Content Marketing Benchmark: Is Your Content A+ Material?

Back in the early days of content marketing, content was published just for the sake of it. It was said that the more you publish, the odds of getting more shares grow, so that was the thing to do, at that time. There were no clear benchmarks on the frequency and volume of posts, no accurate metrics pointing what should one do to benefit from optimal performance. However, that has changed; now you can take advantage of being acquainted with current benchmarks.

What are we benchmarking?

We have selected the top 115 marketing tech companies, those mentioned here. Why did we choose top companies only? Isn’t picking a range of businesses with mediocre performance preferred? The answer is no for one reason.

That would be because a benchmark that compares us to the very best in the industry is useful, as opposed to comparing us to an average company. To put it simply, whether you like it or not, you compete with the very best in the field, in this vast sea of content. Delivering average-rated content won’t help you to get ahead, nor will it draw attention. In fact, average content means no one sees it. On that account, it’s common sense to benchmark against the top in the field.

The metrics we benchmarked

Our primary attention was directed towards blog posts performance, by taking into consideration the number of shares. Meanwhile, usually, we measure internal performance by conversion, traffic, and backlist. However, we focused this benchmark on a standard metric that may apply to all companies. The metrics we benchmarked include:

• Blog posts shares by following members
• Total shares by platform – for a company
• Blog posts shares by type (video, guest post, interview, article, infographic)
• Blog post shares by platform – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+
• Top companies

After having benchmarked your posts, you can take a closer look at the patterns mentioned above, and modify your content activities as such. While experimenting with a range of different content, you can observe what works best for you, and what brings you the visibility you wish to obtain.

In the case in which you target Facebook as one of the primary platforms for sharing your content online, you should consider this metric benchmark. Concerning blog posts shares per follower, it should enable you to compare your shares with top companies.

For instance, Hubspot has about a million followers on Facebook, and somewhere around 5000 shares for each post. If we were to compare these numbers with a company that has only a thousand followers on Facebook, but 50 shares per post, contrary to what you may assume, that means that the second company rules over Hubspot. That’s because we normalized the numbers by considering the number of followers. Typically, this metric is conveyed as a percentage. You may use it to determine the percentage of followers that share your posts.

The bottom-line? Actionable benchmarking can truly help you to measure up your performance in this competing realm of marketing. Of course, doing this asks of you to do plenty of work, but, in the end, it will be worth it, giving you a hint on the direction your content is taking. If your aim is to perfect at delivering excellent content, you will find the information included above helpful and life-changing!