Measuring the Success of Your Content Governance Strategy: Key Metrics to Track

Content is central to any organization’s success, especially those vying for market share on the digital shelf. Quality content results from an effective content strategy, and every effective content strategy is supported by intentional, thoughtful content governance. 

Optimizing your content governance strategy entails identifying and measuring the appropriate metrics relevant to your organization. In this article from Content Status, we explore how to measure the success of your content governance strategy and determine the key metrics you need to track to hit your targets.

Understanding Your Content Governance Strategy

Content governance is an organization’s overarching content management strategy. Effective content governance ensures that your content is accurate, relevant, and high-quality. 

A content governance strategy creates a framework for stakeholders at every stage of the content lifecycle. It sets policies and guidelines that address potential issues before they arise. Effective governance strategies outline content management from conception to publication to monitoring to ensure your content strategies are as effective and profitable as possible, earning a high return on your investment.

What Are Content Governance Metrics and Why Are They Important?

Content governance allows organizations to maintain consistency and quality within their content strategies. It outlines how content is selected, created, published, and distributed. 

Content governance metrics are the indicators an organization establishes to measure the efficacy of these strategies and processes. Identifying relevant metrics and tracking your performance provides data-backed insights that guide your content strategy and decision-making. 

Knowing which metrics to track and then doing so allows you to determine the next best steps in your content strategy so you can ultimately see more conversions. 

Key Metrics to Track in Your Content Governance Strategy

Your content governance strategy informs how your organization will use its content to meet its goals. Identifying key metrics to track in your content governance strategy helps you execute your plan, meet your KPIs, and improve your ROI. 

Below we list the most crucial metrics for your content governance strategy. 

1. Content Quality

Your content governance strategy centers on your content. The most well-organized and expertly executed strategies will return void if your content falls short on quality. 

Measuring content quality metrics helps secure your content governance strategy, maximizing your ROI on your content efforts. A content scorecard enables you to qualify and ensure that product pages on a retail or distributor site meet or exceed expectations. 

Content Status’s scorecard program provides insight into your content quality so you can see what’s performing well, what’s not, and the elements you can change to improve your content.

2. Content Readiness

Content governance strategies exist to ensure efficient, accurate, and effective content management. Content readiness standards help you create the right content published in the right place, meeting the right standards everywhere you publish. 

Content Status’s content readiness solutions evaluate your content to determine if it’s optimized and ready for publishing. Our platform accomplishes the following for your content: 

• Identify opportunities to modify or upgrade content that checks the box on all requirements
• Score content at scale before you push live, whether through a syndication network or internal teams
• Optimize new product launches by auditing your category, retailer, and competitive brand landscape  

Determining content readiness often requires review by an unbiased third party. Content Status provides evaluations that ensure your content is ready for publishing. 

3. Content Management Teams

Your content governance strategy shouldn’t be siloed from other departments. Your governance team should include stakeholders from multiple departments who can offer input on best practices for your content management. 

As you build content governance teams, identify subject matter experts, SEO specialists, data specialists, strategists, policy creators, and writers. Your people are the driving force behind the success of your content governance strategy. Your organization must know who fills specific roles and equip them with the necessary resources to execute a successful strategy. Below are the key metrics to track regarding your content management teams: 

• The number of hours of training team members receive 
• The percentage of employees trained on content governance strategies 
• The number of stakeholders trained at any given time 
• The rate of employees engaged in content governance meetings and events

Establishing KPIs for these metrics ensures your teams are appropriately trained and prepared to execute a content governance strategy that works for your unique business. 

4. Processes Within Content Governance

Creating, outlining, and explaining specific processes within your content governance strategy empower your teams to execute them effectively. Your processes reflect how content is considered, developed, distributed, monitored, etc. Robust processes ensure your content is relevant, bringing value to your organization throughout its lifecycle. 

The following content process metrics support your content governance strategy: 

• Percentage or areas where your business’s content is compliant 
• Existence of a single source of content truth 
• Percentage of team members who affirm content’s relevance to your organization 

Outlining specific metrics for your content governance processes ensures that all details are considered and accounted for as you build a thorough strategy. 

5. Content Audit Regularity

Content governance includes evaluating content even after it’s published. Product page auditing provides a snapshot of your pages’ health, quality, and overall composition. Audits increase product visibility and provide insight into the performance of your competitors’ content. 

Audits accomplish the following for your content governance strategies: 

• Identify inaccurate specs, titles, descriptions, and product categorization
• Understand keyword usage across multiple sections, including titles, descriptions, and bullets
• Understand and identify rich content issues 

The regularity of your content audits supports governance strategies to ensure your content drives your organization to success. 

Build Your Content Governance Strategy with Content Status 

Content governance is crucial to the success of your content strategy. Understanding the appropriate metrics to measure ensures you maximize ROI, regardless of your goals or the channels where you sell. 

Content Status has the solutions and tools to support your content governance strategy. Contact our team today to learn how we can help you hit your target KPIs and optimize your content strategy.