Content Scoring: How to Assess Performance

It’s a well-known fact: good content is one of the most effective ways to attract and retain your target audience’s attention.

Research-proven facts: Half of the content produced goes unused In the relentless onslaught of messages on consumers’ lives.

So, how do you know if your brand content is being used and doing the job it was designed to do?

Metrics are helpful, but they don’t tell the whole story. To truly understand the effectiveness of your content, you need a scorecard.

A content scorecard shows how an asset scores against industry benchmarks or a company’s standard content performance. It combines qualitative and quantitative assessments. Quantitative evaluation is based on metrics such as pageviews, engagement, SEO rankings, and more.

Let’s get started by building a content scorecard template that you can tweak.

Constructing a Quantitative Content Scoring Worksheet

To know what to measure, you must know what is important. What is the purpose of this content?

For example, consider the purpose of your landing page. Since it’s rarely the final destination, it’s usually not a good sign if the reader spends too long on it. On the other hand, spending a long time reading a detailed article or white paper is a positive reflection of user engagement.

Be specific about your Content asset goals. Based on its purpose, what should you measure? Consider these ideas:

• exposure — Content views, impressions, backlink
• got engaged — Time on page, number of clicks, ratings, comments
• Convert — Purchase, register Gated contentreturn visit, click
• redistribute — Stocks, feet

Once you have determined your quantitative criteria, you need to determine your benchmarks. What do you measure by? Industry standard? Internal standard? A little bit of both?

A good starting point for general web user behavior is Nielsen Norman Group. You can also look at social media and email marketing tools, which often provide engagement benchmarks for the industry. Finally, your organization’s marketing history provides an opportunity to measure how your content assets compare to what you’ve already published.

The following are sample base keys. The left column identifies the indicator, while the top row represents the outcome score on a scale of 1 to 5.

Quantitative Content Score Examples 1-5*

Using a 1 to 5 scale makes it easier to analyze content with different goals and still identify the good, the bad, and the ugly. Your scorecard may look different depending on the benchmark you choose.

how to do

You will create two quantitative worksheets.

• Label the first one “Quantitative Benchmark”. Build a chart (similar to the one above) that identifies each key metric and range from 1 to 5 points. Use this as your reference sheet.
• Label the second worksheet Quantitative Analysis. The first column should contain the content URL, subject, and type. Mark the following fields based on your quantitative metrics (i.e. page views, clicks, engagement, etc.).
• Add detailed information for each piece of content.
• Use the Benchmark Reference Table to calculate each score (1 to 5).

It’s easy to look at the metrics for content, shrug, and say, “Let’s get rid of everything This is not eye-catching. But if you do this, you risk discarding great content whose only drawback is that it hasn’t been discovered yet.

That’s why you need to add a qualitative component to your scorecard.

Create a Qualitative Success Worksheet

You’ll qualitatively rate content using different 5-point scales to identify valuable but buried parts. At this point, in the content scorecard process, a content strategist or an equivalent person on the team/agency will analyze the content against the organization’s goals.

hint: Have the same person review everything to avoid any differences in qualitative scoring criteria.

Qualitative criteria I use include:

• consistency: Does the content comply with brand voice And style?
• Clarity and accuracy: Is the content understandable? accurate,current?
• Discoverability: Does the information layout support key information flows?
• got engaged: Whether the content uses appropriate technology to influence or attract visitors?
• Related: Does the content meet the needs of all target user types?
• Authenticity: Is the content true and original? This assessment is increasingly important given the recent surge in the use of generative artificial intelligence.

To standardize the assessment, use yes-false questions. Earn one point for each “yes” you answer. The average score for each category is calculated by adding the scores and dividing by the total number of questions.

Here’s how it fits into the categories of clarity, accuracy, and discoverability. Bold text indicates the answer is yes.

Clarity and accuracy:

• Can all user types understand the content? Yes.
• Does it use appropriate language? Yes.
• Is the content clearly labeled? Yes.
• Do the images, videos, and audio meet technical standards and are clear? No.

Score: 3 (3/4 * 4)

Discoverability:

Score: 1 (1/5 * 5)

Tip: When calculating relevance categories, ask questions based on the information you have access to. For example, the question “Is it relevant to the audience’s interests?” is effective if the reviewer knows the audience. However, this question won’t work if the reviewer doesn’t understand the audience. However, almost all reviewers can answer whether the content is up to date. Therefore, this would be a valid question worthy of analysis.

In some cases, tools may be used to evaluate attributes such as accessibility, readability, or originality. Convert these results into a 1 to 5 scale.

how to record it

• Label the worksheet “Qualitative Questions.”
• Three new columns are added: content URL, topic, and type.
• Add new columns for each category and its questions on the right.
• Add the last column and plug in the formula (yes answers/total questions times total questions) to calculate the average score.
• Create a new worksheet labeled Qualitative Analysis to view the results more easily. Includes content URL and average score fields for each category.

Put everything in a content scorecard

Once you have identified your quantitative and qualitative measures, you can now build your scorecard spreadsheet.

Based on the previous example (minus the content URL), here’s what it would look like.

Each asset now has an average qualitative score (total category score divided by total number of categories) and an average quantitative score (total category score divided by total number of categories).

Now you can use this side-by-side comparison of each content asset’s score to determine what to do next:

• Qualitative scores are higher than quantitative scores: Analyze your distribution plan. Consider timing, channels, or formats for other “good” content.
• Quantitative scores are higher than qualitative scores: Review content to identify ways to improve. Can it be improved through rewriting? How about adding data-backed research?
• Low quantitative and qualitative scores: Remove this content from circulation and update your content plan to avoid such content.
• High quantitative and qualitative scores: Promotion and reuse this content As feasible as possible. Update your content plan to replicate this type of content in the future.

Of course, you may find differences between your quantitative and qualitative scores, which may indicate a failure in the qualitative assessment. Use your judgment, but at least consider other options.

How to use artificial intelligence to generate content ratings

To enhance your scorecard, you can use machine learning to infer the samples once patterns are identified. This takes some patience and iteration, but can prompt your favorite AI tool to infer initial qualitative scores for content not included in the original scorecard sample.

By showing an AI tool a series of content snippets and each snippet’s respective score, you can ask it to use the same logic to score other similar content. For example, if articles with a specific format, topic, or publication date score similarly on certain attributes, you can assume that all other articles with those qualities will do the same.

Of course, these scores are preliminary and experts still need to evaluate their accuracy before you can act on them, but this AI assistance could turn out to be a time-saving tool.

Start content rating

Developing a content scorecard may seem like a daunting task, but don’t let it stop you. Don’t wait until the next great migration. Take it in small chunks and make it an ongoing process. Start optimizing every quarter from now on, and the process won’t feel so daunting.

Choosing how much content to evaluate and what content to evaluate depends largely on the diversity of content types and the consistency of content within the same type. In my experience, 100 to 200 assets is enough. While there’s no strict scientific basis for this sample size, the number should be enough to see patterns in topics, content types, traffic, etc.

• Total inventory
• Consistency within content types
• Review frequency

Review in batches so you don’t get overwhelmed. Set up an evaluation cycle and review batches quarterly, modifying, retiring or repurposing your content based on the results of the review each time. Remember to analyze content across the entire performance spectrum. If you only focus on high-performing content, you won’t be able to identify hidden gems.

Updated from January 2022 article.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute