Content is essential to your online success, but it’s clear that slapping a few sentences together on the page isn’t going to cut it. Your content should focus on these seven rules for compelling and high-converting copy. Your content should:
- Focus on the benefits, rather than the product. Show your customers what your product will do for them.
- Speak to your readers – people (and search engines) want genuinely useful content.
- Be supported by a killer headline – that’s what draws people in. Make sure the headline is on topic, though. Readers hate clickbait that doesn’t deliver.
- Be simple. Easy readability matters.
- Be supported by facts, stats, and resources for more information.
- Include a call to action that tells your reader what you want them to do.
When you put these elements together, you’ve got a stellar piece worthy of publishing and tracking performance. If the post doesn’t do as well as you expect, it’s time to go back and adjust your strategy. Here are some tools to help you improve your content.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo allows you to find the most shared content on any website, any topic, or by any author. A free account is limited to five searches per day. Paid accounts, with prices starting at $99/month, offer additional features. WIth it, you can find topics doing well on major websites, see how your competitors are doing, and even find top influencers to help you promote your content. Once your content is published, you can use BuzzSumo to keep an eye on how well it’s doing.
Bit.ly
Bit.ly is prehaps most well known for its link shortening abilities, but it does more than save space. Beyond getting your own vanity link shortener, you can share the shortened links and get analytics to show you how well your links perform. For each link you create and shorten with Bit.ly, you can get a report of how many clicks it received, down to the hour. It also will show you the platforms people used to share the link, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from. Plus, you can get a geographic distribution of clicks, which is helpful in optimizing and targeting your content on a global level.
You won’t get as many details as you would with Google Analytics, but multiple data sources can help you better adjust your targeting strategy.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free, highly robust tool for tracking content, and various other metrics, such as time on site, bounce rate, and more. With it, you can see which pages people visit when landing on your website, which pages they are on when they leave your website, the keywords they find your website with, and more. Each URL on your website will have traffic data available for it, so you can easily track which pieces of content are doing well. Plus, you’ll be able to see referrals from social media, so you can get a basic idea of how well your content is doing on social.
To enhance your experience with Google Analytics, you can integrate with a customer relationship management (CRM) software, like Insightly. Integration allows you to take the analytics data a bit further. You’ll see what content is bringing in leads, and follow leads through the sales funnel to determine if the content is playing a role in conversions. A native integration isn’t available at this time, but you can use tools like Zapier or Cloudpipes to automate integration.
Parse.ly
Parse.ly is a predictive analytics tool that allows publishers to track author performance or topics. It makes it easy for your business to capitalize on current web trends, promote in-demand content, and get recommended topics to expand your content empire. With it, you’ll get plenty of audience insight to help you see how your readers respond.There are three plans to choose from, and pricing varies based on audience size. All come with a trial.
Simplereach
Simplereach is a tool that collects real-time data to help track the impact of digital content. Users can gain insight into the direction they should be taking their content strategy to improve performance. Publishers can use it to promote their best content to attract a larger audience, and improve their native ad campaigns. Marketers can use it to measure and amplify their best content to increase brand awareness and bring additional profit. Pricing information is not available, as a demo must be requested.
Using any or all of these tools can help you see how your existing content is performing, and provide insights into how to make adjustments to your future content strategy to improve performance results. The more information you have about your audience and what they’re looking for, the better targeted your strategy can be.
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
