5 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Blog
Looking to get more traffic to your blog?
Driving traffic to your articles can make or break your content marketing efforts. After all, what’s high-quality content without an audience? But sometimes, it can feel like a chicken-and-the-egg situation. Here are several effective strategies to help encourage clicks.
Get More Traffic to Your Blog Fast
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Optimize your articles for search engines to improve their visibility in search results. At minimum, use relevant keywords organically throughout your pieces, including in the title, headings, and body. Add internal links, meta descriptions, and outbound links for an added boost.
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Share on Social Media
You can get more traffic to your blog quickly by promoting individual articles on social media.
Promote your articles on social media platforms where your target audience “lives.” Craft compelling social media posts to tease your content and include eye-catching graphics. As is best practice, use relevant hashtags and post at optimal times for the best outcomes.
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Use Email Marketing
Don’t forget about your email list as an untapped resource. Send out newsletters or email updates featuring your latest articles. Provide a brief summary and a clear call-to-action (CTA) that piques interest and encourages readers to click through to longer-form pieces.
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Repurpose Content
What’s old to you might be new to them. Convert your articles into different formats like videos, infographics, or podcasts. This allows you to cross-pollinate and cater to different learning preferences without creating content from scratch.
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Embrace Collaboration
Align with other content creators or businesses in your field to amplify your efforts. Co-author articles, run joint webinars, or host podcasts together. By combining energy and resources, you can significantly expand your reach.
Get More Traffic to Your Blog, Fast! Consistency Is Key
Driving traffic to your articles requires intention and consistency. Remember that building an audience takes time, so manage your expectations. Over time, as your content inspires engagement and provides value, your analytics will go in the right direction, too. With these 5 ways to get more traffic to your blog, you're off to a strong start.
Another must read: 13 KPIs for Content Marketing
The Case for Content Marketing
Engagement Matters: The Case for Content Marketing
The case for content marketing: this marketing tactic has emerged as a leading tactic in recent years due to its promise to engage audiences, enhance brand visibility, and drive conversions. However, skeptical business owners and leaders might wonder if it's all razzle-dazzle or if there's any substance. The short answer: It's still relevant, and it offers a great deal of value. Here's a look at the why and how.
The Case for Content Marketing
Content provides valuable, relevant, and consistent information to attract and retain a target audience. Unlike traditional outbound advertising — which can sometimes feel intrusive — content marketing seeks to engage and educate people. By inviting them in with trust and authority, your brand is perceived as a helpful guide, not merely sales-driven.
- Valuable: People hate "being sold to". But they do love learning. As one B2B customer said to us, "When you share information, I love it. When you sell to me, I hate it. That's why I love webinars, case studies, etc." - all types of content.
- Relevant: Make sure your content is relevant to the target audience. If your audience is using Sage, sending them content pieces about Acumatica or Oracle isn't relevant.
- Consistent: Don't publish sporadically. Consistent publishing helps build an audience and adds to engagement.
Advanced Analytics Help Assess ROI
Advanced analytics tools provide a look "under the hood." You can see how your audience interacts with your content, which allows you to refine or modify your content strategy. Adaptation is critical to creating content that meets your target audience's needs and preferences. On that note, content marketing transforms the brand-consumer relationship from a transactional one to a deeper connection based on trust and brand loyalty.
In short, content marketing is here to stay, and savvy business owners know they must subscribe to this strategy. Effective content marketing can deliver results and help companies reach people they might not otherwise. In other words, it's an investment brands cannot overlook if they want to stay in business.
The Important of Content Marketing for B2B Companies
Content marketing is important for B2B and B2C companies.
Content marketing is a valid marketing approach for both B2B and B2C companies. However, many are skeptical of adopting content marketing as part of their strategy because they’re unsure of itsf ROI. Here, we dispel the myth that content marketing does not produce significant ROI and examine its importance in the marketing mix.
Content Marketing for B2B Companies Is Similar to Marketing for B2C Companies
Here’s a typical definition of content marketing;
‘A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (blogs, white papers, case studies, videos, social media posts, etc.) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.’
This definition shows that content marketing is crucial for every business.
