Just for kicks, I recently took a Facebook quiz to see if I am more right-brained or left-brained. The results — split nearly down the middle: 49% left, 51% right — confirmed something I’ve suspected all along: My Libra brain craves equality and balance in all things, and doesn’t like dealing in absolutes, especially when there are multiple factors to consider.
I’m sure many content marketers can relate to my balance-beam brain’s struggle to find definitive meaning in the fuzzy logic of social media measurement and analysis. On the one hand, a number is a number. Fifty “likes” on Facebook mean 50 people saw your post and took the action of clicking “like,” which is better than 20 people, but not as good as 100 — end of story. Yet, we also know the true value or meaning behind the 50 “likes” can be colored by a virtually limitless number of considerations, variables, and situation-based data points. The possibilities boggle (both hemispheres of) my mind.
Nonetheless, my right brain and left brain have agreed to work as a team just long enough for me to take a look at CMI’s top-performing posts of 2014 on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Incidentally, we had to really think about the angle for this post. Our goal is to educate, not promote, so we didn’t want to simply churn out lists of “best content by channel.” (Though, if you are someone who wants a summary of some of the posts you may have missed this year, or ideas of things to share on your social networks, these lists are here for you.)
Rather, our intention is to demonstrate how we use this kind of data to improve our marketing and editorial efforts. We share what surprised us and how we have changed our strategy as a result of what we learned.
How do we use social data?
First off, it’s important to note that while we track social sharing data, it’s not the Holy Grail by which we measure the success or failure of our content (and we don’t want to give that impression). However, we do evaluate this data as it provides insight into two key areas:
Social and marketing: At CMI, we have a channel plan that looks at the various content that resonates most with people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, and other platforms. Social sharing helps us understand what these audiences like so we can create more content along those lines. We also share evergreen content in these channels based on what has worked well in the past.
Editorial: Knowing what topics trend well helps our team create our content calendar.
Twitter Leaderboard*
6 Ways to Measure B2B Content Marketing Performance (7,900), Derek Edmond
How to Use Data to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy (2,800), Ben Harper
The Ultimate Blog Marketing Checklist: 57 Tips (2,100), Mike Murray
7 Books That Will Inspire More Successful Content Marketing (2,100), Roger C. Parker
8 Ways Public Relations Can Fuel Successful Content Marketing (1,900), Paul Roetzer
What Keeps Brilliant Visual Content From Being Shared (1,800), Buddy Scalera
How to Audit Your Website Content for SEO (1,700), Amanda DiSilvestro
The Content Marketing Pyramid: Create More With Less (1,500), Pawan Deshpande
How to Make Content Creation a Benefit for Your Team — Not a Burden (1,500), Jodi Harris
10 Ways to Inspire Your Inner Content Creator (1,400), Michele Linn
What surprised us: In February we published a post from Derek Edmond called 6 Ways to Measure B2B Content Marketing Performance. Within the first week, we had almost 7,000 tweets, which was a record for us. The not-so-great news? We didn’t have 7,000 views to the page, so people were sharing this headline, but they weren’t actually visiting our site, reading the post, or signing up for our newsletter (which is a key goal for us).
How we have adjusted our strategy: While we have tracked email conversions along with social shares, we now also look more closely at time on site and bounce rate. Are people taking the time to really read our articles? Are they visiting other pages on our site once they engage with the original post? These are questions we ask to gauge whether our content is truly driving our business goals.
Ask yourself: Are the posts that are performing well for you on Twitter helping you achieve your goals, or do you need to be looking at this data in conjunction with other metrics to give you a clearer picture of your content’s performance and value?
Facebook Leaderboard*
How to Use Data to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy (600), Ben Harper
New B2B Content Marketing Research: Focus on Documenting Your Strategy (584), Joe Pulizzi
10 Content Marketing Roles for Success in the Next 10 Years (556), Joe Pulizzi
A Content Marketer’s Checklist: Editorial Calendar Essentials (487), Jodi Harris
New Data: Mix Content Types for Successful Content Marketing (481), Peyman Nilforoush
Make Your Visual Content Stand Out With a Signature Brand Look (467), Chuck Frey
For Brands, Facebook Is Now a Content Publisher — Not a Community (453), Robert Rose
7 Books That Will Inspire More Successful Content Marketing (414), Roger C. Parker
How to Build Social Media Into Your Content Marketing Processes (406), Cathy McPhillips
Why Your Online Content Needs Both Social and Search Optimization (341), Lee Odden
What surprised us: Out of all social channels, there is the least correlation between Facebook shares and our goal of increasing email conversions. As such, Facebook is not the platform we would want to rely on for tracking performance against that specific goal.
