#future journalism

WORTH WATCHING & SHARING❗️

This 👇🏼 is the SOLUTION ❗️

I found this Zoom discussion really fascinating. We had the opportunity to hear from students attending the University of Texas, who shared valuable insights on how to utilize artificial intelligence in a newsroom setting. The project, funded by The Dallas Morning News, tasked students who were part of the "The Future Press" team at UT with creating news stories entirely using AI tools. What stood out to me most was when Ryan spoke candidly about the ethical challenges of generating content with the help of AI.

Before taking this course, I had no idea how vast and accessible the network of AI tools truly is. The Zoom discussion mainly focused on the group’s interactions with generative AI—what was useful and what wasn’t. The students shared transparent findings and explained how they developed content suitable for publication.

By the time you read this post, a new platform to connect freelance journalist and publishers (aptly named Contently) will have already launched. The premise? Content still reigns as king, but newsroom resources are limited. With freelance journalists in cities around the world, it makes more sense to aggregate quality content from freelance reporters on the ground as opposed to sending one of your own staffers, calling it "the freelance revolution." According to the platform's manifesto:

The Internet means publishers should no longer be confined to the limits of in-office staff, nor should they be forced to burn fuel to put reporters on the ground around the world. Creative talent lives everywhere; it can and should work from wherever it lives. And any quality publisher should have access to it. Though we may live far apart, the web can bring freelancers together into a community whose value far exceeds the sum of its members. This is the freelance revolution.

Most people quit blogging — and most companies do too, for that matter.

Like healthy diet, frequent exercise, proper posture or any other New Year’s resolution, blogging results take time. A 2008 Technorati survey put the abandonment rate of blogs at about 95%.

Part of the reason for low blog success rate is that most of us have a hard time predicting what kind of return blogging will achieve. “If I blog every day for a month, will I get more leads?” Probably. But it may take six months, not one.

That doesn’t mean it’s not worth the fight.

Before the Internet put publishing and distribution tools in everyone’s hands for free, companies that wanted brand exposure paid for time and/or placement on a third party media property (radio ads, TV commercials, banners). Many still do, but a general shift is occurring online – away from outbound marketing and paid media, toward creating one’s own branded content and spreading that media across the social web.

According to the Custom Content Council, 68% of CMOs say they are shifting budget from traditional advertising to this type of content marketing.

But measuring the return on investment (ROI) on content is difficult, especially if you’re not judging success by ad revenue.

Nine out of ten organizations market with content, according to a recent B2B content marketing survey. Companies like Mint, American Express and Hubspot are now competing with “traditional” media companies for eyeballs with their own content. They’re seeing results -– not necessarily in the form of advertising, but rather, through leads, subscribers and brand awareness.

A recent study by Hubspot indicates that Hubspot customers who practice inbound marketing (of which content is a core element) increase leads an average of 4.2 times within a few months. Other studies have shown similar results, that consistent content output increases conversions.

Content costs money, and measuring the results of your content effort is important. But an effective content strategy is like planting a garden: it takes consistent work that eventually pays off in large quantities. However, failure to water or plow that garden will result in weeds, in other words, a blog post every three months whose only comments are spam.

So how do you convince your boss, your partners or even yourself that content is a good investment? Here are three steps to effectively measure your content strategy:

1. Understand What You’re Measuring

Traditionally media companies use readership and ad revenue as the yardstick for content’s success. In content marketing, however, the goal is typically to achieve some sort of conversion or to build “brand awareness,” a rather ambiguous metric.

A conversion can consist of a mailing list or an RSS subscriber, a user signup, a phone call, a sale or any number of user interactions. The first step to measuring ROI on your content strategy is to set a goal.

If your content goal is to increase user signups, you first need to know your baseline: how many signups are you getting now, and from what sources? Once you start your content efforts, you want to be able to measure the results against that baseline.

2. Use Proxies to Measure Initial Success

Unless you’re already starting with a large audience (huge mailing list, captive user base, etc), it’s going to take a while to build momentum, and even longer to start seeing conversions. However, several proxies can help you chart your progress.