There’s a need for B2Bs to understand their prospects' pain points and adopt content marketing strategies to educate and inform the prospects about their products and services and how they solve those pain points.
There are many reasons why content marketing is essential for B2B companies, from helping them build trust and authority to showcasing their products and services and generating high-quality leads.
7 Top Reasons Why B2B Companies Need to Have a Strategic Content Marketing Plan
1. Builds Trust and Authority
B2B buyers constantly try to mitigate risks and optimize purchases. They scrutinize every piece of information they receive before making purchasing decisions. When a company consistently presents itself as the go-to resource for expert industry information and insights, they become a trusted authority.
Smart B2B companies can use content marketing to build trust and authority by consistently creating valuable and relevant content. Building a B2B content marketing strategy that includes case studies, blogs, customer testimonials, thought leadership whitepapers, etc., signals industry expertise and helps build buyers’ trust.
2. Helps B2B Buyers Make Purchasing Decisions
B2B buyers are conscious of making purchasing mistakes that could negatively impact their ROI and customer relationships. They extensively research products and services before making any purchase decision.
B2B companies can use content marketing to provide relevant educational content that helps these customers make informed purchasing decisions. They can provide this information using marketing materials that show detailed product information, use cases, demos, and how the products and services help problem-solving.
By using transactional content for B2B marketing, companies can get their customers, who are at the decision stage of their buyer journey, to make instant buying decisions.
3. Improves SEO and Website Traffic
Strategic content marketing helps B2B companies rank higher on SERPs for different money keywords, increasing website traffic and driving MQLs. During product research, most B2B buyers use keywords to query search engines for specific information regarding their needs. This is especially true when they don’t know about companies offering the required solutions.
Because search engines reward quality content with high-ranking and qualified leads, strategic companies can rank for those keywords, have more visibility, and deliver exceptional content detailed enough to answer all the prospects’ questions. Creating content relevant to your target audience and search engines can generate high-quality leads, leading to increased revenue.
4. Helps Companies Stay Competitive
Most B2B companies are already leveraging content marketing to drive leads. And since B2B buyers conduct online research before purchasing, companies not adopting content marketing lose out on many sales and market share.
It has become a critical differentiator among companies with similar target markets.
5. Bring Higher-Quality Leads
High-quality lead generation is one of the many benefits of content marketing to B2B companies. Content marketing generates more qualified leads because it drives leads actively seeking solutions. These prospects don’t waste time making purchasing decisions when they encounter content they resonate with.
Different approaches to content marketing help companies attract people at different stages of their buyer's journey. With informational and educational content, B2B companies can attract customers at the awareness stage of their buyer journey. Companies can also attract higher quality leads at the consideration stage of their journey, with a different approach to content – transactional.
Knowing how and when to use each approach to content marketing for B2B lead generation is vital to increasing sales and revenue. . It all lies in the company’s content marketing strategy.
6. Content Marketing is Cost-Effective
Content marketing is a cost-effective marketing approach for B2B companies for valid reasons. Consistently updated quality and valuable content can rank at the top of search engines for years and generate leads year-on-year. This is cost-effective in the long run and requires an insignificant investment compared to paid marketing.
Furthermore, valuable content can be repurposed into other forms, such as infographics, videos, podcasts, eBooks, whitepapers, etc., which can be used in other marketing channels like email, social media, etc. This reduces the cost of generating separate marketing materials for these other channels, reducing the overall marketing cost for a company.
With a solid content marketing strategy, companies can save the costs of running daily, monthly, or yearly paid ads and achieve similar or even better results.
Showcase Your Products and Services
Content marketing is an excellent way for B2B companies to showcase their products and services. Customer-centric companies create content that answers their audience’s questions while suggesting their products and services as the necessary solutions.
Even more, they provide detailed content highlighting their products' specific features and benefits.
Since B2B buyers at the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey use online information to compare products and make buying decisions, content marketing becomes strategic for companies that leverage it.
The fascinating thing about using content marketing to showcase products and services is that, when executed well, it can be so engaging and fun that the customer never loses focus or interest. For instance, a product review can be developed to deliver value and drive conversions without the readers feeling they’re being sold to.
