Your customers will thank you.
Spring arrives a day earlier than usual this year—on Thursday, March 19. It’s a prime time to take a good, long look at your content. Are you using it to peak effectiveness? Is it working as hard as it possibly could? Is it the content your customers or clients are looking for? Is it advancing the conversations you’d like to be having with them? And, moreover, do you have too much content?
A study by Vox Media found that 43% of people feel so bombarded by content they find it hard to care about any of it—the very essence of T.M.I. Yet many marketers plan their content calendars with a default to the creation of brand new content. Not enough of us take a step back and think about what content we already have and how we could enhance, update or repackage it.
Research suggests we should. In a study conducted by Databox, 89.5% of marketers found repurposing content more effective than creating new in terms of cost, time and results—pretty much the Big Three of motivations. If we can make our existing content work harder, we can be more efficient and more cost effective. And doing this will encourage us to think strategically about what we’re creating and why.
Clear the cobwebs
Times change, as can a company’s goals. If your messaging and brand don’t precisely match or your visuals look out of date—an image of three middle-aged bros isn’t optimal when your brand’s focus is on financial inclusion—corrective measures are in order. The same goes when your facts and proof-points have been overtaken by events or by new research. Readers count on your content—even when it’s evergreen—to be helpful, reliable and up-to-date. If you can’t update your content easily, then ditch it. Otherwise you’ll deliver a confusing and cluttered experience.
Polish for performance’s sake
Running analytics will give a big-picture view of your content performance. In some instances content may be a dud and has always underperformed despite being in the right format, deftly designed and well promoted. It may be time to drop it to reduce clutter. On the other hand, content that’s been holding its own could get a boost by being published again. The second shot exposes it to fresh eyeballs who may have overlooked the first time and gives newcomers a chance to savor it. In the Databox study, marketers cited increasing exposure to their brand and content as the top reason for repurposing content, followed by driving more traffic to their website and saving time on content creation.
Feather dust and fine tune
During spring cleaning even high performers shouldn’t be taken for granted. There are ways to make them work harder. Take steps to make sure content is current and resonates with readers, which is an essential. Still, in one study, audiences reported that 58% of content created by the top 1800 global brands wasn’t meaningful. Also take a look at your highest performing keywords and update old content accordingly. Make sure images are optimized for accessibility. See to it that all your internal links are as well structured as you can make them so that content works well together. Make sure all your pages are mobile friendly. And consider whether a change in format and distribution channels could boost things even more. A well-crafted long-form white paper, for instance, might do even better by being recast as infographic, an animated video posted on social media or even a podcast.
Arrange and reorganize
Peak content curation isn’t about short-term tactical thinking, it’s long term and strategic. You should always be planning and thinking about this, not just when spring comes around. Creating your content calendar is about looking ahead, for sure. But it’s also exactly the time to look back at what you already have. We all love creating new content—but it’s not always the answer when making existing content work harder can be such a win-win.
You’ve done the work, so let it shine. You could get more value by creating less. And that should spark joy.
Help your content work harder–– reach out to discuss your program.
