“Content marketing is all the marketing that’s left” �"Seth Godin - Content intelligence is defined as data-driven content marketing optimizations that are growth-driven and user-centric. 

Here at IMI, we’ve been debating the future of content in a world where consumers are presented with thousands of pieces of content in any given day.

Technology moves faster than humans and as it becomes more and more integrated into our lives (and even our bodies �" hello, wearable tech!). With every brand seemingly jumping on the content bandwagon, how do we break through the clutter? (Cue Grinch quote “All the noise, noise, noise, NOISE.”) The answer lies on the surface of the behavior of our current customers.

If content is king, then intelligence is queen.

Content intelligence is defined as data-driven content marketing optimizations that are growth-driven and user-centric. Shifting our way of thinking about content marketing and how we design and create stories that convert should be 20% gut instinct and 80% driven by user behavior data. Obviously, you know your business and your brand. But let’s think beyond the basics and take a deeper dive into how your customers are actually interacting with your content.

The first place to start is Google Analytics. Think about the foundational elements of user behavior through your website, starting with content on the homepage.

Analysis Questions to Consider

• What is the user path of your average website visitors? Where do they go after they browse the homepage?
• What are the top pages that users spend the most time on?
• Where are the pages with the highest bounce rate and what content is on those pages?
• What are the top user paths taken on your website (specifically what assisted in leading to a conversion?) Or how many users viewed more than one page on your website? Then, dig into the content on those specific pages.)

In gathering these data points, ask yourself these three questions:

1. [Awareness]: What topics are driving traffic?
2. [Engagement]: What content is keeping people on the site the longest?
3. [Conversion]: What content is closing the deal?

The key is to discover insights that measure your content’s current impact and potential impact. As an example, if a specific web page highlights content that doesn’t seem to convert but the time spent on that page is high, there is probably more content needed to expand on that topic.

There are platforms on the rise that take this approach to the next level including Ceralytics. We dug into this platform. They have differentiated themselves through additional benefits such as competitor comparison. Here are a few other benefits of their platform:

• Clarifies your audience’s needs
• Shows how to customize your customers’ content path
• Identifies content that converts
• Uncovers your positioning against competitors

Another platform to check out is IDIO specifically tying their benefits to the overall customer experience for your business leveraging content across your digital properties, as noted on Forbes.com.

Using Insights to Take Action

To bring it back around, the core focus on content intelligence is gaining actionable insights from the content we put out to the world and how our customers interact with it. Understanding sentiment from a prospect versus a user that’s interacted with your brand before is crucial and probably on opposite sides of the spectrum.

This process is only going to get more complex. Big data and artificial intelligence are further being tested around understanding customer experience and sentiment in response to a brand. Our prediction is all of this will lead to brands reverse engineering what their customers want to consume by becoming the media company that provides that valuable content.

Looks like the future for brands is to become storytelling machines. Let’s start with our customers today.

For more insight about getting results from your content marketing, download one of our free whitepapers today.