Leverage Content Marketing, Adopt a Strategy, and 10X Your Results
Companies that adopt content marketing and create valuable content are sure to win in a competitive B2B market. It’s a non-negotiable for companies that want to be future-proof and increase market share and profit margin. Hopefully, you have the insights to adopt an effective content marketing strategy, execute it well, and generate 10x your results.
The Value of Content Marketing for Technology Companies
11 Ways Content Marketing Drives Value for Technology Companies
Content marketing for technology companies continually achieves success, especially for B2B companies in highly competitive industries. The more tech companies launch and offer diverse products and services, the more the market gets noisier. Only companies that effectively communicate their value proposition will eventually meet their marketing goals, boost market share, increase revenue, and gain a competitive edge.
Although companies employ various strategies to communicate their value proposition and increase market share, content marketing has been recognized as one of the most effective strategies.
A Content Marketing Institute report showed that 73% of B2B and 75% of B2C companies use content marketing to show their expertise and authoritativeness, build customer trust, drive business results, and improve profit margins.
Before I explore how content marketing brings immeasurable value to B2B tech companies, the essence of a practical content marketing strategy, and the best way to win with content marketing, let me briefly discuss…
Why Content Marketing Is Key to Success for Tech Companies
Content marketing integrates with and powers all other marketing channels, which is part of why 22% of B2B marketers spend 50% or more of their total marketing budget on content marketing. It enables companies to educate and inform their target audience on diverse, relevant, and helpful topics ranging from the latest industry trends to best practices, client FAQs and pain points, etc. It helps smart companies to establish themselves as thought leaders and trusted advisors, increasing credibility and trust.
Customers are easily drawn to companies that share valuable content. Strategic content addresses clients' pain points and challenges, attracts and converts quality leads, and drives business results.
Furthermore, content marketing is crucial to achieving brand visibility, awareness, and a positive reputation, which is vital to every tech company's success.
It's non-negotiable if you're in business to make a profit. A Semrush survey of marketing pros showed that 91% of the respondents agreed that they achieved success with content marketing in 2021.
How Content Marketing Brings Value to Tech Companies
Content marketing brings overall long-term value.
1. Increase Brand Awareness
Content marketing is invaluable for building brand awareness and increasing visibility on a budget, as supported by eighty percent of marketers. Tech companies leverage content marketing to create compelling brand stories that induce an emotional connection in customers. Compelling brand storytelling communicates a company's mission, vision, and unique selling proposition, ultimately differentiating the company from competitors.
Furthermore, with billions of social media users available, an effective digital content strategy leverages social media platforms' potential for lead generation. Tech companies with effective content marketing strategies preach their products and services on social media, enabling them to acquire only quality leads.
2. Increase Website Traffic
Tech companies use content marketing to drive website traffic by providing valuable information that addresses critical clients' questions and pain points. According to Hubspot data, consistent content marketing yielded 55% more website traffic for the companies.
Excellent content marketing provides SEO-rich valuable content and promotes content through other content amplification channels. These increase content reach and drive more quality traffic.
3. Generate Quality Leads
Effective content marketing helps tech companies attract quality leads actively seeking solutions. HubSpot surveyed 1400 websites, and among other findings, it was revealed that companies that adopted content marketing gathered 68% more leads from blogging alone than customers without blogs.
Their 2023 state of marketing report, which included original data from over 1200 marketers across the globe, also supported that inbound marketing channels like content marketing drives 54% more leads than traditional marketing channels.
When you publish whitepapers, ebooks, blogs, webinars, and other informative materials packaged to deliver value, clients will trust you enough to drop their contacts, allowing you to follow up and move them down the sales funnel.
4. Establish Thought Leadership
Future-proof tech companies establish themselves as thought leaders by creating informative and insightful content and repeatedly addressing industry questions and concerns. This practice builds credibility and increases reputation and trust, as customers see such companies as reliable sources for credible industry information.
A 2020 study by Edelman and LinkedIn featured expanded insights from 3,275 global business leaders. It showed that nearly 90% of C-level decision-makers believed that thought leadership influences their opinion of a company.
Companies that successfully establish thought leadership easily convert their target audience into brand loyalists and advocates, increasing retention and profitability.
