The Guaranteed Way to Keep Your Content Popular

Keeping everything up to date is not always easy.  But it’s IMPERATIVE if you’re a content marketer! Keep reading to find out exactly how to keep your content popular

Look at it

Sounds obvious.  It’s not. As entrepreneurs and content marketers, we’re creating A LOT of stuff all the time.  Let me ask you this question - when’s the last time you went back and read through your old blog posts?

Mmm-hmmm.  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

How about the email sequences you created last year to nurture your list?  It’s most likely more than a month ago…

Here’s something I want to share with you that got me really thinking about this topic.  Yes, it was drilled into me in 15 years of corporate life. But, it was easy to forget about it when I started running my own business.

Until…

A few weeks ago.  I was kinda-sort stalking a lady online that I thought was pretty cool and successful.  I’d been told to follow her by a few different people, in fact. So I was randomly reviewing a bunch of shiny things that came in my email (I’m sure I was avoiding doing something, though I don’t remember what…) and I came across a free thing from this lady on a freebie-bundle on another site.  I was like, “sweet! I can get on her list and stalk her from there!”

And then I waited for the emails to start.  I think I got one welcome email, and it mentioned there would be another one the next day.

Three days later, I got the same email.

Then I got day 2 the next day.   With broken links in it.

Day 3 was an email with a video.  The text in the email talked about summer activities that were happening that week.  But… I received the email in January (and, yes, I am in North America, and so is she *wink*)

I am not trashing on this person at all.  But, it reminded me that I needed to go back and review what I was sending out to my subscribers as well.

(Luckily, I didn’t find anything like this in my emails...but I did change up some of my content.)

This is the lesson - on some frequency, you can decide how often - you need to go back and re-read the content you’re putting out there.  You’ll want to look for broken links, expired offers, outdated event references, or un-seasonal commentary. You might also check for some current event references, if you have a habit of adding those in.

I didn’t lose respect for this person, but I did wonder who was managing her business for her.  

Create a Review System

To keep yourself accountable to double-checking your relevancy regularly, you’ll want to create a system for your business.  

Here’s a free ‘system in a box’ for you:

After you’ve downloaded this tracking sheet, you can enter each piece of content into it.  Yes, that might be a lot. So start somewhere - and do a little at a time. I promise, once you have it set up, it’s a lot easier to add the content one piece at a time.

For each piece of content, you’ll decide how often to review it.  At the very least, you’ll want to touch each piece once a year. For some things, such as your automated emails, every 2-3 months is probably more appropriate.  Write into the tracker how often you’re going to be reviewing the content.

Next, write in the date of your last review.  

And, yes, that date of last review...might be the date you published it.  That’s OK! We’re getting better now, so don’t worry!

Last, add the date that your next review will be.  And, if you want bonus-brownie-points, schedule it into your calendar or project management system.

Delegate it

The smartest thing you can do for your content is delegate the review of it.  It sounds a little bit like I’m telling you to give away the boring work. But that’s not it!  There’s a reason you want to delegate this review.

YOU know your content.  You understand completely what you were talking about when you wrote it, and you have the background knowledge that makes everything make sense even if you missed explaining something.

When you delegate reading your content to someone else, you really are testing the viability and quality of your content.  A pair of eyes that isn’t your own is the best way to make sure everything made and still makes sense.

OK.  Now that you know what you’ve been missing in yoru to-do list, where will you start?  Start where you are. Work backwards through all of your posts and emails, until you’ve hit the end of your evergreen content.

And, you’ll never have to be embarrassed by irrelevant content or silly mistakes.  Man, it feels great to be able to sleep at night again. Whew.