Gigi Griffis

When: July 14th (Wednesday) at 6:30PM

Where: Crepes & Crepes in Cherry Creek North

What: Come prepared to drink cappuccinos and discuss drafting a formal content strategy. If you have an example of a CS document to bring, you’ll be the life of the party.

Please RSVP if you plan on attending. I’ll make the reservations.

The Qualitative Audit is designed to identify issues with your existing content and answer the question: is this content accomplishing what it needs to? During this portion of the audit, you should go through your content page by page and ask yourself a few key questions. If the answers to the second round of questions below are a resounding Yes! you’re probably in good shape. If the answer is no, you’ve got some work to do.

Qualitative Audit Questions:
First, let’s identify what this page is trying to do.

1. Who is the audience for this page? (Who is it designed for and who is going to click on it to read the content?)
2. What is that audience looking for when they click on this page?

For example: a page about economic development services may attract an audience of site selectors or business owners considering a move to your area. When they get onto the services page, they may be looking for a list of services your organization offers, what each service entails, who is eligible and what are the next steps.

Next, let’s ask ourselves whether this page is accomplishing its purpose:

1. Is this page content talking specifically to the audience you’ve identified?
2. Is this page providing answers to the questions that your audience is asking (from the example above: what services are available? Who is eligible to receive this help or benefit from this service?)?

And, finally, let’s ask ourselves whether the information on this page is easy to consume (your web users will leave if it’s hard):

1. Does the headline (and sub-headlines) tell the user exactly what they’ll find on the page?
2. When the user gets to this page, do they feel like they’re in the right place–like they’ll find what they’re looking for?
3. Is the page easy to scan for information?
4. Can the user download or print information to take away and read later?

Hopefully the answers to these questions are Yes! If not, the next step in your content process will be to fix the problems you’ve identified: if the page has no clear audience, identify one and edit the content to speak to this group. If the page is wordy and hard to read, it’s time to edit and make it scannable (79% of web users scan before reading). If the page doesn’t address the questions of your audience, it’s time to add content that will answer those questions.

And thus the audit has prepared you for what comes next. Now you can allot the appropriate funds or internal resources needed to prepare content, fix content or fill in the holes.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, please drop us a line. Let’s talk about what we can do to help.

As we learned yesterday, the first step down the road of better web content is the content audit.

So, what are the next steps? How does one get started on auditing content?

Well, first let’s talk about the two questions we posed yesterday:

1. Do I have the content my user is looking for?
2. Does that content accomplish what it needs to?

These two questions are the starting point for what we call the Quantitative Audit and the Qualitative Audit.

A Quantitative Audit is designed to identify holes in your content and to answer the question: do I have what my user is looking for? To start with your quantitative audit, here are a few first steps:

1. Create a Word or Excel spreadsheet to keep track
2. Fill in your spreadsheet’s first column with your new site map (if you’re doing a new website)*
3. Go down this spreadsheet like a check list: do you have all the content for the pages in your new site map?
4. Once you’ve identified the holes, you can start to organize your content for upload into a new website or you can start to ask the harder question posed by the Qualitative Audit: does this content accomplish what it needs to?

* If you are doing the audit after you’ve already launched your website or before you have a new site map, use your current site map and take a look at any industry standards that are available (for economic development, IEDC spreadsheets fit this bill). From the IEDC spreadsheets (or other standards), you can identify whether there are pages of information that your current site map is missing–add these to your document.

Let’s pause here so that you can collect your thoughts and your content. Watch for the Qualitative Audit soon.

So, what is a content audit and why is Atlas recommending that I do one?

A content audit is the process of sifting through all of your web content (from your website, blogs, social media networks, microsites, etc.) and identifying holes or issues with said content.

A content audit is most often done when you’re about to start writing new website copy for a brand new website, but it is also a good practice to do an audit 6 months into your new website, one year into your website and so on and so forth. The reason your prospects come to your website is to consume content. They come in search of information about your place, your organization, your services, your available properties–and all of this is content.

In fact, the number one reason they’ll leave your website and never come back is out-of-date or irrelevent content.

This is why you need to audit–to ask yourself two simple questions about every single page on your site (and maybe some pages not yet on your site):

1. Do I have the content my user is looking for?
2. Does that content accomplish what it needs to?

Whether you’re getting ready to up the ante with a beautiful new website or are just ready to have better web content, now’s the time to audit.

Originally posted on Latitude.

Our first ever Denver Content Meet and Greet is on the calendar! Details are below. If you are a content obsessed Denverite, please RSVP by emailing me here. We do have a reservation, so please do RSVP.

Details are as follows:

Date: June 15th
Time: 6:00PM
Location: Caveau Wine Bar on 17th (http://www.caveauwinebar.com/)

When you get there, ask for Gigi.