Content marketing is your ticket to increasing your brand awareness, interacting with your target market audience and extending your reach within that audience. It allows you to showcase the knowledge and the passion that drove you to create a business within a particular industry. You work hard each day to present new content pieces to your audience as a way to hold their engagement level on what you have to offer.
In recent weeks, your key performance indicators show that your audience is slowly losing interest in the content pieces that you are sharing. Your social media statistics are declining regarding the number of responses, re-tweets and new followers you are receiving. There has even been a slight drop in the number of subscribers to your blog or email newsletter campaign. Here is an easy-to-follow plan to help rejuvenate your content marketing practices.
Day One – Conduct a Content Audit
Conducting a content audit can help you generate ideas for new pieces as well. Look at each piece of content you currently have in rotation to pinpoint the pieces that may be receiving low response rates or are no longer relevant to what you are trying to accomplish with your content marketing campaign. There are three basic steps that can help you accomplish a content audit.
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Step One: Make a Spreadsheet
Using a basic spreadsheet, record content information including the website a piece of content is in, the page title it is on, a page description and any relevant tags that you associate with that particular piece of content. You are essentially creating a content library catalog that lets you know how you are using each piece of content upon first glance at the spreadsheet.
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Step Two: Compile a List of Website Pages
Visit Google Analytics to take an in-depth look at how each page on your website is performing. Start at the ‘behavior’ tab and move down to the ‘all pages’ section where you will see detailed information on each page of your website. Make sure that each page title that appears shows up on your spreadsheet and add the individual page URLs to your spreadsheet as well. Pages with poor performance may result in content pieces not reaching a particular audience you have in mind.
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Step Three: Review the List
Analyze your list of websites by focusing on the key details such as the page description and content on each page. Look for areas of improvement or irrelevant information that you can remove to enhance the performance of a particular page. Determine if a content piece is functioning properly or if it no longer serves the purpose of your content campaign.
Day Two – Create a New Content Plan
To successfully manage a content marketing campaign, you need to have a guideline in place that helps determine what content pieces to share and what audiences should be on the receiving end of that content. A content plan gives you that sense of direction and helps you create a schedule illustrating when to publish new pieces of content so that you gain the maximum level of exposure and audience engagement with each content piece.
Start by revisiting your target market audience to ensure that your brand still works to effectively solve a problem or fulfill a desire within your audience. Compare your brand objective with the current problem that your audience is facing. If your brand no longer provides the target audience with a solution, you need to redefine a market segment for your product or service. That new market segment will have a need for particular content pieces to help illustrate how your product or service benefits their life.
You can generate content ideas by asking your social media followers what type of information they want to see from you. Spend time researching the websites your new market segments frequently visits as well as the blog content they engage with to get a good idea of what types of content pieces benefits this audience the most. When you have an extensive collection of content pieces to share, it is time to create a publication schedule for each piece. You can use a spreadsheet program or find an application or online program that helps you accomplish this task.
Day Three – Manage Social Media Accounts
Your social media channels are key indicators of how well your audience responds to the content pieces that you share. It is an excellent starting point for pinpointing gaps or problems that may be present with your current content marketing practices. Analyze the analytical reports that your social media channels provide to see how your audience is interacting with the content that you share. Keep the content pieces with high levels of customer engagement in your current rotation schedule. Remove the ones that are no longer relevant or are lacking in audience engagement.
It is an excellent idea to revitalize your content marketing practices on a regular basis. Your content works to keep you in front of your target market audience and when those pieces fall to generate the responses that you want, it is time for a change.
Get started today if you are looking for more help on your content marketing campaign. Contact us today and we will help you get started in the right direction.