These proxies present immediate signs of encouragement, more so than, say, search engine ranking, which can take a while to manifest. Here’s a quick list of proxies for measuring a blog’s ROI:

Facebook likes

Retweets

LinkedIn and other shares

Reblogs

Links back

Comments

Time spent on page

Average page views per visitor (especially if you’re effective at internal linking of your posts)

Followers

@mentions

These proxies will monitor how well your content is resonating, how you’re building trust in your brand. That trust will eventually turn into loyalty, advocacy and continued conversion.

It’s important to note that absolute measurements are rarely useful. What you’re looking for is a trend line. The number of retweets relative to previous content on your site or peer sites is a more useful yardstick than the total number of retweets.

Though it may not seem like much, an average of five tweets on a post today versus an average of one tweet three weeks ago is a great sign of progress.

Also, because some pieces of content will be outliers (whether spikes or duds), it’s important to pay attention to aggregate trend data rather than isolated post data. For example, the average number of retweets in June compared to April is a better measure of progress than the number of retweets on today’s blog post versus yesterday’s.

3. Measure Both Primary and Secondary Conversion Indicators

From a practical standpoint, measuring conversions can be as simple as installing Google Analytics, or keeping a spreadsheet of leads or even tick marks on a whiteboard.

While keeping track of the raw conversion numbers (How many leads are we getting this month versus five months ago when we weren’t blogging?) is important, it’s also crucial to measure secondary indicators. If you’re measuring leads, these might include the following:

Quality of leads

Retention period

Lifetime value per lead

Length of sales cycle

Number of new customers referred by lead

“One way we try to quantify ROI is to track content users very closely,” says Sam Slaughter, a producer at Comcast.net. “That way we can tell if they went from consuming content to buying a product, or to bookmarking the page, or to digging deeper into the publisher site or any number of actions that the publisher might be able to monetize. From there, we can often come up with an actual dollar value from that piece of content.”

Patience Is the Secret

Content strategy for most businesses isn’t about instant advertising metrics anymore; therefore, clear ROI data can take a while to manifest. Once it does, however, returns will generally increase as you continue to consistently publish.

“When we talk about ROI for content we often use terms like ‘adoption,’ ‘time on site,’ ‘page views per unique’ and things like that,” says Slaughter. “The idea [is] that while you might not be monetizing the content on your site directly, you are using that content to attract new and better users who you can monetize down the road.”

In the end, planning, tracking and consistency will help you succeed. As Problogger founder Darren Rowse recently tweeted, “Building blogs is like building muscles.” Great content properties, like muscles, take patience.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pearleye

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42 Comments

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Rajiv Thakore Follow

nice

1 day ago Reply 0

Tom Emmons Follow

Well stated. Too many people don’t understand how the work to build the audience pays off if you keep at it.

1 day ago Reply 0

Ruben Paniagua Follow

Interesting tips on Mkt ROI…

1 day ago Reply 0

karmapositive Follow

Most bloggers quit bcause they never had a plan and clear goals. Don’t think of results, think of the user/ customer problems and how your content can solve that. Forget ROI, just write content to share your expertise and serve market needs. And surely, the the law of karma will work. If they like what you say and do, they will want to work with you.

1 day ago Reply 3

eastinnovations Follow

From a business perspective I think having measurable targets and objectives in place is a fantastic way to not only keep motivated, but also assign actual value to the time dedicated to blogging. If you can’t measure value, then how can you justify spending time on it? It would be nice if all we had to do was consistently produce innovative, unique and interesting content, and there are a great many benefits to be had if done correctly, but without some sort of ROI measurement then how can you justify your efforts? Then again, this is from a corporate point of view – if you’re blogging on a personal level then there is absolutely no need for this, although it can still be very interesting information!

1 day ago Reply 0

Charles Dery Follow

Well put Karma, It’s conventional wisdom. When it comes to communicating with the public, most companies take the safest path. They usually play their cards pretty close to their chest. Some people join blogs simply to challenge that “wisdom.”. Why not, there are benefits not by being read, but simply by HAVING a blog.

