Friends, while likes and shares are nice, they really are surface-level metrics (they’re also referred to as vanity metrics for a reason!). Likes communicate that your content has made it to your audience and they’ve engaged to a certain degree with your content, but there are more data metrics that truly reflect your content engagement. Here are some metrics to track to really get into the nitty-gritty of your content engagement and enhance your ability to create content and content marketing strategy that resonates with your audience.
Time On Page: Time on page is a web analytics metric that provides insight into how long visitors remain on a particular page before navigating to another page or leaving the website. Time on page is calculated by tracking the time when a user arrives on a page and then tracking when they navigate away from that page. There are some limitations to this metric e.g. a user doesn’t exit the page and leaves the tab open. However, longer average time on page metrics indicates that users are engaging with your content in a meaningful way.
Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is a web analytics metric that measures the percentage of visitors who navigate away from a website after viewing only a single page, without interacting further or navigating to other pages on the same site. A high bounce rate indicates that your audience didn’t find the content/website engaging enough to continue with their interaction.
Click-through Rate: Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a digital marketing metric that calculates the percentage of people who click on a specific link, advertisement, or call-to-action out of the total number of individuals who viewed it. It’s commonly used to measure the effectiveness and appeal of online content or ads in generating user engagement and directing users to desired destinations.
Example: You boost a post on Instagram about an event. Your CTA is a link to a blog post with more information on the event. Your CTR is 28%. That means that 28% of people who viewed your post, clicked on the link.
Social Media Reach: Social media reach refers to the total number of unique users who have been exposed to a particular piece of content. It quantifies the potential size of the audience that the content has reached. Reach is a key metric in content engagement analysis because it gives insight into the initial visibility and awareness of your content. Understanding your reach and engagement levels is important in content creation.
Examples of Reach and Engagement:
- High reach, low engagement: Your content reached a large number of people but has not generated a significant level of interaction or engagement from those people.
- Low reach, high engagement: Your content reached a relatively small number of people but generated a significant level of interaction, engagement, and positive response from that limited audience.
- High reach, high engagement: Your content reached a large number of people and has generated a significant level of interaction or engagement from those people.
- Low reach, low engagement: Your content reached a relatively small number of people and did not generate a significant level of interaction or engagement from those people.
I want to understand my data better and use it stategically. Where do I start?
Optimizing Your Content
Armed with content engagement metric data, you can adjust your content creation strategy accordingly! Do your analytics show that certain types of blogs are performing better than others? Do you see better engagement with infographics than static photos? We strongly suggest A/B testing your messaging, formats, and imagery for the best optimization.
Likes make us feel good, but more customers/clients make us feel even better! Don’t forget to include a Call-to-Action (CTA) in your content if you want your audience to take action such as: making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, downloading a resource, filling out a form, or heading to your website.
Social Media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn have built-in data analytics tools for their respective channels. This data will give you information on your likes and reach. That’s a great place to start.
To take it a step further, platforms like Google Analytics give you insights into your website and user behavior. With Google Analytics in your toolbox, you’ll have access to user acquisition and user engagement data that will help you make data-driven content decisions.
Be sure to follow us for more data insights and tips! Of course, feel free to reach out to us if you’re interested in discovering how Human Focus Digital can assist you in harnessing these insights and more for data-driven decisions that drive strategic digital expansion!
