A fool-proof strategic system to help you create better content marketing campaigns

Writing content in a digitalised world, where searching for a single topic can produce dozens of articles, is a difficult task. But creating content that’s unique enough to attract good traffic is another ball-game altogether.

To those who religiously believe that most good online content results from a three-step process of write-edit-and-publish, you’ve got another think coming. Although creating content is the most important part of the entire process, there is a world of strategising employed between editing the piece in question and publishing it online, otherwise known as content marketing.

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As a content marketer, you may be following a system of your own, but here’s your opportunity to go back to the basics and recheck some points that are sure to help you produce great content and ensure it grants you the numbers you deserve.

Set your goals

While this may come across as the most obvious point, it cannot be emphasised enough. Too many bloggers nowadays choose to follow the reverse – produce good content and then decide their target audience. However, your content is sure to do better on the numbers if you know who you are catering to. For instance, a lifestyle blogger’s target audience will naturally be different from that of a content writer in an advertising firm. Producing content after gauging your audience and the expected response from them is a highly recommended, as is the pre-evaluation of expected views, shares, and subscribers. This will help you in the long run because you can then make a distinct comparison between the expected and resulted numbers, and understand your user-base and how to cater to them better.

Subscriber-base

The first thing you need to check both before and after releasing your content online is the strength of your subscriber-base. While most of your potential readers will subscribe to your page by signing up via email, entailing easier tracking, there are other ways by which you can track the numbers. The simplest way to do this is using email marketing software. This will give you the analytics of recent additions, unsubscribes, as well as the percentage of steady subscribers. Thus, you can understand the general age-group of the majority of your subscribers and thereby tailor your content accordingly.

SERPs and organic traffic

This is one of the most effective ways to track the number of people who have visited your page. Search Engine Result Pages, or SERPs for short, show the placement of your website through the organic searches. On any search engine, whenever we click on a webpage for more information, it amplifies the chances of the article in question ranking higher among the search results. You can use Google’s Search Console to determine how your website ranks among search results. As a consequence, users are then re-directed to your page once it appears on the SERP, creating organic traffic for your website.

Other (media) mentions and backlinks

These refer to other online pages that refer to your page through a candid mention or through the use of backlinks. Such traffic is usually referred to as referral traffic, and its exact numbers can be determined using Google Analytics. The higher the number of mentions, the greater the awareness of your brand.

Social media user-base and shares

As any active social media user knows well, the greater the number of shares, the better it will do on the charts. To this end, you have to ensure that your content is being widely shared on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. To track the number of shares, you can use a social share plugin or counter which will show you the number of shares for a particular URL.

Page views

As a content marketer, the most important factor to determine is the number of page views that your individual content gathers at any given moment. The greater the page views, the wider your reach and the higher the numbers. This again can be determined through the use of Google Analytics.

Before you create your next content, it is important to take these factors into consideration. Do you agree with these practices? Let us know in the comments below!