Examine these stats when you analyze your content to improve your content strategy and the effectiveness of future content.

A critical (but often overlooked) element of an effective inbound marketing strategy follows the actual production and distribution of content: analyzing your content. It sounds obvious, but many businesses who are producing content do not take the time — or are unsure how —  to evaluate how it has performed over time.

Regularly studying how your blog posts, videos, high-value resources (e.g., case studies), and other content resonates with your audience helps inform your strategy. It tells you what kinds of content succeeds in driving traffic and converting leads, as well as which distribution platforms and patterns are optimal.

While you may have had a good feel for this when you initially developed your strategy — p.s. you should always have a strategy and you should always document it — an audit can confirm it. If it doesn’t, you can make adjustments.

Also, keep in mind that digital and social media is constantly evolving. Regular content analysis will dictate where and how you need to accommodate changing user patterns, interests, behaviors, and technologies.

Here are four things that are important to evaluate when you analyze your content.

1) Views

How many times your content has been read, watched, or downloaded is a good indicator of how well it resonates with your audience. It’s important to evaluate individual pieces of content (rather than total website views) so you’ll know exactly what is driving web traffic.

Run such reports on a regular basis, examining how your content has performed over that short interval of time. You’ll want to consider how certain subjects play during the time of publication. You should also keep an eye out for how things have changed over time — for example, a topic that normally drives a lot of traffic that is no longer getting the same attention. Has audience interest changed or been satiated? Is the distribution platform no longer appropriate for that topic?

For blog posts or web pages, make sure to check both pageviews and unique pageviews, as well as bounce rate and time on page. That way, you can rule out any spam traffic or pages that draw a large audience but do not end up keeping them once they start reading. An eye-catching title or well-optimized post can bring the horse to water, but if it’s not drinking, your content isn’t doing its job.

2) Performance over time

It’s equally important to check how individual content has performed over its lifetime.

You may have a blog post that gets an extraordinary number of views the week it is posted but then fails to draw traffic thereafter. If that’s the case, examine what circumstances were in place at the time of the post and how the post fit in that context, then try to replicate that pattern in the future.

On the other hand, if you have a post that continues to draw traffic long after it has been posted, take note. Is content involving similar topics popular as well? Your audience is hungry for information about that subject. Consider other factors: Was it authored by a particular company leader? Is it formatted in a certain way, or did you use certain keywords?  

3) Social impact

What kind of content gets the most engagement on social media? Examining the number of likes, shares, comments, and click-throughs on individual posts offers insight into what your followers are interested in. It can also help you evaluate your distribution strategy. Do certain subjects perform better at different times of the day? Get more engagement on one platform? Use individual channel’s analytics features as well as tools like Google Analytics to evaluate the impact of your content on social media.

4) Lead conversion

The reason we create and publish content is to attract new business, so knowing what drives lead generation and conversion is incredibly valuable. If you use marketing software, like HubSpot, this is easier to do. If not, it can be difficult, though not impossible, to understand what content was critical in winning over your customers.

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• 4 Steps to Measuring Social Media Impact with Google Analytics
• How to Use Twitter Analytics
• Google Analytics is a Goldmine of Information; Mine It