How to Measure the Impact of Social Media on Content Marketing

Graphs and chartsSocial media is a key driver in the success of content marketing, but to measure this impact you need to have accurate data. To do this, marketers need to implement a system to tag all links to their site’s content placed on social channels. This requires parameters that can be focused on measuring each individual link. Using Google Analytics as an example, parameters include “utm_source,” “utm_campaign” and “utm_content,” among others. Then comes the analysis of on-site metrics and off-line metrics. Off-site metrics can be broken down into exposure and engagement. With all this data, compile it into a spreadsheet to track the performance of each piece of content. “While this manual process can be quite tedious and time intensive, it’s a starting point which can be used to begin to understand the impact that social channels have on content marketing. Robust social media analytics tools can automate this process for you, so once value is proven, it is likely worthwhile to look into the options that are available to you.” (Search Engine Watch)