How a content audit improves your social media success

As marketers we spend a lot of  time creating content to fill websites, blogs and social channels. However, few of us take the time to review, update or even remove content as it goes out of date or stops serving a brand purpose.

Leaving out-of-date or unaligned content on full display for your prospects and customers is confusing for your brand and causes substantial SEO and conversion issues. When did you last review your social media strategy against your business objectives? You may have been so busy flexing and reacting over the last 18 months that you haven’t had time to stop and reflect.

When you live and breathe your own content it’s hard to take a neutral view of how it compares to your competitors and the value it genuinely provides. A content audit is a thorough and effective way to ensure your content and social channels represent your brand (and marketing team) in the best possible way. It can be done relatively quickly and certainly doesn’t have to break the bank.

Here’s how a content audit will help improve your marketing success:

1. Competitor comparisons and content gap analysis

A fresh set of eyes is a quick and efficient way to get a holistic view on what channels your competitors are performing well on and what they are producing to generate strong engagement. You can then get to work filling any gaps between your content and theirs.

2. Ensuring what’s ‘always worked’ still works

It’s easy and perfectly understandable to keep producing content that has ‘always worked’ - it’s much harder to objectively understand if it works now or how it could be more effective. Albert Einstein once said: “If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.” Content is an opportunity for growth and lead generation - it shouldn’t be something that keeps you in the same place you’ve always been.

3. Keeping up with platform developments

Social media moves fast! Platforms are adding (and removing) functionality all the time and offering new opportunities to get in front of a bigger, more relevant audience. A content audit will look at where you're missing opportunities on each of your current platforms and how you can utilize all the new features available - without increasing your workload.

4. Taking the right content, to the right audience, at the right time!

Do you know where your audience is and when they are there?

When you embark on a social media/content audit, your auditor will take a deep dive into your customers and your analytics to discover the best platforms to find your audience, the best times to post and the type of content that is most likely to generate engagement. This may require a slightly different approach for each social platform you use - or platforms that you should be using - including: TikTok, Twitter YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn - and anywhere else they may be hiding!

5. Replacing ‘winging it’ with strategic direction

There is always a time and a place to ‘wing’ something in marketing - but it doesn’t have to be your content. There is so much data, research and resource available to set a perfectly tailored strategy for your business and content objectives. Adding structure makes content marketing (and social media) more manageable and improves the speed and volume of the returns you’re likely to see.

Social media is part of your and your team’s role, but with so many other things to deliver,  it’s hard to find the time to analyse content and reports. It’s likely that you’re going with what feels right, rather than using analytics and industry  data to know what is right.

You can treat your business to the best holiday gift you could wish for by booking a content audit consultation with the ContentCal Boost team - who specialise in improving your social media success.

Book your audit now to ensure you're on the right track.