If you’re like most bloggers and brand managers, then you are probably worried about whether each piece of content you create is getting the attention it deserves. A solid content marketing strategy uses a wide variety of avenues to increase exposure, including social media, email, search engines and paid advertising through all three. In order to observe and improve content marketing efforts over the long-term, many people use metrics and analytics to keep an eye on overall performance. There are several commonly-used metrics when assessing overall performance, but some are easily overlooked. Today, we’ll talk about three important yet obscure metrics that’ll tell you more about your overall efforts and whether you need to change things up.

Half-Life of Content

Inevitably, any piece of content reaches the point where its best days are now behind it. Whether you are creating evergreen content or topical content, the reality is that all content sooner or later begins to slip in the traffic department. One metric worth pinging your website to find out is the content’s half-life. This, in short, is when the amount of traffic in a period of time has dropped below half of what it was generating when it was first released. Because all forms of content peak at different times, you may reach half-life very shortly or quite a long time after initial publication. The goal is usually to extend a content’s half-life for as long as possible. Knowing when your content tends to reach this point can shed valuable insight into the success of your content marketing.

Average Attention Time

If someone were to ask you, “how much time does a reader on average spend actually reading and engaging with your content”, could you answer the question? Another important content metric is average attention time, which will tell you the overall amount of time a user or customer spends reading, clicking, interacting with or sharing a particular piece of content. This metric can also be used to monitor any page – whether you’re eyeing a blog post or an online store-front – and will give you a better idea of how engaging your content is for them. Note that this particular metric separates idle time from the overall number, so you’ll also be able to gauge how intriguing your content is and determine its ability to lure in readers immediately.

Pages Per Person

This particular metric can vary in terms of its precise name – pages per person, articles per person, stories per person, and so forth – but the measurement is uniform: how many unique pieces of content is the average reader enjoying? A good indicator of a solid content creation and marketing strategy is its ability to lure people in and keep them engaged. If you can attract a visitor and convince them to read or otherwise engage with ten different pieces of content while there, then your marketing effort has done its job. You are building brand recognition at the same time that you are likely increasing shares and engagement rates.

Depending on your exact focus, there are potentially hundreds of unique metrics out there that can be used to observe content performance and improve results. What is an uncommon metric that you use to extract knowledge for your content marketing and creation efforts, and how specifically has it helped you? Tell us below about your experience.