A smart content strategy starts with content analysis. I love analysis and enjoy explaining how to do it. The challenge? Content analysis can overwhelm you—especially when you have a lot of content or many audience segments. To prevent analysis from slowing you down, follow these five tips.
Remember the end goal
Keep in mind that you’re not conducting a full-fledged research study. You’re putting together an intelligent game plan for content on your website or in your content marketing efforts. Pay attention only to the details that help you make smart decisions for your content plan.
Sample, sample, sample
When you have a lot of content or a large audience, you need to sample. Remember the 80/20 rule. You can get a good understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and characteristics of your content by reviewing a representative sample. You also can get a surprisingly deep understanding of each group of your audiences or users by interviewing a representative sample. I find interviewing five people for each major user group works well.
Focus on the important audiences or users
Segmenting your audiences or users is good. Over-segmenting them is bad. In my experience, it’s not useful to focus on more than three key audiences or user groups. And, usually, you can prioritize those three groups. When you simplify who you’re trying to reach, you simplify your content needs. This simplification almost always leads to better content and, ultimately, better results.
Use competitive analysis wisely
Think hard about whether you really need a competitive analysis as part of your content analysis. Once you review the competition, it’s often tempting to copy it. But, the real intention of a competitive analysis is to identify opportunities to be different or better. If you or your team will misuse competitive analysis as a shortcut to copy ideas, then you probably don’t need it.
Take heart in iteration
Once you finish your analysis (congratulations!), you have not only valuable insights but also much data. As you plan your content strategy, you might have a new question or idea, and you can look at your data again for help. In other words, if you don’t think of every possible strategy question to answer during your analysis, it’s okay.
These five tips will help you conduct a content analysis efficiently AND effectively. With the insights you gain, you will have the power to form a content strategy that brings you results.
Want to learn more? Here are some articles from me as well as others that I highly recommend:
“Analysis” chapter in Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson
Understanding Content: The Stuff We Design for by Karen McGrane and Rachel Lovinger
I’d also love to hear your ideas on how to keep the content analysis process in check. Share your thoughts in the comments!
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