Without measuring your content marketing performance, you'll never how effective it really is.

Metrics is a big word  in digital marketing at the moment and no more than for content marketers. The field of content marketing may not be an exact science – how exactly do you assess how well an individual article has influenced decisions or viewpoints?

But, if your content marketing strategy is going to get off the ground, you need to understand some core metrics. Start with basic website analytics, including:

Unique visitors: This gives you the best picture of your site's traffic. Each visitor is only counted once, so you get a good indication of your site's reach.

Search engine traffic: How many visitors you're getting from search engines like Google and er, well, Google (Bing is picking up, but it remains dwarfed by Google). This will help you see how well your content is optimised for search engines.

Bounce rate: This refers to those visitors who immediately leave your site without stopping to read some other pages. Good website content, whether news, blogs, static copy or features, plays a key role in helping people stay with you.  A bounce rate of less than 40% is good.

Page views: Simply, just the total number of pages viewed by visitors – if your content is engaging – and your bounce rate is good – you should be getting more page views than unique visitors, ie – they are reading more than one page.

Inbound links: How many other sites are linking to your content. This is a good indication of how well thought of your site and its content is. More importantly, the more inbound links, the higher up your site will rank on Google and other search engines.

Conversion rates: Now we're getting into the nitty gritty – how many people are converting by say, sharing content or signing up to a newsletter. The first five are really inbound metrics; that is, you are measuring how many people have seen the site, like the site etc.

Conversion rates are ultimately more important as they are defined by how you as a business want to measure the success of your content – orders, Facebook likes etc. However, measuring the success of content by how many people read an article and then buy your product, is a very narrow approach.

Content has a much wider impact and it can be hard to see how one article has helped to get you more customers.

Have a look at our top tips for a first-rate press release.

Grab the reader

Journalists don't like having to come up with their own headline, so come up with something that makes it easy for them. Avoid clichés; try to use a phrase that's new and makes the reader stop and take notice.

Know your market

It's no use speaking in jargon if you're wanting to attract individual consumers. Likewise, businesses don't like being spoken to informally. Set the tone at the start and keep it up throughout.

Structure is key

News sites will generally only want a press release that is correctly laid out. It usually follows a set format, so stick to this. Make sure you stick in all the correct contact info and have a relevant title.

Focus

Captivate the audience – don't veer off talking about other products, services, events, charity deals etc – stick to the point. Keep to the topic and constantly reinforce.

Photo

Providing a photograph for news sites and journalists to use is a real bonus. Sourcing pictures and paying for them is the bane of every content editor's life – make it easy for them. If your CEO is commenting, stick a picture of him on the press release. A company logo is also good.

Content doesn't need to shout from 128,000 feet up, but it helps.

If you're in a crowded room at a party you're not going to be heard by whispering. Even speaking normally will barely be audible to anyone unless you have literally grabbed them by the ear.

And so it's the same with website content. It needs to scream through the massed hordes. Instead of other party-goers shouting and making noise to prevent your message being heard, it's other sites, other content and other businesses who are in the way.

Content has to SHOUT! (Not literally – keep the caps lock for Facebook). In other words, it needs to be worth reading, which means writing something that resonates quickly with your audience – your potential and existing customers.

How do you let content speak for itself?

Provoke an immediate response with your title. It's hard enough to grab people's attention, don't make it any harder by producing a limp headline that doesn't make the reader stop and take notice.

You've probably guessed that the Concorde wannabe Austrian skydiver did not actually eat my dog. I don't even have a dog.

I'm also not really advocating this David Brent technique to get people's attention – "I think there's been a rape up there". But you do need make people actually want to read on.

A good headline is priceless and once you've got them hooked with a title, they may actually read the first paragraph.

Content needs to sing for itself on any platform, in any space and for any purpose. Get your content strategy right and it can be reused – making it the "enabler" of future growth.

This is, essentially, is what TUI general manager Ros Mackenzie told delegates at Econsultancy's Jump conference in London yesterday (October 10th), according to Marketing Week.

Basically, what she was saying that it doesn't make sense to write separate content for one corner of your normal website, and then another bit for the mobile site and so on.

"You should think about content first, content in its own right, not how it will look on a web page or in that gap in the brochure," she said.

Flexible content is what it's all about. Essentially, rather than focusing just on SEO, produce great material, that will be read on iPhones, tablets and desktops.

Mackenzie also point out that tagging is key – tag everything so that when you need to pull up all the relevant content for a particular purpose, it's easy to find.

Econsultancy summed it up in its 'key takeaways' from Jump: "Travel customers come to 'do' something. They want to be inspired or persuaded, so content is key."

One more thing to take away from Jump - the focus of a search campaign should be on the highest quality links, which is social content. This nugget, which came from iProspect, essentially means that to boost your SEO, create interesting content on social platforms that people want to share.

Those New Zealanders know a good PR stunt when they see one.

It's not all about content marketing; there's nothing wrong with a good PR stunt to generate interest and it seems nowhere does publicity quite like New Zealand, or should I say Middle Earth?

The world premier of The Hobbit takes place in Wellington on November 28th. In honour of this auspicious occasion, the authorities are renaming their capital The Middle of Middle Earth.

The unkind among you may suggest that The Middle of Nowhere might be more appropriate, but I wouldn't dream of it.

Quite a clever move really and they really are going to town with it – postmarks on letters and the city's newspaper will reflect the new name.

