What Is a Content Analyst?

A content analyst is a key position to fill on your team as your content operations mature. Content analysts help to track and analyze content effectiveness and value for an organization, evaluating a variety of metrics to determine the impact of content. 

But what is a content analyst, exactly, what does a content analyst do from day to day, and how do you get into this field? This article gives you all the answers.

What Does a Content Analyst Do?

A content analyst generally works as part of a digital, marketing, UX, or product team. As a content analyst, you will help set goals, strategy, and standards for content. You will work closely with content strategists, designers, developers, SEO specialists, researchers, and marketing staff. Content analysts partner with these team members to establish KPIs and design content intelligence dashboards to monitor and improve content performance. 

Regularly, you’ll need to analyze data, identify trends, and deliver actionable insights to stakeholders that can help improve content and user experience. Content analysts are experts on metrics such as unique visitors, page views, time on site, bounce rate, scroll depth, conversion rate, etc. You will likely also perform competitive analysis: exploring what competitors are doing, and opportunities for your organization based on insights from this research.

Content analysts may also be responsible for tasks such as researching topics for articles and creating outlines, monitoring social media sentiment, conducting experiments, carrying out surveys, and interpreting findings. You will likely also play a role in identifying any gaps in the content tech stack, and help make decisions around selecting and procuring relevant content evaluation and tracking tools. 

What Are the Skills Necessary to be a Content Analyst?

As a content analyst, you will need to be skilled in using tools like Google Analytics and Excel, and building performance tracking dashboards. You will likely serve as the expert in analytics and voice of customer tools. 

You should bring an in-depth understanding of content analysis to the table, making use of multiple data sources, from digital analytics to competitive analysis, surveys, and market research. You should be able to parse large amounts of data quickly, think critically, and identify the most important information. . There is an ever-growing set of content technologies available to help with collecting data, but understanding and making sense of that data is up to you.

But your content analysis skills are most useful in tandem with strong communication skills. You will need to interpret data for others, conveying your findings clearly, concisely, and effectively so that they can act on it—for example, using it to decide what content to generate or how to optimize content. 

Experience with the process of content creation and the content development process will also be helpful in your role as a content analyst. You may be called on to research a topic, find authoritative sources, and incorporate relevant keywords for SEO purposes.

Still intrigued? Wondering how to get into this field? Read on.

How to Become a Content Analyst

Typically, becoming a content analyst requires a four-year degree in a relevant field such as computer science, market research, statistics, business, marketing, or equivalent experience. Experience with content in a related industry is also helpful. To show employers that you will be able to be hands-on from the get-go, consider earning certifications in relevant analytics tools, such as ContentWRX or voice of customer software. And once you have some experience as a content analyst, this can lead to other opportunities.

What are the Career Paths for Content Analysts?

Demand for content analysts is likely to grow in the future as organizations rely more and more on data to make business decisions. As you gain more content analysis experience, you may take on increasingly complex projects and move into data analytics. If you enjoy the more creative side of things, you may shift into a role that sees you producing content. Or you may take the management route, embracing project management or moving up into more senior managerial roles. 

Summary

If you enjoy numbers, thinking critically about and drawing insights from data, and have strong writing and communication skills, then a content analyst position could be a good fit. As you will be called on to analyze a large amount of information on a regular basis, you’ll need to be highly organized, a naturally analytical thinker, and a problem solver. In exchange, you will have the chance to make recommendations that deliver business value and make a tangible impact.

Download our Content Analyst Sample Job Description to learn more.