How to Measure Content Performance

If you believe measuring content performance is just about checking numbers in a report, think again.

In this guide, we’ll break down everything you need to know about measuring content performance, from choosing the right metrics to building powerful reports that give you real insights.

We’ll break this guide into the two following sections:

• How to Measure Content Performance
• Content Performance Report

Let’s dive in.

How to Measure Content Performance

To measure content performance effectively, you must first define the content space you’re analyzing and determine which metrics matter most. Identifying these key aspects will help you track performance more accurately and refine your content strategy.

The type of content you produce will guide you in identifying the right KPIs for the platforms where your content exists. Although many of these KPIs are similar across platforms, they may use different terminology. However, some platforms have their own unique metrics.

Once you’ve established these KPIs, you need to monitor them. But what does that actually mean? Of course, it involves checking these metrics periodically to track trends. However, simply looking at the numbers is not the best approach. 

Let’s explore the different types of content, the essential metrics for measuring performance, and how to benchmark effectively. 

Content Types

There are various types of content, which can complicate measurement, especially when spread across multiple platforms. To simplify, we will categorize content into three main types:

1. Website content (e.g., blog posts, landing pages)
2. Social media content (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, Instagram)
3. Marketing campaign content (e.g., emails, ads, eBooks)

Unless you’re using a single tool for all your content, we recommend organizing your approach with a Measurement Plan or any document where you list your relevant KPIs, benchmarks, and objectives. 

The Measurement Plan

A Measurement Plan helps you define objectives and identify key metrics to understand content performance. You can easily manage this in a Google Sheet.

To create the plan, you need to first align on what defines performance. Here we’ll list KPIs to gauge the performance of your content across these three content categories: Websites, Social media, and Marketing campaign content.

Website Metrics

Each website may have its own definition of performance, but there are standard metrics commonly used:

Active users (or total users)

Page views: How many times pages were viewed

Sessions: How often users interact with your content or website within a set time frame (e.g., 30-minute intervals)

Average engagement time: The average amount of time spent on your content

Events: Specific actions tracked for user interactions

Key events (or goals): The most important actions you want users to take

Revenue

🚨Note: While some metrics are automatically tracked, you still need to install an analytics tool. This process involves three common methods:

1. Manually adding the analytics code to your website’s source code
2. Using a plugin
3. Integrating with your Content Management System (CMS)

We cover how to do this using the most popular web analytics tool in our guide on how to Install Google Analytics 4 with Google Tag Manager.

Social Media & Marketing Campaign Metrics

For social media and marketing campaigns, here are the key performance indicators to track:

• Impressions
• Reach
• Clicks
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Conversions
• Conversion rate
• Cost (or amount spent)
• Cost per conversion
• Return on ad spend (ROAS)
• Return on investment (ROI)
• Number of subscribers
• Followers
• Website visits (use an analytics tool like Google Analytics to get this information, by looking at the traffic source or the number of clicks directing to your website content)
• Comments
• Likes vs. unlikes
• Shares
• Views

A Measurement Plan is crucial as it helps you stay focused on relevant metrics rather than getting lost in the large number of data points and features available in analytics tools.

Benchmarking: Comparing Performance

Before comparing your results to industry benchmarks, start by evaluating your data to identify trends. The easiest way to do this is by tracking monthly and weekly KPI averages.

For instance, if your content brings in 500 users per week (or 2,000 per month), that becomes your baseline. From there, you can set more realistic and precise goals. If your target is 3,000 users, you can plan a gradual increase, such as a 30% rise in viewership, equating to 650 users per week (or 2,600 per month).

This method applies to all types of content and metrics.

Once you’ve assessed your trends, you can start comparing your performance externally. This involves benchmarking against competitors. Typically, it’s best to compare yourself to:

• Competitors of a similar scale
• Well-known industry leaders for broader insights

Several competitive analysis tools can help you understand not only performance but also the strategies behind its success:

• Meta Ad Library: Analyze how competitors craft content across Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram). While you can’t see direct performance metrics, indicators such as ad longevity can provide insights.

• SpyFu: Enter a competitor’s website to uncover organic and paid traffic insights, top-performing content, and ad copies.

• Similarweb: Aggregates data to reveal a website’s traffic trends, top referral channels, and successful social media platforms.

Scaling Your Analytics

When starting out, you can track performance by analyzing each platform individually. However, as your content scales, you’ll need integrated tools that provide a global view of performance across platforms, such as the Content Performance Report.

Content Performance Report 

You can simplify the process of measuring content by automating the creation of reports with the metrics you need rather than going through each step every time. This approach allows you to address repetitive questions quickly.

Various content performance reports are available that you can use immediately, create on your own, or customize to fit your needs. Here are some reports to assess your content performance:

1. Pre-made reports
2. Custom reports
3. Report templates
4. Multi-channel reports

Most platforms already provide built-in reports that you can use right away to access most of the key metrics you need.

