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5 Steps You Can Take Now To Make Future Content Updates Easier

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5 Steps You Can Take Now To Make Future Content Updates Easier

You’ve probably read lots of advice on how to refresh, reuse, and revise old content. The first step is almost always the same: Conduct a content audit.

Frankly, some marketers see that advice and move on. After all, a content audit takes a lot of time – from figuring out how to do it to the actual execution.

But what if refresh, reuse, and revise didn’t require a full-fledged content audit. What if you already knew what to do? You probably would be more likely to do it.

So how do you get to that point? The solution is rooted in advice on forming good preparation habits.

Study this list of tips from Apartment Therapy on how to make leaving the house on time easier, for example:

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  1. Set a designated space for keys.
  2. Pack your work bag the night before.
  3. Organize your closet by what you’re wearing.
  4. Make your breakfast ahead of time
  5. Set out your morning products at night.

Can you detect the theme?

Each tip (from designating a space for keys to organizing the closet by what you wear) requires looking ahead and preparing today for what you’ll need in the future.

You can do the same with your content. So instead of looking backward with a content audit, form new forward-looking habits that will make your content operations more efficient down the road.

You won’t need a backward-looking #content audit if you adopt forward-looking content habits today, says @AnnGynn via @CMIContent @semrush. #ContentMarketing Click To Tweet

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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 Then, they become a negative, indicating to your audience that the piece is outdated (even if all the other information is still valid) and your brand didn’t notice (or worse, didn’t care.)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 your content management system. If you wanted to get even more granular, you could list the specific, timely mentions on your tracker so future reviewers can go directly to that line.

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Then, you can search for the tag, go through the timely mentions, and update as appropriate. If you can’t find a 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 you’ve tagged for updating.

Tag #content with time-specific references on your calendar or in your CMS. Review those pieces annually (at least) to make any needed updates, says @AnnGynn via @CMIContent @semrush. Click To Tweet

2. Use the actual year

This tip doesn’t require any additional work after the piece is published. Instead of saying “this year” or “last year,” specify the actual year. That way, audiences who consume the content in the future will know which year it refers to.

The same advice goes for “yesterday,” “today,” “this week,” “last week,” etc.

One caveat: You can skip this tip if you craft content designed as a news vehicle, where the current-focused language is appropriate. It won’t matter if readers see the content as not timely down the road because it should be outdated by then.

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Avoid phrases like this year, last month, where possible. Write (or say) the actual year or month, so you won’t have to go back and update those references later, says @AnnGynn via @CMIContent @semrush. Click To Tweet


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3. Craft smarter calls to action

The most powerful calls to action often have an “act-now” message designed to motivate people to take action right away. However, time-centered CTAs (i.e., for an upcoming event) or campaign-related CTAs (i.e., a new e-book release) usually expire long before the content does.

If your time-centered event repeats (every year, for example), craft a CTA that can work in any cycle.

For example, let’s say you’re creating a registration CTA for your company’s annual summer event. Create a forward-thinking CTA that won’t become out of date after the event, such as, “Register now for the best rates for this summer’s Big Brand Event.”

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.

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4. Ask your sources for help

Content often incorporates the names, titles, and employers of quoted sources. But we all know any of those three identifiers can change. Of course, tracking every source in your content isn’t an easy task. Instead, use these two tricks – one for external and one for internal sources.

External sources: Ask sources for their LinkedIn handle. Include that link when they’re referenced in your content. Then, even if they move jobs, the audience can click and find out their current role. You also can ask sources to send updates if they change their name, title, and employer. (I realize this is less likely to happen, but it’s worth a shot.)

Internal sources: It’s easier to track sources within your company’s ranks. More than likely, these people get quoted or published more than once. Set up a way to pull the content they created or contributed to. (Think byline links for authors that showcase all pieces of content they contributed.)

5. Set up the right shot

People change more than their titles and names. They change their appearance, too. Whether they now wear glasses, have different hair color, or are five years older, they may not look like their headshot forever. So they get a new headshot, but they never share it with 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 on your site, too.

Move forward from the beginning of your content process

If you dread hearing the phrase “content audit” as a solution to refresh, reuse, and revise your content, take preventative measures now. A forward-thinking process will let you quickly find content to update or eliminate manual involvement altogether.

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All tools included in the article are suggested by author. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used). 

Want more content marketing tips, insights, and examples? Subscribe to workday or weekly emails from CMI.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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