Fitbit is doing something pretty amazing.

Despite our inherently reactive nature as human beings, wearable technology is making our entire generation incredibly proactive about achieving our fitness goals.

Instead of just crossing our fingers and hoping for the best, wearable technology users are actually getting excited about the least sexy part of goal achievement: actually doing the work.

As both a marketer and psychology geek, the Fitbit's ability to shape behavior in real time is fascinating to me. But how does it accomplish this feat? Is the secret in the technology? Nope. At the end of the day, it just comes down to tracking the right metrics.

Tracking the Work, Not the Goal
The goal of most Fitbit owners is to stay in shape or get in shape. Prior to wearables like Fitbit, the primary method of assessing progress was to hop on the scale and weigh in. The key metric of interest in that scenario is weight, which is also the goal.

But this approach was deeply flawed, which is why so many people struggle to lose weight. You shouldn't be tracking your end goal, you should be tracking the steps (pun!) you're taking to get there. Focusing on hitting 10,000 steps every day for a month will do far more good than weighing yourself everyday for a month.

If you have a pen and paper handy try this exercise: draw two dots on on either end of the piece of paper. Now place your pen on one of those dots, close your eyes, and try and draw a line to the second dot. Tricky right? Now try it again, but this time go halfway, stop, and open your eyes. Assess your situation, close your eyes again, and draw the rest of the way. Closer, right? This illustrates the impact of tracking progress vs. tracking results.

Fitbit moved our focus on metrics to the process and our progress, where it does far more good.

Tracking Your Content "Steps"
So if tracking progress this way can do so much good for physical health, can it have the same impact on content marketing goals? Absolutely.

In terms of sophistication, many content marketers are merely weighing themselves at the end of each month and scratching their heads as to why they aren't hitting your goals. Your ability to track your unique monthly visitors is doing nothing to help you actually improve that number. We need to move our reporting metrics towards tracking our progress, not just our results.

1. Identify Your Goal

The first step toward better tracking is to identify your goals. Are you trying to increase monthly blog visits? Are you looking to increase the number of leads you are driving from your calls to action? Whatever your goal, write it down. You need to have a rock solid definition of what success means for your content.

2. Define Your "Steps"

For wearable owners, their steps toward their goal are well, steps. For content it's less clear. Any easy way to find your steps is by asking yourself "How will I accomplish this?" If you are looking to increase your blog traffic, you might try increasing your guest blogging. If you want to guest blog more, you may set the goal of writing 1,000 words a week. At the end of the week, you're much further toward you're goal if you can see you've written 1,000 words and two guest posts instead of merely checking your blog traffic.

3. Measure Success

Now it's important to make sure that your steps do indeed get you closer to your end goal. Make sure that at the end of the month, you are measuring your final progress. If you write 10 guest blogs in a month and see no increase in traffic back to your site, you may need to change your steps. Perhaps writing more for your own blog would have a greater impact. Just like trying different exercises to hit your target weight, you should never be afraid to try and track new steps to reaching your goal.

What do you think about the way wearables shape our behavior or the way we currently track content? Let me know in the comments!

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons