"All content is not equal in relevance or usefulness to your prospects," writes Ardath Albee at Marketing Interactions. "The overwhelming amount of content available online generates a lot of clutter and noise that your prospects must sort through to find useful information that addresses their needs." That's why pageviews and clicks—on their own—don't accurately measure the effectiveness of your content marketing.

She recommends looking past traditional metrics and asking questions like these:

• How much time do prospects spend with your content? Online visitors won't stick around for irrelevant content. So you need to know whether they're taking the time to read an entire article or skipping out after five seconds. "Do your prospects stay for the entire Webinar or leave after the first 15 minutes?" she asks.
• How deeply do they explore your content? Observing the path they cut through your content is another way to identify what they find valuable—and even where they might be in the buying process.
• Which webinars do they want to see a second time? If you compare the number of unique attendees and total attendees, you can discover which ones are being revisited and, possibly, shared with colleagues.
• Do they share your content with their social networks? You're doing something right when prospects post links to your content at Twitter, Facebook and blogs, and use the material to start conversations with you and others.

The Po!nt: Just because people clicked on your link doesn't mean they're reading your content. Find out what really connects for them by going beyond traditional metrics.

Source: Marketing Interactions.

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