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If a social media post falls in a forest and nobody hears it, did you really post it?

The question is, if a social media post falls in a forest, does anybody really know that you posted it? That’s kind of the name of the game, right? Everyone’s creating content, everyone’s busting their butts and putting stuff out there.

Is it doing any work for you at all? Like, is it actually worth the time that you’re spending, creating all this content?

How to ensure your content is effective

The only way that you’re really going to know this is if you’re tracking things, and that can be a lot of work.

On Instagram, you have to go into Instagram Insights for stories, you have to look up like metrics on this tab for posts or videos, you have to look up metrics on this tab over here for Reels. And there’s no way to pull that out of Instagram’s API. They blocked that, or at least they stopped the things that really matter (which is super sneaky of them, almost like they know it’s not that effective). So that’s a kind of a problem, right, in terms of knowing if your Instagram content is effective?

Then beyond that, the question is, are they making it easy for you to find the information that gets people off their platforms? They probably are not. Tracking what’s working in your business is not easy.

If you’re going to spend all this time creating content, especially if you’re putting real strategy behind it, you’re not just spraying and praying and posting something like, “Oh, crap, I haven’t posted in 17 days; I should probably throw a cute quote up, right?”

Measure your social media content

If you’re not spraying and praying, you have put some legit strategy behind what you’re doing. If you have something to say, if you’re on a mission or genuinely want to help people, you’re probably putting some strategy into your actual content creation. This means you’re probably spending several hours a week creating content to educate and for marketing. And if you’re doing that, why not add an extra 15 minutes a week into measuring that content?

It will take 15 minutes if you have a good system setup. If you don’t have a sound system, you don’t really know what you’re doing the first few times, then it will probably take longer than 15 minutes. But if you are measuring what you are doing, you will know when you make a social media post, blog post, YouTube video, or podcast episode. You will know which kinds of those content are effective. 

And you will know, therefore, when to put more effort into that. 

Ask the right questions

I was just on a marketing roundtable hosted by Melissa Harstine. And it was fantastic. A handful of people talked about how to get into the nitty-gritty of what our clients truly desire. 

One of the participants said, “What do you do when you don’t know what your clients want?” My response was off the cuff and I commented, “Well, you’ve got to go a step beyond what they’re asking. You need to kind of make the question mean.” 

I elaborated and explained your audience is asking you questions and they may not be asking you their honest questions because they’re too polite.

A personal example: my audience would generally be too polite to say, “Yeah, well, how do I know that content creation is even worth it?” They’re not going to say that to a content strategist. But when they say other things like, “Well, which posts really are the ones that are, you know, getting the results, which posts really do bring me clients and leads?” When they say things like that? I know what they actually mean is how can I make my content creation time more efficient by focusing on the posts that do generate leads? 

I always look at the questions people ask and take them a step further. If they were willing to be mean to my face, I muse, what would they actually be asking? Think about making it really blunt and pointed and harsh. Or look for the gaps in between the questions, right. 

What to say in your marketing content

Those are the things that you want to be answering in your content. When you can actually address those anxieties and hurdles before your people even have a chance to voice them, they look at you like a freaking genius! 

If you don’t know how to do that, I highly recommend checking out my series on the “old, new, borrowed, and blue” different kinds of content, as it’s beneficial. But once you’re addressing those things in a well-balanced on-brand sort of way, all you have to do is measure your content. 

If you want to take the headache out of measuring your content, if adding in a few minutes a day or a solid chunk of time each week or month is just something you know you’re never gonna get around to (because, let’s be honest, we’re all wearing a lot of hats), then I’m going to recommend you reach out. I’m going to put a link down there at the bottom, britneygardner.com/visibility, that will take you to a sales page for my Visibility Accelerator. It’s a fully done-for-you content strategy plus a content measurement dashboard. You can also hire me for just the content measurement dashboard; you don’t have to get the whole done-for-your content strategy and plan with it anymore. 

If you know that you need help in this area, if you’re not measuring the results of all the content you’re putting out right now and pouring time into, you’re probably just throwing spaghetti against the wall. And I don’t want a messy business for you!