1 day ago Reply 0

Chase McMichael Follow

Great “Don’t think of results, think of the user/ customer problems and how your content can solve that. “

1 day ago Reply 0

Parth Rana Follow

Most companies quit because the concept that has been described is still to a large extent abstract. ROI(generally sales/invmnt) means return on investment(usually measured in currency in a corporation). Companies, especially SMEs need to realize that there will be no ROI unless there is brand awareness across the social media, which in turn should be part of a larger marketing effort/strategy.

1 day ago Reply 0

Ben McAuliffe Follow

Love the Chauncy Gardener reference.

1 day ago Reply 0

Jeff Manes Follow

Readjust, measure & readjust.

1 day ago Reply 0

Chase McMichael Follow

Sean best post I have seen on this topic …. The ROI is real and your right about keeping up with the content. We should be working together. Were doing crowdsourcing of trending content around brands to show them what content they should be feeding or curating. Like your feedback on the Social Intelligence side of what we do . See Sephora | Brand Trending Content http://bit.ly/jmSU0r @chasemcmichael

1 day ago Reply 0

Chase McMichael Follow

Shane nice post its all about engagement and like your spin on the ROI elements

1 day ago Reply 0

Wilton Blake Follow

Best article on social media ROI ever!

1 day ago Reply 0

Erlend Hovgaard Follow

I think you forgot to pull out all the editor’s comments before you published this… Recognise: [not sure what that means] ?

1 day ago Reply 1

creativemf Follow

This article is a nice start to introducing (how) you can achieve qualitative as well as quantitative ROI for building your social media network. As a legacy #madave type – this stuff is second nature to me. I think many people who have entered the field of new media are really only (just) entering the field of advertising and marketing. Beyond the boon of measurable “clicks” and analytics – rest assured, the song remains the same: Show me da monayy ;)

1 day ago Reply 0

FoxInFlats Follow

Shane, thankyou for this – the timing was perfect for me. I’ve been blogging for just 5 months, and been very focused on using my marketing background to build a brand. Despite doing well so far (engagement and dialogue is good, traffic is competitive and growing exponentially, and I’ve been recognised in some Blogging comps), yet I literally hit the wall tonight. Exhausted. I’ve set myself a number of objectives already, but will add some of these to the list. Tell me, is there an easy (automated ) way to measure the proxies you mention in point 2?

1 day ago Reply 0

theinfodaddy Follow

While I don’t disagree that blogging is an effective marketing tool (in the long run), for the majority of small business owners it is simply ‘too much like hard work’. They do not have the time or inclination to maintain a blog, especially as the results are not measurable and not instant. A pay per click campaign will always be the preferred choice of the small business owner- it may not be as cost effective (in the long run), but it’s simple, instant, and measurable.

1 day ago Reply 0

Madeline Johnson Follow

Blogging also keeps you on top of your game because you have to stay abreast of your industry/market and all breaking news. You are so right, it’s just like working out and building muscle. Results do take time, but it is also a matter of promoting your blog on the web and off. We use ours like a portfolio when visiting new clients. Great article, thanks for sharing.

1 day ago Reply 2

Paul Marshall Follow

For all you current or aspiring bloggers …

1 day ago Reply 0

Bill Oakes Follow

Content strategy is like planting a garden.

1 day ago Reply 0

Jorge Noricumbo Follow

hmmm..

1 day ago Reply 0

nickoflaherty Follow

Completely agree with you Shane. How about this as a justification for blogging: we’re a digital engagement PR agency – without a credible blog (now more than three years old) showcasing our thought leadership and social media savviness, we simply would not be in business today!

1 day ago Reply 1

Charles Dery Follow

I like how you guys put the blog in the forefront while keeping the menu options visible. Well done!

1 day ago Reply 0

Chase McMichael Follow

Nick i had to share my blog post on Winning Curation Strategies and Brands Becoming Publishers http://bit.ly/iroPvU based on your comment tell me what you think

1 day ago Reply 0

Charles Dery Follow

Good article! I keep a blog for improving my personal brand and increase exposure, but I also keep it to stay fresh with topics relevant to my domain! Kind of like doing a homework in school and covering up topics, summarizing concepts etc Its also clearly fun to do even though time consuming…

1 day ago Reply 0

Blair Keen Follow

Slightly overblown title in terms of it being a ‘How To’ guide, however the list of initial success indicators is useful for people just getting started out with measuring the effectiveness of their content strategy.

