How can you identify outdated social media content?
Social media is a dynamic and fast-paced environment, where trends, preferences, and algorithms change constantly. As a content strategist, you need to keep your social media content relevant, engaging, and aligned with your goals. But how can you identify outdated social media content that needs to be updated, removed, or repurposed? Here are some tips to help you conduct a social media content audit.
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Emily BaillieAI & Marketing Trainer, Professor & Speaker
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Muhammad Shahzil (The Word Wizard)The Wizard 🧙♂️ | Helping Busy Founders and Coaches grow and monetize their Brand on LinkedIn with my Writing | Direct…
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Dhruv ParmarI ghostwrite Educational Email Courses (EECs) for Personal Branding & Executive Coaches | Building Thought Leadership…
Prior to reviewing your social media content, it is essential to define criteria for evaluating its performance and quality. Engagement, reach, relevance, consistency, accuracy and goals are all common criteria. Engagement looks at the likes, comments, shares, clicks or views generated by the content. Reach assesses how many people saw the content and how they found it. Relevance considers how well the content aligns with the interests, needs and pain points of your audience. Consistency examines if the content reflects your brand voice, tone and style. Accuracy evaluates if the facts, data and sources are up-to-date. Lastly, goals assess how well the content supports measurable objectives.
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I would also just look at the times things have been posted. Most trends or topics don't last longer than a week. If it takes your team longer than a week to get out a post about a topic you wish to engage with it is worth while to tighten up your process before looking at what trends you want to engage in.
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When crafting social media content, defining clear criteria is the compass for success. Consider: - Engagement - Reach - Relevance - Consistency - Accuracy - Goals. It's not just about likes and views – it's about resonating with your audience, staying true to your brand, and driving measurable objectives. Keep it genuine, stay on track, and watch your content flourish!
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People have to understand: * who you are * what you deliver * what to expect from you They have to know what kind of content they get from you. The only way to find out what's your niche - is to create content, and get daily feedback. If you're just beginning, then just create more and more. Everyday. Your audience will respond to some of your content in some ways. Use analytics to understand which of your content performs the best. Then focus on creating more and more content like that. Little by little, you'll start defining your niche, your audience, and your message.
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To identify outdated social media content? - It will not have any personal experience of the content poster - It will not have any insight or value to reader, hence it will act as a spam and will be reported very often.
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Algo primordial para que as estratégias de conteúdo tenha sucesso é acompanhar dia a dia as discussões, posts e o que a imprensa especializado no mercado está publicando. Quando pensamos em estratégia de conteúdo, estar atualizado já não é uma questão de escolha, mas de obrigação, pois em mercado cada vez mais competitivo, perder ações imporantes no setor pode comprometer a comunicação exata com os clientes e demais interessados.
Once you have your criteria, you need to analyze your data to see how your social media content performed. You can use various tools and platforms, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, or Instagram Insights, to collect and measure data. Additionally, spreadsheets or dashboards can be used to organize and visualize that data. Some of the data points you can look at are frequency (how often you posted on each social media channel), format (what types of content were used), topics (what topics were covered and how they related to your niche and keywords), timing (when you posted your content and how it affected engagement and reach), and feedback (what feedback was received from your audience).
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Analyzing social media data has significantly improved my content strategy. Using tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights, I've identified optimal posting times and frequencies, enhancing audience engagement. Analyzing content formats revealed preferences, like carousel posts on Instagram attracting more interaction. Topic analysis helped tailor content to audience interests, increasing relevance and engagement. Feedback from comments and messages provided direct audience insights, refining content tone and style. This data-driven approach has been crucial in making informed decisions, leading to more effective and engaging social media content. It's a continuous process of learning and adapting.
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After that, go into the data analysis. Leverage tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, or Instagram Insights for a comprehensive view. Organize data using spreadsheets or dashboards to track frequency, format, topics, timing, and feedback. Uncover insights into posting patterns, content types, and audience reactions. This data-driven approach sharpens your content strategy for meaningful connections and impactful results.
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Publishing content without analyzing it is like shooting in the dark. You might hit something, and sometimes not. But if you wanna hit consistently, you have to understand your audience response to your content. * How do they react to it? * What kind of comments do they leave? * Do they share? Ideally, you should aim to create content that people can relate to, react, comment, and share. That's engagement. In other words: Consistency is key, but it's not enough. You need to understand which content works, and which won't. Then focus on the types that work.
