You’re halfway through the year. What adjustments do you need to make to your content?
By Craig Irons
The first half of the year has come and gone. And while this might be the time to unplug and turn your focus to a re-energizing summer vacation it’s also time to take stock of your progress toward your business goals.
While you may look at your revenue, the number of leads in your pipeline, or how much progress you’ve made—or haven’t made—on those goals you began tackling back in January, now’s also the perfect time to look at your content. This includes the content on your website as well as your social content, thought leadership, high-value assets, and marketing and sales collateral.
Basically, you should evaluate your entire content portfolio to determine what’s working, what needs to be swapped out or updated, and what to do differently in the second half of the year.
Here are some helpful questions to guide this process.
Is our content working?
What metrics are you using to track the effectiveness of your content? Are they web analytics (Google Analytics), such as unique views, click-throughs, or time spent on the page? Or, they might be social engagement metrics, such as number of followers, views, likes, or shares. Then, of course, there are the metrics tied to generating leads and increasing sales.
Don’t forget, not all useful data can be quantified. Talk to your salespeople and your customers. Learn what content they find valuable and why, and what they would like to see more of.
Has the business changed?
Things move fast in business. New competitors, new technology, new opportunities, and new market forces can come up quickly. As a result, it’s best to take a responsive approach to creating and curating content.
What’s changed in your business since the beginning of the year? Do those changes warrant revisiting your content mix?
Now’s the time to map out and start working on the new content you need for the rest of the year and beyond.
Are we producing as much content as planned?
In addition to the performance and relevance of your content, you’ll also want to take stock of your productivity. Maybe you had planned to publish six blogs by mid-year but only published three. Or perhaps you had four white papers scheduled for release by the end of Q2 but only completed two.
It’s common to be overly ambitious when planning content production. And, given the evolution of your business and goals, not hitting your goals may not be that big a deal. You may be okay with retrenching and settling for producing less content
But if you determine that all the content you mapped out for the year is still important to produce, you need to come up with a plan to close the gap on where you fell short in the first six months.
Be careful, however, not to stop at adopting a more aggressive production schedule. If you don’t address the issues that prevented you from producing the content you wanted in the first half of the year, you’re unlikely to increase your output in the year’s remaining months.
Do we need more resources?
If, by mid-year, you failed to produce as much content as you’d hoped or the content you did produce didn’t meet your goals, you might draw the conclusion that you need help. Often, businesses will recognize the need for either more hands to create content, or the expertise to help ensure they produce content that meets their goals and objectives.
Engaging freelance content creators is a smart way to quickly ramp up both capacity and capability. Plus, you can hire them on a short-term or project basis—a flexible approach to building the team you need to meet your content goals.
A Critical Step
Taking stock of your content at mid-year doesn’t need to be a complex process. But it is a critical one.
Half the year is behind you. What you do with the other half—including what you do about your content—will determine if you can look back on this year as a success.
Irons Strategic Content brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to your content strategy and content creation efforts. Check out the services we provide.
Craig Irons is President and Lead Content Creator for Irons Strategic Content.