So you’ve got the content marketing ball rolling for your brand. Let’s say you saw some growth but then you hit a flatline. What do you do next? Do you abandon content? Or do you try to identify the problem? For most people (and hopefully that includes you), the answer is the latter. 

So how do you identify what’s lacking? The answer is pretty simple – by executing a content gap analysis. 

What is Content Gap Analysis? 

Finding that gap between your current content and the goals you set to achieve but haven’t (and the process you use to identify this) is essentially what is called ‘Content Gap Analysis’. 

Continually auditing your content is key to ensuring the success of your [long-term content strategy].

How do you perform a Content Gap Analysis?

Let’s break this down into a few simples steps: 

1. Review the performance of your content

The verdict on how well your content performed, of course, cannot be biased. You will have to put some data to it. So first off, pen the following down: 

• Goal(s) to be achieved
• Target audience
• Keywords targeted
• The degree to which you are satisfied with the organic traffic and conversions (based on the last 12 months), and social traffic and conversions (based on the last 12 months)

2. Find the gap

Now that you have reviewed your content’s performance, you can reflect upon and decide on the next goal to be achieved. That will help you determine what needs to be done to get there. 
This analysis will allow you to define follow-up tasks and priorities in terms where your content performance is lagging behind.

3. Compare your content with that of your competitors 

It’s great to outperform yourself but it’s also important to outperform your competitors. 

To do so, you need to ask yourself two questions: 

• What topics do you and your competitors share? Do they outperform you in any of these? 
• Do they have any effective content that you do not? 

To make this comparison possible, you can use tools such as SEMrush that can give you an insight into your competitors’ performance especially in terms of SERPs, allowing you to steer your content strategy in the right direction. 

Other tools such as BuzzSumo can help you compare the performance of your content on social media vis-a-vis that of your competitors. 

No matter how great your content strategy or your content is, a continuous content audit or gap analysis is the only way to have it succeed.