Spring Cleaning Your Content Strategy: Essential Marketing Tasks
Spring is a time for renewal, and for business owners and entrepreneurs, it's the perfect opportunity to take a step back and assess the state of their marketing strategy. Spring is the beginning and the end, the beginning of a new season and the end of Q1. When the year began back in January you likely sat down and mapped out your goals or resolution for the year. And that is great, and I too am a sucker for a vision boarding session.
However, if you mapped out your year in January and hit the ground running without looking back, it’s time to make a quick pause to reassess. The first quarter of the year is over, let me repeat, we are 1/4 of the way through 2023! And in the blink of an eye, we’ll be halfway through the year!
Checking in on your goals each quarter can help you reach your goals faster because you’re staying focused on your goal. You’re catching things that need tweaking, you’re improving and pivoting when needed. Checking in on a higher level basis with your monthly metrics is the best way to keep your eyes on the prize.
If you're a podcaster, speaker, or coach, evaluating your content strategy can help ensure that you’re message is still clear, you’re reaching the right audience, and that you’re being consistent.
Since 2014, I’ve helped many different small business owners and solopreneurs create and maintain content strategies on social media and beyond. I’ve watched the rise of Facebook, the shift of Instagram from mommy bloggers to Influencers, the explosion of TikTok, and everything in between. Social media and content strategy are my languages and I’m here today to tell you more about how you can apply Spring cleaning to your business.
Here are a few essential marketing tasks to consider as you start on your spring cleaning journey.
Review Your Content Calendar
Take a look at your content calendar and make sure it's in line with your overall business strategy as well as your goals.
Are you consistently publishing new episodes, blog posts, webinars, e-guides, or speaking engagements?
Are you taking advantage of holidays or other relevant events to create special content?
What content is your audience reacting to? What is falling flat?
Are you also sharing general info on who you are + what you do?
This is also a good time to plan out through the summer at the very least. Ideally, you’re planning summer and starting to make key decisions for Fall + Q4. Think about what supporting materials or info you’ll need to help your audience understand the value you bring to the table. Making sure you have a steady stream of content planned and ready to go will ALWAYS make your marketing life easier.
Audit Your Website
Your website is your OWNED corner of the internet so you need to make sure it's always in good shape. You have control of what your audience sees unlike on social media where algorithms decide.
Here are a few things to check for:
Broken links
Outdated information
Clear navigation
Site speed
Duplicate content
Drop-off rates via your analytics
It’s also incredibly important that you make sure your website is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate. And no website audit is truly complete until you look at your website's analytics to see which pages are performing well and which ones need improvement.
Optimize Your Posting Process
Are you maximizing the process of getting your content onto your website? Whether it’s show notes, blog posts, transcripts, or landing pages, these are important parts (s) of your content strategy.
Make sure they're optimized for search engines by including:
Keywords
Headings
Meta descriptions
ALT tags
Links
You want to make sure that your content is easy to read/digest and provides value to your audience. Creating a repeatable and batch-able process will enable you to pass off getting your content out to the world, freeing you up to create more of the content that needs your thought leadership to be made. Knowing which boxes to check and what you need ahead of time allows you to get more strategic with your planning to squeeze as much as you can from all the content you create.
Update Your Social Media Profiles/Channels
Your social media profiles are an extension of your brand, so make sure they're up-to-date and consistent with your overall content strategy.
Things to update:
Your profile
Cover images
Your bio to ensure it accurately reflects who you are + what you do
Link to your website and website linked to social
This is also a good time to evaluate your channels and WHERE you’re sending your content as well. Are there channels you could add to the picture easily? [Looking at you, Pinterest] Are there channels that just aren’t working [and you have data to back it up]? Keeping a keen eye on what channels are moving the needle can help you rein in your focus.
Evaluate Your Distribution Channels
How are you sharing your message outside of social media? You should have an email list, that’s hopefully a given. However, are there other ways you could distribute your message as well?
Here are some examples:
Posters in a local coffee shop
Speaking in a targeted group/event
Guesting on podcasts
Collaborations
Networking
Take a look at the channels you're using to distribute your message. Are they still relevant and effective? Do you need to add or remove any channels to better reach your target audience? This is also a good time to evaluate the performance of your email list, open rates, click rates, and opt-in rate.
Measure Your Results
You should be looking at your marketing numbers on a monthly basis, and if you are this will be as simple as pulling up your insights spreadsheet to see the trends.
Things to look for:
Website session trends: when did people visit your site? What got them there?
Website page views: what are people looking at on your website? Most viewed page vs least viewed.
Social media content: what is performing vs what needs improvement
This information should help you make solid decisions about the content types, topics, and even the tone you’ll use to share in the future further refining your content strategy.
Spring cleaning isn’t just for your closets, garage, or garden; spring cleaning could truly apply to most areas of your life. However, spring cleaning in business and marketing is ESSENTIAL. We need to hit a pause on a regular basis to bring our goals back into focus. Putting your head down and pumping out content is great, but if that content is not optimized for the goals you’ve laid out, it’s a waste.
Tap back into that New Year's energy for the beginning of Q2 to create a stronger, more effective marketing plan. If you’re looking for help spring-cleaning your content strategy, book a Stater Kit session!
