You need to perform regular content audits, for instance, focusing on what people are looking for but not finding. Analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, are a good start, but are often not good enough. For example, what do high page views but also high bounce rates mean, is it good or bad? These analytics tools should be complemented with other tools assisting with content optimization, such as Hotjar or Optimizely.Once you verify the collected analytics data is sufficient to track your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), make sure they are mapped to your company goals. That way, it will be easier to determine if you are managing to achieve your company goals.Another task that should be performed on a regular basis is content refreshing, which helps you to keep being relevant and useful for your consumers— that's the main goal of your content. Workflows should be put in place to assure regular content revisions.Not all content is created equally. The content you create should answer or help to answer user questions. Even if you have already created content from a previous website, don’t feel that you need to use all of it just because it was already created. Ensure the created or carried over content aligns with your content strategy. Deciding that is out of the scope of this course, but consider it when approaching your next project. Make sure your content isn’t full of ROT: redundant, outdated, or trivial information. ROT hurts content performance. An audit can help. A great idea is to start with your customer journey maps to identify relevant content and content channels. A customer journey comprises things that people want to accomplish as they interact with a brand.When you’ve delivered information in certain ways over and over, it’s easy to go with your default distribution channels, for example, another blog post, print poster, and so on. Standing back and looking at the range of channels from a customer point of view gets you thinking of new possibilities.
Analyze your content creation process
The content creation experience should be optimized and analyzed the same way you analyze and optimize your customer purchase conversion funnel. Make the content creation process as easy as possible but encourage high-quality content with a compelling unified message which will be re-enforced over and over again.
For content types with high reuse potential, design a publishing approval process that ensures detailed and useful metadata.
For content or content types used for promotion, make the publishing process quick and easy.
Limit the promotional content to have one-two metadata attributes for promotional content, for example, so your editors focus on creating the content that is important for your content strategy.The quality of the produced content is more important than quantity. This approach also allows for easier content maintenance, as more content means more time to re-tag it, if necessary.
What's next?
Content modeling terminology
Before you move further, let's go through what can come in handy in different situations. Bookmark this page for later when you're modeling content. But even passive knowledge can make a difference when you read further.
