Features

Uncover the Value of Content to Modern Business with a Fresh Approach to Metrics

By Colleen Jones

Business today is digital, so content is critical. More than half of the Fortune 500 have disappeared since the year 2000 because they struggled with digital transformation—in other words, they could not adapt their business successfully for the digital era. Businesses are recognizing the importance of changing their approach to information and content. International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that by 2019, businesses will spend $2 trillion on digital transformation, and 25 percent of that will focus on information transformation.

Companies measure what they value, so as they start to recognize the increased importance of information and content to their digital businesses, companies will want to measure it. What does this mean for you? A big opportunity to:

  • Gain more insight about your content’s effectiveness, which can help you make it more impactful.
  • Position your content as the lifeblood of digital business, either overall or for a specific function such as support.
  • Connect your content to impact on other phases of the customer experience, such as marketing and sales.

So how do you take advantage of this opportunity? My answer might surprise you. After advising a range of midsize, large, and enterprise companies as well as conducting independent research with Content Science, I find the answer does not start with the metrics or the data. The answer starts instead with a fresh approach inspired by business intelligence. I like to call this approach content intelligence. Let’s walk through a framework and its implications so you can start to identify and track the right metrics for your content.

The Content Intelligence Framework

Content intelligence represents the systems and software that transform content data and business data into actionable insights for content strategy and tactics with impact.

As you can see in Figure 1, key elements of this system are collecting appropriate data from a variety of sources, analyzing that data in light of your content goals, and finally interpreting and acting on that data to understand effectiveness, return on investment, and more.

This framework requires a number of changes to how many companies tackle measuring content. I want to cover two changes that will be especially helpful to you.

Mindset Shift: From Quality to Effectiveness and ROI

In Content Science’s research with nearly 200 content professionals—including professionals in technical writing or editing roles—we found that the majority reported measuring content in terms of metrics related to quality, such as volume (number of content products completed), timeliness, delivery completion, defects, or revisions required.

Figure 1. A framework for a content intelligence system

However, the professionals who reported that their content teams or efforts were thriving also reported that they measured content in terms of effectiveness, such as impact on customer behavior or perceptions and business goals, and ROI.

In reviewing open text responses and conducting follow-up interviews, we learned that teams focused on content effectiveness and ROI created a positive cycle, or upward spiral, where metrics informed better content decisions and more ambitious content goals, leading in turn to more success. Ann Marie Gray of Morningstar Financial explains,

“You should always be raising the bar for yourself. Nowadays everything has become so data-driven, which allows us to see what’s working, what content is driving results—but the value of that is what you do with it.”

What you do with your data or metrics leads to our next change: process.

Process Shift: Start with Questions and End with Decisions

If you’re not a data guru or a numbers fan, then I have good news for you. You don’t have to be either to plan your approach to content metrics. In fact, my friend and data guru, who also is the vice president of audience development and analytics at CNN, recommends starting with questions:

Going through the data mining process and asking the right questions is the hardest part. With seemingly unlimited data and finite time, narrowing the scope to yield meaningful answers is critical.

You do love numbers? Starting with questions will save you a tremendous amount of time and hassle instead of wading through a sea of data. Once you decide on the questions, you can then focus on which data sources—and ultimately metrics—will help you get answers.

You will want to cover basic questions, such as “Does our support content help customers with problems get resolution? How quickly?” You can then look at a range of data, as suggested in Figure 1, with a focus on answering those questions and decide which metrics give the best indication of answers.

You also have the opportunity to ask questions to help unveil the full value of your content, such as “Do customers use our support content as they shop or buy? Does the content accelerate the shopping or buying process?”

Figure 2. Fewer content teams extend measurement to effectiveness and ROI metrics, but those teams are more successful.

So, the process needs to start with asking the right questions. How does it end? Ideally, with a decision. Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis. If you collect data and never take time to interpret what it means and act on it, you might as well have no data at all. Most commonly, you will decide either to continue as is, to optimize performance, to predict the impact of a decision, or to investigate a problem or opportunity.

As you pioneer this new world of digital business mediated by content, make the most of your opportunity to gain new insight and show return on investment with content intelligence.

COLLEEN JONES is the Founder and CEO of Content Science (content-science.com), a growing content intelligence and strategy company based in Atlanta, GA. Content Science owns the online magazine Content Science Review, Content Science Academy, and the content effectiveness software ContentWRX. A Star Wars fan, Colleen shares insights about mastering the content force at events around the world and in highly rated books, such as Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content. Follow Colleen on Twitter at @leenjones or on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/leenjones.