Content is king, but it can lose its shine over time. If you want to keep your audience engaged and attract new visitors, you need to update your content regularly. But how do you do it without wasting time, money, or quality? Here are some tips to help you refresh your content for maximum value and reach.
The first step is to evaluate your existing content and identify what needs to be updated, deleted, or created. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or a content audit spreadsheet to analyze your content performance, relevance, and accuracy. Look for metrics like traffic, conversions, bounce rate, keywords, and user feedback. Then, prioritize your content based on its impact, urgency, and effort.
Auditing your content is essential to understand the 'current state', but you need to know what you want the 'future state' to be and that's done by developing a strong brand - good companies have a brand, great companies have an identity. You need to understand your culture and your place in the market. A competitive analysis will help you figure out where you are currently and help you determine if that is where you want to be. You can then use content to reinforce your position or change it completely. You won't need to refresh your content often if you know the organization's identity and have built into your marketing its evolution. If you look at early Nike or Google ads, it's not the same brand, but it is the same personality.
The second step is to improve your content according to your goals, audience, and best practices. You can optimize your content for SEO by adding or updating keywords, meta tags, headings, images, links, and schema markup. You can also optimize your content for UX by making it more readable, scannable, engaging, and accessible. Use tools like Hemingway, Grammarly, or Yoast to check and enhance your content quality.
Your content should be optimized to convey your identity and differentiate your brand. There are plenty of tools and platforms for SEO/SEM, UX, etc. and they achieve tactical goals for websites and social media. But, really optimizing your content means it resonates with the right people. Use pertinent hooks to capture your audience and then, use narrative structure to keep them reading - a beginning, middle, and end; a thesis or overall point and then, clear and concise supporting information; and finally, a call-to-action. If you do it right, the reader will be interested in 'learning more' or reading a white paper or joining a webinar, etc.
The third step is to transform your content into different formats and channels to reach a wider and more diverse audience. You can repurpose your content by changing its medium, angle, length, or purpose. For example, you can turn a blog post into a video, a podcast, an infographic, a newsletter, or a social media post. You can also use tools like Lumen5, Anchor, Canva, or Mailchimp to create and distribute your repurposed content.
The fourth step is to update your content with new information, insights, or perspectives to keep it relevant and valuable. You can refresh your content by adding or replacing data, statistics, examples, quotes, sources, or opinions. You can also refresh your content by addressing new questions, trends, or challenges that your audience might have. Use tools like BuzzSumo, AnswerThePublic, or Google Trends to find and incorporate fresh content ideas.
This is more about making sure you have an editorial calendar and you're publishing new content on a regular basis. A mixture of blog posts, white papers, videos, interviews, etc. combined with takes on trends or pertinent items in the news for instance. The main thing is consistency in producing content and making sure the content has an obvious purpose and a reason why someone would want to read it. You need to hook them and then, make them want to keep reading. Most people read about 100-200 words and then, they move on, but research shows they will read four times that much if they care about it. Develop a voice and brand that connects with people and make sure it is consistent across all channels.
The fifth step is to share your content with your target audience and potential customers to drive more traffic and conversions. You can promote your content by using paid or organic methods, such as email marketing, social media marketing, influencer marketing, or guest posting. You can also promote your content by optimizing it for voice search, mobile devices, or featured snippets. Use tools like Mailshake, Buffer, BuzzStream, or Ahrefs to plan and execute your content promotion strategy.
The sixth and final step is to track and analyze your content results and feedback to see what works and what doesn't. You can measure your content by using key performance indicators (KPIs), such as page views, shares, comments, leads, sales, or retention. You can also measure your content by using tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, SurveyMonkey, or HubSpot to collect and visualize your data and insights.