Why your business needs a content inventory
Photo @mvdheuvel
If your business has an online presence of any kind (which it absolutely should!), you know that you need fresh content to keep your sites and socials engaging and relevant. And if you've been adding content to your site for any length of time, you know that it doesn't take long before that content starts to get a bit...unruly.
Maintaining a content inventory for your business's blog or website is an important part of effective content management. At its most basic level, a content inventory is a list of all the content that is published on your site, including blog posts, pages, products, images, and other types of content. And at its best, your inventory is a map that shows you exactly how you can get the most out of each piece of content you create. It helps you avoid the "one-and-done" approach and see how each piece of content can work together to weave a story about your business, your products and services, and your customer's buyer's journey.
The challenges of getting started
While maintaining a content inventory is crucial for any business with an online presence, setting it up is not without its challenges. Here's a quick look at some of the obstacles you might face and how you can overcome them:
Time and Resources
Depending on how much content you've already created, setting up and maintaining a content inventory could be time-consuming. If you're early on in your content journey, it will be much easier to list out all the content pieces you've created and map how they link together. If you're in a little deeper, you'll need to invest in the necessary personnel, budget, or time to work backwards and create an up-to-date inventory that can grow as your content library does. But as the saying goes, it's better late than never. Creating a content inventory will help you spot opportunities for new content to be developed or for existing content to be repurposed so it can work a little harder for your business.
Lack of Knowledge and Expertise
Many businesses may not have the necessary expertise or knowledge to set up and maintain a content inventory. They may not know how to organize their content, categorize it, or analyze it effectively. This is easily overcome! Do some research for tips on how to create your inventory, or check out our template to get started right away. You can use the template as it is or take it as a source of inspiration to create something tailored to your own business and approach to content marketing.
Content Fragmentation
With so many digital channels and platforms available, businesses may struggle to track and manage their content effectively. Content may be scattered across various platforms, channels, and devices, making it difficult to maintain a centralized inventory. This is especially true if you've been creating content for a long time but haven't been keeping track of it all. Fragmentation can also occur when someone on your team changes jobs or leaves the company and takes their knowledge with them. This is precisely why you need the inventory in the first place, so you can protect your content marketing efforts and keep track of everything you've put out there.
Technical Challenges
Some technical challenges may arise while setting up and maintaining a content inventory. For instance, you might face issues with tools and software used for managing your inventory, such as data management, content analysis, and search functionality. To some extent, this is unavoidable. Especially in the beginning. It can take some research and experimentation to find the tool or platform that's right for you, but it's worth it in the long run.
Content Rot
As content becomes outdated, it may lose relevance and effectiveness. You'll need to ensure that your inventory is up-to-date, relevant, and informative. Failing to maintain an up-to-date inventory can result in content rot and a lack of engagement from your targeted audience. Having an inventory makes it much easier to set expiry dates for your content so you can go in and refresh what's already there, rather than forgetting about it, removing it, or just letting out-of-date sit on your website like some sort of info-blight that leaves your site's visitors with a bad taste in their mouth.
Fortunately, all the challenges listed above are easily overcome with a bit of effort.
The benefits of a content inventory
Once you get it set up, the benefits of maintaining an up-to-date inventory of all the content your business produces are many. Here are just a few of the most impactful benefits:
Ensures Consistency
A content inventory helps you ensure that your online content is consistent in terms of quality, style, tone, and messaging. And it allows you to review your entire content library to identify gaps, inconsistencies, and outdated content and make necessary updates to ensure that your brand image is consistent and relevant.
Helps with SEO
A content inventory is also crucial for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. By having a comprehensive list of all the content assets, you can identify duplicate content, identify gaps in your content, and optimize your company's content for specific keywords and phrases that will help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Saves Time and Resources
Maintaining a content inventory can help businesses save time and resources by avoiding duplication of efforts. By knowing what content already exists, you can avoid creating new content that may already exist and instead focus on improving and updating the existing content.
Facilitates Content Planning
A content inventory provides a solid foundation for content planning. By having a comprehensive list of all digital assets, you can better plan and strategize your content creation efforts. You can easily identify areas where your business needs more content, spot the topics that need to be covered, and develop a content calendar for publishing and promoting your content.
