Test Your Content Before You Invest
What’s the difference between short and long form content?
Why should I use both forms?
How can I measure my content’s success?
Imagine that Esther runs a fitness studio called Cardio Cooking, where busy professionals can work out and create healthy meals at the same time.
She decides to do a music video featuring her exercise routines.
She pays for dancers and a director, and posts the final video on her company website. She gets one like – from her Mom.
Where did she go wrong? Let’s check out what she did and didn’t know before she produced her video.
A good way to do this is by testing your idea in its simplest form first. It’ll help you check if your idea will work for your business. After that, you can start scaling it up.Smart content marketers do a mix of both short-form and long-form content – and use the former to test the latter.
A good way to do this is by testing your idea in its simplest form first. It’ll help you check if your idea will work for your business. After that, you can start scaling it up.
Think about how your content can scale to 3 different levels: Micro, Base, and Hero – which are pretty much just saying, “Start small and go big.”
Micro is short-form content like a status update or a Tweet. Since it’s easy and cost-efficient to do, you can try different micro versions of your idea and see which is the most popular.
Base is longer form content like a blog post, newsletter or short video clip. It’s the next testing step for your most popular micro content.
Hero is immersive content like a film, event series or an app. It’s where you can go when your idea has truly passed the popularity test.
Chobani® Greek Yogurt took a content idea from small to big, testing it along the way.
They posted a Chobani yogurt recipe conversion chart on their website and linked to it on their social media platforms. It became hugely popular, so they decided to scale the idea up.
They posted recipes featuring Chobani on their site – and then promoted the content by linking it to various Pinterest boards.
This resonated with their fans, so Chobani developed the idea further and devoted an entire section on their site to recipes.
REMEMBER
As you scale your content idea like Chobani, it’s important to measure its success along the way. We’ll show you how you can do this.
Followers and likes may make you feel warm and fuzzy, but let’s look at 4 things you should track instead that really measure your content’s value.
Shares tell you if people find your content interesting or entertaining enough to show to friends.
Check your comments. Do people often ask similar questions? Can your content help answer them?
Track how many leads your content gives you. Is it convincing people to do what you want them to do?
How many sales do you get from your content? Make sure it’s encouraging people to buy your products.
TOOLS
You can track shares and comments manually with a spreadsheet, or use a social listening tool like Sprout Social, Topsy, Social Mention, or Crimson Hexagon. You can track leads and sales with measuring tools like Google Analytics, KISSmetrics, or Mixpanel.
DO THIS NOW
Along with long-term goals like leads or sales, you can choose short-term content goals as well. That way your content will work hard for your business even as you’re still scaling it.
If you’re participating in the course, go to the next section to access your self assessment.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When it comes to a content idea start small and go big.
Test your idea at the Micro level before going on to Base and then Hero.
Shares, comments, leads, and sales tell you how successful your content is.