How to Do a Content Audit—And Why You Should

By Rob Swystun

Developing a content strategy isn’t just about providing your prospective customers with useful information that showcases your expertise in an organized way. It’s also about finding and answering questions your competitors aren’t addressing.

Your prospective customers may have an information gap about what they are purchasing. The information gap in this case is a lack of the specific knowledge needed to make an informed purchasing decision. If you are able to fill in an information gap for your prospective customers, you can more easily position your brand in relation to your competitors and provide leads with valuable info they need to make a decision.

You can find and fill in these information gaps by:

• Learning what questions your current and prospective customers are asking
• Auditing your own content to see how well you are addressing these questions
• Auditing your competitors’ content to see how well they are addressing these questions
• Creating content that fills in these gaps in information

The post How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy in 6 Steps outlines a comprehensive plan to develop your very own content marketing strategy. By incorporating competitor audits with a content strategy outline, you can identify potential information gaps and address them with an organized plan that puts your expertise at the forefront and answers your prospects’ questions.

How do you find out the questions your prospects are asking?

In order to find out what questions aren’t being answered, you first need to know what questions are being asked. Have your salespeople keep track of any questions they are hearing. Get your social media team to forward any questions they are receiving on your various accounts. Try searching for information related to your industry and see what comes up (and more importantly, what doesn’t come up).

And, talk to your current customers. You can use surveys, interview them in exchange for a small discount, or have your social team put out a call for reactions. The people who are currently using your product/service have vital information about what is good and bad about it and your marketing efforts. You should end up with a list of questions that your prospective (and maybe even current) customers want answers to.

What to address in a content audit

Once you know the questions your prospects are asking, you can find out how well you and your competitors are answering them with a content audit. A content audit is an analysis of a company’s available content assets, both individually and as a whole. It includes items like:

• Videos
• Websites
• Blog posts
• Newsletters
• Case studies
• White papers
• Press releases
• Podcast episodes

Virtually any content a company creates and distributes to the public can be audited. (Note: because social media is an entire marketing segment unto itself, social media content is not included here, but you can and should also audit your social content for the same purposes as you audit your longer-form marketing content.)

Performing an audit on your own content will tell you exactly what content you have, what questions it answers, what questions it doesn’t answer, and whether or not it supports your content marketing strategy goals and your overall business goals.

You will also need to audit your competitors’ content. This is where you will discover what questions your competitors aren't addressing, which is just as important as knowing what they are addressing. If you can answer the questions your top three competitors aren’t answering, it will give your entire content strategy a boost.

Conducting a content audit

At its heart, a content audit is about analyzing the content of your company and top three competitors, and then determining how well it’s doing its job.

To get started, create spreadsheets for you and your competitors where you list all available content. The sheets should include links to the content and pertinent information such as date published, creator, which content pillar and/or marketing campaign the piece supports, etc. You probably won’t know your competitors' exact internal marketing strategies, so fill in the data the best you can. Also note the content's strengths and weaknesses.

When assessing the strengths of a piece of content, ask:

• What questions does this piece answer?
• Is it well organized?
• Is it compelling to read/watch/listen?
• Does it tell a story?
• Is it clear what purpose this piece is fulfilling?
• Does it fulfill its purpose within the structure of the sales funnel?
• Can a consumer relate it to a problem they are trying to solve?
• Does it deliver on its promise? (e.g., Does a how-to video actually show you clearly how to do something?)

Weaknesses may include a lack of information, a problem with how the piece is formatted, and whether it suits the platform. Ask:

• Does the piece bring up more questions than it answers?
• Is the piece in the right format or would it be better as a different kind of content? (e.g., Would a convoluted blog post be better served as an animated explainer video?)
• Does the piece convey its information clearly?
• Is the voice and tone appropriate for the brand?
• Does the piece include original, demonstrated knowledge and experience?
• Does the piece come across as authentically human?

The next step is looking for gaps in information. Ask:

• Are there questions our customers have that no one is answering?
• Are there questions our customers have that our competitors are answering, but we are not?
• How can we answer these questions better than the available information from our competitors (or, at least as good)?
• Are there questions our customers have that we are answering, but our competitors are not?
• How can we take advantage of this information gap where we are the ones supplying the better information?

Seek an outsider's perspective

There is one more item that will help you with all your analysis: an outside perspective. If it’s within your budget, bring in an outside consultant to help with your analysis. Research shows that bringing in someone who's not involved with a project offers fresh, new perspectives. However, if you prefer to keep it in-house, at least bring in someone who isn’t part of the marketing or content creation team.

It’s also best if the person has limited prior knowledge of your industry, as they will have the freshest viewpoint and be able to identify where information is truly missing. Unlike your team, they won’t already know the information and won't be mentally filling in any blanks.

Benefits of a content audit

The benefits of a content audit are twofold. Auditing the content of your company will give you direction on how to improve your content and make it work even better for you. Introducing competitor content audits will reveal the information gaps you can take advantage of to position your company as the go-to authority in your industry.

Content audit FAQs

About the Author

Post by: Rob Swystun

Rob Swystun is a content marketing strategist, business writer, marketing consultant, journalist, and fiction author who works with B2B companies.

Company: Rob Swystun
Website: www.robswystun.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.