How should we approach the PDCA cycle for content?

The tricky part of content marketing is measuring and evaluating content effectiveness. How do you set KPIs? How do you measure impact? Are PV/UU metrics insufficient? Which indicators should you track? When you actually try to implement it, you're just left with a sea of question marks.

There's a tendency to assume that content with high traffic is good content, meaning a good plan, but that's not necessarily true. If you run ads, the landing page will inevitably get more traffic. Even with high traffic, if the bounce rate is high, it might just mean you're luring people in with clickbait titles.

When you look at information from overseas, you find things like "Look at whether the content was consumed, shared, led to lead generation, or resulted in sales." The moment you learn that, you think, "Oh, I see! That's how you do it!" But when you actually try to apply it to the task at hand, somehow, something just doesn't click.

So how should we approach this?
I'd like to share what I've started to understand.

① What do we want to achieve?

First, it's obvious, but what do we actually want to achieve? What do we want to accomplish? Without a clear goal, you can't evaluate the numbers or the content itself. If you don't know what you want to learn through evaluation, you can't create an effectiveness measurement plan. And if you can't create that plan, you can't decide which metrics to track. Of course, numbers are necessary as a basis for comparing and judging whether content is good or bad. However, simply generating numbers and discussing them by comparing them to the previous month or competitors rarely leads to creating new, better content.

② Metrics and Goals Are Different

Both metrics and goals carry the meaning of "markers," leading to frequent confusion in their usage.
Metrics are benchmarks or measuring sticks. Goals are the targets to be achieved. They are fundamentally different. Metric numbers serve as markers to track progress, while goal numbers serve as markers to aim for and achieve. When evaluating campaign content, it's common to set target values and assess whether they were met. However, when evaluating ongoing content like content marketing, the ideal approach is to use metric numbers to confirm your current position and determine the next course of action.

③ Understanding how to improve plans

Perhaps the most challenging part is applying the evaluation results to the next plan.
Choosing the option with higher CTR from A/B testing titles or photos is straightforward. But simply combining effective parts doesn't guarantee a successful plan. Similarly, insights like "the text is too long" from bounce rates or read-through rates don't provide actionable hints for planning. Even if comparing ABC reveals Plan A had more sessions, it doesn't tell you what kind of plan to create next. This alone is rarely sufficient.

What planning truly requires are consumer insights and brand challenges. Simultaneously, what PDCA needs is an understanding of how to "assemble" a plan.

Theme, tone, context, title. The ability to control each element according to the desired objective. And the ability to separate the framework and presentation within the plan—that is, the logic and the art—and view them independently. Furthermore, if you can organize the art component logically, like a skilled designer, the range of improvement methods expands. With this perspective, you can decide "what aspect of the plan you want to test" before releasing content to the world. Deciding this beforehand makes evaluation easier and the next improvement points clearer.

 

That said, the fundamental role of content is to attract people.
Lately, I've been feeling that perhaps not every piece of content released one after another needs constant improvement and adjustment.

When you chase numbers and logic relentlessly, content inevitably loses its ability to truly connect with people. It might feel uncomfortable for those with a logical mindset, but sometimes it's necessary to be a little more forgiving and focus purely on entertaining the viewer. Accept that covering the essential points is sufficient, then entrust the rest to what the creator intuitively feels is "desirable," "fun," or "worth seeing." I believe this approach is actually necessary too (though in this case, careful planning verification by a cool-headed third party is absolutely essential).

Just as writing that flows effortlessly can captivate people even if its logic is slightly flawed, content infused with the creator's passion truly has the power to move people.