Content writing is marketing for the long game. Unlikely copywriting, which sells specific products, content writing builds brand awareness and trust over time. 

It includes the likes of useful informative blogs or social media posts, such as ‘how to’ series or ‘what to do if…’. 

So, measuring your return on interest can be difficult. 

Here are a few ways to make it easier.

Have specific goals

Why are you writing content? Make sure you know why you are doing it and it will become easier to measure the outcome. Goals for content marketing includes:

• More traffic to your website
  • Where do you want that traffic to come from? Directly typing in your website or via search engines like Google? There are tools to measure both, and knowing where you want the traffic to come from helps you tailor your content and measure if it is increasing. 

• Increase social media following
  • And if so, on what platforms? Do you want more followers, higher engagement or both? More traffic to your website via your social media accounts?

To know your return, you’ll also have to know your investment. Be specific about what resources you’re willing to commit to the content creation. For example, tell your staff to spend one hour a week writing social media posts, three hours writing a blog or outsource your content creation to professional content creators and weigh the cost vs the time saved. 

Know your expectations too – research typical ROI for your industry and set a benchmark against it.

Test different strategies

Even if you are getting the desired ROI, you should run A B tests to see if another way might yield better ROI. For the same blog, run different SEO headlines and see if that improves the traffic it creates. 

Try posting on social media at different times of the day and compare the results. Try different tones too. 

Content marketing is an art not a science, so you need to work out what is best for you and your company.