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The best content marketing tools for the research phase.

The best content marketing tools for the creation phase.

We mentioned how much content marketing is an opportunity to build an audience in an authentic way, if you’re willing to invest the time to do things right.

Want to understand more about each phase of content marketing, why it’s important and the details about how to do it? Get a copy of ROI or RIP – The Lean Content Marketing Handbook for SMBs. It’s over 80 pages of best practices for developing and executing a content marketing strategy.

This week, we’ll go over the best content marketing tools to help you in your optimization phase.

Best content marketing tools for the optimization phase

1. To see how people behave on your site: Google Analytics.

This is one of the tools that separate winners from losers in content marketing. Whether you want to know conversion rates, top pages, or where your site traffic is coming from, this is the go-to tool.

2. To find out when to post, which posts did best and more: Scoop.it Content Director.

Whether you want to know how well your curated content or your in-house content performed, Scoop.it Content Director can show you. There’s a whole section of the software dedicated to statistics and analytics for your account.

The new Scoop.it Content Director analytics makes it easy to break it down across the various fundamental elements that will help you measure, improve and prove the ROI of your content:

– Volume: number of content pieces on your destination sites and by channels on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Because content marketing has compounding returns that build over time, it’s critical to leverage your team and curation to sustain your content efforts.

– Amplification and Traffic: how many times your content was shared and what traffic it generated. This measures the quality and the impact of your content on your audience and you can track it as a time-based chart or post by post.

– Leads your content generated. Ultimately, you want your content to convert your visitors into subscribers, prospects or customers and this is what you can easily track with Scoop.it Content Director, again as a time-based chart or post by post.

Bonus tip: use our free content marketing analytics framework to analyze all your content by performance and take corresponding actions to optimize ROI.

3. For keyword ranking, click-through rate, site speed and other website metrics: Google Webmaster Tools.

Google Webmaster Tools doesn’t get as much attention as Google Analytics, but it’s a treasure trove of information about how to improve your site. Ignore it at your peril.

4. For A/B split tests: Optimizely.

An ongoing split test program can more than double your results over time. Optimizely is affordable, fairly easy to set up, and gives you a ton of resources for ideas on what to test and how to be sure your test results are valid.

Want to work smarter and start generating real results from your content marketing? Find out how to use the new Scoop.it Content Director to help you become a smarter marketer!