When it comes to developing a content program, publishing high-quality content is only half the battle. In fact, the most important step to nailing your content strategy is understanding your audience so you can create relevant content that drives increased brand awareness, further engagement, and eventually, more subscriptions.
It can be confusing for publishers to know where to start, so we’ve outlined below how you can use content insights and analytics tools to both research and understand your audience, then measure your content’s success.
Using Demographics to Learn Your Audience
Before blindly producing content, you first need to understand who your audience is, which is where analyzing the demographics of those you currently engage is an important first step.
Demographics such as age range, gender, geographic location, job title, and education of your audience can help reveal what type of content you need to create to remain relevant and build trust with your audience.
But your content demographics analytics shouldn’t stop there. You’ll also want to understand what your readers’ interests, media consumption habits, and preferred channels are so that you know what type of content to create and how to share it for the most impact.
Is your target audience consuming video, podcast, or written content? Are they reachable on social media or forums, or can they easily find your website via organic search? You’ll need to meet your audience where they are, understand their needs and interests, and produce the right content to fully engage them.
The good news is that many publishing and social media tools help track this third-party, real-time data for you. You just need to analyze it regularly. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok provide businesses with content analytics tools and demographic breakdowns daily, and content platforms like Invisibly provide you with deep user insights that are collected in an ethical way.
Measuring Content to Engage Your Target Audience
Once you understand your audience’s demographics, take a deeper dive into your content metrics to identify whether your content is meaningful to your audience, then adjust accordingly.
First, review all of your content channels to see how much – and which ones – are driving traffic to your brand. Look at click and bounce rates, impressions, shares, and even reader comments to learn what pieces of content your audience is engaged with. More importantly, identify what channels and types of content are not working so that you can produce less content that doesn’t engage your audience and spend more time on content that does.
Next, analyze your content to understand how your target audience is finding and consuming it. Use Google Analytics, your content management system (CMS), paid search tools and publishing software to understand how your audience is finding you.
Consider what keywords, calls-to-action, hyperlinks, social media, and paid advertising campaigns are driving significant traffic to your site. Are there CTA buttons, keywords, ads, or channels that perform better than others? If so, experiment with SEO optimization, the button copy, and the location of advertisements to see what drives better results.
Finally, measure how much content your audience is consuming once they’ve discovered it. This helps you keep a pulse on whether your content is meaningful, and, if so, how to build a relationship with your readers. Content insights such as click-through rates, time-on-page or session lengths, and reader or listener consumption rates will help you identify pieces of content that your readers stick with.
If, for example, a reader clicks on a blog post, then immediately jumps off of it, it’s likely that your headline didn’t match the content or address the reader’s needs. In many cases, you’ll also discover that certain topics and types of content are more interesting to your audience than others, and you’ll need to focus on strategizing and producing content that your audience cares about.
Adjusting Your Content Strategy for Success
For publishers and marketers alike, one of the most difficult parts of managing a content program is understanding and developing your audience, and, thanks to today’s digital platforms, it’s even more challenging to stand out from the crowd online. But remember: the key to success is to remain flexible and agile when your content strategy requires a shift.
As you measure content engagement and performance and align your production goals with your business goals, you can use content insights and analysis to focus on producing quality content and develop new ideas that will help you produce effective, engaging content for your target audience.
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