Why Your Business Needs a Content Audit and How to Get Started
It’s a common issue for most companies: your content marketing is in a rut.
You’ve been writing about the same topics forever. Your recent blog posts aren’t driving as much traffic as your top organic posts. Social media engagement is down.
You need a content audit.
What is a content audit?
A content audit is a thorough review of your existing content to identify your top-performing content, gaps in your content, and opportunities you should be focusing on.
When should you perform a content audit?
Businesses should do a deep dive into their content at least once a year. You can also audit when you feel that content isn’t performing as well as you would like. Additionally, you should consider an audit when expanding your marketing team to get a fresh look at what’s performing well and what you can improve on.
Steps to take
Before you can examine your content, you need to have goals in mind that will guide you to create content that helps achieve those goals.
1. Determine your company’s marketing goals
What do you want to accomplish with your content marketing? You likely have goals to meet that align with other stakeholders or departments in your company, as well as your marketing team’s goals. These can include meeting set goals for acquiring new leads, downloads, email opens and clicks, organic traffic, and social media engagement, among other things.
When setting these goals, make sure they follow SMART goal criteria:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely
2. Identify the content used throughout the journey from prospect to customer
Take a look at what you’ve already created for the steps of the buyer’s journey, lifecycle stages, buyer personas, and beyond.
Content isn’t just for prospects. Make sure you’re creating resources for prospects once they become customers and as they stay on for the long term. Helpful, impactful content plays a role in letting customers know you’re to guide them towards success and it can contribute to reducing churn.
3. Consider company, industry, and seasonal themes
The calendar is a factor in your content development. Make note of top company priorities for the year, major projects, major events, and seasonal or cyclical trends that could impact the content you create.
4. Organize and plan your content
Create a spreadsheet of content that identifies the content type, buyer’s journey, lifecycle stages, buyer’s persona, topic, keywords, campaigns, priorities, events, seasonal trends, date, data, and other helpful information.
Identify gaps in your content. Have you ignored or lacked focus in a step in the buyer’s journey, lifecycle stages or buyer’s persona? Are there important dates or campaigns on the calendar that need content to support them?
Let the data guide you. Results like leads generated, high organic or paid traffic, and high engagement can tell you what content topics and types have worked. Make plans to reproduce your top content or refresh it with republished information and a new date.
If you have low-performing content, it may be time to remove it from your website or blog so that the high-performing pieces are front and center, leaving them as the prime targets for SEO and traffic.
5. What to do next
Keep your list of high-performers and new ideas, and make room for them every month in your editorial calendar. Add to the list as new topics, campaigns, priorities, goals, and events arise throughout the year.
I’d also recommend this resource: HubSpot has an excellent blog post on content audits, which contains a list of helpful tools and a content audit kit download.
Do you need help with your content?
With more than 20 years in content marketing, writing, and editing, I have the skills to help businesses with content audits and creating the content they need to accomplish their marketing goals. Send me an email at marketing@azure-collier.com to discuss your content needs and how I can set your business up for success.
