In the not-so-distant past, content marketing tactics were considered optional pieces of an overarching marketing strategy. Today, however, sharing valuable content with their target market is a must-do for companies in many industries. Whether you and your creative staff produce original content or gather it from third-party sources, providing your customers and prospects with information that addresses their needs and pain points can increase your credibility and your audience’s trust in you.
Ensuring that the material you choose to share with your target audience will have the desired effect of leading them closer to a conversion takes a thoughtful approach and a solid plan. Rather than guess which kind of content might generate the best results and help achieve your business goals, a smarter method is to carefully manage your content creation and curation efforts based on specific criteria and then analyze the impact.
To learn more about how to accomplish this with your company’s content, check out the tips provided by the experts of Forbes Agency Council below.
Forbes Agency Council members share tips for managing and analyzing a company’s content.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Craft A Strategy That Outlines The ‘Why’
Managing and analyzing company content boils down to the overall purpose of why you are making and sharing it. If it’s for the sake of filling your channels with content, that’s mistake No. 1. Crafting a content strategy that outlines the “why” and how it reinforces your company positioning, values and differentiators will result in more meaningful content and engagement. – Jonathan Hanson, Unconquered
2. Treat Content As You Would A Product
Apply the following product life-cycle management stages to your content management: strategic planning and gap analysis, workflow development, writing and editing, publication and, finally, post-publication maintenance. This involves removing, refreshing, repurposing and retiring content. – Wendy Covey, TREW Marketing
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3. Have A Trusted Colleague Analyze It
Ask any artist, writer or programmer to review and analyze your content. When you are looking at something for hours and days on end, you often overlook areas of improvement. Getting a second or third set of eyes and opinions is always good practice. – T. Maxwell, eMaximize
4. See If It Adds Value To Your Brand Experience
Every company should evaluate their content by asking if it adds value to someone’s experience with the brand. Even a laugh or a quote can bring value, provided that it aligns with the identity and positioning of the company. Overall, if your audience sees value in your content, they will look forward to it every time. – David Harrison, EVINS
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5. Always Consider Ways To Repurpose Content
Core to accomplishing goals with company content is ensuring that content is appropriately recycled across different formats. Was that recent blog post something that could be repurposed for a webinar, company podcast, social media post or proactive talking points for PR? Every time a piece of content is created, ask yourself if you can see this working in another format to increase engagement. – Jason Wulfsohn, AUDIENCEX
6. Find Out What Different Kinds Of Content Achieve
Content is an effective way to draw in new prospects, so determine what your visitors are interested in. Find out what kinds of content generate clicks and what kinds increase the amount of time visitors spend on your website. Then, use the data as a guide as you plan monthly content creation. Create more topics of interest, and you’ll develop a recurrent readership. – Hannah Trivette, NUVEW Web Solutions
7. Focus On Creating A Defined ‘Content Library’
Companies tend to focus on frequency and accumulate mountains of unread content. Instead, focus on creating a defined “content library” and become the best, most engaging and thorough resource for the audience that you’re seeking. This often means collapsing dozens of articles or blog posts into one, enhancing them with designs and video, then redirecting traffic to those well-designed pages. – Douglas Karr, DK New Media
8. Sync Your Content Up With The Audience’s Motivations
As a behavior designer, my best tip for analyzing and managing content has to do with syncing your content up with the motivations of your audience. Basically, identify which behaviors you want to see your audience perform, then align your contact with the psychological profile behind each communication channel. – Roger Hurni, Off Madison Ave
9. See What Audiences Find Educational Or Entertaining
You need to look at what educates or entertains your audience. How is your content connecting with them? Blog posts, social media updates and more all need to be able to attract visitors and turn them into leads, so look at your content and see which stories and information really grab your audience’s attention. – Lisa Montenegro, Digital Marketing Experts – DMX
10. Integrate Your Marketing Plan And Content Strategy
Create an integrated marketing plan and content strategy to guide your team’s efforts. Make sure that document captures marketing, communications, PR, social and paid tactics and contains a theme and strategy that supports organizational goals. Decide which KPIs you’ll track up front and report on results monthly. Create feedback loops to dynamically inform your content. – Mary Ann O’Brien, OBI Creative
11. Don’t Rely Too Much On Technology
Pay attention to your audience first. It is tempting to use all the analytics you can possibly find, as every tool promises outstanding results, but there is no guarantee that your readers and followers will like it. Always monitor audience engagement because this is the best content performance indicator. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
12. Categorize Content Based On Audience Segments
Categorizing content based on audience segments is a critical step in managing and analyzing it. By mapping your audience, you can better align content and calls to action with specific audience segment needs. This also allows you to more effectively gauge content performance vis-à-vis marketing objectives for each audience segment, then revise content marketing tactics accordingly. – Lars Voedisch, PRecious Communications
13. Maintain An Easy-To-Access Reference Point
Make your content strategy the center of the universe for all of your producers by maintaining an easy-to-access reference point that includes content pillars, samples and performance metrics for each pillar by channel. Keep it updated regularly so that it can serve as the starting point for every message. – Russ Williams, Archer Malmo
14. Create A Content Calendar
Content calendars can be used to manage and plan content as well as ensure that tone of voice and colors are consistent across all content. Study the insights on different social platforms to figure out which content your audience relates to and engages with the most. – Jonas Muthoni, Deviate Agency
