My recent revelation: when I write, my audience always comes first. However, when I look at all of CMI’s websites and channels, I am concerned that at all times we are providing an exceptional experience to our community. For example, we may have people’s questions answered, but can people find what they need? Is every point of their experience good?
While continuing to hone my content marketing skills, I am also focusing more on content strategy.
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU: How Content Strategy and Content Marketing Are Separate But Connected
Don’t get me wrong: I believe in the power of (good) content marketing. I believe marketers need to create and promote content that educates. But if we’re truly going to put customers at the center of our marketing — and get the most out of our efforts — we need to look beyond conversions and metrics and apply the kind of strategic thinking that can transform our organizations’ content into good. – business assets under management.
Content marketers have a lot to learn from content strategists. Here are the strategy-related topics that I will prioritize over the next few months. These topics aren’t traditionally considered part of content marketing, but we need to consider them if we want our content – and the experiences it delivers – to be as exceptional as possible.
Have a plan to manage your content after it’s published
I imagine you have a plan for publishing and promoting your content, but do you have a plan for what you will do with all that content once it is available? Do you want it to exist forever? If not, when will it be Uruguay Mobile Number List removed and by whom? As for the content you want to keep, how do you envision it as a permanent asset? In other words, how will it be kept up to date and relevant? How will it be reused over time, across various deliverables, and across all departments in your organization?
Think of every page on your website as a potential landing page. You don Cryp Email List ’t want people entering where your best foot forward isn’t – where the information is redundant, outdated, or trivial (ROT).
Consider this story Gerry McGovern told Confab. When Columbia College Chicago dramatically reduced the number of pages on its website—from 36,000 to 944—student inquiries went from 477 per month to 855. Think about it! They took down 35,000 web pages and the response rate doubled. Why? Chances are visitors are now coming to the website on up-to-date, relevant, and organized pages.
As we heard many times at the Intelligent Content Conference, content should be managed as a product,
Nnot a project. In short, you need a plan to manage all content after it’s published, which is part of digital governance. Something to try : track the pages that drive the most traffic to your website and come up with a plan for their governance.
To find your high traffic pages, open Google Analytics for your site and navigate to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. (If you’re blogging, skip the most recent posts, which are likely driving traffic because they’re recent.)
After identifying high-traffic pages, check them for accuracy and timeliness. Although I’ve done this sporadically in the past, I recently asked Jodi Harris, CMI’s Chief Curator, to review all of our high-traffic pages and then come up with a plan for how we want to manage them.
We list these pages in Trello and track which ones have been updated and which ones we want to update next. We also have a checklist for each page or post to check this.
