Content marketing isn't typically aligned with lean manufacturing — a scientific method of eliminating waste in a manufacturing system — but lean thinking has strategic advantages for content marketers. The phone number list Lean methodology, formalized in the book The Lean Startup by Eric Reis, applies to organizations of all sizes and levels of sophistication. The phone number list only requirement is a willingness to innovate and improve.
The Lean Approach: Preparing to Win
The phone number list need to learn from everything you do is at the heart of a lean approach. To learn from your content business, you need three things: a hypothesis, performance data, and analytical skills.
A hypothesis. You need a hypothesis that you think is correct. Example: I assume my sports content will drive massive engagement among 16-18 year olds because they are athletic .
Performance data . To test your hypothesis, you need to be able to collect, collate and understand the phone number list most important metrics related to what you do: reaching 16-18 year olds, their level of interaction with content, their feelings about the content, how often they share it, etc.
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Decide what to measure
The phone number list key to being lean with your content is measurement. If you can't track what's going on and how your content is performing, it's not possible to learn what works and what doesn't. Think about what you want to know, what to measure, and how to measure these things. What you want to measure will depend on your overall goal for your phone number list content. For most marketers, overall goals include brand awareness, engagement, and ultimately conversions and sales down the road. Map the key indicators according to your objectives. If you're focusing phone number list on engagement, you might want to track metrics like social shares across multiple platforms, time spent using your content, and sentiment of those using the content.
For sentiment metrics , such phone number list as positive and negative comments and people's opinions on content, you can use social listening platforms like Radian6 or Crimson Hexagon - or better yet, poll users who use your phone number list content with a clear set of questions to understand their impressions on him.
For social shares , a useful tool is Like Explorer, which displays the number of likes a piece of content has had. Also consider setting up columns in Hootsuite or TweetDeck to track mentions of your content.
For user time , just use a web analytics platform like Google Analytics – provided your content is on its own page. You will be able to get the phone number list average time on page, bounce rate, etc. To be smart, set up event tags for each stage of your phone number list content (especially if it's quiz or multi-upload content) so you can see how far users are going and how they interact.
Avoid tracking too many metrics. The longer you follow, the more confusing your conclusion may be. More than five metrics are probably too many for this type of test. At the phone number list end of your content test, you should be able to determine whether you should continue with your strategy or start over.
When deciding what to track, focus phone number list on what you want to find out. Find a statement you want to prove or disprove. Example: We think our sports content will perform best among 18-24 year olds. Once you have this hypothesis, you can decide which metrics will help you prove or disprove it as quickly as possible. The phone number list sooner you determine the validity of your hypothesis, the sooner you can focus your efforts on what works and stop wasting time on pieces of content that aren't working for your audience .