What are your top content strategy goals and KPIs?

The best starting point is to determine how your content marketing activities can be in service of the organization's existing goals. No need to reinvent the wheel. Sure, you'll focus on marketing-centric outcomes too like increasing share of voice and brand awareness. But what matters is always ensuring your content programs tie back to the overarching goals the business is prioritizing. Ideally, more alignment and clarity can help ensure marketing isn't in a silo and is in service of the business. Plus, you're more likely to get buy-in when your colleagues are clear on all the ways content supports the company's growth.

Content strategy goals can include the following: Increasing: - Brand awareness - Customer engagement - Traffic to landing pages/website - Lead generation - Customer retention - Talent recruitment - Sales - Customer education - Customer evangelism (by word-of-mouth or social media) - Upsell/cross-sell - Lead nurturing - Customer loyalty Attach a number/percentage to the desired outcome for each goal - to make these SMART goals - i.e. achievable in the timeframe you have set.

When it comes to content strategy, I find it's best to have your top 3 KPIs. It can be a mistake to try to do too much with your content, and achieve too many things. Having 3 clear KPIs that are measurable can really keep you on track. Here are 3 I really like: 1. Increase website traffic by X%, 2. Increase newsletter sign ups by X%, 3. Increase marketing influenced revenue via content channel by X%.

Engagement should be on the top of your list. Simply getting tons of views rarely equates to engagement or conversion. Learn what your audience responds to and create with that in mind, using their language and you'll have a sure way to create engagement with them

I find customer engagement to be key here, because views are passive and don't necessarily lead to conversions, but engagement often does. Customer engagement should also be from the 'right' audience, i.e. your target audience. So make sure your content targets the right niche, and doesn't just lead to general engagement from the web. Because the right target audience will have the desire and willingness to buy to result in positive returns for your efforts, while general engagement is the equivalent of 'views'. That is, no future conversions in sight.

In my experience, if you cannot track it, there is no point in creating that content. If you cannot measure how well or poorly a piece of content performed, and compare it with other content pieces, how well can you tell if Content A outperformed Content B? This is particularly important when facing tight budgets, where you can only use 1 content piece to increase sales, improve traffic, or increase customer engagement. Also, be sure to choose the right KPIs/metrics to track and measure the right content's performance - otherwise, you are matching apples with oranges. Meaning, your revenue will be adversely affected without you realizing the cause of it.

A good example could be on the company's internal newsletter, having as main goal: Keeping employees informed about company news (events, achievements) and KPI's: 1. An increase of 5% in the open rates and click through rates within x months. 2. Holding an employee survey asking for satisfaction about the newsletter (topics, length, tips for future topics) in order to reach KPI n. 1 in the end.

I encourage my clients to work backward when it comes to developing KPIs, and I work to do the same. For example, if I want to add 2 more clients this year, I work backward to decide how I want to do that and what channels I want to leverage. This could look like engaging more regularly on LinkedIn - posting a weekly article, engaging for 15 minutes a day, adding 10 new contacts per week, etc. KPIs should be focused but tailor-made to the client and the resources they have to move the needle. Too often, I've worked with clients who say they want to get more traffic or more social media engagement, but they're not tying their desire for these metrics to a specific outcome, or determining how they will evaluate the success of these efforts.

It is important to create content that adds value to your target audience. However, do not be so rigid that you cannot test new types or forms of content. And that way see if fresh creativity and unique posts from your brand will result in more eyeballs and help your brand or product stand out from your competitors.