Helps with Website Maintenance
A content inventory can also help with website maintenance. You can identify broken links, outdated pages, and other technical issues that may be affecting your website's user experience and search engine ranking. By identifying and fixing these issues, you can improve your website's functionality and user experience.
Improved organization
A content inventory helps you keep track of all the content on your site and organize it in a way that is easy to access and manage. This can save time and effort when searching for specific pieces of content or making updates to the site. There's nothing worse than coming up with a great idea for a new piece of content only to discover that you already did it and forgot about it. Staying organized can help you keep your content alive and prevent you from running in circles.
Enhanced SEO
A content inventory can help you identify gaps in your content and optimize existing content for SEO. By analyzing the titles, tags, and keywords of your content, you can identify opportunities to improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site. This might take the form of creating new content to meet the needs of your latest keyword research or updating and refocusing existing content.
Better content strategy
A content inventory can help you plan and execute a more effective content strategy by identifying the types of content that are performing well and those that are not. You can use this information to create a content calendar that aligns with your business goals and audience needs. Find out what your audience likes to engage with and create more of the same. You might be surprised to learn that the topics that resonate with them aren't the ones you initially thought about.
Enhanced user experience: A content inventory can help you ensure that your site is easy to navigate and provides a seamless user experience. It shows you how individual pieces of content fit together and can be linked together to make a better experience for your site visitors. By identifying and organizing content in a logical way, you can help users find the information they need more easily and reduce bounce rates.
Additionally, you can establish standard protocols for categorizing and organizing content and ensure that your inventory is updated regularly. It can also be beneficial to let one team or department "own" the responsibility of managing the content. Of course, if you're flying solo, that job will fall on you...but the benefits of maintaining the inventory still apply equally whether you have a lot of content or a little. It's all about working smarter, not harder—especially if you're doing it all on your own.
Photo @homajob
Who owns the inventory?
When it comes to maintaining a content inventory, there are different approaches that you can take. The two main options are to assign responsibility to a specific department, such as the digital team, or to make individual owners responsible for their own content. Each approach has its pros and cons.
Single source
Having a single team, such as digital or marketing, responsible for maintaining the content inventory has several advantages. This approach ensures that there is a centralized point of control and accountability for managing the content inventory. The digital team can use its expertise to manage and analyze the content inventory effectively, ensuring that it is organized, up-to-date, and easily accessible to all stakeholders. Additionally, this approach can help avoid duplication of efforts, reduce fragmentation of content, and ensure consistency across all digital assets.
However, there are also some disadvantages to this approach. By having a single team or department responsible for the content inventory, other teams may not have a clear understanding of their own content and how it fits into the larger content strategy. Additionally, having a centralized point of control may lead to delays in updating the inventory, as the digital team may not have the necessary resources or time to update it promptly.
Collaborative effort
Alternatively, you can make individual owners responsible for their own content. This approach has several advantages, such as ensuring that content creators have a clear understanding of their own content and how it fits into the larger content strategy. Additionally, this approach can help promote a culture of ownership and accountability among content creators.
However, there are also some disadvantages to this approach. For instance, there may be inconsistencies in how content is organized and categorized, as different content creators may use different naming conventions or structures. Additionally, content creators may not have the necessary expertise or knowledge to analyze their content effectively, leading to gaps in the content inventory. This approach may also result in duplication of labour, as various teams across the company identify a need for a certain type of content and then work to create it in a silo, unaware of each other's efforts.
The approach that your business takes to maintain a content inventory will depend on your specific needs and goals. While assigning responsibility to a single department has advantages in terms of centralization and consistency, it may lead to delays and a lack of ownership among content creators. Alternatively, making individual owners responsible for their own content can promote a culture of accountability and ownership but may result in inconsistencies and gaps in the content inventory. Ultimately, you need to weigh the pros and cons of each approach and determine which one works best for their specific needs and goals.
Along the way, you'll discover that setting up and maintaining a content inventory is not without its challenges, but the benefits of having one far outweigh the costs. A running inventory helps you ensure consistency, optimize your content for SEO, save time and resources, facilitate content planning, improve your content marketing strategies, enhance your online presence, and improve your website's functionality and user experience. By regularly updating and maintaining a content inventory, your business can stay ahead of the competition and ensure that your online presence remains relevant and impactful.