How do you test content formats to find what your audience likes?

This is where your KPIs are very important. There is one caveat about KPIs and choosing the right ones. As a content marketer or marketing team, it is imperative you understand your stakeholder's definition of goals. Both business goals and marketing goals should be set by the stakeholders, and executed by the marketing team. Thus these KPIs come from the stakeholder as well. While strategies and goals mostly will stay the same during the timespan of a year, you might need to switch tactics if the KPIs are telling you adjustments are needed!

Creating compelling content without clear goals and metrics is like embarking on a journey without a map or compass. Here's a guide to setting your course: 1. Define Your North Star - Content Goals: - Brand Awareness - Audience Engagement - Lead Generation - Thought Leadership - Customer Retention - Sales Conversion - Education and Informing 2. Metrics - Navigational Tools - Website Traffic - Engagement Metrics - Conversion Rates - Subscriber Growth - Click-Through Rates (CTR) - Customer Retention Metrics - Thought Leadership Indicators 3. SMART Goals - Your Compass: - Specific: Clearly define what you want to achieve, e.g., "Increase monthly blog traffic by 20%." - Measurable - Achievable - Relevant - Time-bound Insightful? Like it.

Content marketing is a dynamic realm where a one-size-fits-all approach seldom proves effective. Audiences today have diverse tastes and expectations when it comes to consuming content. Therefore, it's essential to conduct thoughtful content format testing to discover what truly resonates with your target audience. In this article, we'll explore the art of content format experimentation and how it can help you create content that not only engages but also converts and fosters brand loyalty.

Before you start testing content formats, its important to know your goals and the metrics you want to track. Here is a brief overview of 5 common goals and related metrics: ??Increased Brand Awareness: Brand mentions, social media interactions and follower increase, website traffic ??Drive website traffic: organic search traffic, social media traffic, direct traffic ??Generate leads: form submissions, email opt-ins, downloads ??Improved Customer Engagement: social media engagement, website bounce rate, time on page ??Increased Sales: conversion rate, revenue from content marketing Once you've chosen your goals and picked the relevant metrics to monitor, you can begin your testing.

The aim of the game is connecting your content to your audience. They may want text (articles, tweets, etc.), they may want images (personal, quotes, graphs, etc.) or they may want videos (reels, education, entertainment). They may want all three. You metrics should be around which of these have: A) The greatest reach b) The greatest engagement rate. Once you have these data you can determine what content works best for your audience. Don't forgot the final metric: Do you enjoy creating this type of content? Even if your audience loves video, but you HATE creating it, you won't last. So... Find what you LIKE and what your audience LIKES TOO. That is how you find the content you want to and need to create. Have fun!

First of all, know your end goal with it. Do you want to get clients or just want a following? If you want to get leads or connect with thought leaders, focus on producing content that adds value, share your personal client stories. This way people will see your tangible results and will ask for your products or services. If you want followers, create content which is more relatble and get more eyeballs.

The foundation of measuring and comparing content performance across different formats starts here. Once you have the KPIs clear in your head, you should be on the lookout for the numbers. One tip is to notice(not exactly delve into) the performance of content formats of your competitors; especially the formats that you don't use yet. Like an idea of how well some specific content format is performing. This will allow you to understand better the social reception of all formats in the concerned industry. You may pick one industry leader, one mediocre performer, and one starter to put everything into perspective.

It's like polishing a gemstone to reveal its brilliance. My secret steps to assess how content is performing: 1. Content Inventory: Treasure Hunt 2. Set Clear Objectives: The Quest Begins 3. Key Metrics - The Compass - Page Views and Unique Visitors - Engagement Metrics - Conversion Rates - Bounce Rate - Click-Through Rates (CTR) - Social Media Metrics - SEO Performance 4. Data Collection Tools: The Analytical Toolkit 5. Content Audit: The Deep Dive - Top Performers - Underperforming Content - Audience Insights - Content Gaps 6. Competitive Benchmarking: Comparing Treasures 7. Content Lifecycle: Renew or Retire 8. Actionable Insights: The Hidden Gems 9. Iterative Strategy: The Content Renaissance 10. Monitor and Adapt Insightful?

