The 5 Ws of a content audit: Building a smarter content strategy

In 1995, a little movie called Clueless dropped. Girls, boys, and teenagers across the globe couldn’t wait to watch Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz on the silver screen. What no one knew however, is that the movie would casually showcase an imaginary, yet highly-covetable technology — an outfit generator — that people would go on to talk about for ages and later inspire an outfit app (and serve as a fun intro to a blog post about content). This tool took inventory of all of Cher’s outfits, creating a directory of all her articles of clothing, enabling her to maximize her wardrobe easily by understanding what was available, what matched, what was outdated, and what needed tailoring.

That’s basically how a content audit works. Basically.

Just like Cher needed to know exactly what was in her closet to create the perfect looks, marketers need to know what’s in their content closet to create the perfect strategy. If you’re standing up a brand new marketing department, implementing a content strategy, or reinventing your approach to content marketing, a content audit is the number one place to start. To help you in this endeavor, this blog post will explore the 5Ws of content audits:

• What is it?
• Why is it useful?
• Where should I conduct one?
• Who executes it?
• When should I conduct a content audit?

Let’s get into it.

What is a content audit?

A content audit is the process by which one collects data and information on a brand’s or business’s content, analyzing it against different criteria such as topics, stages of the marketing funnel, keywords, usage, formats, quantity, performance and much more. A content audit is critical to building a strong content strategy, aligned to business objectives, that drives results. 

What does a content audit entail?

A content audit is only as good as the criteria you use to analyze it. Of course, the particulars of each team’s content audit will be unique, but a few elements to include are:

• The basics: Blog title, link, date published, and author.
• Length: I like content as short (300 to 600 words), medium (600 to 1200 words), and long-form (1200+ words).
• Longevity: Seasonal content vs Evergreen.
• Format: Blog post, blog post with video, video interview, pillar piece, infographic, and quiz for instance.
• Topic: The category topics will be unique to your industry and business. While some organizations have a slew of topics, I recommend keeping topics to a minimum for improved categorization and focus.
• Business Unit: A business may have several business units for which content must be produced. Outlining which business unit each piece of content support is valuable.
• Marketing funnel: Awareness, interest, consideration, intent, purchase, evaluation, retention? Which phase of the marketing funnel does the content support? Tagging your content accordingly will help ensure you have a handle on where you might have gaps.
• Intent or Purpose: Is the content meant to be high-level thought leadership, or actionable, step-by-step? Or perhaps something else? Establishing labels that represent the intent or purpose of the piece can help you better understand the needs you want to meet.
• Audience: I left the best for last. Understanding who your content is for is critical to a successful content marketing strategy. Tagging your content with the intended audience will help you assess you strategy and content plans particularly when faced with several personas or audiences.

These are just a few of the criteria you might want to include in your audit. Of course, there’s also the entire question of measurement and engagement like sessions, time on page, and bounce rates for instance, that you’ll want to consider and include in your content audit.

Why is a content audit useful?

A content audit is useful because it allows you to collect data and insights about your content that can help you create a data-driven content strategy. With a content audit at your fingertips not only can you assess the content you have, but also your content gaps, strengths, and opportunities for improvement. Content audits enable marketers to formulate a data-driven content strategy. 

Here’s a great example: Many moons ago, when I joined LiveIntent, I conducted a lengthy and thorough content audit. It was an arduous process with more than 300 blog posts to review. What I discovered was a library of content that leveraged a rich variety of formats, however a majority of the content addressed the top of the marketing funnel with many short-form blog posts. While content did exist at the bottom of the funnel, it needed some TLC.  By creating more case studies, testimonials, and product comparisons we moved those prospects from awareness to conversion. Without a content audit, I’d have missed these opportunities. 

Who should create a content audit?

So, who leads the content audit charge? Who, exactly, depends on the size of your content team. Ideally, the person executing the content audit is the person that requires a deep and intimate understanding of your brand’s content, your content goals and objectives, and the overall content strategy. Remember: A content audit is more than just a spreadsheet with a bunch of information—it’s a map that leads you to your content strategy.

Where should I create it?

Spreadsheets are your best friend here. Whether you’re a Google Sheet fanatic, or an Excel aficionado, these tools can help you easily organize, analyze, and visualize your content data. Ideally, you’re using your content audit to showcase your findings to your leadership, slicing and dicing information in ways that will help support your proposed content marketing strategy. Use pivot tables, pie charts, and graphs to showcase a summary of your findings in a presentation to leadership to help illustrate what has informed your decisioning; afterall, data is knowledge, and knowledge is power.

When should I produce a content audit?

There’s a few approaches I believe every content marketer should take when it comes to producing a content audit.

At the start of a new job: 

Roll up those sleeves and get in there. Even if a content strategy has already been established prior to you joining, the best way to get to know what you’re working with and how to build onto it is by conducting a content audit. The first one is always the most grueling audit. After that, you’re only adding to it.

Half-yearly audits: 

Conduct an audit six months into the year, or six months after you start a new job. Six months is sufficient enough time to showcase impact or course correct your strategy. Ideally you’re keeping tabs on content performance and can right your ship in three months if necessary. However, with six months worth of data, you should be able to showcase real impact on traffic, organic search, brand awareness, etc.

An end-of-the-year audit:

Close out the year with another audit before you kick-off a new year. This will help you establish clear benchmarks and deliver a neat report that summarizes outcomes from the year.

On-going data collection: 

I’ve produced a lot of content in my time as a content marketer. To ensure I wasn’t left scrambling every six months to collect content data, I made a bi-weekly practice of updating my “content directory.” This was a spreadsheet that outlined all of my content prior to analysis. In other words, it didn’t contain charts, graphs, or pivot tables. It was just the details of my content. 

Every other Friday I’d spend 60 minutes updating it with the latest content and any pertinent details, so when it was time to actually audit my content and analyze my findings, I could get right into it. 

A content audit: More than just a tedious exercise

Conducting a content audit is no simple task, but it’s certainly a powerful move for any marketer who wants to be strategic and data-driven. With a content audit by your side, you can make smart decisions about your content marketing that will undoubtedly move the needle on your marketing efforts.

Check back for a helpful guide on how to structure and execute your content audit.