So What? How to measure your content

So What? Marketing Analytics and Insights Live

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In this week’s episode of So What? we focus on how to measure your content. We walk through understanding why you’re creating content, how to set it up for measurement, and what to do with the data. Catch the replay here:

So What? How to Measure Your Content

Watch this video on YouTube

In this episode you’ll learn:

How to choose the right metric scope
Content marketing KPIs
Where to start looking at content marketing data

Upcoming Episodes:

Natural Language Processing – 8/5/2021

Have a question or topic you’d like to see us cover? Reach out here: https://www.trustinsights.ai/insights/so-what-the-marketing-analytics-and-insights-show/

AI-Generated Transcript:

Unknown Speaker 0:25
So what Happy Thursday, I’m Katie, I’m joined by Chris John is in the Adirondacks wrestling.

Unknown Speaker 0:35
Let’s go with squirrels.

Unknown Speaker 0:38
He wanted us to tell you all that he’s wrestling bears. But since he left it to us to convey the message, he doesn’t get to pick the animal. So he’s wrestling squirrels. Very, very vicious ones,

Unknown Speaker 0:50
which was not.

Unknown Speaker 0:53
I see what you did there.

Unknown Speaker 0:55
So today on so what the marketing analytics and insights live show, Chris and I were talking about how to measure your content. So this came up for a couple of different reasons. One, Chris, you are doing a session, a workshop at content marketing world? Is that correct? That’s correct on content marketing analytics one on one. And so we’ll make sure that we include information on how you can sign up to that workshop if you’re interested in doing so. But it’s also just a question that we hear a lot, how do I know if my content is doing anything. And so we’ve talked, you know, on the podcast on the live stream, and blogs about how much content is produced on a regular basis, and just how to make how to like, first of all, get your content out there so that people are reading it are seeing it, but then you have to take that step to see is it doing anything for you. So Chris, today we’re talking about how to choose the right metrics to measure with your content marketing KPIs. So having a plan before you even put the content out there, and then where to start looking at your content marketing data. So with that, Chris, where do we start? If you are if someone says to you, how do I know if my content is working? Where would you start with them?

Unknown Speaker 2:12
Gosh, the first and most important thing to ask is, what are you measuring? What is the outcome was objective you’re after because a company that’s an e commerce company, it’s gonna have a different outcome than a company. That’s a B2B SaaS company. And so the first thing we have to ask are all the basics. Do you have a measurement system in place, say like Google Analytics? Is it setup? Right? Do you have goals to find typical values? setup? Is, are your tracking codes actually, on your content? Do you have governance around how you use those tracking codes. So there’s a whole bunch of prerequisites to content marketing analytics that you have to fulfill first. And if you don’t have them, it’s really, really hard to measure the impact of your content. If you’re like, trying to follow a recipe in a cookbook for baking bread. And like, I’ve got no measuring cups, no spoons, I just got a big pile flour. Right? So it was like, okay,

Unknown Speaker 3:12
you might be able to bake something, just by eyeballing everything. I’m not sure that I would eat it.

Unknown Speaker 3:20
I would say that you probably need to, and this is, you know, possibly a topic for a different show. But take a step back even farther, why are you producing content in the first place? Is it because you think you need to? Because everybody else does it? Are you trying to do it to get people aware of your services? One of the things that Chris and I have talked about is, you know, we haven’t been producing enough original content. And if, you know, Chris wants to be even more well known for his work in data science, and I want to be known for my work with change management, I need to be producing that content that speaks to those stories and how it applies.

Unknown Speaker 4:05
So once you know why you’re creating the content, then to Chris’s point, you need to start figuring out, you know, what is important to you? Do you care that the most people see it? So it gets clicks? Do you care that people engage with it? So it gets comments and feedback? Or do you want to take it a step further, and have your content linked to your sales portal and your e commerce?

Unknown Speaker 4:28
Exactly. So one of the things it’s important to talk about is what we call metrics scopes. And this is the unit of measurement that you measure your content with, because there’s different units that apply to different parts, your strategy and the analogy. In fact, I’ve got I don’t have any newspapers because I don’t order paper newspapers anymore. I actually just use this as a IRS tax bill I got recently that I was very unhappy to receive.

