Content abounds in your marketing library. A lot of the good stuff gets buried in the stacks — quality content that may be a little too old or tired to surface for your audience.
You could do an audit to identify all that old content ready to refresh, reuse, and revise. But let’s face it, that takes time — something you don’t have a lot of these days. Perhaps that’s why 37% of B2B marketers surveyed by the Content Marketing Institute say content repurposing is a challenge.
I’ve got a better idea. From this day forward, plan for refreshing, repurposing, and revising content when your team creates it. Instead of looking backward, form forward-looking habits that make your content operations more efficient down the road. Here are five to get you going:
1. Tag dated content
Timely references in content often offer good context — until they’re no longer timely. Then, they become a negative, indicating to your audience that the piece is outdated (even if all the other information is still valid) and your brand didn’t notice (or worse, didn’t care).
When you write, record, or edit content that includes moment-in-time surveys, studies, etc., add an internal tag, such as “dated” or another trigger word. You could do this on your content planning calendar or in your content management system. If you wanted to get even more granular, you could list the specific mentions on your tracker so future reviewers can go directly to that line.
Then, you can search for the tag, go through the timely mentions, and update as appropriate. If you can’t find a more current reference to replace the outdated one, rework the rest of the content so it’s still valid.
TIP: Establish a regular frequency (at least annually) to revisit content with date tags to update it.
2. Use the actual year
When you create the content, don’t use phrases such as “this year” or “last year.” Specify the actual year. That way, no matter when someone consumes the content, they understand the reference.
The same advice goes for “yesterday,” “today,” “this week,” “last week,” etc.
TIP: Skip this step if you craft news content where the current language is appropriate. It’s already intended to be seen as outdated if someone finds it in a year or two.
3. Craft smarter calls to action
The most powerful calls to action motivate people to take action right away. However, time-centered CTAs (e.g., register for an upcoming event) or campaign-related CTAs (e.g., see this new e-book release) often expire long before the content’s usefulness does.
If your time-centered event repeats, craft a CTA that can work at any time. For example, let’s say you host an annual event every summer. Create an evergreen CTA, such as “Register now for the best rates for this summer’s Big Brand Event.” By not including the event dates, the CTA is good no matter when someone consumes the content.
TIP: Work with your events team to ensure the website address remains the same year after year.
If you must create a time-specific CTA, follow the same advice for tagging content — track which CTAs need to be updated and when. Then, add those updates to your scheduling calendar.
Even better, use coded CTAs in your content management system, where you create a CTA code and insert it on the page. The system publishes the content from the code. Then, you can easily update the CTA content and have it automatically updated on the page.
4. Ask your sources for help
Content with sources often includes the person’s name, title, and employer in the attribution. But, of course, those identifiers can change — someone gets a promotion or moves to another organization. Tracking that information for every source in your content isn’t feasible. Instead, use these two tricks — one for external and one for internal sources.
External sources: Link to the sources’ LinkedIn profiles. Then, even if they move jobs, the audience can click and see their current role. You can also ask sources to send updates if they change their name, title, or employer. (I realize this is less likely to happen, but it’s worth a shot.)
Internal sources: Since these people are more likely to be quoted in your organization’s content or published under their bylines, set up a system where their bio lives in one space on your site. Link to it when they’re quoted or set up the content page to pull their author bio from that space.
You can also organize the system to display all content quoted or authored by individuals on a single page. Then, if they leave the company, you know what content needs to be updated or removed.
5. Set up the right shot
People change more than their titles and names. They change their appearance, too. They start wearing glasses. They change their hair color. They are 10 years older. So, they get a new headshot but never send it to you.
To keep headshot images current, use a photo-imaging API tool like Gravatar. Ask people to set up their own accounts and share the associated email address with you. If you’ve integrated the Gravatar tool into your site, any time someone changes their headshot, it automatically updates your site, too.
Make it easier to repurpose content in the future
If you dread hearing the phrase “content audit” as a solution to refresh, reuse, and revise your content, take preventive measures now. A forward-thinking process will let you quickly find content to update or eliminate manual involvement altogether.
Updated from a June 2022 story.
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