Content is king - this catchy phrase precisely sums up the importance of compelling content. Companies that do not keep their content building blocks up to date and adapt them to their marketing strategies risk losing their respectable online presence.
First impressions count - both in terms of design and content. A content audit is equivalent to an inventory of existing content. The analysis steps ensure that you can plan based on your status quo.
Target-performance analysis of the content
Every department and every employee has their own ideas about how to create sales-boosting content. Sales employees pursue individual - tailored to their Target groups adapted - strategies to successful sales transactions for products and services. The strands come together in the Marketing department. The task of the marketing experts is to promote the Present content effectively externally and internally.
In the field of online media, viewing and consumption habits have prevailed that require a certain type of display. The shift of media consumption to smartphones and tablets ensures that websites should function flawlessly on any display. At the same time, attention must be paid to the Customer Journeys The interests of different buyer personas as well as the interests of other stakeholders of a company must be considered and taken into account.
A target/actual analysis of existing content - in the form of a comprehensive content audit - provides information about where the individual strengths and weaknesses of your company as well as individual advertising channels. A look at the Competition as well as an analysis of your strategic goals will show you starting points in which direction your content must develop in the future in order to Strengthen market positioning and to acquire new customers.
Set objectives for a content audit
Before actually conducting a content audit, it is tremendously important to determine objectives. The following questions provide assistance:
- Were your products and services modified during the relevant period under review?
- Have the demands and composition of your target groups changed?
- Do you have new markets in mind or are you already working on new markets?
- Do you want to focus on specific forms of online marketing - e. g. Social media marketing or search engine optimization - put?
- Do customers or business partners regularly ask about outdated content published on the Internet?
- Is your website about to be relaunched?
- Is the number of successful conversions too low because your existing content is not optimally tailored to your customers' customer journeys and the different touchpoints?
- Do you want to rebuild your teams and introduce agile working methods in your company?
- Has your business changed hands or ownership and your strategic direction is changing?
Once the goals you want to achieve through a content audit have been defined, you can develop a strategic roadmap. In this context, define standards and criteria for content that you want to continue working with in the future. Extremely important, among other things, Uncover contradictions and redundancies as well as find logical gaps.
Quantitative content analysis
A quantitative analysis shows you which content is available and on which different channels it has been published. If your company does not have a content management system (CMS) that gives you a comprehensive overview, a web crawler helps you to get a complete list of content published on the Internet.
A web crawler or searchbot is a software tool that automatically searches the World Wide Web for defined information.
You can commission different searches to get a complete picture of existing content. Don't forget to include the content of your intranet as well as all important media your employees have access to in the results list of the quantitative analysis. A special area within the scope of a content audit is the quantitative analysis of SEO-relevant information - such as backlinks and current ranking positions for relevant keywords.
A tabular overview helps in the evaluation and formation of links.
Qualitative content analysis
The qualitative analysis of the existing content is strongly determined by the individual objectives of the content audit. How exactly the individual content is assessed depends on the criteria defined with the help of the questions. Current and relevant content can be retained without any problems, while redundant and outdated content must be removed without residue or fundamentally revised.
For a simplified assessment, numerical ratings have proven their worth. In order to have a clear result in retrospect and as little room for interpretation as possible, it is advantageous to measure the scale narrowly.
Developing a strategic roadmapn
After a successful content audit, it is important to develop a strategic roadmap. The goal is to Increase the quality of existing content building blocks. The definition of milestones helps to carry out important work steps in a timely manner. This can involve, for example, the creation of new content, content corrections, and the splitting of existing content modules.
The comprehensive overview of existing tasks helps to determine personnel resources and budgets, as well as a Long-term optimization of the future content strategy in coordination with the short-, medium- and long-term corporate strategy.
Your company's content is a valuable resource and relevant building block for success in online marketing. Take advantage of the many opportunities offered by a content audit to Multi-channel marketing optimally positioned for the future.
