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You’re showing up. You’re creating content. You’re posting regularly.
But here’s the question that keeps you up at night: Is any of this actually working?
Maybe you’re checking your Instagram insights every day, feeling a little deflated when the numbers don’t move the way you hoped. Or perhaps you’ve been avoiding looking at your website analytics altogether because you’re not sure what you’re supposed to do with all that information.
Here’s what I see time and again: Entrepreneurs create brilliant content, but they have no idea if it’s effective because they’re either measuring nothing or trying to measure everything. Both approaches leave you stuck, unsure whether your content performance is improving or if you need to change direction entirely.
The truth? Measurement doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need a dashboard full of metrics or hours spent analysing data. You just need to know what actually matters for YOUR business, track it simply, and review it regularly enough to spot what’s working.
Let me show you how.
Why Most Entrepreneurs Struggle with Measurement
Before we dive into what to measure, let’s talk about why this feels so difficult.
When I work with clients on their content strategy, measurement is consistently the step they’ve skipped. Not because they don’t care about results, but because:
They’re overwhelmed by the options. Google Analytics alone offers hundreds of metrics. Instagram has engagement rate, reach, impressions, saves, shares… Where do you even start?
They’re afraid of what they’ll find. If the numbers aren’t good, does that mean you’re failing? (Spoiler: No. It means you have information to work with.)
They don’t know what success looks like. Is 50 website visitors a month good? What about 500? Without context, numbers are just… numbers.
They check too often and get discouraged. Checking your stats five times a day is like refreshing your email constantly hoping for client replies. You’ll drive yourself mad without gaining any useful information.
But here’s what changes everything: measurement isn’t about judgement. It’s about learning.
When you measure the right things in the right way, you discover what’s resonating with your audience. You spot opportunities. You stop wasting time on content that isn’t serving you. And you gain confidence in what you’re creating.
The Foundation: Know What You're Actually Trying to Achieve
In my Content Strategy vs Content Plan blog, I mentioned that measurement can be really helpful for both strategy and planning. But you can’t measure success if you haven’t defined what success means for you.
This is where most people go wrong. They’re tracking vanity metrics (things that look impressive but don’t move their business forward).
Before you decide what to measure, get clear on your goal. Here are the most common ones:
Building awareness: You want more people to know you exist.
Creating engagement: You want your audience interacting with your content.
Growing your email list: You want people joining your world.
Making sales: You want people buying from you.
Providing customer support: You want to answer questions and build trust.
Notice how different these are? Someone building awareness needs completely different measurements than someone focused on sales.
And here’s the thing: your goal might shift. When I first started Digitalie, I focused on awareness. Once people knew about me, I shifted to engagement and list growth. Now, with an established audience, I balance all of these, but I know which one takes priority in each season.
Your content can serve multiple purposes, but you need ONE primary goal to measure against. Otherwise, you’ll never know if you’re succeeding.
What You Could Be Measuring (The Key Content Marketing Metrics)
Website Metrics
Traffic: How many people visit your website.
Bounce rate: How many leave immediately without exploring
Time on page: How long people actually read your content.
Pages per session: How many pages someone visits in one go.
You can find all of these in Google Analytics (it’s free, though it can feel overwhelming at first).
What actually matters: If your goal is awareness, track traffic. If you’re trying to build trust and engagement, time on page and pages per session tell you whether people find your content valuable enough to stick around.
Email List Metrics
Subscriber growth: How quickly your list is growing.
Open rates: How many people open your emails.
Click through rates: How many people take action on your links.
Most email platforms (like Kit, Mailchimp, or ActiveCampaign) have built-in analytics that show you all of these.
What actually matters: If you’re focused on list growth, track new subscribers and where they’re coming from. If you’re nurturing your list, open rates and click through rates show you what content resonates most.
Social Media Metrics
Follower growth: How quickly your audience is expanding.
Reach: How many unique people see your content.
Engagement rate: Likes, comments, shares, saves.
Profile visits: How many people want to know more about you.
Link clicks: How many people take action.
Every platform (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn) has its own insights section where you can find these numbers.
What actually matters: This depends entirely on your goal. Growing awareness? Reach and follower growth. Building community? Engagement rate. Driving traffic to your website or offers? Link clicks.
Content Specific Metrics
Downloads: How many people grab your lead magnets.
Video views: How many watch your videos.
Shares: How many people spread your content.
Comments/questions: How many people engage in conversation.
What actually matters: These tell you what type of content resonates most with your audience. Pay attention to patterns. If your behind the scenes posts consistently get more engagement than your educational posts, that’s valuable information.
Sales Metrics
Consultation bookings: How many people want to talk to you.
Product purchases: How many people buy.
Cart abandonment: How many get close but don’t complete the purchase.
Repeat customers: How many come back for more.
What actually matters: If sales are your priority, these are your metrics. But don’t forget to track the journey. (How do people find you before they buy?)
The Measurement Approach That Actually Works
Pick Your Primary Metrics (Maximum Three)
Based on your current goal, choose 2 to 3 metrics to track consistently. Not seven. Not ten. Just the ones that directly tell you whether you’re moving towards your goal.
For example:
Goal: Build awareness
Track website traffic, social media reach, new email subscribers.
Goal: Increase engagement
Track email open rates, social media engagement rate, blog comments.
Goal: Make sales
Track consultation bookings, product purchases, email conversion rate.
Check Monthly, Not Daily
This is crucial. Daily number checking creates anxiety without providing useful information. Content marketing is a long game. You need time for patterns to emerge.
Set a monthly date (maybe the first Monday of each month) and review your numbers then. Put it in your calendar. Make it a ritual. Have a cuppa, sit down with your data, and see what story it tells.
