A copy and content audit everyone can use

I developed this framework for checking the suitability of existing and new copy or content. It’s covered in detail in my 30-page e-book, which includes more detail and examples across all ten criteria, a checklist, AND extensive hints and tips for easy fixes for the most common problems. Drop me an email now if you’d like to a copy (it’s free!).

With that as the background, here’s a summary of the framework that will help you make the most of the time you have available for assessing and editing content.

1. Context

Things change fast, and even the best content can soon become out of date. This part of the audit is designed to spot when that has happened. A simple way to think about this is to break the task down into considering the internal and external environments.

Internal environment
Sometimes internal changes mean that the content is no longer relevant to your organisation’s current strategy or activity. I saw a classic example of this while working with a client. They had just launched a new product with a distinctive name and were in the middle of a PR campaign to promote it. But two years previously they had used the same name for a very early version of the product that hadn’t really taken off – and their website was littered with blogs and other pages using the product name.

There was a big risk than when someone Googled the product name after seeing some publicity about it, they would be taken to a blog about the earlier version. Old content often ranks high in search results, especially if it has been extensively visited and shared. In this case, if someone landed on an old blog it would have confused customers, potentially losing sales.

External environment
If you’ve studied marketing, you will remember the ‘STEP’ model for analysing the external environment. You can use it here, considering the Social, Technological, Economic and Political factors that may make your content look out of date. (Other versions of the model are PEST, STEEPLE or PESTLE, but they all do the same thing.)

A typical scenario would be where a piece of ‘thought leadership’ content becomes out of date after changes in the economic situation. Imagine if you are a financial adviser and you have a major piece of content from 2008 discussing mortgage options. The housing market has changed since then, as have interest rates and rules around mortgage availability.

2. Clarity

It’s amazing how often something that the writer thought was very clear looks less clear when looked at again a while later. There’s something about coming back to a piece that gives us a different perspective. This is one reason why checking for clarity (‘understandability’) is part of the audit.

If you want to assess how clear and understandable a piece of content is, here are some tips:

Read it properly
We often just skim through a piece of writing, missing out words or phrases and trusting our brain to fill in the blanks. You want to avoid that here. Now is the time to read the content properly. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph.

Be very tough on the content. If there is anything you don’t completely understand the first time you read it, it needs attention.

Read it out loud
When you read something out loud you perceive it in a different way. You’re more likely to spot any problems with clarity. If you find yourself stumbling over parts of the content, it’s probably an indication that there’s a problem.

Think like the reader
Again, be very tough on the content here. Look out for any word, phrase, sentence or paragraph that may be confusing to readers. Pay special attention to whether any abbreviations or industry jargon you’ve used will be understood by everyone the piece is aimed at.

A definition of jargon is ‘special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand’. But the problem with that definition is that it assumes everyone in a profession or group has the same level of knowledge and familiarity with jargon. That’s an unlikely scenario.

Identify the density
Unless you’re a brilliant writer, it’s likely that long sentences or long paragraphs will confuse or slow down many of your readers. I don’t usually give ‘rule of thumb’ advice but in this case, applying these three tips across a piece of content almost always improves it:

• Identify any sentences over 25 words and see if they can be rewritten or split into two.
• Insert a line break in any paragraphs longer than three sentences.
• Insert subheadings after every three or four paragraphs.

3. Comprehensive

In many cases, the best content gives readers all the information they want. It answers their questions and leaves them feeling glad they spent time with it.

If I take the time to publish a page about a training course I’m running, I want people to see who the course is for, what’s included, how it’s delivered and how much it costs. If I don’t do all of that, I’m certain that many people will click somewhere else rather than ask me for the missing information.

Most search engine optimisation (SEO) experts also agree that comprehensive content tends to perform better from a search perspective. Google likes giving its users answers to their questions, and comprehensive content is usually more likely to do that. As a quick test, I googled ‘best way to control weeds’ and the first five pages listed were all 800 words or more.

4. Customers

The audit has already made a start on this, but now is the main place to ask whether the piece is really focused on the readers. (Usually this will be customers or potential customers, but other stakeholders may also apply here.) In short, is this something they will want to read and then be glad that they did?

Here’s a handy list of qualities that you can use to help with this assessment. Your content may not fulfil all of them, but it should probably score well on at least one of them.

• Helpful. The reader can do something better as a result of reading the piece.
• Unique. It’s information that readers can’t get elsewhere, or if they can, they might struggle to find it all in one place.
• Interesting. The content maybe doesn’t have any practical value, but it’s informative nonetheless.
• Actionable. The readers can go and do a specific task after reading the piece.
• Inspiring. The content will inspire emotion, changing how people feel.
• Targeted. It’s clearly aimed at a specific segment/persona/situation.

On the other hand, non customer-focused content looks like this:

• Useless. It might be trying to help, but really it doesn’t.
• Obvious. It’s all stuff that the reader already knows.
• Generic. Lots of content available elsewhere that says the same thing.
• Boring. Even if the subject matter is good, the writing style is totally uninspiring.
• For everyone. There’s nothing specific to any particular type of reader. By trying to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no-one.

5. Clickable

This is about getting people to the content in the first place. The question to ask is this: if people just saw just the headline, and maybe an associated image, would they be likely to click through to the content? So, assuming that the content itself is strong, with good subject matter and well written, how are the title and image performing?

The headline/title:

• Does it properly convey just how useful or interesting the content is?
• Is it really likely to generate clicks?
• Is any data on click rates available to help you assess the title’s performance?
• Does it include words or phrases that your target audience are likely to use, including when using search engines?

The image:

• Is it a good one?
• Is it likely to compel people to click to the content when it feeds through to social media posts?
• If there is no image, can you add one?

