It’s natural when you’re pumping out content for there to be a difference in quality. Not everything can come out as amazing as unicorns, rainbows, and that first crunch of a chip from a new bag. So what do you do with lacklustre content? You’ve already put your time and energy into making content for marketing in Kelowna. Well, don’t delete that file, scrub that video, or remove that post right away, because you can reuse, repurpose, and recycle it into something even better by following our simple guide:
1. Figure Out Your Content Goals
Before you write anymore content, figure out what you want to achieve by writing it. Your time is valuable—if you’re just writing it because everyone else is doing it then you may need to reconsider your strategy. Yes, Google loves to munch on fresh marketing content and rank it higher, but your customers don’t like to nibble on tasteless content crackers, they want delicious quality greens and content steaks, maybe even some chocolate social media posts. Quality is a big factor to stand out in 2019, but you should have a direction and plan for how and what you’re going to create.
2. Identify the Problem
There are a lot of metrics surrounding your content—so many factors in a single day influence your content contributing to the battle royale of trying to reach number one. While other metrics are still important, traffic and conversions should be the two metrics you focus on. Likely, your issues could be boiled down to one (or all) of these situations:
- Low traffic – high conversions
- Not a lot of visibility, but the content is solid and the people who are seeing it are converting. Still the potential to reuse the content, it just needs more reach.
- High traffic – low conversions
- The content attracts attention, but your call-to-action (CTA) isn’t strong enough for people to want to take the next step. Still the potential to reuse the content, your message to convert just needs to be stronger.
- Low traffic – low conversions
- The content isn’t getting enough attention and people don’t feel engaged enough to want to convert.
These situations don’t necessarily mean you need to drastically change any part of your content creation process though. The issue might just be in identifying where you can make a simple fix or adjustment.
3. Determine if the Content is Worth Saving
This is where you change your mindset from company to customer—would I actually want to spend my time reading this if it was reworked? To reach an answer for that, consider the following questions:
- Is the message in your content truly relevant to your target audience and either important and/or useful to them?
- Does the content talk about something your business has expertise, knowledge, or skills in?
If the answer is a “no” to either one of these questions, then it’s not worth your time trying to save what’s been written. Skip to the last section for the best course of action. If it was a “yes” to both questions. Then your content can be reused or repurposed.
However, if the piece that didn’t perform is very similar to another better performing piece, it’s best just to focus your efforts on improving that one instead.
4. Adjust Your Content so That It Stands Out and Gets You Results
Alright, now we get into the nitty, witty, and gritty of improving your content. Firstly, you need to find a way to make it your own. Don’t just add another item to your “10 Things You Might Not Know About [Your Industry/Business].” Instead, find a way to take a unique angle on it, maybe that means adding more of your brand’s voice to the piece, or shooting a video in a style or format that hasn’t been tried before.
Once you’ve figured that out, and how you’re going to reuse it, the next step is to improve your visibility. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. Each medium of content, like blogs, social media, and videos have their own ways to improve SEO on each platform. For social media posts in particular, sometimes boosting posts you really want others to see is the best option. However make sure to use the appropriate hashtags (on platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube) to improve visibility and write short punchy descriptions. For blogs, make sure your headline is relevant to the content, and that you’re using proper formatting within your writing so Google can easily understand and rank it. Look at optimizing your CTAs as well to improve conversions—consider simpler messaging and making your wording succinct. It’s like s’mores—content has layers you need to have in place or you’ll end up on page two of Google getting older and more stale. No one likes stale s’mores.
You can also improve the visibility of your website’s SEO through our handy guide.
Can’t Rework It or Save It?
If you’ve answered no to those questions back in step three or you just can’t seem to find a way to make your content stand out by reworking it, it’s probably better to either redirect the link to a piece more relevant or remove it entirely from your site. Remember, your website is often the first impression of your business, you should always be showing your best marketing work there—not lacklustre content that is about as punchy as a pacifistic turtle.
Distinguishing content that isn’t performing can be challenging since there may be extenuating reasons as to why it didn’t get the results you had hoped. However, if you’re noticing a trend, or can identify why a piece didn’t get the numbers you were looking for, our steps above can help you find ways to get your content performing again. Don’t have the time, or need to get more content rolled out? We offer content marketing to get your message out to a broader audience.
Post Author
Andrew Buckley
Andrew likes to write. And that's a good thing because he's good at it. He likes Canada, the UK, and of course, pop tarts.