After analyzing your data, you need to identify your gaps and opportunities for improvement. Comparing your data with criteria, competitors, and industry benchmarks can help you determine where you stand and where you can do better. You may find content gaps in topics or keywords that you are missing or underperforming on. Additionally, you may discover channel gaps in social media platforms that you are not using or optimizing for. Audience gaps may also be present in segments or personas that you are not reaching or engaging with. Lastly, strategy gaps can be identified in goals or tactics that you are not achieving or implementing.
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Utilize the for you page to see what content/collaborations offer something that your content does not. If the simple fact is that your content is struggling to be timely. Look into commenting on trending videos to make sure your profile and brand show up in the conversation
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Once the data is in, pinpoint the gaps and growth avenues. Align your performance with criteria, competitors, and industry benchmarks. Uncover content gaps in topics or keywords, ensuring nothing is overlooked. Inspect social media platforms for untapped potential. Identify audience gaps—those segments yet to be reached. Lastly, assess strategy gaps, ensuring goals and tactics are on track. Bridging these gaps propels your content strategy towards completeness.
To make your social media content more effective and relevant, you can employ various methods and techniques. Refreshing your content by adding new information, images, or links, or by changing the headline, caption, or call to action is one approach. Alternatively, you could consider removing content that is outdated, inaccurate, irrelevant, or low-performing. Repurposing content by changing its format, channel, or angle, or by combining or splitting it into new pieces is also an option. Finally, creating new content based on your audience's feedback, your competitors' analysis, or your industry's trends should be taken into account.
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Many brands update and repurpose older content effectively. Blog posts are easy to update with new and relevant information. A new date stamp should be added to indicate the informal date vs the update. Old content can be repurposed with new comments or insights added to it. Instagram is a great place for this!
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Refresh with new info, images, or headlines to keep it vibrant. Trim the excess—remove outdated or low-performing content. Get creative with repurposing—change formats, angles, or channels. Stay responsive by creating content inspired by audience feedback, competitor analysis, or industry trends. With these tactics, your content stays not just relevant but also resonant.
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Introducing: Repurposing. The 8th world's wonder. What is repurposing? * You write a long newsletter * You create a shorter version for LinkedIn and Facebook * You create a shorter version for X (including threads and tweets) Vouala! You've got one message spread across 4 different platforms. The same goes for visual content: * You create a long video for YouTube * You cut shorter 30-60 seconds versions for IG, YouTube shorts, and TikTok. Vouala! You've got one message spread across 4 different platforms. And I didn't even mention podcasting. Long story short: If you're content creator across different platform, you have to repurpose.
The final step of your social media content audit is to document your results and learn from them. To do this, you can use various tools and formats, such as reports, presentations, or summaries. Additionally, SWOT analysis, SMART goals, or OKR frameworks can be used to structure your results. Documenting your results has many benefits, such as accountability as you can track your progress and performance over time and report it to stakeholders. It also allows you to identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as learn from successes and failures. Ultimately, it helps inform future decisions and actions in order to optimize your social media content strategy.
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Documenting every result and adding up to the available data makes it easy to update the existing content. And you can update with different things: 1. Adding a new POV 2. Adding a new insight 3. Adding some new data 4. Adding a new experience Connecting that instance with your life experience and updating irrelevant information with updated data can never be a problem for any content format.
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You don't need to document everything. Instead: * Take screenshots of before and after to showcase your work to clients * Take a few case studies as examples for yourself
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Outdated social media content is more of an issue on some channels than others. For instance, LinkedIn only lets the public see content that goes back a year on your timeline (unless it's pinned or you have the URL). While on Pinterest, content accessibility is more focused on interest and less on recency. So before you assign someone to start editing, changing, or taking posts down, educate them on this if they don't know.
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As always, the performance of the content may vary depending on several factors: format, social network where it was published, publication time, day of publication, etc. It is important to remember that sometimes the content can be relevant, but the problem can be in how you materialize the publication. The recommendation is always to test, test and test. At different times, in different formats, different call to actions, and different content pillars. Then, measure the performance, according to what you are looking for (reach, interactions, views, etc.). Don't forget that one of the good things about social networks is that they allow us to experiment. Don't be afraid, and try different strategies.
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Forget about finding your niche. Forget about engagement. It will come. First, you have to start creating and publishing. Everyday. Make this habit integrated as an integral part of your creator identity. Then comes analytics, feedback, repurposing, finding your niche, etc.
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Nowadays the content strategy has been so evolving that until we plan for next month, we have to think about three major things before we even take on action. 1. Content trend 2. What is the “meme” now? 3. Which SM platform changed its “what” and “how” and “why”? One has to specifically be a “user” to experience the shifts in algorithms and compare these 3 things with the results.
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