Why Your Old Content Needs A Refresh
By Amy Wheaton
Close your eyes and picture, for a moment, the messiest closet in your home. Chances are, no matter how tidy you may be, you’ve got a spot that’s packed with old clothes that no longer fit, outdated decor, maybe a George Foreman grill or a cardboard box full of chargers for cell phones you no longer own…useless, and potentially embarrassing, stuff that’s easier to hide away than deal with.
You don’t want to clean it out, do you? Even though you know that once it’s done, you’ll feel so much better?
Your website is just like that chaotic closet or overflowing junk drawer, except instead of obsolete electronics, you’re hanging on to old content. Event announcements that are long out of date, blog posts that aren’t relevant any more, press releases from 2013 — it’s a mess! And now’s the perfect chance to tackle that mess, get rid of what’s old, refresh what’s still there, and add some shiny new content into the mix.
Need some convincing? Here are five great reasons to do a content refresh right now.
Your voice and tone has lost its lustre.
When a website is brand-new, voice and tone is one of the most important pieces of the content creation puzzle. Establishing a brand voice, and then carefully choosing the words, graphics, and images that best suit that voice, is something we tend to pay a lot of attention to early on.
But over time, something changes. New folks are added to the team, and maybe they’re not brought up to speed on the voice and tone. Or maybe a few “quick” blog posts or landing pages are whipped up that might deviate a little bit. Somebody gets creative with a new style of photo editing or graphics. Before you know it, that brand personality that shone through so clearly in the beginning becomes diluted, and it’s hard to ascertain just what your brand is about the longer a user spends on your site.
When you’re refreshing your content, don’t just look for errors and updates that need to be fixed. Make sure to analyze it from a voice and tone perspective, too. It helps to think of your brand as a person. Read each page, each CTA, and each popup aloud. Does this sound like something your brand would say? If not, flag it and rework it. The goal is a cohesive voice throughout your website (and all your digital channels).
Your content isn’t representative of your audience.
Maybe in the early days, your target market was an older demographic and now you’re appealing to younger audiences instead. Or, perhaps you’ve refined your buyer personas and realized you actually need to broaden your target demographic. Over time, it’s normal for a brand’s following to shift — your customers get older, have kids, move to big cities or relocate to rural areas — and your content needs to keep up.
With imagery especially, representation is important. People care about seeing people who look like them. They want to relate to a brand, and if they can’t picture themselves enjoying the experience, they’re not going to convert.
Pay careful attention to the words and images you use. Consider a mix of user-generated content and brand assets — research shows it’s the most impactful. Don’t forget about diversity and accessibility when choosing images.
There are gaps in your content.
We recently launched a site for a client, thinking we’d nailed all the content they could possibly need. Then, the site’s chatbot started getting a ton of questions about a particular topic. It hadn’t been identified as a priority while we were planning out the site’s IA, but in practice, we realized that users were really interested in this specific offering. We’re currently updating the site with plenty of fresh content that’s based on what users have been looking for: a new landing page, a helpful blog post, and updated chatbot flows. We’ll develop social posts to drive back to it as well.
The point of this story? This was a brand-new site and it still had gaps, in spite of all our planning. The longer your site is live, the more these gaps are likely to appear. In our case, the chatbot was the first indicator that we were missing something. If you’re not sure what your gaps might be, you can also use email surveys, social media polls, or your own site search history to determine what people are looking for, and update your content accordingly. Or check on trusty Google Trends to see what people are talking about and if there are any opportunities that might be relevant to your brand.
You’re not getting the results you want.
If your content isn’t resonating, you’re not going to get conversions — it’s as simple as that! Take a look through your analytics to see which pages are converting and which aren’t. Where are people falling off? What could you be doing differently?
Data is your best friend here. Check out Google Trends to see what people are searching for about a particular topic. Use a tool like BuzzSumo to assess what pieces of content, globally, are performing the best. Review online forums and read about what’s being discussed in your industry. In addition to UX fixes like optimizing your CTAs or reorganizing a page’s layout, and making sure that your SEO is up to snuff, sometimes more robust content — or a slightly different, more user-centric angle — is all you need.
Speaking of SEO, search engines love fresh content! Relevant, new content that’s more accurate or helpful for web users will always perform better than old, stale pieces. And since SEO algorithms are always changing, so should your content. Be sure to take SEO into account as you’re looking for opportunities to upgrade.
Your content is just…old.
We’ve all been on a site where the “news” section dates back a decade or blog posts are older than our children. It’s OK to let some of this stuff go! In this case, analytics will help you to determine which old content can be culled without a negative impact on your traffic, and which should be kept on the site. Chances are, you’ll find plenty of low-value pages that can be removed, like event listings, but likely many more that would benefit from a refresh, such as blogs.
The benefit of refreshing dated content is twofold: your audience gets shiny new content to enjoy, and you get to save time because you’re not creating new articles or pages from scratch. Win-win!
When you’re refreshing blog posts, think about all the ways you can repurpose and redistribute the content for maximum impact. For example, a long-from editorial blog might work well as a quick branded video and a LinkedIn thinkpiece, too. A listicle might also make a great infographic and an Instagram story slide series. You’ve worked hard at creating quality content — now, make it work for you.
Amy is the Director of Marketing at VERB Interactive — a leader in digital marketing, specializing in solutions for the travel and hospitality industry. Find out more at www.verbinteractive.com.