6. Competition

If your competitors have created similar content, you probably need to check how your piece stacks up against theirs. Maybe when you published your piece it was the best source of information around. But what if someone has since gone one better?

You could use other criteria in this framework to score competitor content, seeing how it matches up against yours in a head-to-head. For example, is competitor content more comprehensive than yours, or more customer focused?

For online content, this step starts with Googling to find competitor content similar to yours. But don’t just use the obvious on-page copy for this comparison. Dig deep to see if competitors are publishing white papers, eBooks, videos, webinars, podcasts, slides, infographics, FAQs, case studies, how-to guides and so on.

I like to print out a few examples and get my Sharpies out. I annotate with notes on what I would like about the competitor content if I were a reader within the target audience. I do the same thing with hard copy content such as brochures or print advertising.

Here are some other factors to consider when assessing your overall content against competitors:

Volume. Does your total amount of content look slim compared to what your competitors offer?

Publishing frequency. If you publish news or a blog every couple of months and your competitors do it weekly, you may have a problem.

Subject matter. Are competitors covering subjects that you haven’t even thought of? (Or thought of but never got around to covering?)

Social media engagement. The level of likes, shares and comments competitor content is getting could be an indicator of how well their content strategy is resonating with audiences.

Traffic and SEO performance. Tools like Alexa, Moz and SEMrush can tell you how well competitor content is performing in terms of the traffic it’s attracting and its SEO performance.

7. Credibility

There’s a very simple question you can ask yourself to instantly assess the credibility performance of a piece of content: If your most wanted customer read the piece, would they be more willing to do business with you as a result?

Improving performance in several of points 1-6 in this framework will bolster the credibility factor of your content. But now is the time to zero in on what you can do to go further.

Here are five things to look out for:

Do numbers back up claims about performance?
Does the content include statistics that strengthen any claims being made about the performance of your organisation, product or service? And if it does, is there also information about where those numbers come from, ideally referencing reputable external sources?

Is your organisation’s expertise given a high profile?
Have experts within your organisation been interviewed? Have they been involved in creating the content, and if so, is that visible to readers? Does the content show the world that yours is an organisation that has the knowledge your customers can benefit from?

Was the content co-created?
Not all content needs to created with partners. But where appropriate, have suitable opportunities been taken to create content in partnership with credible influencers so that it carries more weight than content you produce on your own? Who do you (or colleagues) know across your industry? Can you involve them? (In a 2017 survey by DemandGen, 87% of B2B buyers said they give more credence to industry influencer content.)

Does the content link to further information?
You may not want to link people away from your content. But including a link or two that backs up some of what you are saying could make you appear more involved and engaged in what’s happening across your sector. So in the audit, ask whether external links could achieve that.

Is the content helpful – or just about making a sale?
Too much salesy content can ruin your credibility by making you look desperate. Would the content work better if it was providing information and help, either instead of or in addition to promotional copy?

8. Creative

Being creative all day, every day is hard. It’s easy to get caught up in a cycle of ‘churning out stuff’ rather than fully committing to excellent content. That’s why when you assess existing content you may find it’s a bit dull, even if when it was published everyone loved it. (Maybe everyone loved it because it was finally finished after a painful process.)

Assessing a piece of content’s level of creativity is not easy. It’s almost impossible if you just try to score it based on a single, blanket ‘creativity’ metric. This could be why advertising legend David Ogilvy preferred to use the word ‘remarkable’ instead of ‘creative’.

Ask yourself whether the piece of content is remarkable in any way:

• Does it really answer a question or meet a need?
• Does it stir emotions?
• Does it have a great flow, like the best stories do?
• Does it instantly look as though it will be an easy, interesting read?
• Will readers think ‘this is about me and my life’?

9. Call to action

It’s hard to think of a reason NOT to have a call to action (CTA) in every piece of copy and content. Will including one bring in thousands of enquiries, every time? Of course not. It can’t do any harm though. And it will probably do a lot of good.

The simplest call to action is along the lines of ‘contact us to find out more’. But if you’ve put a lot of time and effort into your content, why not follow it through with a compelling CTA? Like these:

• Netflix have managed to provide three benefits within a single CTA device: “Watch anywhere, cancel anytime. Watch free for a month.”
• Basecamp make it a no-brainer: “Give Basecamp a try – it’s free for 60 days.”
• Rothy’s add an air of exclusivity to their mailing list sign up: “Find out first.”

In the audit, assess whether your CTA reflects the context and where the reader is in the relationship cycle. If the content is likely to be one of the first places they come to, and you offer an expensive or high-involvement purchase, it probably shouldn’t say ‘Buy Now’. Something like ‘Learn More’ might be better.

The audit can also check whether CTA buttons are used, rather than just hyperlinked text. Pretty much all the A/B testing I’ve seen found that a CTA button gets more responses than a standard text CTA.

10. Correct

When you review a piece of existing content it’s a good opportunity to check it for accuracy. Some of this is covered under ‘context’. For example, if a piece of legislation is mentioned you need to check that it’s still relevant and hasn’t been replaced by new legislation.

Here are some other things to check:

Spelling, punctuation and grammar
Why not do a proofread, just in case any typos slipped through the net when the piece was published?

Links
Are all the links still working and still pointing to the right place? Don’t send your readers to 404 error pages.

Contact details
Check that anyone mentioned as the contact person is still in position, and that any contact email addresses and phone numbers are valid.

Images
Do you have permission to use any images that are part of the content? Include this step if the content was published at a time when people were using images without permission.

Brand
If your brand (including your written style guide) has changed since publication, decide whether you want legacy content to follow current guidelines.

As always with proofreading, ideally it should be done by the writer AND somebody else, preferably someone who is good at it. Remember also that it’s the final step in any process, a time to spot and fix any errors, and not a time to do more editing.