Why You Need A Content Audit Now
By Andrew Patricio
June 04, 2018
Teachers & Education
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While every small business produces content, few really understand how it’s performing, resulting in resources wasted on creating the wrong content. A content audit will help you gain more visibility so you can produce effective content, efficiently. So let’s look at what a content audit entails and go through a down-and-dirty method so you’re not taking on a mammoth task.
What Is A Content Audit?
A content audit is basically an analysis of all the content you’ve published to better understand its value. Think of it like creating a list of all your webpages, product guides, videos, whitepapers, webinars, etc. and then systematically reviewing each so you know how well it is at driving your goals.
Why a Content Audit?
How much time and money does your small business invest in content marketing every year? There are no stats on this, but chances are you’ve invested something. And the question that comes with every investment is, “What is the return?”
If you don’t know what content you have and how it’s performing, there’s no way you can improve to increase that return. A content audit often reveals a lot of redundancies and important gaps in information, which, by itself is worth the time. But you should also have a better idea of what content your segments or personas engage with, and act on, so you can do more of that in the future.
Why now?
Even with our simplified content audit process below, a content audit takes time. Time you won’t have in the fourth quarter. And with the third quarter fast approaching, waiting will mean you won’t have the information you need to do make smarter decisions for 2019. So start now!
A Simplified Process for a Content Audit
Step 1: Goals
It’s worth reiterating why you even pursue a content marketing strategy in the first place.
Step 2: Inventory
List of all your content on an Excel sheet. Include landing pages, videos, product selection guides, etc. Then, identify:
Step 3: Analyze
With this inventory, analyze each piece of content to determine if it’s excellent, good, OK, not good in meeting its objectives, persona, or stage of the customer journey. At the very least, you can come up with a good list of content you need to create, tweak, and trash. And you’ll have a list of existing content that you can repurpose for these needs!
Of course, there is considerably more analysis you can do; look for consistent messaging, confirm the metadata is correct, etc. But with this simplified process, you can know what gaps you have in your content so you can start filling them!
Performing a content audit is an involved process, but one that will help you make your content marketing more strategic and more effective.
What Is A Content Audit?
A content audit is basically an analysis of all the content you’ve published to better understand its value. Think of it like creating a list of all your webpages, product guides, videos, whitepapers, webinars, etc. and then systematically reviewing each so you know how well it is at driving your goals.
Why a Content Audit?
How much time and money does your small business invest in content marketing every year? There are no stats on this, but chances are you’ve invested something. And the question that comes with every investment is, “What is the return?”
If you don’t know what content you have and how it’s performing, there’s no way you can improve to increase that return. A content audit often reveals a lot of redundancies and important gaps in information, which, by itself is worth the time. But you should also have a better idea of what content your segments or personas engage with, and act on, so you can do more of that in the future.
Why now?
Even with our simplified content audit process below, a content audit takes time. Time you won’t have in the fourth quarter. And with the third quarter fast approaching, waiting will mean you won’t have the information you need to do make smarter decisions for 2019. So start now!
A Simplified Process for a Content Audit
Step 1: Goals
It’s worth reiterating why you even pursue a content marketing strategy in the first place.
Step 2: Inventory
List of all your content on an Excel sheet. Include landing pages, videos, product selection guides, etc. Then, identify:
- Publish date
- Primary audience
- What stage of the customer journey it was targeting
- Call to action (CTA)
- URLs the content is linked to
- Content quality metric(s)
- Any other characteristic that makes sense given the goals you stated above
Step 3: Analyze
With this inventory, analyze each piece of content to determine if it’s excellent, good, OK, not good in meeting its objectives, persona, or stage of the customer journey. At the very least, you can come up with a good list of content you need to create, tweak, and trash. And you’ll have a list of existing content that you can repurpose for these needs!
Of course, there is considerably more analysis you can do; look for consistent messaging, confirm the metadata is correct, etc. But with this simplified process, you can know what gaps you have in your content so you can start filling them!
Performing a content audit is an involved process, but one that will help you make your content marketing more strategic and more effective.