We’re feeling the spring vibes around here and that means we’ve got spring cleaning and decluttering goals on our mind. Spring is the perfect time to review what’s working and what isn’t with your content strategy. We know from experience how easy it is to get off track and try to do too much. Creating a lot of content without a strategic focus behind results in a scattered message and confused and overwhelmed customers.
To avoid this scenario, here are our top tips for keeping your content clean and simplified.
Audit your content funnel. What’s planned for your blog this month, quarter? Better question, why is it planned? Is it aligned with upcoming product announcements? Are topics supporting your key messages and business goals? Are you posting blogs at a digestible pace? We recommend posting once a week on the same day and giving your readers a chance to read your content. If you post too frequently, you risk it never even being read by your audience. Give people a chance to interact with your content at their convenience.
What about other content beyond your blog? How many press releases do you have planned this quarter? Hint: Zero is not enough, five is too many! Are you producing a newsletter? Hosting podcasts? Don’t get us wrong, we love fresh content, but churning it out too fast versus thoughtfully sharing it on key channels and aligning it with business goals can cause brand fatigue. Yes, that’s a real thing and we’d love to help you avoid causing it.
Cut the clutter. Once you have a clear idea of what content is being produced and why, it’s time to drill down into the analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t. You can’t make good decisions about where to focus time and energy if you don’t know what content sources are driving the most traffic and engagement. But, be careful, you don’t want to cancel b2b content creation that is meant to drive awareness and establish thought leadership. If it’s not being well received on one channel, try another before abandoning it altogether. For example, an update from your CTO may be better received in an email sent directly to the technical contacts at your customer companies rather than a blog post.
Refresh to increase engagement. Now that you know what content sources are working and what’s planned, give your content a good scrub. What do we mean by this? Make sure it’s tagged to keywords, includes compelling and appealing images and graphics, reflects your brand voice/tone and is Goldilocks in length-not too long or too short, just right. For example, a blog post is ideally read in five minutes or less. A post with about 500-600 words can typically be read in the time it takes to wait in the queue for a coffee or to board a train/bus. This is a good rule of thumb to follow. Most importantly, make your content searchable. Include drop down menus with topic/subject areas and make it easy for a reader to find content they’re interested in as this will help to increase engagement. Adding links to related content like other blogs by the same author or about the same subject matter is another great way to keep people reading.
As part of our b2b content creation, we’d love to help streamline and optimise your content strategy. Contact us on + 44 (0) 203 322 8928.
