So you’ve identified the fact that your content has turned feral and requires an audit in order to keep it on-point. Realising the need to action this and actually implementing it, are two completely different things.
So what are your options?
Head in the sand
Well, the easy option and by no means the wisest, is to do nothing. The lack of budget, resource and skills may naturally demote the priority of reviewing the merits of your marketing assets from a necessity to a ‘nice to have’. The net result means that you carry on with the status quo more in hope than expectation that the content will resonate with your audience.
D.I.Y
Another approach is to conduct the assessment in-house. This mitigates the need for additional budget but does require a secondment of resource to complete the project. With head count often scarce, this could restrict your ability to perform a D.I.Y audit internally. There is also the additional risk that your content won’t be critiqued agnostically, after all it was produced by your peers and represents a view, a vision or a business/technical posture of your organisation. ‘Good’ content may be championed internally but may fail to deliver when syndicated to your prospects.
Ab Fab
The next route is to task your PR agency to conduct the review. From a journalistic point of view this may seem like a logical approach especially if they are technology specialists. Assessing pitch, tone and target audience should be second nature to a PR specialist. However expanding the content into a fully joined up marketing strategy may come as a stretch and fall outside of their capabilities.
Social soundboard
The same could be said for commissioning a dedicated social agency. Looking through the lens of ‘social-ability’, content will be assessed to see how sharable it can become through networks and communities. Messaging flex is important when ‘chunking’ content for the purposes of social distribution, although if the actual nub of the content is weak to begin with the results could be catastrophic if syndicated in social space.
Marketing mojo
The final option, and the one that has a more rounded approach to it, is to contract a marketing agency (with an affinity for technology) to critique your assets. Marketing agencies worth their salt should be judged on ROI, so analysing the content that ultimately they will use in their marketing campaigns is a natural progression.
Ensuring that the core message & pitch, vibrancy, audience resonance and ability manifest itself is critical to planning a successful content strategy and joined-up marketing approach.
We all know the importance of content. To leave it to evolve organically and even produce it sporadically without control runs the risk of attracting the wrong kind of audience or worse, no audience at all.
To understand more about our unique M4 content audit framework and how it can help you supercharge your content, register your interest today.