5. Build a Community
Customer-oriented companies understand the importance of a community of vibrant, happy, and loyal followers and leverage all available means to build one.
Content marketing effectively builds a valuable loyal community around a company, its products, and its services. B2Bs that create content that encourages discussion and engagement foster a sense of brand affinity that increase brand loyalty. A community of loyal customers increases brand visibility and reduces advertising and other customer acquisition, support, and retention costs, increasing profitability in the long run.
6. Enhance Customer Engagement
Content marketing improves customer engagement and service delivery.
Creating and effectively distributing valuable, shareable content is an excellent way to engage prospects across customer touchpoints. Smart tech companies use this approach to increase content reach, increase visibility for their products and services and generate more quality leads, conversions, and referrals.
7. Support Sales Efforts
Content marketing supports and enables sales to achieve more. A robust sales enablement strategy streamlines the collaboration between marketing and sales so that marketing qualifies leads before passing them on to sales. This relationship involves using content to attract, engage, and delight prospects before moving them down the sales funnel for conversion. Doing this reduces the load on the sales team, reduces customer acquisition costs, and boosts revenue generation.
8. Showcase Products and Features
As highlighted, content marketing helps companies showcase products, service features, and benefits. While providing information and addressing clients' pain points, tech companies can present their products and services as solutions to the challenges.
Effective content marketing involving practical content like case studies and visual content like webinars is so powerful that companies can make potential clients experience their products and services with detailed descriptions. This information eliminates conversion barriers and facilitates purchasing decisions.
9. Provide Customer Support
As clients seek more and more self-service support, content marketing makes it easy for companies to meet clients' concerns and questions even before the ticket reaches the CX department. Companies that provide detailed information on industry topics and answers to frequently asked questions about their products reduce the workload on customer support teams and improve customer satisfaction.
Savvy tech companies set up knowledge bases and provide product documentation to help customers solve problems and learn more about their products or service without contacting the support team. Even more, these companies use social media and email marketing to provide additional support and keep customers informed of new features or changes to their products or services, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
10. Provide Analytics and Insights
Customer insights are critical to the success of B2B tech companies. Content marketing analytics data provides valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, helping companies improve their products and provide better customer experience.
Forward-thinking companies make data-driven decisions powered by metrics such as website traffic, engagement, bounce rates, lead generation rates, most visited pages, customer journey maps, most searched keywords, etc., that help them discover customers' preferences and refine their content marketing strategy to meet those preferences.
11. Support Recruitment Efforts
Content marketing is also instrumental in recruiting top talents. It helps a company showcase its culture and values and highlight career opportunities. Tech companies that create content around their company culture and work ethics and how it supports the comfort and growth of their employees attract the best talents.
A Content Marketing Approach That Yields Optimal Results
Content marketing is essential. So is having a robust content marketing strategy that yields optimal results at a minimal cost. A good content marketing strategy and execution is the key to staying competitive in a highly competitive tech industry.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, only 5% of B2B marketers don't plan to develop a content marketing strategy. Being a part of this minority automatically puts any tech company at a disadvantage, as 95% of others implementing content marketing strategies will indeed have a competitive edge.
Because adopting content marketing is a must for profit-minded companies, B2Bs are often faced with two options - hiring in-house content marketers and putting them on a monthly salary or outsourcing their content marketing needs to experts experienced in developing, executing, and managing content marketing strategies.
What a company will opt for depends on many factors, including budget, personnel available, experience level, company size, etc. Whatever you choose, your content marketing strategy must track the right value metrics that bring business to the company. That way, you're not chasing shadows with your content marketing.
Work with Experts that Maximize Content Marketing Value for Tech Companies
The value of content marketing for tech companies can't be overemphasized. A well-implemented content marketing strategy can move a tech company from zero recognition to becoming a trusted, reliable go-to brand for quality industry information. It increases lead generation and conversion, boosts revenue, enhances CX delivery, and yields long-term business value.
Seven Oaks Consulting provides content marketing for technology companies that achieve tremendous results with content marketing. We're a content marketing outsourcing company that can assist you so you can focus on other business processes and be assured of winning with content.
