If content is king in normal circumstances, it’s now a beloved dictator.
Content marketing is the cornerstone in our full-funnel marketing efforts. We need content to light that first spark of awareness, to generate demand and ultimately get our audience to a M/SQL, all the while establishing trust and brand preference. Content is in every aspect of digital marketing: your blog posts, social, email nurture copy, white papers and e-books. Most importantly, content can make or break your customer’s journey, if not finely tuned to your prospect’s position in your marketing funnel.
Content, therefore, dictates your strategy. It can dictate your strategy in terms of how you go to market, or how you interact with your target audience. And now, in light of the current situation with COVID-19, content dictates your next move, more than ever. Content that speaks to the situation with empathy, addresses customer concerns, new ways of life, or offers an escape from the news cycle is in demand. Content that is situationally tone-deaf, too much “business as usual” or evergreen, falls on deaf ears. Your target audience wants to know how your brand is operating or responding to the pandemic, as things change day to day. And this can be accomplished with data-driven content creation that speaks to the current crisis.
So how does your brand compete if you are low on content marketing resources? Two words: Content Audit.
What exactly is a website content audit?
It’s an analysis of all of the content you currently have on your website/blog to understand where optimization efforts need to be placed, and where there are gaps that need to be filled. It may also include social media and an SEO analysis, including competitive and keyword rankings.
The content audit process also helps you to see what you already have in your arsenal. As you examine each blog post or piece of copy, consider what is low-hanging fruit for you to simply update with a timely introduction, new post date and refreshed backlinks. For example, if you are a B2B tech company that has customers in healthcare, what case studies do you have that can be updated and featured? Or, if you have content around the enterprise workforce and employee endpoints, how can you update to discuss the new normal of working from home? Not only will these updates boost your SEO efforts and increase organic traffic, but this will also ensure you have relevant content you can leverage that ultimately adds value for your audience during this time. Also, log into Google Analytics and take a look at your web traffic from the last few weeks, starting in Feb/March 2020. What blogs or pieces of content have been getting the most traffic organically? Are those related to issues that everyday people are facing these days? If so, update them with even more valuable information and re-promote or include in your newsletter for increased exposure. Dive even deeper and take a look at bounce rate. Which blogs can be optimized to keep users on the page longer and offer more valuable content? Let the metrics help guide your content strategy. And what if you don’t have a lot of content? That’s also ok. A quick audit of your competitors will give you a baseline of where you should roughly be in your industry and which content type will be most valuable in achieving your business goals.
So, if you’ve asked your digital marketing team or yourself why you’re spending thousands of dollars in content creation that isn’t being leveraged (p.s., you’re not alone, 65% of B2B content ends up unused) or why your brand is still churning out technical blogs and data sheets that aren’t getting any traffic, it’s time. Harness the power of a content audit to help drive your content creation in a way that exceeds your business goals.
What about an SEO audit?
Once your content audit and corresponding to-do list is complete, consider pairing an SEO audit with your recent findings. An SEO audit will cover four main quadrants: technical, site architecture and usability, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. The goal is to identify any major holes in your website’s SEO and compile a list of optimizations that will boost your site’s rankings in any given search engine. For example, your SEO audit might reveal action items such as keyword mapping to identify target keywords for individual pages/blogs, rewriting your home pages’ title tag and meta description, or fixing broken links. Bottom line, if you want your content marketing to increase your website’s organic search and lead to more conversions, consider pairing your content audit with an SEO audit.
Now that you’ve read about how a content audit can up-level your content marketing strategy, where do you start? The good news is that at LEWIS, content audits are our bread and butter. It’s also an actionable plan you can take to your executive team as a way to make sure your brand is empowered to pivot your overall content strategies during these uncertain times. Let’s get connected.
