In this week’s Content & Coffee with Brafton, Stefanie D’aulizio focuses on the growing demand for savvy content analytics reporting. She explains that content marketers must either be analytics wizes themselves or have someone on staff who can assess data and make intelligent marketing decisions based what they learn. 

One major challenge marketers regularly gripe about is content analytics reporting. They either don’t understand what metrics to look at, which platforms offer the greatest insights or the point of it all. Fortunately, marketers are getting savvier by the day. Econsultancy’s Online Measurement & Strategy Report for 2013 found that 26 percent of companies don’t have a dedicated staff – not 1 person! – to analyze web data. While this percentage is still high, it’s down from 30 percent last year.

Content analytics aren’t just numbers that show how well a specific blog post did on a given day – many of these metrics can inspire creativity and impact your sales funnel. Most brands use Google Analytics to gauge the reach, audience and effectiveness of their content strategies, but they may not put their new-found insight to use.

Marketers must dive deeper into their reports – look at the commonly clicked and shared pages. Is there a pattern in the subject matter? Does each successful blog have a straightforward, business tone of voice or a more comical drawl? Having the answers to these questions helps dynamic creative teams switch gears and focus closely on material that resonates with their audience.

Implementing content analytics has been a slow process. Too many brands still don’t measure their campaigns’ success rates, but more caught onto the practice’s benefits in the past 12 months. Who knows – maybe next year everyone will be a little savvier and a little more profitable!

Catch you next week, and happy content marketing.

Ted Karczewski is an Executive Communications Associate at Brafton. He works to develop his own voice and apply his passions to the evolving world of SEO and content marketing, but he doesn't shy away from writing for fun. After graduating from Suffolk University, Ted used his Communications degree to test out Sports Journalism before Marketing at Brafton.