for search engine optimization. A well-written article encourages an audience to interact. In turn, businesses reap the benefit of more organic traffic and sales. Establish authority and get on Google’s good side by sharing made-from-scratch content.
Quality Content Drives Better Leads
Word of mouth has been one of the most effective ways of marketing. When people like what they see, they’ll spread the word to their network. Similarly, top-notch content marketing encourages high-quality clients and sales. If visitors find your article easy to understand and packed with value, they may share it on their social channels. These shares are powerful because they could reach prospective clients.
According to a study by BrightEdge Research, 65% of online experiences start with a search engine. This is impressive, considering HubSpot reported an average of 2 trillion Google searches each year! It has been proven that going the extra mile to make sure your content is unlike any other pays off.
Invest in the Best Content You Can - Because It Pays Off in ROI
In life, you get what you pay for. If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is. Poorly written content is more detrimental to your brand than having no content at all. Instead of spinning content with software, hire a marketing writer to create authentic content. It goes a long way in sparking discussion and building a community!
At Seven Oaks Consulting, we curate top-notch content that will boost your search engine ranking and drive new traffic to your website. Our team of creative content writers offers unique, search engine optimized B2B content. Contact us to learn more about our copywriting services!
MOre Content Marketing Resources for You
My New Book
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