You can also look at the sentiment of your audience's engagement with your content. For example, are they mostly liking, commenting, or sharing your content? This can give you insights into what they are finding valuable and interesting. A study by HubSpot found that blog posts with a positive sentiment received 78% more shares than those with a negative sentiment. This suggests that people are more likely to engage with content that makes them feel good. I hope this is helpful!

There is a common problem that creators struggle with - they hate analysis of their content. And when I saw creators, I mean everybody who is creating content because they enjoy the process of creation. Because inevitable those people are creating for themselves and not with the target customer in mind. And they hate having to analyse the content and recalibrate their approach. They almost think it's some kind of selling out. But please remember - the only purpose to create something, at least in the business world is to create some change - externally and not just internally.

You can also conduct post-content feedback surveys to ask your audience what they thought of your latest piece of content. This can help you understand what they liked, what they didn't like, and what they would like to see more of in the future. A study by SurveyMonkey found that 86% of customers are more likely to do business with a company that asks for their feedback. This suggests that asking for feedback is a great way to build customer loyalty and improve your content.

To create content that resonates, engages, and builds lasting connections, you must master the art of collecting feedback. Here's a roadmap to help you: 1. Diverse Feedback Channels: Cast a Wide Net - Surveys and Questionnaires - Website Feedback Forms - Social Media Listening - Comments and Discussions - Analytics Tools 2. Timing is Key: Strike While the Iron is Hot - Post-Interaction - Regular Surveys 3. Be Clear and Concise: Ask the Right Questions - Open-Ended Questions - Rating Scales 4. Incentivize Participation: Offer Rewards or Recognition 5. Analyze and Act: Transform Feedback into Action - Thematic Analysis - Priority Setting - Iterate and Improve 6. Communicate Changes: Close the Feedback Loop Insightful? Like it.

It's a challenge to provide content of value, but once you understand the requirements and challenges of your audience the next step is truly understanding how they consume content. Two-way dialog is important, but in terms of feedback, they're offering you more value than you are them - so be conscious of their time and reward them for participation. Test internally - get your stakeholders involved. Their calendars are likely as busy as your audiences, getting first hand experience from those outside of your own department can be invaluable. Finally, compare those insights against analytics, heat-maps and any other data points you capture. Does the qualitative feedback match the quantitative?

Many business wrongly assume that all customers dislike being asked for feedback. From my experience, it is true that a majority of customers may skip the survey, but they do not hold any grudge against the company for asking. And the few people who respond to the survey - they feel more bonded to the company after they take time to give their feedback. Another suggestion - while I do take customer's feedback into account, I would give more credence to their actions and this is where heat maps and user recordings and even analytics can give a better picture of their actual preferences.

Figuring out which content formats your audience likes best is important in content marketing but super simple when you follow these 3 simple steps: 1?? Start by publishing all formats for at least one month, ideally three. This will give you enough data to see which formats are resonating with your audience. 2?? Then, analyze your audience's interactions with the content. Check metrics like comments, likes, and shares to see which formats are getting the most engagement. 3?? And finally, pick your top-performing content formats and master them. Once you know which formats your audience loves, focus on creating high-quality content in those formats. And that's it. Happy testing ??

You can take experimenting with content formats a step further by truly discover what resonates with audiences by classifying your content into a taxonomy and then measuring the success of each type of content within the taxonomy against various metrics. The trick here is to ensure that you use metrics that will allow you to compare 'apples to apples', by which I mean you need to ensure the time frame of the measurement of the metric (first 7, 14, 30 days for example) is the same. From there you can then a select a range of different metrics to measure against from reach, retention, engagement, conversion and revenue.

Content marketers are in fact 'content testers.' Because the second the content marketers make up their mind on customer preferences, they cease to be effective. A true content marketer is always testing, validating, experimenting and innovating .

It all comes down to knowing your audience. What do they want? How do they want to receive it? Craft the right message and present it to the right audience via the right channel and at the right time. If you don't know, ask, test, experiment.

Don't confuse popularity with effectiveness. For example Short form videos might be most popular. You get hundreds of thousands of likes and great engagement. But long form videos might be more effective. Effective in what - effective to get leads or responses. This is where it all comes down to what your goals are. Because that will allow you to measure which formats are effective in achieving those goals.