Content Marketing is the creation and sharing of interesting, valuable, and relevant information for the purpose of promoting a product or service.

While the focus of your content is not specifically on your company or its products, the idea of freely giving away valuable information that solves your readers’ problems evokes trust and likability and ultimately establishes you as a thought leader. Your readers will consume it, they will want more of it, and when the time is right they will trust you enough to open their wallets.

Usually you can tell by the level of response that you receive from your audience e.g. page views, average time spent on site, bounce rate, blog comments, blog sentiment, email inquiries, number of subscribers, social media followers etc.

However if these indicators are not strong or if they do not give you enough insight, it is definitely time to perform a thorough content analysis.

Content analysis is an essential part of creating and sustaining effective web content. It is the process of evaluating your organization’s web content in terms of:

• Branding
• Usefulness
• Relevance
• Usability
• Voice and tone
• Format
• SEO
• Delivery channel

Well, how do you know if your content is any good if you don’t evaluate it from time to time? A content analysis helps to:

• Weed out ROT (Redundant, Outdated or Trivial content)
• Identify any gaps or missed opportunities in capturing and nurturing your audience
• Prioritize important brand messages
• Measure up against the competition
• Sustain quality content that helps prospects, clients and stakeholders to make positive decisions about your brand.

Anytime you perceive that your website is not delivering the desired business results e.g. increased traffic, high user engagement, customer inquiries, new business leads, more sales etc. However there are two critical periods when a content analysis MUST be done:

• When you’re launching a new site
• When you need a new content strategy

• Start with a content inventory to evaluate existing content
• Evaluate current web policies and standards
• Perform a content audit
• Present findings
• Make recommendations for improvement

After your content analysis is complete, the final step is to develop a content strategy (the blue print for your content marketing campaign) that will help you to provide content that attracts and retains customers.

It all depends on how much content you have to evaluate in the first place. It may take anywhere from two to seven weeks.