Look for Patterns, Not Perfection
One bad month doesn’t mean failure. One viral post doesn’t mean you’ve “cracked it.”Â
Look for trends over time:
- Is website traffic gradually increasing?
- Are certain types of posts consistently performing better?
- Are more people taking the actions you want them to take?
Ask Better Questions
Instead of “Are these numbers good enough?”, ask:
- What’s working better than expected? (Do more of this)
- What’s not getting the response I hoped for? (Why might that be?)
- Where are people dropping off? (What’s the obstacle?)
- What surprised me this month? (Surprises often reveal opportunities)
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These questions turn data into action.
Hey, you! Ever feel like you’re doing everything right, but your content efforts just don’t seem to be working? Maybe my Creative Marketing Puzzle program is for you!
Creating Your Simple Measurement System
You don’t need fancy tools. You need a system you’ll actually use.Â
Here’s how to set one up.
1. Create a Simple Tracking Sheet
A spreadsheet works best for most people (Google Sheets is free and simple). If you’re only tracking content performance and nothing else, you could add it to your content calendar instead. Create columns for:
- Date
- Metric 1
- Metric 2
- Metric 3
- Notes (observations, context, experiments)
2. Set Your Baseline
Before you can see progress, you need to know where you’re starting. This month, note your current numbers for your chosen metrics. No judgement – these are just your starting point.
3. Do a Monthly Review
- Record your numbers
- Note any significant changes
- Write down one thing that worked well
- Write down one thing you’ll adjust next month
4. Draw Conclusions from Your Metrics
This is where the learning happens. Look at what’s driving your numbers. You might discover patterns like:
- Certain topics get more response than others
- Specific days or times work better for your audience
- One channel drives far more results than another
- Particular formats (video vs text, long vs short) perform differently
What to Do When the Numbers Aren't What You Hoped
Let’s address the elephant in the room. What if you measure and the results are… disappointing?
First, take a breath. Low numbers don’t mean you’re rubbish at content. They mean you have information to work with.
Give It Time
If you’ve only been posting for a month or two, you don’t have enough data yet. Content marketing compounds over time. Your June blog post might not drive much traffic in June, but it could become your most popular post by December.Â
Give your strategy at least 3 to 6 months before making major changes.
Are People Actually Seeing It?
- Are you sharing it where your audience actually hangs out?
- Are you promoting it more than once, in different ways?
- Is it easy for people to find when they’re looking?
Revisit Your Audience Understanding
If content consistently misses the mark, you might be creating what YOU find interesting rather than what YOUR AUDIENCE needs. Go back to your ideal client. What are they actually struggling with right now? What questions are they asking you in consultations or messages? Those questions often reveal exactly what content you should be creating.
Look at Your Calls to Action
If people are reading/watching but not taking action, your content might be fine, but your next steps aren’t clear enough. Make it obvious what you want people to do next.
Consider Your Content Quality
Sometimes you just need to improve your craft. If your blog posts are thin, your videos are hard to follow, or your social posts don’t grab attention, it’s worth investing in getting better at content creation. My Content Success course can help with this.
How This Connects to Strategy and Planning
Remember in my Content Strategy vs Content Plan post where I explained that strategy is your “why” and plan is your “how”?
Measurement is the piece that connects them both. It tells you:
For your strategy: Is this approach moving me towards my business goals?
For your plan: Which specific tactics within my approach are working?
Your strategy might be “Build trust through educational content that demonstrates my expertise.” Your measurement tells you whether people are actually engaging with that educational content and whether it’s leading to the trust building outcomes you want (like enquiries or newsletter signups).
Your plan might include weekly blog posts, daily Instagram stories, and monthly newsletters. Your measurement tells you which of these channels and content types are actually driving results.
This is how you create a feedback loop that makes your content better over time. You try things. You measure. You learn. You adjust. You try again.
The Marketing Circles Approach to Measurement
If you’ve worked with me or read much of my content, you know I don’t believe in the traditional marketing funnel. People don’t move in straight lines from awareness to purchase. They circle through Know, Like, Trust, Buy, and Care in their own messy, human way.
This affects how we measure, too.
Someone might discover you (Know), disappear for months, come back and binge read your content (Like), sign up for your newsletter (Trust), lurk for another few months, then book a call (Buy). Your measurement system needs to account for this non linear journey.
This means:
Don’t panic if traffic is growing but sales aren’t (yet). People might be in the Know or Like phase. Keep building towards that Trust.
Track multiple touch points. Someone who visits your website, follows you on Instagram, and reads your newsletter is much more likely to buy than someone who only sees you once.
Value every part of the circle. A comment on your Instagram post might not lead directly to a sale, but it deepens the relationship. That matters.
Look at the full picture. Even with just your 2 to 3 core metrics, you can start to spot patterns. Someone who visits your website AND follows you on Instagram AND opens your emails is much more likely to buy than someone who only sees you once. You don’t need to track everything to see these connections.
Moving Forward: From Data to Action
The goal of measurement isn’t to have impressive numbers to share. It’s to create content that actually works for your business.
When you measure the right things and review them regularly, something shifts. You stop posting and hoping. You start posting and learning. You discover what resonates. You understand your audience better. You make smarter decisions about where to spend your energy.
If you want to build a complete content system that includes measurement from the start, a Digitalie Day can help you set everything up properly.
And bit by bit, your content becomes more effective. Not because you’re working harder, but because you’re working smarter (guided by real information about what your actual audience actually wants).
Your measurement system doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to exist. Pick your 2 to 3 metrics. Set up your simple tracking. Do your monthly review. Start paying attention.
If you’re tracking but don’t know what the numbers mean, or you’re seeing results but don’t know why (so you can replicate it), a Pick My Brain session can help you make sense of it all.
The insights you gain from your content performance will transform not just your content, but your entire marketing approach.
