Measuring your content’s performance helps you see what works and what does not, thus allowing you to tweak your content marketing strategy on an ongoing basis. In this article, we wrap up the recruitment marketing series by discussing how to pick the right metrics to track your content’s success and a few helpful tools.
Setting goals:
Before you pick the metrics, it is important to define your goals even if they are vague to begin with. Your goals can be as simple as “Increase applications”, “Increase LinkedIn engagement” etc. Defining your goals gives direction and allows you to pick the right metrics and tools. As you pick pace, you can revisit these goals to make them more focused and specific like so- “Increase application by 20 per cent over last quarter”, “Increase careers site visitors by 200 over last month”.
💡Tip: You can also consider adding sub-goals under a more generic goal allowing you to retain a larger goal and keep making additions as you go. You can even pick an existing one from your overall recruitment and business goals. Additionally, linking specific metrics to your business goals transforms them into key performance indicators (KPIs).
Picking the right metrics:
Once you define your goals, you can pick metrics that will give the information you need. These could be the number of website visitors, bounce rate, number of likes, comments etc. For a specific goal, you might have to track more than one metric. For example, if your goal is to increase applications, relying solely on the number of CTA clicks is barely helpful; you would also want to track the number of visitors to a page, bounce rate on the application page etc to truly understand the gaps and take necessary action.
Note: If your careers page is embedded in your company website, you could collaborate with your marketing team to get the necessary metrics.
Social media engagement metrics are pretty straightforward composed of impressions, likes, shares, comments, etc.
Below are a few common metrics you can track for careers site/page:
Bounce rate: Bounce rate indicates the number of visitors who left a page right after visiting it. Bounces can happen when a visitor does not find what they need, due to longer load times, etc.
Number of visitors: Total number of visitors to your page/site in a given time.
Number of returning visitors: Number of visitors to your site/page in a given time.
Average time on page: Average time spent by visitors on a page (applicable to careers page).
Average session duration: Average time spent by visitors on a site in a set period (applicable to careers site).
Traffic sources: Different sources of your traffic such as organic search, paid ads, social media, etc
Goal conversion and event tracking: Number of CTA clicks, downloads or any other goal you define.
Tools you can use to measure your content’s success:
Google Analytics:
It is the single most useful tool to track your site’s performance. It is highly likely that your marketing team is already using it. As already mentioned, if your careers page is embedded in your company site, you can get the required metrics from your marketing team. Else, you can use this guide to get started for free(you will need your technical team’s help to set it up).
Hotjar:
Hotjar provides website heatmaps that help you see which parts of your site are grabbing user attention as well as those that are being overlooked. In addition, Hotjar also provides recordings of user sessions, user feedback etc. If you are primarily interested in utilizing the heatmaps, Hotjars offers a free plan.
Buffer:
If you are active on just one or two social channels, the dashboards provided by the individual platforms should suffice. But if you are active on multiple channels and would like to manage it all from one place, you can check out Buffer. It is a comprehensive social media management solution to create, schedule, engage, and track posts.
What next?
Once you start measuring your content’s success, you will be able to derive goals and tweak your content strategy to maximise success.
Deriving goals: As you gather data, you will be able to refine your existing goals and even derive new ones. For example, if you notice that the bounce rate is unusually high, you can add a sub-goal to decrease it under your original goal to increase applications.
Tweak and iterate: Use your data and insights to continuously feed your content marketing strategy to keep it relevant and retain success in the long run. For example, if you notice that social media channels are not generating as much traffic as you expected, you can focus on refining your social media posts.
.png)