Let’s look at a few examples.

1. Pre-made reports

First, if your content is primarily hosted on your website (such as through blog posts or other site pages), your CMS platform may come with built-in analytics. You can start by reviewing the data available within your CMS itself. For example, Wix Analytics comes with all Wix websites for both free and premium plans. 

Next, we typically recommend using a more advanced tool, such as Google Analytics, to gain deeper insights into traffic patterns and user behavior. Google Analytics provides a more comprehensive view, allowing you to analyze how your audience interacts with your site, which content performs best, what areas may need improvement, and highly customizable reports. 

Then, you should consider spending some time on the following reports:

1. Landing page report
2. Pages and screens report
3. Performance report (search results)

1. Landing page report

In general, the Landing Page report is excellent for providing insight into the users’ first impressions of your content. It reveals which pages visitors see first when they arrive on your website. These entry pages deserve careful attention and thoughtful design as they set the stage for the user experience.

The essence of this report should answer the following question (s):

• What is their first impression of me (my website)? 
• Or what do they see first when they see me (my website)?

To take this a step further, you can use the Path Exploration, which can reveal where users go starting from a page of your choice. 

With this in mind, you can decide if their journey makes sense or if they experience bottlenecks. 

For example, Path Exploration often shows what is called a looping behavior. It is when users keep coming back and forth, for instance, between the home page and another page. Often, this suggests a confusing website or navigation path, where users can’t find the information they need (or that they found one that interests them).

2. Pages and screens report

Like the Landing page report, the Pages and screens report is a premade report that looks at all the pages of your website regardless of whether these are the first pages (like the landing page report does) or the last page in a user’s session.

The Pages and Screens report can answer the common question: what are our most popular pages or content?

Remember that this report does not only show data from desktop and mobile app users – hence the name screens. 

3. Performance report (search results)

Although you’ll find overlaps and similarities with the previous reports, the Performance report shows you how your website or content performs on search results.

The main distinction is the possibility of knowing not just which pages but also which queries trigger your website to show up, or in other words, are bringing most of your traffic. Regarding sources, you can identify which are made on mobile, which can be very helpful if you are targetting mobile users. 

Custom Reports

Customization allows you to extract even more valuable insights for reports like the Landing Page Report and the Pages and Screens Report. 

You can apply filters to focus on specific segments, add secondary dimensions to break down tables further (e.g., by traffic source), and modify or remove metrics to tailor the report to your needs. If you’d like to learn step by step how to achieve this and more, check out our guide on How to Customize Your Google Analytics 4 Reports.

These adjustments help refine your analysis and make it easier to understand how users interact with your content.

Beyond modifying existing reports, custom reports let you build new ones that align with your business goals. Explorations in Google Analytics, for example, provide a flexible way to mix and match dimensions and metrics, enabling deeper analysis that goes beyond standard reporting.

Report Templates

Using report templates is the best way to speed up content measurement. Instead of building reports from scratch, you can use pre-made templates designed by experts. Fortunately, there is a vast selection of free templates available online.

For example, the Looker Studio gallery comes with a library of ready-to-use templates that only require connecting them to your platform. 

The Looker Studio Community provides even more templates so it’s likely you’ll find one that suits your needs. If not, you can always use them as inspiration. 

These templates come with pre-configured charts, tables, and filters, helping you to get up and running quickly without needing a complex setup.

Multi-Channel Reports

How do you measure content performance when it’s spread across different platforms?

Tracking each channel in isolation makes it difficult to get a complete picture of your content’s impact. Multi-channel reporting brings data from multiple sources together, allowing for a holistic view of performance.

For small-scale reporting, you can manually export data to Google Sheets or Excel and then integrate it into your visualization tool. This approach works well when handling minimal data, but as your operations scale, automation becomes essential.

Tools like Supermetrics or Coupler.io help automate data collection from platforms such as social media, web analytics, and CRM systems to simplify multi-channel reporting. Once gathered, all this data can be connected via connectors to visualization tools like Looker Studio, Tableau, or Power BI, ensuring real-time, interactive reporting without constant manual updates.

Here’s an example with the Coupler.io’s Multi-channel creatives performance dashboard: 

Or the All-in-one marketing dashboard:

By automating multi-channel reporting, you can save time, reduce errors, and make data-driven decisions more effectively.

Summary

Measuring content performance isn’t a one-size-fits-all process, but it becomes a powerful tool for driving growth with the right approach. We’ve covered the essential steps, from defining content categories and selecting relevant KPIs to using pre-made and custom reports for deeper insights.

For those looking to refine their measurement framework even further, check out our guide on the Top 5 Blog Metrics to Track for Growth and Success. 

It’s the perfect next step to ensure your content strategy is data-driven and results-focused.

What methods do you use to measure content performance? Have you found a particular KPI, process, or tool especially useful? Share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear your experience!