Also a good point about measuring the baseline before assessing ROI.

1 day ago Reply 0

Fred Faulkner Follow

Content is still king…know how to use it!!

1 day ago Reply 0

Mark N Follow

Self-branding is only going to become MORE important post-Google Panda. I think we’re going to see a lot less mass-produced sites and a lot more focus on single sites that have a lot of attention paid to them.

1 day ago Reply 0

agendize Follow

Great read on content #marketing!

1 day ago Reply 0

agendize Follow

Great read on content #marketing!

1 day ago Reply 0

Eric Goldman Follow

Great article, thanks for posting. I particularly liked the idea of using proxies to begin with, while searching for the ROI of your Social Media Marketing efforts.

When readers, and you want to calculate Return on Marketing Investment accurately using analytics from your Goggle and Marketing Automation accounts, you may find this calculator helpful. It provides step by step instruction on where to find the information you need from your own sources, and its sliding scale controls allow you to play what if with the values, while at the same time learning the best practice values for these fields in B2B marketing. At the end of the exercise you can print your results. The use of the calculator is free and does not require registration on the site. Here’s the link: http://www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca

1 day ago Reply 0

Chase McMichael Follow

Shane finally a post about content marketing ROI that backs up a great deal of what we have been working on. Would like your feedback and think we could be working together on using crowdsourcing to find trending content. http://smo.infinigraph.com/portal/termSearch.html?term=Clinique What content to post and what’s most relevant appears to be a big gap in brands move to being publishers.

1 day ago Reply 0

marywangseo Follow

I like Problogger founder Darren Rowse’s quote “Building blogs is like building muscles.” It is so true that “great content properties, like muscles, take patience.” I wrote a short blog last summer about how to make vision board using photoshop. Last week, Google ranks it PR 2. I think it is quite encouraging. So be patient and keep blogging . . .

1 day ago Reply 0

AllieSheaK Follow

I’m working to build a personal blog as well as starting a blog for my internship. ROI is hard to quantify and I’ve struggled to come up with definitive goals for both blogging ventures. Seeing examples of ROI for blogging will help me define what I want my blogs to do for myself and my employer.

1 day ago Reply 0

Sookie Shuen Follow

Thanks for this. Use the time and money you save to generate content, presence, and reputation. Become a respected thought leader and the number one source for people interested in your area.

1 day ago Reply 0

Dennis Gilgallon Follow

Terrific article! I would think that most people abandon blogs because for measuring ROI, it does not follow the speed of the internet. Everyone thinks that anything associated with the web is instantaneous. With content management, this is far from the case. Those that want to blog for the purposes of building a following and brand awareness MUST have a long-term plan and strategy. Without such, the person will become disillusioned and abandon the effort within a month.

1 day ago Reply 0

Raymond Clarijs Follow

Raymond’s take: Content creation is a long term investment

1 day ago Reply 0

Anton Babayan Follow

interesting BLOG POST that starts with words about low blog success rate :)

22 hours ago Reply 0

Nicole Henderson Follow

Amazing article–absolutely worth the read!

20 hours ago Reply 0

David Spark Follow

Shane, I would also put in relationships. This is I think the key to any content strategy is that of building relationships. Much of the work I do is producing content at live events and interviewing industry thought leaders. The process of interviewing is a great way to build a relationship AND content.

I just published a really successful case study about this:

“How to Become One of the Most Respected Companies in your Industry” http://bit.ly/indyvoice

20 hours ago Reply 0

MarketingSutra Follow

To Shane’s great post, let us add that it’s now possible to use Google Analytics to track Social Engagement and search marketing metrics under one umbrella and so measuring the return on investment on content is rather not difficult: http://www.marketingsutra.com/blog/google-social-analytics/

18 hours ago Reply 0

Santiago Darmandrail Follow

Interesting

14 hours ago Reply 0

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