Digital transformation has taken a new toll on the publishing business and content creation, especially during the current pandemic situation. The more technological upheaval you can adapt to your business, the better your business will turn out.
There has been one constant factor throughout the alteration of 2020 – the spurring adoption of digital publishing technologies. And one of the most defining technologies of them all is content analytics. If you want to target the right audience with the right content, you would need more than just the click-through rates or page views; and content analytics is that tool, which assists you in deep learning the audience behavior.
Gartner defines content analytics as “a family of technologies that processes digital content and user behavior in consuming and engaging with content, such as documents, news sites, customer conversations (both audio and text), and social network discussions, to answer specific questions.” These tools combine Business Analytics and Business Intelligence to leverage insights into the digital contents, analyzing their trends and patterns to help in making improved decisions.
The nature of publishing was not like this always. In fact, only 27% of the B2B marketers used to care about the numbers to track the efficacy of content.
But with the introduction of digital publishing along with audience analytics, the entire scenario has changed. Starting from referral paths, conversion rate, dwell time, and even the number of recurring visits – every data is now readily available, and that’s the beauty of content analytics.
Content Analytics deal with 4 Fundamental Areas.
- Production
This data helps businesses track the potential of the content team. These metrics are used to determine the number of posts to be created to achieve the goals or the author with the most production, and so on. With this data on hand, marketers can analyze the production progression.
- Engagement
To understand the audience behavior, you would need this data. It informs about the extent of involvement every user has shown towards your content. This metrics affirms you if the user is at all interested in your brand or not.
- Performance
This piece of metrics is just like the name suggests. It combines production and engagement analytics to define the overall rate of accomplishment of the contents, bringing out the top-performing blogs/articles/any other posts.
- Content Scores
What’s a business without revenue? The content score allows you to understand how effective a particular content is at generating sales and ROI. With your top revenue-generating blog, you can plan your further actions easily.
The Benefits of Content Analytics
- Distribution Strategy
With the enormous volume of digital content, it is next to impossible to track content performance manually. So, if you are willing to administer your content creation resources in the best possible manner, these automated analytics tools are your way out. The dashboards inform you about the new visitors or the conversion of existing ones into subscribers. It tracks the pathway through which visitors get to your content, thus helping in the development of the right content distribution strategy to boost engagement.
- Behavioral Analysis
Content analytics allow you to apprehend user preferences, both group and individual, targeting different segments that are plausible to engage, retain, and convert audiences. This assists you in interacting with the users more effectively by analyzing several factors, starting from mobile behavior, headlines to even testing the subject lines.
- Monetization Strategy
The real-time data from your best-performing blogs allow you to adapt to the monetization strategy sustainably. You can ascertain which content works the best in attracting new readers, retaining them on the page, converting them into subscribers, and even the other way round.
Challenges of Content Analytics
- Aligning Data with Objective
Every business has different objectives; the alignment of your analytics tool with your objective is the only way to gain actionable insights. For example, if you want insight into your conversion rates, the system must be integrated with the payment gateway.
- Accessibility
Building up the right reporting dashboards is crucial to making the analytics tool accessible to your content and marketing team. Work closely with the vendor to install the system, providing the correct information to the right people.
- Potential Team
To get the numbers to their best use, you need to have a trained team of data analysts who will understand the information provided by the tool. It is of utmost importance for your team to understand your business and its objective to turn the metrics into action.
Top Content Analytics Tools
- Parse.ly – It evaluates the content performance, delivering customized experience in terms of content consumption.
- Chartbeat – It provides real-time data to formulate editorial decisions, thus boosting readership.
If the content is king, distribution is queen. No matter how well you write, unless you evaluate and analyze your audience behavior, you would not measure the patterns. And that’ll lead to a loyal consumer base. So, as Renée Kaplan, Head of Digital Editorial Development, Financial Times, believes, take advantage of “every possible kind of behavioral data about our users.” This will include understanding the topics, formats, and also devices your users prefer.
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