Content marketing is a complex and multi-faceted art that requires expertise and experience in a variety of areas. All too many content marketers – some surveys report as many as twenty percent – do not use any metrics at all to track their overall progress. While this is shocking, a bigger underlying problem is the prevalence of marketers to avoid analysing anything but the most basic of metrics. While clicks, likes, shares and CTR are all important and basic elements for any marketing campaign, there are many other, more subtle metrics that can provide valuable insight when tracked. We’ll discuss a few of these important but often overlooked metrics below so that you can be aware of them.

Content Half-Life

Even the best pieces of content in the world have an inevitable half-life – the point at which a majority of people who will ever see it arrives. Content marketing to some degree revolves around how often you need to publish new content in order to satisfy an audience. Whether the content is being delivered via blog, on social media or through email, there are half-lives to each that must be considered. On social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, the half-life of the average post is only a few hours. For videos on YouTube, the half-life is usually around one day. By being aware of the importance that half-lives can play on content marketing efforts, you’ll be able to start pinging URLs to content more effectively throughout each day and week.

Engagement Time

Are you keeping track of how much time people are spending with your content? If not, then you’re not doing it right! While simple bounce rates will tell you whether or not people found anything else of value on your website, engagement times can help outline whether or not people find your content to be enjoyable, entertaining or informative. Some people will inevitably bounce after reading just one post or piece of content, but that doesn’t mean that they did not find the one piece of content to be valuable. By measuring engagement time, you’ll be able to see what percentage of people are reading or watching until the end.

Contribution from the Audience

Regardless of what Google Analytics or other metrics tools may indicate, one of the most important and abstract metrics to assess is the amount of contributions your audience is providing to each piece of content. Social shares and comments are both extremely important metrics to track – especially the latter – as it helps marketers determine whether or not the content they are pinging URLs to is resonating with readers. Most people who read or view your content will not respond – this is normal – but the complete absence of commentary or shares indicates that something is amiss with the delivery or reach of your content.

Conclusion

Measuring the amount of contributions from readers, the half-life of each piece of content across mediums and the amount of time people spend reading or viewing content are important yet often forgotten metrics to analyse on a consistent basis. Understanding these elements will help provide better insight into how well your content is resonating with readers, customers and subscribers.