We were also surprised to see what topics performed well here. Prior to seeing the data, we would have guessed that general interest discussions (like social media, digital technology, creative considerations, or discussions of specific brands) would grab the most attention. However, we discovered that our top 10 most-“liked” posts on Facebook are more heavily concentrated in the B2B arena, and that in-depth and niche-focused discussions seem to feature just as prominently as overview topics and thought leadership pieces.
How we have adjusted our strategy: Facebook is the social channel on which we now share the fewest blog posts. One reason is because we want to encourage people to subscribe via email. Over time, we have also started to focus more on sharing more conversation-friendly content here, as well as smaller bits of content that we curate from posts and our larger content efforts — such as our Content Marketing Example of the Week.
Ask yourself: Does it make sense to share your content on every possible channel there is, or are there certain channels where the content you provide is more meaningful to your audience than what you share elsewhere? If this is the case, you might want to consider whether it’s worth putting your resources into those channels where you aren’t delivering epic content or providing unique value.
LinkedIn Leaderboard*
How to Use Data to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy (1000), Ben Harper
3 Tactics to Optimize Your Website Content With Social Intelligence (995), Rebecca Watson
How to Audit Your Website Content for SEO (911), Amanda DiSilvestro
New B2B Content Marketing Research: Focus on Documenting Your Strategy (909), Joe Pulizzi
The Content Marketing Pyramid: Create More With Less (876), Pawan Deshpande
If Your Content Marketing Is for Everybody, It’s for Nobody (843), Joe Pulizzi
8 Ways Public Relations Can Fuel Successful Content Marketing (843), Paul Roetzer
Why Your Brand Should Speak Human (834), Kevin Lund & Eileen Sutton
What Keeps Brilliant Visual Content From Being Shared (802), Buddy Scalera
Why 55% of Potential B2B Buyers Might Not Trust Your Website Content (799), Dianna Huff
What surprised us: If we were to guess what would perform well on LinkedIn, career-focused topics — like setting up your content marketing team or how to transform your organization to use content marketing — would have been our safe bet. However, we discovered that our top 10 most-shared posts are focused on other areas, such as strategy optimization, creating more efficient and productive processes, and overcoming specific content industry challenges.
How we changed our strategy: The influencer-heavy LinkedIn reminds us that we shouldn’t stop at topical evaluation on this platform. With this in mind, we started to take a closer look at who our contributors are, and what roles they play — both in our industry and online. We’re looking outside our “regulars” to find new voices and extend our reach.
Ask yourself: How can influencers on your network help extend your content’s reach on your high-priority channels?
Across all platforms
Beyond what we saw when we looked at each of the individual social channels, there were the undeniable successes — the content that hit the bulls-eye on all three platforms, as well as on our website. For example, Ben Harper’s post, How to Use Data to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy, topped the list on LinkedIn and Facebook, was No. 2 on our Twitter list, and earned well-above-average page views, conversions, open rates, and click-through rates.
Lesson learned: Don’t evaluate your content in platform-specific silos. Monitor the entire dashboard. Keeping an eye on the big wins can provide insight into what you might want to curate into new formats or update periodically in order to capitalize on their universal appeal and high potential to engage an audience.
Conclusion
Of course, these “top” evaluations are somewhat surface-level and unscientific, but even anecdotal evidence like this can be instrumental in providing a quick, snapshot view that can help content marketers identify opportunities, set priorities, and recognize early traffic patterns that can be explored in more detail down the road.
*Note: Our social counts are for posts that were published between January and November 2014. Social data was captured during the first week of December.
Find more best practices and rules of engagement for working with today’s top social media platforms. Read our Content Marketer’s Guide to Social Media Survival: 50+ Tips.
Cover image by tiffanytlcbm via pixabay
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