In the article below Michal Wronski talks about the need for a new framework to measure social media and bring a level of consistency and robustness to this measurement. This got me thinking about what you actually do with this measurement once you have it and in particular how you use it to enhance your content marketing strategy, particularly in a B2B business.

I think all too often the marketing team gather the numbers, analyse them and then keep them for themselves. If you have managed to get the experts and senior leaders in your business to create insights, blogs and commentary as part of your content strategy how do you get them to continue doing this on a regular and ongoing basis. The key answer has to be in the feedback. If one of the experts in your team writes a piece of thought leadership, and you never tell them how that content performed, then they are much less likely to write another piece the next week. But if you tell them that their article was read 256 times, was shared 23 times on Twitter and 58 times on LinkedIn and give them a list of the names of the 37 people that opened their article on the e-newsletter then they are much more likely to write another piece the next week.

I was told in my first ever job, the Ken Blanchard quote that "Feedback is the breakfast of champions". To bring this to life I was told to imagine playing a game of ten pin bowling and that every time I threw the ball down the lane, just as it was about to hit the pins, a big screen would come down and I would not see how many I hit over. I would not keep playing for too long. I thought that was a great way of showing the importance of feedback and in a B2B content strategy you must make sure that you give that breakfast to your champions!