Unknown Speaker 4:54
Yeah, exactly. So let’s say I’m reading this, this huge pile of paper right

Unknown Speaker 5:01
When I’m looking at this, I point out an item on here. Oh, what’s that? Huh? What’s that? These are like events. So when you hear people talking Google Analytics for about event based tracking is nothing more than saying, Hey, I did something just on a piece of paper, I just did something I circled this line. Now, there’s a line here that I probably should talk to my accountant about, we’ll go ahead and circle that. Okay, that’s an event.

Unknown Speaker 5:25
on every page of this, this is a page, right? There’s literally a page of paper.

Unknown Speaker 5:31
I can read a page, right? Look at it. And maybe I there’s some pages here, I’m gonna go ignore like, I just don’t find this page useful. Right. So that’s our second. scope is the page. We care about the metric associated with the page is the page view. Right? Did I look at this page that we care about page views, when we actually care about what’s on the unit page itself? Right. So if you are trying to measure content, from a page old perspective, did this blog post to get read? You’re talking about page views? Now, let’s say I’m going through and I’m reading this thing, I’ve read some pages and pages out, right? I’ve read these pages. This combined this group of pages I read while I was sitting here, this is what we call a session. Right? So in Google Analytics, this would be a session, it’s just a bunch of things I did all within the same period of time, this is a session. We care about sessions a lot with marketing channels, right? Did Facebook start this session? Here? Did this session result in a conversion? Right? Did I pick up the phone and call the IRS? say, Yes, I’ll pay my bill. begrudging the problem having a functioning federal government?

Unknown Speaker 6:46
Did did I do? Did some action results in the session? And what things went into the session? this pile of pages? And then the fourth scope is me, the user the person, right? Am I a customer? Am I not a customer?

Unknown Speaker 7:01
And when we look at the different measures in content marketing, we have to say, what do we what are we trying to study? are we studying the person? Like how many people did the thing? are we studying a session of series of actions, or looking at a page, or trying to figure out if a thing on a page happened, like if I, if if I’m trying to do say, a B testing, like a button, I very much care about event based tracking, right? I don’t care about the page I care about the red or the blue was this word of that word? So that’s a really important thing to start with, with metric scope is to say, what are we measuring what you were saying, Katie, what’s the point? Why are we doing this? And then matching that to the type of metric scope we need? Do you find

Unknown Speaker 7:45
in you know, your dealings with clients and your audience that there’s a lot of times a mismatch? And so what I want to measure is not what I’ve created, therefore, I’m trying to pull numbers out of something that just will never exist? And how do you prevent against that, when you’re putting together your content marketing plan? It goes right back to what you were saying earlier, which is, what are you trying? What what decision you trying to make, right? If you’re saying I want to go with a red button, or a blue button works better, you know, on our homepage, and your measuring sessions, you’ve got you got a mismatch between the metric and what you’re trying to do. And so a big part of content marketing analytics is saying, are you measuring the right thing that goes with the decision you’re trying to make? And a bigger picture problem there is, well, what decisions are you trying to make about your content marketing, you raised the most important, which is, why are you even doing this? But then you get into what content should you be making? Where should you publish it? How would you get people’s you know, words to to find it?

Unknown Speaker 8:53
When is the best time to publish it? So there’s all these questions you kind of have to have at least catalogued up front, before we even start trying to measure it.

Unknown Speaker 9:01
You know, and I, without getting too far off topic, I want to make sure that we mentioned you know, we’re talking about, you know, we’re positioning almost in context of this as a brand new thing. So making sure you have that plan before you do the content. But a lot of times, and most commonly, what we see is that the content has been produced for, you know, a very long time and internet year. So it’s like, you know, three, four or five years down the road. And there’s a lot of content that’s been produced and put out there and now, you’re retrofitting some sort of a measurement plan into it’s like, oh, we should probably figure out whether or not this is doing anything for us. We’ve been doing it for this long do we need to keep doing it. And so, you know, that’s a little bit trickier, especially if the measurement, you know, pieces weren’t put into place when you first started doing the thing. So you may have a few years of lost data. And so I just want to sort of acknowledge that piece of it is that a lot of what Chris and I are talking about is

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Almost like as if you had the luxury of setting up something net new, but the majority of time, I think we’re trying to retrofit within, you know, legacy stuff.