The Hobbitt director Peter Jackson says: "Nowhere else in the world does a premiere quite like Wellington, and I'm very grateful for the support of the mayor, the council and all Wellingtonians."

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be release globally on December 14th, with the second film, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, due 12 months later.

I might keep banging on about it, but content really is king these days and when it comes to content marketing, we know that measuring success is crucial. But just what metrics are you using?

It all depends on the business and the goals of the content marketing strategy, of course. Despite this, there are certain metrics useful no matter what, says Econsultancy in its Content Marketing Survey Report.

Which are the most common metrics for content marketing?

Number one is 'unique visitors', which was cited by 88% of publishers. 'Page views per visitor' (76%) and 'page views' (71%) were also rated highly. Only a third of the 49 publishers said 'ad clicks' were used to measure success.

You can take a horse to water... It's one thing attracting visitors to your site, but keeping them is another matter and it seems publishers view stickiness as being important. 
Three-quarters (76%) said generating a second click for each visit was "very important". Not exactly ground-breaking – every website owner knows that traffic is useless unless it stays, reads more pages and ultimately converts in some way.

How do you keep people on a site?

Recommendations to other content are key, such as providing links to other sections of your site. Some 69% said they use internal recommendations to provide inspiration for where to go next. 

How do you get people to read more? Follow the golden rule of content writing – grab your audience and get them interested in what you're saying. 

Not only might they want to read more, they might even share your blog post on social media, friend your business on Facebook and sign up to a newsletter.

It's good to know that your Prime Minister is a thought leader. While some may have suspected that David Cameron was short of original ideas, it seems the PM is actually full of worthy thoughts ready to share on social media.

DC has become one of LinkedIn's new 'thought leaders', a initiative that allows users to follow the site's most important people.

Despite the presence of our PM and Barack Obama, it is Richard Branson who is proving the most popular.

The Virgin boss clocked up more than 100,000 followers in just 72 hours by describing the the five secrets to starting a successful business. 

In case you're wondering, these are: Listen more than you talk; keep it simple; take pride in your work; have fun, success will follow; and, in the words of great Scottish art-pop band Orange Juice, rip it up and start again.

Paid search is dead. Deceased. Like the Norwegian Blue, this parrot has gone to meet its maker.

At least that's what Uri Bar-Joseph claims in a recent blog post in Search Engine Watch. He quotes a range of data and I'm inclined to agree.

So what are these studies that show paid search is no longer in the land in the living? First of all, he says the percentage of total paid search visits out of total visits has declined by 39% in the last year, citing research from Optify.

The B2B marketing software firm also found 57% of marketers spend no time on PPC, and only 4% spend more than 15 hours per week. Not exactly working their noses to the grindstones.

Of course, the point is they are finding plenty of alternative marketing channels to occupy their time.

Social media marketing is one, display and retargeting is another.

A third, as Bar-Joseph explains, is content syndication channels or any cost-per-lead program. "There are more and more cost-per-lead programs out there that will yield high volume of leads at a much lower cost per lead than paid search," he says.

"You will need to create content or offers to attract leads."

It keeps cropping up and it's something more and more marketers and business owners are beginning to appreciate: content is central to everything they do online.

Paid search is dead, long live the new King Content!

Working in this business makes you realise just how few companies have a content marketing strategy; that is they know what it is they want to say and how.

It should come as little surprise then that just 38% of businesses have a content marketing strategy in place. But that is exactly what eConsultancy has found in its first Content Marketing Survey Report.

So, what exactly did they find? Well, first of all the report confirms that as people spend more time online, the importance of content marketing is growing. Combine with this the increasing sophistication of search engines like Google and it becomes obvious that a clear, well thought-out content marketing strategy is a must.

More than 90% of survey respondents believe that content marketing will become more important over the next year. In addition, three-quarters of digital marketers agree that brands "are becoming publishers".

James Keady, digital marketing manager at McLaren Automotive, told the report's authors: "Content is the voice of your brand and it is therefore important to allocate the respect, investment and focus it requires.

"Creating great content is difficult and delivering great content consistently through established processes is complex. However this is what is required if you want to take your brand from good to great in today’s communication environment."

He's right about one thing – creating great content is vital. But it is not as hard as businesses are making it out to be.

Despite the growth in content marketing, the majority of both brands and agency clients are yet to create a defined content marketing strategy, according to the report.

Only 38% of in-house marketers and 13% of agencies said this is in place within the companies they work for.

Thomas Messett, global editor in chief, Social Media at Nokia, said: "I find it quite surprising that the vast majority of respondents use content marketing and see it as becoming more important in the next 12 months but only a minority already have a strategy in place for this area."

He suggests companies are either "playing" at content marketing or are still testing the waters. Either way, there is a chance for businesses to set themselves apart from competitors by galvanising their content marketing strategy now.

Good content is everything. It's clear companies are aware of this, but few are acting on their inclinations.

Why is content king?

First of all, without it you have no product. Your website is everything and without high-quality content, it will be ignored by search engines.

But it's more than a matter of simple SEO: good content is what people want to read. If they are prepared to stay on your site to read an article, they are much more likely to hang around to find out what the site is all about.

If people like what they read, they might just share it. Sharing articles, whether by email or social media, helps you to get noticed.

As a content writer, I'm pleased to see businesses are placing so much importance on content marketing. I'm less impressed about the action. It's time to start now.