Online businesses live and die on the strength of their content. Due to this, companies' concerns always lay with which content performs the best. Figuring this out allows them to develop more content along the same lines that's as popular with their target audience.
Content auditing is the process by which businesses accomplish this task. Audits can inform a business what posts are performing above the others and offer clues as to where the audience engages with the company the most. Here, 13 professionals from Forbes Agency Council take a look at the essential steps that a content audit should cover to have maximum effectiveness.
1. Make Sure The Content Is Tailored To Your Audience
It is critical to think about the audience for each piece of content you put out. It’s not just about how content is performing, but whether it’s speaking to the right people. Ask yourself, "Is it tailored to the customers you want to attract, does it educate the reader, is there a clear call to action and are they acting upon it?" Content that meets that criteria will yield the best results. - Laura Cole, Vivial
2. Conduct A Gap Analysis
A must-cover step in a content audit? Inclusion of a gap analysis. A content audit and review of current performance metrics will only tell a business so much. It's when that information is analyzed in context -- compared to priority topics, competition and the current landscape -- that opportunities begin to present themselves. - Donna Robinson, Nina Hale - Digital Marketing Agency
3. See What All The Buzz Is About
You can (and should) use Google Analytics to see what content on your site gets the most attention. But auditing content is a different story. BuzzSumo lets you dig deeper into worldwide content so you can see what kind of information is capturing the public's attention, letting you pinpoint valuable content trends. This will give you strategic insight as you prepare your next content calendar. - Bernard May, National Positions
4. Audit Your Competitors, Too
Don’t limit the audit to your own content. Always know what you’re up against by analyzing the competition, too. Look for gaps in the knowledge and expertise being offered in your content by comparing it to your competitors’ sites. Be willing to ask yourself, “What are they doing better than us?” and consider what type of content can help you achieve the same outcome, or better. - Hannah Trivette, NUVEW Web Solutions
5. Determine If It's Shareable
By leveraging a tool like BuzzSumo, you can actually see how many shares a piece of content received on the major social channels. It's important to audit your content categories and understand if these topics are ones that naturally get lots of social shares. This can make or break the reach of each post you build into your strategy. - Jim Huffman, Growthhit
6. Look At Content Interaction And Engagement
Businesses often overlook the engagement their content receives and keep sharing content which they believe best suits the voice and image of their brand. In reality, they should leave it on their audience and only share content they interact and engage with, rather than content they show less to no interest in. For a brand to be successful, its customers should see their brand as their own. - Vishal Jain, Sunshy Group Of Companies
7. Connect Sales And Marketing
Any content audit done in marketing should start with conversations with the sales team. What are the obstacles to buying your product? What are the most common questions, comparisons and concerns customers have? Only once you know this from those at the front line with customers ready to buy, can you have the context you need to audit marketing content for what might actually be missing. - Courtney Smith Kramer, PureMatter
8. Know Your KPIs First
For any content audit to be useful, you must know your KPIs. You need to understand what measurements to take. The values of metrics can be deceiving, as some are virtually irrelevant, while others are vital to your business’s overall goals. Look beyond the numbers for the meaning. - Fran Biderman-Gross, Advantages
9. Make Sure It Leverages Basic SEO Tactics
Effective content marketing requires the application of basic SEO tactics. Before writing, it's important to use a tool like Google Keyword Planner to identify keywords used by others to search for things related to your business. Target keywords should be used in the title, copy and meta information of your content and webpage. Using SEO will help you generate more traffic from your content. - Kristopher Jones, LSEO
10. Map The Audit To The Customer Buying Cycle
The key tenets of a robust content marketing strategy are to make your content valuable, relevant and consistent. By mapping relevant content in an audit across a customer's buying cycle, scoring its value and auditing for consistency of message, you'll end up with higher-performing content that's more likely to be seen by customers and result in higher performance. - Alisha Lyndon, MomentumABM
11. Measure Video Consumption Versus Drop-Off
There is no question that video should be a fundamental part of any content strategy. Most companies in the online space struggle to create video that converts and gains the traction they are looking for. Measuring how much of your video is consumed by the end user allows you to better understand and adapt in order to create more engaging content for your audience. - Michael Smith, MDS Media Inc.
12. Know Your Call To Action
Analytics will tell you a lot about your most popular content, but it is important to go the extra step and look at how those pieces convert into new business leads. Understand what the call to action is for each piece you write. It’s great to have content people can find and like, but unless they are motivated to take the next step and engage further with you, you’re losing out on opportunities. - Valerie Chan, Plat4orm PR
13. Rank Against Social Media
A critical step is to assign a monetary value to each of your pages onsite and use Google Analytics to analyze the results. GA does this automatically for e-commerce sites. Next, rank onsite content against social shares for what topics perform well with your audience. What quickly emerges from the data is what resonates for not only engagement, but also the bottom line (and CFOs will love you). - Jacob Cook, Tadpull