Unknown Speaker 10:10
Well, the good news there is that net new can start anytime, right? So you can always say From today onward, is when we’re measuring, we’re like, we’re gonna fix this stuff today. It’s gonna be working after today. And we’re just gonna pretend that the last year five years 10 years lifetime has not happened. Well, and I think that, you know, there’s definitely something to that you don’t need to wait for like, July 1 or January 1 to put that stake in the ground and say, as of this day, like, why not today? What’s wrong with? What’s today? You know, what’s wrong with July 29? Why can’t today be the day that you start fixing things? Exactly. So the next thing we want to tackle is the KPIs themselves. What are your content marketing KPIs? So Katie, when you think about?

Unknown Speaker 10:56
Is our content marketing working out? What do you say? What do you think? Are the numbers that that matter the most?

Unknown Speaker 11:02
Um, well, you know, for us, specifically, our content is meant to be used as an awareness tool. So having people get to know us what we do, you know, our stance on certain things. And so the kinds of KPIs that I’m interested in, would probably be around organic search and SEO

Unknown Speaker 11:24
pageviews.

Unknown Speaker 11:27
Probably, those two things are the they’re what stick out to me, because I want to know, is my content being read? Because I’m putting it out there to be read by people to become aware of us. So can they find it? And are they reading it? Right? So it’s really important that you write out that sentence, because when somebody says that, you can start to pick apart the measures you’re going to need. So let’s go ahead and do this. Let’s go ahead and flip over to Google Data Studio. Right, and got a nice big blank chart here. So Katie, I heard you say, I care about people finding our content. Right, is that? So the first thing we want to figure out then is we want to figure out what KPIs should be in a basic system of measurements. We’re gonna slap up a new table here. Yep. So my persona statement is, as a CEO, I want to understand if people can find our content so that

Unknown Speaker 12:32
I mean, so that they read it. Right, so that they they read it and eventually do something with us, right. So here, we have to met, we have one metric, one dimension, the page, the title of the page, and the number of new users because again, we’re talking about discovery. So all users would not necessarily be a good as good a measure here based on your your user statement, because you want new people coming in. So this would be a very simple, I’m using my personal websites, data here, but you can use obviously, whatever you want.

Unknown Speaker 13:06
Here’s the page title, how many new users within this given period of time? Amen. So in this case, my homepage, number one, number two is my subscription preferences. Page. Number three is my newsletter subscription page, and then some blog posts. Right? So this would be a first set of KPIs, right? If, if the new users number goes to zero, I’m fired, right? My website is, is dead, there’s I’m just getting not getting any new users, I’m in a lot of trouble. The second thing that you mentioned, is we want people to find us by search, right. So an important thing to do at least once. And it’s it’s not the most fun thing

Unknown Speaker 13:49
is to look at what dimensions and metrics are available in in a piece of software, Google Analytics, and this is true of all analytics software. So if you’re an Adobe shop, if you’re on matomo shop, it doesn’t matter what you are, look at what’s available. And Google Analytics has, you know, this a really, really, really, really, really big.

Unknown Speaker 14:10
Let’s see if we can find the dimension Explorer,

Unknown Speaker 14:15
do API dimensions and metrics.

Unknown Speaker 14:19
That

Unknown Speaker 14:30
used to be in the left hand menu here.

Unknown Speaker 14:33
Oh, Google, changing things without telling you. So you know, it. One of the things that, you know, we often talk about are the things that are out of your control in terms of, you know, making changes. And so this, you know, harkening back to a couple of episodes ago is a really good example where Google doesn’t tell you when they make changes. And so as you’re trying to go through the same process you’ve always gone through so Chris is trying to find the dimensions and metrics

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Google’s changed how that looks and where you can find that information. And so now you have to reset your process

Unknown Speaker 15:07
based on something that was out of your control. Exactly. So here

Unknown Speaker 15:12
is the dimensions and metrics Explorer, note that there’s a difference between ga three and ga four.

