How and Why You Should Perform a Content Audit

By Michelle Voznyuk, Marketing Specialist at Heinz Marketing

It’s hard to believe we’re already almost halfway through the year. Chances are you’re in full swing at this point, launching campaigns left and right in anticipation of hitting your quarterly goals. While I hope you’re seeing the traction you expected, if you aren’t, you’re not alone. Launching a new campaign requires many moving parts and buy-in on all fronts.

I would argue that one of the cornerstones to a successful campaign is developing the right content to pair with it. You can think of this as being the fuel that makes the engine go. Each campaign is a unique situation and has a different set of outcomes. This means, in addition to creating very specific and targeted messaging to your audience, you must also have strong offers to go along with it. At the end of the day, you have to give a little to get a little. Sending relevant content to your audience will help provide value, encourage them to act, and push them along in their buying journey.

That being said, developing thoughtful content takes time. Sometimes more time than you have. The best way to shortcut this process is to use what you already have. This means, using existing pieces (that are up-to-date) or repurposing your assets.

If you don’t already have a system for keeping up with your content, I highly recommend performing a content audit. Not only will this help you assess what you have, but it will also highlight any gaps that need to be filled. Once you’ve completed your audit, it will be a lot easier to create content strategies, build an editorial calendar, and select content for your campaigns.

Here are 6 steps to help you complete your content audit:

1. Start by determining where the majority of your content lives.
   • Is it in a Google Drive or SharePoint folder?
   • Is it mostly on your website?
   • Is it scattered across multiple tools/platforms?
2. Once you know where your content is, assess how much of it there is.
   • If you have a ton of content, consider looking at the past 2 years’ assets
   • This will likely be your most relevant and up-to-date content (although some of it might need to be refreshed)
3. Begin recording each asset and include the following pieces of information:
   • Asset Name
   • URL
   • Format
   • Funnel Stage
   • Intended Persona
   • Topic
   • Industry (Optional)
4. After you’ve collected the past 2 years worth of content, analyze it by using filters to record the following:
   • Format – How many pieces are blog posts, webinars, whitepapers, case studies, etc.?
   • Funnel Stages – How many pieces are top, middle, and bottom funnel?
   • Persona – How many pieces are there for each intended persona? If you don’t want to record individual personas, you can always create groups (think business versus technical)
   • Industry – How many pieces are there for each of your target industries?
   • Topic – How many pieces are there for each topic area?
5. Next, take a look at your metrics. Pull the top performing assets and compare that list against what you have in your audit.
   • Consider highlighting the top 10-50 pieces (this might depend on how much content you have in total)
   • These will be your lowest hanging fruit
6. Lastly, identify which pieces can be easily refreshed and which ones need a complete overhaul (or to be retired)

Once you have the information above, you’ll be able to see where your strong and weak points lie. These will be good indicators for where to focus your future efforts.

Maybe you need to beef up your top-of-funnel content. Or want to explore creating content for X industry. Or realized you have no content targeted towards executives. Whatever it may be, you have the opportunity to build a campaign or editorial calendar around it.

I hope you found these tips helpful as you continue building and executing strategies to reach your goals. Happy auditing!