Is Your Content Working?

byAJTrimble1

9.1K followers

5 years ago

In my last post we discussed some strategies for moving yourself into a Blue Ocean where competition is not a factor.

Part of any cohesive strategy is actually the impact that your content has on your niche audience. Just throwing random content out there and hoping it “sticks” can be a lesson in futility. But how do you know exactly what is working and what isn’t? That’s what we’re going to cover today.

Much like goal-setting, in order to maximize the effectiveness of your content you need some way to measure it. But before we get into that, we need to first set up a strong foundation…

Step One: Build Your Avatar

Remember in an earlier post I talked about making your readers the main character in your “story”?

For our purposes, an avatar is simply a physical representation of your ideal customer — a character. The idea is to create a typical buyer persona based on your target audience. For example, if your niche tends to cater more to middle-aged women, you wouldn’t want your avatar to be a 35 year old man in a biker gang.

A great way to start building an avatar is to browse through magazines or online and find a photo of someone that fits your perfect customer. Then print out the image and give this person a name. For instance, your perfect customer might be a 25-something female with red hair and named Laura.

Now, whenever you are writing to that audience, you don’t write to the crowd. That’s too big and not personal enough. Instead, you tape the picture of Laura up in front of you, and EVERYTHING you write you must write to her specifically.

What information is Laura searching for? Here is where your keyword research comes in.

What types of content does Laura like?

Is she more partial to written articles, videos, audio/podcasts, or perhaps a full-blown weekly newsletter?

And so on. Focus on making everything about her.

Step Two: Develop a Content Marketing Plan

Once you know who you’re writing to, next you have to decide the what and when, or what is known as a content marketing plan.

One way to really increase your productivity as a content creator is to not pick topics at random from day to day. Instead, create a “hit-list” of 20-30 articles you could write based on your keyword research.

Then pull out your calendar for the month and schedule which article you will write on which day. It’s a great way to beat writer’s block because you’re not sitting there staring at a blank page trying to figure out what to write; you already have your topic in hand and all you have to do is the research.

Step Three: Determine Your KPIs

Is making one sale a day good? What about 10 sales? 100?

The correct answer is… it depends (Oh, come on. How long have you known me now? You should have seen that answer coming a mile away. lol.)

You don’t really know, because it depends on what your other factors are. 100 sales per day sounds good on the surface, but let’s say your profit is only $1 per sale. What happens if you’re spending an average of $10 per sale to get that result. Doesn’t sound so good now, does it?

That’s why tracking your KPIs is so important.

Don’t let the term KPI frighten you. KPI is just a business term that stands for Key Performance Indicators. Basically it is your intended outcome accompanied with a way to measure it.

First, you need to know what you’re working towards…

Avatar (i.e. which avatar are you writing to?)

The problem or challenge they are facing

Targeted Keywords

Action you would like the reader to take as a result of consuming your content

Now, once you know all of that, here are some examples of possible KPIs you could track:

• Traffic Volume = The actual number of visitors who looked at your content
• Call to Action (CTA) Clicks = The number of visitors that clicked on your CTA link
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) = This is basically the number of CTA clicks divided by the number of visitors after multiplying them by 100; (CLICKS/(TRAFFIC x 100) = CTR)
• Conversion = The number of people who actually took action after seeing your CTA (for example, how many people actually made a purchase after clicking on the link)

And so on…

Data like this is invaluable because you can easily determine if your business is growing, staying steady, or — heaven forbid — shrinking. As they say in accounting circles: the numbers don’t lie.

Step Four: Iterate and Optimize

Once you have the hard data as to exactly how your content is performing (i.e. KPIs), you can begin to tweak it to match your reader’s expectations.

Iteration is the idea of not only doing things “right”, but also constant improvement. You make your content better every time you write something, and that builds on itself like a snowball rolling down the hill.

Optimization is the idea of getting more from what you are already creating. This might include going back and tweaking older articles to improve your KPIs. Or perhaps making the content more compelling, which — in turn — increases your volume, conversion, etc.

You need both. But you won’t succeed at either unless you measure your results.

Conclusion

If you take the time and effort to go through these four steps you will be light-years ahead of where you were when you started. And it’s not difficult. Identify your ideal visitor, set a calendar to regularly create content they are interested in, track your results, and constantly tweak and improve until you get things right.

Easy-peasy, right?

Now, go forth and create.

Please share any comments or ideas with the rest of the community.

Thank you.