What do you do with the insights from your content audit?

A content audit is a systematic review of your existing content to evaluate its quality, relevance, performance, and alignment with your goals. It can help you identify content gaps, opportunities, and issues, as well as inform your content strategy and planning. But what do you do with the insights from your content audit? How do you turn them into actionable steps that improve your content and achieve your objectives? Here are some tips to help you make the most of your content audit findings.

1 Prioritize your content needs

The first thing you need to do is prioritize your content needs based on your audit results. You may have a lot of content to update, delete, create, or repurpose, but you can't do everything at once. You need to focus on the content that has the most impact on your audience and your business. To prioritize your content needs, you can use a matrix that plots the value and effort of each content item or category. Value refers to how well the content meets your goals and satisfies your users' needs. Effort refers to how much time, money, and resources it takes to create or improve the content. The matrix can help you decide which content to tackle first, which to schedule for later, and which to avoid or eliminate.

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Beth Carter

Marketing with impact and heart 💛 Inclusive digital agency owner 💻 LinkedIn Ghostwriting | Writing & Editing | Audits, Strategy & Planning | Social Media Advertising
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When prioritising what content to work on first, make sure you also consider what's coming up in your marketing calendar. You'll need to weigh up what content has the most value against what campaigns and promotions you have coming up. Remember, it's ok to go for the easy wins to get the ball rolling!

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Robyn-Lee Samuels

LinkedIn Ghostwriter 💫 I help B2B consultants share their expertise and attract clients on LinkedIn using content, comments, and strategic outreach.
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As a freelance copywriter who is also a content creator, I've got my hands full juggling my own content needs and my clients' demands. It's like a content circus in here particularly because I write for a living and writing content is how I market my services as well. So, what's my strategy? You guessed it – the value-effort matrix. I look at my analytics to determine what gives me the most value with the least effort. That helps me maximize my time when working ON my business so I have more time to work IN my business and get those articles to my clients on time. Of course, I'm also a big fan of repurposing content when it makes sense, as this is an efficient way to create multi-channel pieces quickly.

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2 Create a content action plan

Once you have identified the content you need, you should create a content action plan that outlines the tasks, responsibilities, deadlines, and resources associated with each item or category. This plan can help you organize your content work, communicate expectations, and track progress. The plan should include the content title or description, goal and KPIs, type and format, owner and stakeholders, creation or improvement steps, review and approval process, publication and distribution channels, and maintenance and evaluation schedule. You can use a spreadsheet, project management tool, or content calendar to create and manage your plan.

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Robyn-Lee Samuels

LinkedIn Ghostwriter 💫 I help B2B consultants share their expertise and attract clients on LinkedIn using content, comments, and strategic outreach.
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Sometimes, especially if you're just starting out and like me you're a team of one who is juggling a lot, your content action plan might be to simply observe something every day, write about it and post your thoughts. As basic and simple as that is, it's an action plan. And as you get into the swing of things, you can look at your comments, engagements, and more importantly sales queries to see which content categories and formats resonated most with your audience. Then, do it all over again, but this time focusing on creating more of what worked and resonated. Rinse and repeat.

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3 Implement your content changes

The next step is to implement your content changes according to your content action plan. This may involve creating new content, updating existing content, deleting outdated or irrelevant content, or repurposing content for different formats or audiences. You need to follow your content standards and guidelines, as well as your brand voice and tone, to ensure consistency and quality across your content. You also need to collaborate with your content team and other stakeholders, such as subject matter experts, designers, developers, and marketers, to ensure alignment and feedback. You need to test and optimize your content for usability, accessibility, and SEO, as well as for different devices and platforms. Finally, you need to publish and distribute your content through the appropriate channels and platforms, such as your website, blog, social media, email, or other media.

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Robyn-Lee Samuels

LinkedIn Ghostwriter 💫 I help B2B consultants share their expertise and attract clients on LinkedIn using content, comments, and strategic outreach.
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I used to create carousels in addition to my weekly newsletter. After looking at my analytics last month, though, my newsletter articles (even the low-performing ones) were getting twice the reach of carousels. I'm not a designer but me + Canva = eye-catching really cool carousels. But even with all that effort it was just not worth it anymore. So, I decided to conduct an experiment (it's still ongoing). I wanted to test what would happen if I just focused on my newsletter. You know what? My overall impressions have doubled and creating content isn't stressful anymore. Even when I'm overwhelmed, I chill because I can repurpose an old caption as an article (I write long captions) or just write my thoughts and click publish. TEST & measure

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4 Measure your content performance

The last step is to measure your content performance against your goals and KPIs. You need to collect and analyze data from various sources, such as analytics tools, surveys, feedback forms, comments, reviews, or social media metrics, to evaluate how well your content is reaching, engaging, and converting your audience. You need to report and communicate your content results to your content team and other stakeholders, highlighting the successes, challenges, and learnings. You also need to use your content performance data to identify areas for improvement, optimization, or experimentation, and to inform your future content strategy and planning.

A content audit is not a one-time project, but a continuous process that helps you keep your content relevant, valuable, and effective. By following these steps, you can turn your content audit insights into actionable steps that improve your content and achieve your objectives.

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5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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What do you do with the insights from your content audit?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Prioritize your content needs

2 Create a content action plan

3 Implement your content changes

4 Measure your content performance

5 Here’s what else to consider

Content Strategy

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What do you do with the insights from your content audit?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Prioritize your content needs

2 Create a content action plan

3 Implement your content changes

4 Measure your content performance

5 Here’s what else to consider

Content Strategy

Rate this article

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