📊 Yes, the Numbers Do Lie

mlns='> At least when they tell an incomplete story [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 5.27.22 Connect With CMI [The Deadline Struggle Is Real. Try These 5 Tips to Manage It]( Deadlines. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t get anything done without ’em. But you can make them less stressful on you and your team with a few adjustments to your approach. (Bonus: You’ll probably see more – and better – work come in on time.) [Read more]( By Ann Gynn More of the week's best stuff: - [How To Breathe New Life Into Unpublished Content]( by Linda Formichelli - [Stop Making These Reporting Mistakes (If You Want To Keep Your Content Budget)]( by Aaron Agius - [Fix Outdated Content To Boost Your SEO Results]( by Lee Li Feng - [Do You Really Need To Measure Your Content's Impact on Brand Value? [Rose-Colored Glasses]]( by Robert Rose  Figures Can Lie (When They Tell an Incomplete Story) Once upon a time, I had a marketing boss who would ask me this question about our brand-building efforts: “What value did they add to the business?” My answer was always the same: “Good things.” Marketers seem desperate to measure brand awareness. (To be fair, businesses pressure teams to measure pretty much everything.) You’ve probably read countless articles on the difficulty of associating transactional data with brand value. And when you find articles that cover brand measurement tactics, most rely on the same vanity metrics used for other elements of marketing strategies. They direct you to look at the growth of direct traffic, referral traffic, earned media coverage, or social media share of voice. You can see this in [CMI research](. Marketers mention these metrics when describing which ones provided the most insight in the last 12 months. Website engagement tops the list at 69%, traffic comes in third at 65%, email engagement is fourth at 64%, and social media analytics is fifth (51%). Conversions rank second at 67%. But anyone who has tried to argue for more money for brand or content marketing will tell you that those vanity metrics won’t get you very far. Budget holders push back by pointing out that more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean more unaided or aided brand recall. It could mean the brand suddenly ranked well for an unbranded search term. Similarly, website engagement metrics don’t automatically mean you’ve earned more credibility and trust among the target audience. The numbers could mean people scrutinize your digital content because they don’t trust the brand. More engagement from email could mean the topic resonates with the audience, but not that the brand does. Put simply, those vanity metrics may have nothing to do with increasing or decreasing the brand's value. Ironically, some may run counter to it. Now, before brand-building fans get depressed, rest assured you can measure whether your content-driven brand efforts work. The key is to set an objective, then build in testable and focused measurability. In this week’s [Rose-Colored Glasses]( I give examples of companies doing this. I also argue that content-led brand building is worth doing whether you can measure it or not. Give it a read, and let me know if you agree (or how you measure brand impact) in the [article's comments section]( or [by email](mailto:cmi_info@informa.com). In the meantime, remember: It's your story. Tell it well. Robert Rose Chief Strategy Advisor Content Marketing Institute Do you have colleagues or friends who would benefit from Robert's weekly updates? If so, please invite them to [subscribe]( here.   Sponsored Content Top Options for Hosting (and Optimizing!) Your Content Your website hosting decisions can make a big impact on speed, performance, manageability – and the experience you deliver to your content consumers. Before you choose a hosting solution, watch this chat with Harry Jackson of InMotion Hosting, where he outlines the three main options and explains the pros and cons of each. [Watch Now »](  Content Marketing Job Listings Currently on a job search? Thinking about switching gears with your career? Please check out our job listings below. Available positions: - B2B Content Strategist and Writer - Enterprise Tech, Lauchlan – Remote - Work From Anywhere – [Learn More]( Interested in posting a job here? Please see our [CMI Careers page]( for more info.  More from CMI ContentTECH Summit Is Next Week! 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