A content audit can be a helpful tool to improve your brand’s overall experience and ensure that it aligns with your business goals. It is often used during transitions, such as when a brand is growing or going through a rebranding, or even when you are not hitting your goals.
Let’s dig a little deeper into what a content audit is and how it can help you achieve your goals.
What is a content audit
Ok, first things first: a content audit is a health check on one of your greatest marketing assets. It is an investigation to find off-brand, inconsistent, and/or outdated information, such as service descriptions, social media bios (is that the sound of your LinkedIn profile crying?), flyers, evergreen marketing campaigns, and live email sequences.
In this post, we will explore the moments when a content audit is essential for optimizing your brand’s presence and ensuring that every piece of content aligns with your business objectives.
When you should worry about a content audit
Let’s consider a scenario: Laura has a coaching business that used to drive consistent sales, but has noticed fewer and fewer visitors to her website, or that the visitors are just lurkers, not going down the funnel. She wonders why her campaigns are not working so well.
Well, we might just have a clue for Laura.
You see, even with a clear content strategy, it’s common for website traffic or campaign performance to start going down after a while. With all that has been going on in her business and taking care of the client’s experience, as well as showing up online consistently, Laura might have outdated, repetitive, or irrelevant content for her current audience.
Links break over time, content becomes outdated or irrelevant, your brand and audience might change…
That’s when a content audit comes into play: it would help you identify possible gaps, update information, restructure, and repurpose valuable content. This way, we can have more engagement and conversion in your marketing.
Now let’s consider C, a coffee roastery that has been around for over five years as our imaginary client.
After five years, C Roastery has evolved and is starting to grow into more cafés around the city. However, they want to make sure that everything is working well before launching a new place in a different neighborhood.
Their website and blog have been the same after all this time, with just some tweaks here and there, and don’t reflect their current approach on social media.
Also, since they are expanding, this change has to be reflected in their marketing.
When a brand redefines its visual identity, values, and market positioning, or targets a different audience (like C here) their communication must reflect this new phase.
With an audit, we can review and adjust all the materials to align with the new brand direction.
Benefits of a content audit
A content audit helps your brand stay in sync with its overall strategy.
As your brand evolves, your content must reflect your current values and goals. A good audit ensures that every piece of content works together to tell a cohesive story, strengthening your brand’s identity in the eyes of your audience.
This not only clears out outdated or irrelevant material but also makes your communication crystal clear and more relatable.
With a consistent and engaging message, you can build a stronger bond with your audience, leading to more trust and loyalty over time, so they can keep choosing you.
Not to mention how it benefits your SEO performance:
You can enhance your visibility in search results by optimizing your existing content for the right keywords, fixing broken links, and refining your article.
More organic traffic coming your way means you have better chances to turn those visitors into loyal customers.
Plus, a content audit helps you spot the gems—your high-performing content—that you can promote or repurpose, making sure you’re getting the most out of your valuable resources.
Audit your content and boost your marketing results
The best strategy is to perform periodic adjustments and have routine maintenance of your brand’s digital presence. I normally suggest once per semester or quarter, depending on the size of your brand and the amount of content you publish.
However, if you already know this will be quite a lot of work, a spa day (as I call it here at Pilea) might be just the solution for you.
In this service, we agree on a scope of content for me to check, and I will first organize what stays, what needs to change, and what needs to go (if you thought of a wardrobe seasonal change, you got the idea), so that I can then make the edits on the next day.
You can do whatever suits your fancy while I check your live content, streamline your brand experience and fine-tune your message for you.
