Is Your Content Working For You?
It can be very easy to put a content plan in place and then happily put your content to the back of your mind while you get on with your business. You may have mapped out your content with purpose, with every social media post and web page aiming to reach certain goals. You may have simply started populating your website and social platforms because you knew you had to.
When was the last time you re-evaluated your content though? Took the emotion out of it and really assessed whether your content was achieving what you had set it out to?
Content Audits to Reassess
A content audit has the magical power of stopping you from ambling along and forces you to stop, look around and assess.
The best way to approach your first audit is to look to your marketing strategy for your goals per platform. Is your Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for your website to generate new business leads? Or newsletter subscriptions? Did you start an Instagram account for your business with the hope of engaging a certain community more?
Once you have the goals laid out clearly that your content is meant to be achieving, the audit should flow smoothly from here.
First, look at your current content and weigh it up against your goals. Is it attracting the right target market? Do they stay engaged? Do they take action from it? If it’s a “No” to all of those, then it’s time to revisit your content strategy.
Regular Check Ups to Stay on Track
Once you’ve changed your content up with your goals and KPIs in mind, then it’s time to stay vigilant. No one wants to be putting out content for the sake of it. By scheduling it in to reassess your content every few months, you give time for the content to achieve traction, and if it doesn’t, then you can change it up – just like the seasons.
These regular small audits also mean you will be able to tweak content ideas, rather than having to do major overhauls as you might have to with yearly audits.
Audits to Keep Up With Changing Times
We all know how quickly the world we live in changes, on a daily basis almost. So this is a note to remind you that even if your content was on point and performing at the top of the game a month ago, things may have changed around it that mean a decline soon.
Even a great content strategy should be kept a keen eye on. Innovations on social media or search engines could mean that while your content could still be doing relatively well, if you tweaked something, or added another content format into your plan, you could be experiencing more success.
Remember, no one wants to look like that parent that thinks using outdated slang makes them “popular with the kids”. Understanding new content mediums and using them to tell your brand’s story in interesting ways keeps you moving with the times, can gain you respect and put you ahead of the pack with your target market.
All of this is the power of the content audit. If you want some help with yours, email info@samantics.org and we’ll get make sure your content works for you.