Unknown Speaker 15:19
And one of the things to look at here is what are the different measures that are avail and dimensions that are available to you? Again, this is not, I would say, compelling reading, this is not something that you want to, you know, just pull up a cup of coffee with and sift through, but at least take a look to see what’s available to you.

Unknown Speaker 15:41
Once Now, back to our example, you had said searches, right, we have people to find if I searches. So if I look in my met my list of measures, one of the measures I have built me is organic searches when I put that in here.

Unknown Speaker 15:57
And what we see is very interesting here, right? The overall new users does not look like the organic searches calm. So let’s go ahead and change my sort here.

Unknown Speaker 16:08
Are we able to filter the pages by only blog pages?

Unknown Speaker 16:15
Something we would need to do in Google Analytics before bringing it into Data Studio? It depends on how your blog is set up. So the Trust Insights blog and my blog have something in common. And what that thing in common is, is that we keep the dates in our URLs, right? So if I have blog posts, well, doesn’t it also keep the word blog in the URL? No.

Unknown Speaker 16:44
That’s not you learn something new every day.

Unknown Speaker 16:47
Oh, so good. You page contains

Unknown Speaker 16:52
actually gonna do a page matches regular contains regular expression. And I want to choose your one on 202, which is 2019 and 2020, or the 2010s and 2020s. This now takes away all the pages that don’t have that in the URL. Okay. So and that for me, as the person in the persona, who is looking for the information makes sense, like, Yeah, it’s great that someone comes to my homepage. I’m more interested in the blog content that we’re writing, like, I would expect people to come to our homepage. But that to me is a different, you know, scenario that I’m interested in. I want to know if I’m taking the time to write something is someone then reading it?

Unknown Speaker 17:34
Yep. Now, here’s something very interesting when you look at this very simple dashboard. Some of the pages, organic searches and new users match up really well, right, you can see the sort of that that power locker of other pages is a big gap, right? Mark, this marketing strategy, blog posts, lots of new users, but not a lot of organic searches. So now the question you have to ask, Well, what happened there? Like why are we getting new users if we’re not able to if it’s not through search, and that’s where having some kind of filtration mechanism would be helpful. So let’s, let’s put one in actually,

Unknown Speaker 18:12
on the switches down to 10 rows that we don’t have is taking up the entire page. But some is, are you saying, you know for you know, if I’m sort of being introduced to this brand new, so I’m saying I want to know that they’re finding through organic search. And what this data is telling me is organic search may not be how they’re finding this content? Right? Sometimes, yes, sometimes No. So that’s a really important thing. So let’s go ahead and add in another table here. And we’re just going to make this a source medium table.

Unknown Speaker 18:49
Let’s put in source medium.

Unknown Speaker 18:54
I don’t know. I know put interaction filters on both of these, an interaction filter in Data Studio allows you to click on a result, and then have it change the rest of the page by that result. So I’m going to go ahead and go to my view mode here. And I want to look at let’s look at this. So this is a blog post, how do you determine whether something’s a trend? Right? Got it’s got some good users here. 109 new users, but no searches. So how do people find if I click on just that post?

Unknown Speaker 19:21
If I didn’t even know that was a feature? That’s super cool. Uh huh, exactly. So in my case, I clicked on that post. And it’s, it’s, it’s Twitter. Twitter’s what drove that post. Oh, or, if I want to look at Okay, well, what pages is my organic search driving? I’m gonna click on my Google organic there. And now I can see my new users. Details where my new users from just google organic, so I can filter in either direction, but it’s a good way. A good way to look at this based on your user statement. Well, what if I want to look at email like how’s email working for us? Right? Because see, the organic searches here have all basically gone to zero, right?

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Because it’s alright. But you know what pages on my blog is email driving traffic to?

Unknown Speaker 20:08
That is super interesting. And now, could we

Unknown Speaker 20:14
take it a step further?

Unknown Speaker 20:17
And look at the term? So this is a question we get a lot is, well, how do people so we know the channels people are finding us from but like if I’m in, you know, if I’m looking at Google, how do I, as a CEO know what words somebody typed into the search bar? And they found us?

