At the end of 2014 we set out on a mission to prove the ROI of our content marketing at NewsCred. This was a particularly terrifying exercise for me – prior to working at NewsCred I had never heard the term “ROI.” In fact, if you would have told me I’d be the Managing Editor of a “brand newsroom” five years ago, I probably would have said, “What’s a brand newsroom?” and also, “How did you get here from the future?” In 2010, content marketing was barely a thing, and it certainly wasn’t on my radar. I was working as a reporter in NYC, waiting tables to pay my rent, and sleeping about 120 minutes a night. It was awesome.
But as I’ve transitioned from the world of journalism to the world of brand journalism, I’ve learned lots of new words – like “lead generation,” and “Marketo,” and “401K” to name a few.
It turns out, assessing your content to prove ROI doesn’t HAVE to be scary. I promise. And in our case, it actually worked! Luckily, I had lots of help from people with MBAs who can do “math.” So grab a friend from biz dev, huddle up, and get ready to audit your content and lead generation! Here are three major lessons we learned, as illustrated by Liz Lemon gifs.
