(Intermediate to Optimized) Cross-Departmental Content Audit Made Easy

Content audits are one of the toughest things that established marketing teams can undertake. Facing hours of combing through spreadsheets, setting cadences, and tagging assets with TOFU, MOFU, BOFU, content audits can be an overwhelming task.

Wouldn't it be so much easier if you understood not only what clients are doing with your content, what is being consumed, and what's working, but also what your internal departments are doing with this content?

An old adage goes, “If a marketer makes a piece of content and no one shares it, does it make a lead?”

When you implement and execute on a cross-departmental content audit, you not only save time for your marketing team, but also improve the quality of content being released because you know what type of content you should be creating.

How to Start a Cross-Departmental Content Audit

There is a simple three-step process that will help set your teams up for success.

Step 1: Where does your content live?

Every good audit starts with an export of the URLs and locations of each piece of content. This would include internal items on your website, third-party tools like YouTube and social networks—anywhere that content can be consumed by an end user should be included in this content audit.

INSERT LINK TO SPREADSHEET OF EXAMPLE CONTENT AUDIT

Step 2: What content is working? What are our metrics?

The next step is comparing your completed content audit with your single source of truth metrics. Depending on where you are hosting content, you may be able to pull metrics right from that platform (such as Uberflip). Otherwise, take a look at your Google Analytics to see what content is resonating with your markets and what content is not. Be sure to track this on your content audit.

Step 3: Bring in your departments and ask them what content they use/want from marketing

This is the most important step in the whole process, otherwise it would not be a cross-departmental content audit. 

Bringing in members from other teams is crucial to the success of any audit. Once you have a list of content pieces, what is receiving traffic, and input from other departments, you will be able to better understand what sales shares to prospects, what content marketing is creating, and what success needs to nurture.

Following these three steps will put you and your company on the path of a true s’marketing team. By leveraging all the opinions of the people who share content regularly, you are setting yourself, your marketing team, and your whole organization up for a successful journey through content.