Unknown Speaker 20:36
Yes. So what you’re asking about is, can we find that search data and you’re not gonna find it in Google Analytics, it just doesn’t live there. Where it does live is in Google Search Console. So let’s go ahead and find me. And so

Unknown Speaker 20:52
if you are creating a lot of content, and you don’t have Search Console set up, today’s the day July 29, put that stake in the ground today is the new day that we’re going to start fixing things and set up Search Console.

Unknown Speaker 21:05
Exactly. So let’s go ahead and plop in another fun chart.

Unknown Speaker 21:14
Yeah, let’s see what we have right dimensions and metrics here. So we have a query.

Unknown Speaker 21:21
We have a landing page.

Unknown Speaker 21:25
And we have our clicks.

Unknown Speaker 21:27
Now, can you are you able to apply filters across pages? Or is it just that one page that you’re on

Unknown Speaker 21:35
the one page that you’re on? Okay.

Unknown Speaker 21:39
Still, so in this case,

Unknown Speaker 21:42
it would be had here, let’s go ahead and and resize these columns to fit the data. So now I can see the term, the page that they went to, and how many clicks it got. And I can also if we want to get a little fancy, let’s put in our URL, click through rate, so that we can see how efficient a page is at getting search traffic, right? Because we can now see that there, even though this is the top page here by total number of clicks, the click through rates a little on the low side. So let’s put a number there.

Unknown Speaker 22:16
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 22:19
And now let’s go into our view mode. So now I can look at this and go Okay, well, what’s what’s really working for me in terms of search, right? Is your share of engagement. One, click on subscribe my name. This one’s actually a little concerning to me. It’s like why why is my name not doing better for

Unknown Speaker 22:38
people searching? For me? It’s,

Unknown Speaker 22:41
that sounds like an existential crisis that we can explore next week.

Unknown Speaker 22:46
Exactly. Well, we can see pretty clearly here, these are the things that you know, the pages that are doing reasonably well within this time frame. I can also obviously search by search by sort by click through rate and see what are the pages they get, you know, good, quick food. So this one is a waking to superhero bug, that’s a branded search, and has a very high thing, causation without correlation that posts as you know, 75% of people click got there.

Unknown Speaker 23:12
There’s a little onesies and twosies things start getting down to here, here of engagement, right? We have strategy, tactics execution. So now I can start to see, okay, these are pages that do pretty well.

Unknown Speaker 23:24
But could they do better? Could I optimize them more if I wanted to improve them?

Unknown Speaker 23:30
And the answer is yes.

Unknown Speaker 23:32
Then the answer is always you can always improve something. Exactly. So I think that that’s super helpful. So let’s say,

Unknown Speaker 23:41
let’s say I change my objective. And so when I, you know, did my original persona statement, I said, as a CEO, I want to know how people are finding our content and if it’s being read, so we looked at new users coming to the website to read the content looked at organic search, but let’s say I want to know if my content is helping me sell anything.

Unknown Speaker 24:09
Is your content helping to sell anything? Mmm, hmm. I mean, we’ve been asked that question a lot. And the first thing I if someone said, asked me that question, the first thing I would say is you need to be a little bit more specific with your question, because that’s very broad. Now it’s a common question. But you can start to pick it apart and say, Well, what do you mean is do you mean, art? Is someone going to your blog and saying, Yes, that’s the product I need. Let me go pick up the phone and call the sales team, or is that blog then linking directly to your e commerce and someone can buy something that way, or is there literally something someone can buy directly from that blog page.

Unknown Speaker 24:52
And the challenge that you’re running into there is that

Unknown Speaker 24:57
content and this goes back to scoping content.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
operates at the page level, right? Whereas the conversion operates at a session level. So you have a group of pages will be part of a session that leads to a conversion. But an individual page may or may not be And generally speaking, you know, if you were to do a vase, straightforward, you know, what pages have what goal completions, number signs, there’s always going to be like, essentially, the last touch, it’s always going to be the landing page or the form page that the conversion occurs on, because that’s the, that’s the limit of a page level scope, the way around that.

