Crafting excellent content is crucial, but what happens when your audience becomes saturated? This may limit your lead generation results. That’s where content syndication comes in.
What is Content Syndication?
Content syndication is republishing your content on third-party platforms, websites, and social media channels. This strategy allows you to tap into new audiences, build brand awareness, and ultimately, generate high-quality leads.
Why do you need to Measure Content Syndication?
The success of B2B content syndication isn't just about generating leads; it's about engaging your audience and driving traffic to your website. Measuring the effectiveness of your content syndication efforts is crucial. However, measuring its effectiveness can be challenging due to the qualitative nature of metrics, such as lead quality, engagement and more.
It's not surprising that 47% of B2B organizations find it difficult to evaluate these outcomes effectively. So, how can you overcome this challenge and ensure your content syndication efforts are delivering the desired results?
Read on to discover effective strategies for measuring the impact of your content syndication initiatives.
Must Read: Content Syndication ROI: Every Marketer Must Track
Key Metrics to Measure Content Syndication
Content syndication success goes beyond simply getting seen. To truly understand its impact, you need to track a multifaceted range of metrics that paint a holistic picture.
Let’s delve in:
Impressions:
This metric measures the number of times your content is displayed on various platforms. High impressions indicate strong visibility, but remember, it’s just a small start.
Website traffic:
This metric tracks the number of visitors who come to your website after clicking the syndicated content. Targeted and valuable content can drive traffic back to your own domain, where conversions happen.
- For instance: A cybersecurity company creates a comprehensive white paper on "Emerging Cybersecurity Threats." They then condense the key points into an infographic for syndication on a technology news website known for its visual content. This allows them to reach a wider audience interested in cybersecurity trends while establishing their brand as a thought leader in space.
Social media share:
Keep an eye on social media metrics such as shares and comments. This provides insights into how your content is performing in terms of engagement and generating leads. Additionally, tracking the referral traffic from social media channels helps you measure the impact of the content on these platforms.
Click through rates:
Tracking click-through rates helps you understand how engaging and compelling your headlines or ad copies are. A higher CTR means more targeted traffic is driving to your website.
Engagement time:
This metric tracks the activities of your audience when dwelling on your page, such as time spent on the page, bounce rate, and scroll depth. The longer the time spent on the page, the lower the bounce rate. This means that your content is capturing the attention of the reader, inspiring them to explore further.
Lead generation:
Tracking MQLs informs marketers how many viewers are likely to be customers based on filled forms and analyzing past interactions with the brand.
- Example: Registering for a webinar on cloud storage specifically for growing businesses indicates a present need and budget for such a solution. The IT manager could be part of the decision-making process for cloud storage solutions, making them a strong MQL candidate.
Must Read: Mastering Content Syndication Strategies for B2B Lead Generation
Cost per lead
Cost per lead deals with the real content marketing ROI. This metric evaluates the cost spent to acquire each lead against those that qualify. By analyzing CPL, marketers can determine whether their expenditure is worth the outcome. If the results aren’t leading to significant conversions, it simply means you need to adjust the content you are generating.
Downloads and form fills
Sometimes, the marketer's goal is not nurturing or converting leads but building brand awareness through thought leadership—establishing authority in the industry.
By syndicating content like white papers, eBooks, or case studies, you can track the number of downloads triggered by syndicated content. This indicates the user is interested in your deeper expertise and willing to provide contact information in exchange for valuable resources.
Additionally, you can monitor the number of signups for your newsletter, webinars, demos, or free trials that occur after users engage with your syndicated content. Effective content can drive further engagement and nurture leads.
Must Read: 5 Critical B2B Content Syndication Mistakes Marketers Should Avoid!
Tools and Resources to Measure Content Syndication Performance
Now that you know which metrics to track, let's explore the tools and resources that can help you measure and analyze your content syndication efforts:
- Google Analytics: This free and powerful tool provides comprehensive website traffic data, user behavior insights, and conversion tracking. Use Google Analytics to understand how visitors behave when they arrive from syndication platforms to your website.
- Social Media Analytics Tools: Most social media platforms offer built-in analytics dashboards. Utilize tools like Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics to track social media engagement metrics like shares, comments, and reach specifically for your syndicated content.
- Content Syndication Platform Analytics: If you're using a content syndication platform, these platforms often provide their own analytics dashboards. Leverage these insights to understand content performance within the specific platform and identify high-performing content pieces.
- UTM Parameters: Use UTM parameters to tag your content links with specific codes that track traffic source, medium, and campaign.
Reaping the most possible value from Content Syndication
Remember, you can't optimize what you can't measure. Don’t let your content syndication efforts go in vain. Whether it's you, your team, or a reliable content syndication vendor, always measure content syndication to ensure it contributes to your bottom line.