We have 15+ years of experience providing content marketing for technology companies. We invite you to reach out to discuss how we can help your company benefit from these values of content marketing for tech companies.
The Value of Content Marketing for Tech Companies
11 Ways Content Marketing Drives Value for Technology Companies
Content marketing for technology companies continually achieves success, especially for B2B companies in highly competitive industries. The more tech companies launch and offer diverse products and services, the more the market gets noisier. Only companies that effectively communicate their value proposition will eventually meet their marketing goals, boost market share, increase revenue, and gain a competitive edge.
Although companies employ various strategies to communicate their value proposition and increase market share, content marketing has been recognized as one of the most effective strategies.
A Content Marketing Institute report showed that 73% of B2B and 75% of B2C companies use content marketing to show their expertise and authoritativeness, build customer trust, drive business results, and improve profit margins.
Before I explore how content marketing brings immeasurable value to B2B tech companies, the essence of a practical content marketing strategy, and the best way to win with content marketing, let me briefly discuss…
Why Content Marketing Is Key to Success for Tech Companies
Content marketing integrates with and powers all other marketing channels, which is part of why 22% of B2B marketers spend 50% or more of their total marketing budget on content marketing. It enables companies to educate and inform their target audience on diverse, relevant, and helpful topics ranging from the latest industry trends to best practices, client FAQs and pain points, etc. It helps smart companies to establish themselves as thought leaders and trusted advisors, increasing credibility and trust.
Customers are easily drawn to companies that share valuable content. Strategic content addresses clients' pain points and challenges, attracts and converts quality leads, and drives business results.
Furthermore, content marketing is crucial to achieving brand visibility, awareness, and a positive reputation, which is vital to every tech company's success.
It's non-negotiable if you're in business to make a profit. A Semrush survey of marketing pros showed that 91% of the respondents agreed that they achieved success with content marketing in 2021.
How Content Marketing Brings Value to Tech Companies
Content marketing brings overall long-term value.
1. Increase Brand Awareness
Content marketing is invaluable for building brand awareness and increasing visibility on a budget, as supported by eighty percent of marketers. Tech companies leverage content marketing to create compelling brand stories that induce an emotional connection in customers. Compelling brand storytelling communicates a company's mission, vision, and unique selling proposition, ultimately differentiating the company from competitors.
Furthermore, with billions of social media users available, an effective digital content strategy leverages social media platforms' potential for lead generation. Tech companies with effective content marketing strategies preach their products and services on social media, enabling them to acquire only quality leads.
2. Increase Website Traffic
Tech companies use content marketing to drive website traffic by providing valuable information that addresses critical clients' questions and pain points. According to Hubspot data, consistent content marketing yielded 55% more website traffic for the companies.
Excellent content marketing provides SEO-rich valuable content and promotes content through other content amplification channels. These increase content reach and drive more quality traffic.
3. Generate Quality Leads
Effective content marketing helps tech companies attract quality leads actively seeking solutions. HubSpot surveyed 1400 websites, and among other findings, it was revealed that companies that adopted content marketing gathered 68% more leads from blogging alone than customers without blogs.
Their 2023 state of marketing report, which included original data from over 1200 marketers across the globe, also supported that inbound marketing channels like content marketing drives 54% more leads than traditional marketing channels.
When you publish whitepapers, ebooks, blogs, webinars, and other informative materials packaged to deliver value, clients will trust you enough to drop their contacts, allowing you to follow up and move them down the sales funnel.
4. Establish Thought Leadership
Future-proof tech companies establish themselves as thought leaders by creating informative and insightful content and repeatedly addressing industry questions and concerns. This practice builds credibility and increases reputation and trust, as customers see such companies as reliable sources for credible industry information.
A 2020 study by Edelman and LinkedIn featured expanded insights from 3,275 global business leaders. It showed that nearly 90% of C-level decision-makers believed that thought leadership influences their opinion of a company.
Companies that successfully establish thought leadership easily convert their target audience into brand loyalists and advocates, increasing retention and profitability.
5. Build a Community
Customer-oriented companies understand the importance of a community of vibrant, happy, and loyal followers and leverage all available means to build one.