Unknown Speaker 25:35
So there’s there might be a way around, there’s two ways around it. There’s these mathematically sophisticated way, which is to say, gather up all the pages per session, in sessions to have conversions and build a Markov chain model to essentially

Unknown Speaker 25:53
say, what pages and in what sequences tend to nudge people towards conversion. This is something that we do in our most valuable pages report where you can say, Okay, what, what pages all participate in, in a path to conversion? So I’ll bring up an example here. Actually, no, I won’t, cuz I didn’t run one.

Unknown Speaker 26:13
or two, I have an older woman and

Unknown Speaker 26:16
I do have.

Unknown Speaker 26:18
So for Trust Insights, for example, this would be an example. These are the pages like the the various webinars and stuff like that some various blog posts, like this podcast episode, where they participated in conversions, even if they were not the last thing somebody did. The challenge is that this is not an out of the box feature of Google Analytics, this is not something you can do in Data Studio, because it doesn’t support Markov chain modeling.

Unknown Speaker 26:46
The closest you can get to it. In Data Studio, actually, I don’t think you could easily get to do this to you. But you could get to it in Google Analytics for If you or your Google Analytics for is set up. So let’s go to Google Analytics for let’s go to the Explore.

Unknown Speaker 27:06
Let’s go for

Unknown Speaker 27:08
as you’re pulling that up, I would imagine if your executive came to you and said, you know, you need to tell me that the content marketing that we’re doing is helping our overall revenue and sales, or else we have to stop doing it like that. That’s the scenario that happens. And so the question then becomes, which is the one we’re trying to solve for is how do you demonstrate that your content marketing is assisting with the overall sales? Right?

Unknown Speaker 27:38
So you need to be able to track conversion. So a prerequisite of this technique would be you have to have conversion set up in Google Analytics for if you don’t, this won’t work.

Unknown Speaker 27:48
We need to make a segment. Let’s and this is going to be again, we have a user session and event. So the question is, do we care about users, we care about sessions in this case, because we’re talking about content, we’re talking about a stack of pages, and therefore the scope is going to be that session segment as opposed to a user. So we’re going to call this conversion sessions.

Unknown Speaker 28:12
Our condition is going to be

Unknown Speaker 28:16
conversions.

Unknown Speaker 28:18
Is there a conversion event contains true.

Unknown Speaker 28:24
I hit Apply.

Unknown Speaker 28:28
And hit save.

Unknown Speaker 28:31
So now, I’m starting to build a path analysis very slowly, of where a pages on my site where the Convert there was a true conversion, I’m going to change because this is not super helpful. This is event based, change this to page

Unknown Speaker 28:49
title and screen name. And can you filter then from there to just your blog content?

Unknown Speaker 28:57
Yes, I should be able to do that by adding a filter on

Unknown Speaker 29:07
page.

Unknown Speaker 29:11
To page path, yes, each path.

Unknown Speaker 29:18
Okay, so page path, not added to filter?

Unknown Speaker 29:22
The filter is going to be Whoo, that’s bad.

Unknown Speaker 29:27
I can’t do a regex on that. Hmm. So then would it just be page title?

Unknown Speaker 29:34
page title is not on my blog. I don’t have the word blog in the page title.

Unknown Speaker 29:40
No, but you do have the date stamps. That’s in the URL, not the title the page.

Unknown Speaker 29:49
This is so this is actually interesting that we’re, you know, trying to solve for this now, because this I would imagine is going to become a common issue moving forward.

Unknown Speaker 30:00
especially depending on how you know, your website is set up. So if you don’t have any indicator on your page title or in your URL, but someone is now on a blog, this will be really hard to do.

Unknown Speaker 30:16
Right? Hmm.

Unknown Speaker 30:19
I think the only way I could conceive of doing that was would be to fire an event in ga for that would tag an event that would tag that event as being a blog specifically.

Unknown Speaker 30:29
Like, that could get really ugly really fast. Okay, so let’s Okay, so we can put that aside for now, and maybe cover that in a different episode. So in the example that you’re showing from ga for what you’re trying to do is demonstrate that the content on your site has led someone to take an action, which is a conversion.

