With the internet at their fingertips, people are much more likely to do their research online before contacting you. Keeping your content updated is crucial for maintaining a relevant online presence.
๐ You might even say your content is your prospects’ 24/7 online gateway to answers and your chance to make a first impression as a trusted industry leader and expert partner.
Of course, you knew all this, but oh boy, ๐ฑ it’s so time-consuming!
Before you know it, your last blog post is six months old, and you still haven’t documented the typical queries your clients have for a customer-friendly FAQ.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do it all yourself. Great leaders delegate. And you don’t need to throw away your possibly outdated content, either.
In this article, I’ll discuss the three steps you can take to bring your content up to parr:
Step 1: Work with what you already have.
Step 2: Fill the gaps.
Step 3: Maintain a future-proof, steady stream of new content.
Ready to learn how? Let’s get started!
Step 1: Work with what you already have
Your website might need some serious TLC, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all doom and gloom. If your content has a solid base, we can work with that and perform some magic ๐ฎ on it, so to speak.
So, our first step is to ๐assess your current website and content. Then, let’s uncover the ๐gems you have hidden there.
๐ฏ What I can do for you:
โ Edit your articles, ensuring plain and inclusive language and spotting any errors in style or grammar.
โ Scroll through outdated or underperforming blog posts and update them with fresh information, new data, or revised perspectives.
โ Optimise your articles to answer common questions concisely, increasing the likelihood of appearing as a featured snippet in search results.
โ Rearrange your existing blog posts, identify common subjects, and turn them into content pillars with internal links. Your visitors love that, and Google does, too!
Step 2: Fill the gaps
You cannot create a content pillar without related blog posts. Fill the gaps in your existing offering with specific, brand-new blog posts. Using that combination of new and existing articles, we can create content pillars interlinked with an overarching summarising article.
Perhaps you never got around to creating an FAQ. It takes some research to identify your prospects’ queries. Your sales and customer support teams should be able to shed some light on this subject, but there are more ways.
๐ฏ What I can do for you:
โ Spot the gaps that withhold you from creating content pillars.
โ Write the needed articles to fill these gaps and summarise these pillars in overarching articles.
โ Gather information on queries your visitors, prospects, and clients might have to create a fit-for-purpose FAQ.
Step 3: Maintain a future-proof, steady stream of new content
Now that your website is future-proofed, it’s time to consider how to keep it that way. It’s a lot of work to keep your content relevant, even though you know its importance. Some ways to add to your content offering are:
๐ Articles from internal subject matter experts.
๐ Whitepapers on industry data and trends.
๐ Tutorials and how-to guides to educate existing clients, enhancing their customer experience.
๐ Articles or blog posts created from existing videos, webinars or podcasts.
Don’t feel like doing all that yourself? Prefer to spend your time interacting with prospects and existing clients? 34% of SMBs have in-house writers or hire freelancers to do this for them, and why not?
You’ll free up valuable time to focus on your core business by delegating these tasks.
๐ฏ What I can do for you:
โ Interview subject matter experts from within your company and ghostwrite an article or blog post in their name.
โ Create a white paper based on industry data and trends, either provided by the company or through additional research.
โ Create tutorials and how-to guides.
โ Write bi-monthly or weekly blog posts based on a retainer.
And there you have itโฆ
๐ฅ By now, your website should be revitalised with fresh, relevant, and authoritative content. That’s a job well done โ
๐ Have you given any thought to how you will proceed? Writing blog posts and articles is quite the task, taking large chunks from your workday.
According to Orbit Media, it takes a blogger, on average, about four hours to write a blog post. Half a day’s work! Effectively, a full day, as it’s nearly impossible to do more than four hours of deep work per day.
And these are professional, experienced writers, so what does that mean for you, a business owner, doing some writing on the side?
Consider outsourcing this tedious task, and let’s have a chat!