Content marketing effectively builds a valuable loyal community around a company, its products, and its services. Technology companies that create content that encourages discussion and engagement foster a sense of brand affinity that increase brand loyalty. A community of loyal customers increases brand visibility and reduces advertising and other customer acquisition, support, and retention costs, increasing profitability in the long run.
6. Enhance Customer Engagement
Content marketing improves customer engagement and service delivery.
Creating and effectively distributing valuable, shareable content is an excellent way to engage prospects across customer touchpoints. Smart tech companies use this approach to increase content reach, increase visibility for their products and services and generate more quality leads, conversions, and referrals.
7. Support Sales Efforts
Content marketing supports and enables sales to achieve more. A robust sales enablement strategy streamlines the collaboration between marketing and sales so that marketing qualifies leads before passing them on to sales. This relationship involves using content to attract, engage, and delight prospects before moving them down the sales funnel for conversion. Doing this reduces the load on the sales team, reduces customer acquisition costs, and boosts revenue generation.
8. Showcase Products and Features
As highlighted, content marketing helps companies showcase products, service features, and benefits. While providing information and addressing clients' pain points, tech companies can present their products and services as solutions to the challenges.
Effective content marketing involving practical content like case studies and visual content like webinars is so powerful that companies can make potential clients experience their products and services with detailed descriptions. This information eliminates conversion barriers and facilitates purchasing decisions.
9. Provide Customer Support
As clients seek more and more self-service support, content marketing makes it easy for companies to meet clients' concerns and questions even before the ticket reaches the CX department. Companies that provide detailed information on industry topics and answers to frequently asked questions about their products reduce the workload on customer support teams and improve customer satisfaction.
Savvy tech companies set up knowledge bases and provide product documentation to help customers solve problems and learn more about their products or service without contacting the support team. Even more, these companies use social media and email marketing to provide additional support and keep customers informed of new features or changes to their products or services, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
10. Provide Analytics and Insights
Customer insights are critical to the success of B2B tech companies. Content marketing analytics data provides valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, helping companies improve their products and provide better customer experience.
Forward-thinking companies make data-driven decisions powered by metrics such as website traffic, engagement, bounce rates, lead generation rates, most visited pages, customer journey maps, most searched keywords, etc., that help them discover customers' preferences and refine their content marketing strategy to meet those preferences.
11. Support Recruitment Efforts
Content marketing is also instrumental in recruiting top talents. It helps a company showcase its culture and values and highlight career opportunities. Tech companies that create content around their company culture and work ethics and how it supports the comfort and growth of their employees attract the best talents.
A Content Marketing Approach That Yields Optimal Results
Content marketing is essential. So is having a robust content marketing strategy that yields optimal results at a minimal cost. A good content marketing strategy and execution is the key to staying competitive in a highly competitive tech industry.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, only 5% of B2B marketers don't plan to develop a content marketing strategy. Being a part of this minority automatically puts any tech company at a disadvantage, as 95% of others implementing content marketing strategies will indeed have a competitive edge.
Because adopting content marketing is a must for profit-minded companies, B2Bs are often faced with two options - hiring in-house content marketers and putting them on a monthly salary or outsourcing their content marketing needs to experts experienced in developing, executing, and managing content marketing strategies.
What a company will opt for depends on many factors, including budget, personnel available, experience level, company size, etc. Whatever you choose, your content marketing strategy must track the right value metrics that bring business to the company. That way, you're not chasing shadows with your content marketing.
Work with Experts that Maximize Content Marketing Value for Tech Companies
The value of content marketing for tech companies can't be overemphasized. A well-implemented content marketing strategy can move a tech company from zero recognition to becoming a trusted, reliable go-to brand for quality industry information. It increases lead generation and conversion, boosts revenue, enhances CX delivery, and yields long-term business value.
Seven Oaks Consulting provides content marketing for technology companies that achieve tremendous results with content marketing. We're a content marketing outsourcing company that can assist you so you can focus on other business processes and be assured of winning with content.
We have 15+ years of experience providing content marketing for technology companies. We invite you to reach out to discuss how we can help your company benefit from these values of content marketing for tech companies.
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.
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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