Unknown Speaker 30:55
That’s right. And so we can start doing an path analysis is trying to figure out, where is it the people go?

Unknown Speaker 31:03
Right?

Unknown Speaker 31:05
What’s so some go to the homepage? Like, here’s one that was led to a conversion at the AI archives.

Unknown Speaker 31:12
Right, there’s, that went back to the homepage. But there was a conversion event on that page

Unknown Speaker 31:18
is people who are going to my speaking page.

Unknown Speaker 31:23
Here’s another one, how to start your public speaking career. Yep. Okay. So I’m starting to be able to look through it because I’m filtering only by those sessions, where there was a conversion event, I took that out, this would obviously look very, very different. But this would be a way to start trying to understand the paths people take in a site through that level of conversion. This is not ideal, right, again, because you cannot mathematically do a Markov chain model in your head. But this is actually what you’re trying to do.

Unknown Speaker 31:55
And the more content that you have, and the bigger your site is, exactly, yeah, exactly what our clients, we have one client, where they’re with a process several million pageviews every month for their, their analysis, which is why I have a second cooling fan on my laptop at the moment. This is processing all that data. And you can’t, you can’t do that by hand. So this would be a relatively simplistic way to get at that. But I would really say if you want to get that true understanding of what content is generating

Unknown Speaker 32:28
impacts this would be one way. The other way

Unknown Speaker 32:31
is if you’ve defined goal values, meaning there’s $1 amount set to your, your your goals, there’s a defined currency to them. Then if you go into Google Analytics, you go into behavior, go to site content, all pages to know you are now back in Google Analytics three. Yes, I flip back to Google Analytics three, there’s actually a page value computation, which is Google’s attempt at trying to say, Okay, what is the value of this, the dollar value of this page as it contributed to those to those to the end state? So there are some things like,

Unknown Speaker 33:09
these are all the gumroad pages that obviously have a substantial high value, I need to take out hub spots tracking code in my URL, that’s okay. But this doesn’t tell you if a conversion transpired. This just tells you what Google is trying to assign as a page value based on the value that you have assigned to a conversion. Is that correct? That’s correct. But the way it does is it is it’s it’s a science, partial credit. So the higher aggregate dollar page value has, the more that page has participated in conversions along the way.

Unknown Speaker 33:48
I see. And I think it’s also worth noting, so in ga for you, we’re showing the path analysis and tying it to conversions in ga three, you can do a similar path analysis, but it is not tied to conversion. So I just want to make sure that it’s clear, because you may be looking at it saying, but I already have that in ga three you do, but there’s no conversion tied to it. It’s literally just where did somebody hop along on your website? Yep. So yeah, I mean, this, this is the challenge that we all faces as analytically minded marketers, how do we reconcile in you know, there’s different levels of scopes? All the time, there’s different level scopes in each of the applications, they they work quickly. But I would say, at least in terms of being able to start to answer that question, this would be one of the ways to start getting towards it.

Unknown Speaker 34:38
So I’ve thrown you a couple of curveballs. Purposely because I know that those are the questions that people are likely to ask you in, you know, your workshop that you’re giving a content marketing world. But so basically, what we’ve done is we’ve said, okay, you as the marketer first need to figure out why you’re creating the content in the

Unknown Speaker 35:00
First place, is it for awareness? Is it for engagement, you know, someone’s already aware of you, but you want to keep them back and keep giving them useful information? Or is it for you know them to convert to do something. And so those three goals would be measured very differently. And then once you know why you’re doing it, then you can start to understand what metrics are available to you in order to measure against the goal. And that’s a lot of what Chris is going to be covering in his workshop. So Chris, you’re showing something that looks terrifying and scary. So what the heck are we looking at?

Unknown Speaker 35:37
So this is something that we put together a little earlier today. And if you want to participate in this, go to TrustInsights.ai dot AI slash analytics, remarketing is the the community at analytics for markers, and also in the same world slack. What are your questions you have about content marketing analytics, and they copy and paste all the questions out of the slack groups and stuff? Start putting them in buckets. Google Analytics, which is this lower bucket right down here, is by far the biggest of the buckets people have, then there’s a general strategy bucket, those attribution is is there, then general management, then Tag Manager, then SEO. So right now what I’m trying to do is just kind of gather up the questions, people have the general topics that those fall into, and then figure out okay, how do we convert this into a workshop that answers the questions people have the real questions, but also as coherent is not just one really long ama. Because as much fun as that is, it’s difficult to remember everything because there’s not a coherent story to it. So

Unknown Speaker 36:41
this is almost a segue from last week’s talk on how to do public speaking better. But from here, we have to take this and turn into a curriculum, because this by itself is is just raw materials. But if you’ve got questions that we haven’t answered,

Unknown Speaker 36:58
hop on over to TrustInsights.ai dot AI slash Alex remarketing, we are still gathering information as people post it to the slack group and trying to figure out where in this lovely landscape, those questions go.

Unknown Speaker 37:12
And so Chris, if people are interested in taking your workshop, at content marketing world, that really expands on everything we’ve been talking about today and digs in deep, you know, to the details, where could they find information on signing up for that workshop? Would they go to content marketing? world.com? Is there a better way for them to find it?

Unknown Speaker 37:32
Yep, just go to content marketing world.com. A register and the workshops are separate. So the workshops are September 28. And they are in person. So bring a mask along because you will be asked to wear one, even at the convention center doesn’t I will make you wear one of my session?

Unknown Speaker 37:51
I believe.

Unknown Speaker 37:52
Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 37:55
And and, again, ask questions in advance, because what I’m really looking forward to the workshop is

Unknown Speaker 38:02
gathering people’s questions up front so that we can have the time to put together something that’s going to answer, you know, 80, or 90% of the not all of the questions is going to fit in. And so for the ones that don’t fit in, we’ll tackle them on future issues of in the Trust Insights newsletter, in the Trust Insights podcast, or in the slack group as well.

Unknown Speaker 38:23
You know, I wish I could be there with you. I won’t be at content marketing world with you. But I am jealous of all the people who get to take that workshop, because I do feel like it’s a question. We hear a lot. How do I measure my content? How do I know if my contents working? What do I do next with my content. And so, you know, you’ll be covering that in more, you know, over the course of four hours. And you know, the goal is for marketers to walk away with, you know, a set of tools that they can go okay, I can apply this today to what I have, and then build on that. So, you know, Chris, final thoughts, any final pro tips for people who are struggling to figure out how to measure their content, the thing that I would really emphasize is if you’re watching this live, or if you’re not just catching on replay, please go ahead and take

Unknown Speaker 39:12
take a shot at building this yourself. You watch us step through step by step building these two dashboards and Google Data Studio. It’s free, there’s no money, you just have to have Google Analytics set up and put in place. Take the time to write down those user statements. And then ask what metrics are available in the Google Analytics metrics Compendium?

Unknown Speaker 39:38
Do they map to this and then can I put them in a dashboard or make them make sense? So I would and this is something that has to be true for the workshop folks, too.

Unknown Speaker 39:45
It’s gonna be hands on like, I’m not gonna let people just sit there and vege for four hours I know you’re gonna get your laptop or your tablet or whatever, and build the thing because I want people you including you watching this to walk away.

Unknown Speaker 40:00
way from this with something in hand like, okay, I at least have this if I don’t I mean, at least I have this. And that’s that, to me is the most important thing. I agree with that. And you know, again, super excited to see, you know how it turns out. So I think with that, you know, Chris, that is the show for the week. And so tune in next week to see who won the wrestling match between John and the, you know, rabid squirrels that he’s wrestling in the Adirondacks. I’m sure he’ll tell us all about it.

Unknown Speaker 40:29
All right, take care.

Unknown Speaker 40:33
Thanks for watching today. Be sure to subscribe to our show wherever you’re watching it. For more resources. And to learn more, check out the Trust Insights podcast at Trust insights.ai slash t AI podcast, and a weekly email newsletter at Trust insights.ai slash newsletter. got questions about what you saw in today’s episode. Join our free analytics for markers slack group at Trust insights.ai slash analytics for marketers. See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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