By Julia McCoy, from Search Engine Journal – http://bit.ly/1zhiXSu

The holiday season has ended and, it’s time to think about your web content and gear up for the new year. The first step is to reassess and address the changing needs of your audience. Understand that last year’s content cannot be this year’s content. Because of the dynamic nature of content production, you must constantly update your idea of what constitutes good content. The start of a new year is a great time to take stock and determine what goals you want to accomplish in the new year. Ready to watch your content take off in 2015? Follow the simple steps below.

Understand that last year’s content cannot be this year’s content. Because of the dynamic nature of content production, you must constantly update your idea of what constitutes good content. The start of a new year is a great time to take stock and determine what goals you want to accomplish in the new year.

Ready to watch your content take off in 2015? Follow the simple steps below.

Five Steps To Assess Your Completion of Last Year’s Goals and Set New Ones

• Setting goals gives your a benchmark by which you measure your progress. Having a ready measure of your progress allows you to plan accordingly and develop a long-term solution that you can implement throughout the course of the year.
• If you had goals set at the end of 2014, the time to assess their level of completion is now. If you have incomplete goals, you would be best served to move them to the highest priority for this year’s goals.
• Determine where you want to be by the end of this year in regards to your content. This is the mark you set for yourself for the end of the coming year (2015).
• Determine what are the most necessary tasks that need to be done and place them at the head of the list. Remember, the most necessary tasks are not always the easiest ones to complete.
• Make a note of the three most important goals for 2015 and print them out. Place the print out in a location that is readily visible to keep your motivation up as the year progresses.

The Importance of a Content Audit

Not all content you produce is of the same value. A thorough content audit will provide the insight necessary to move forward. Go through your content and determine what constitutes good content and what isn’t. Keep in mind that good content is content that connects to your audience and creates a rapport with them.

Be honest in your assessment. The only way your content will improve in the coming year is if you accept responsibility for bad content and go about changing the bad content into good content. Go through your content and categorize it. Ideally, as you create content you should assign them tags in order to make it easy to categorize like this. Categorizing gives you a quick glance at what content you currently have.

Create content to fill the gaps. When your content is categorized, the gaps in the information you provide is just as easily visible. The new content you create should seek to fill those gaps and round out the overall body of content.

Create a Marketing Strategy

Creating a strategy is a very useful way of scheduling the things you want done by the end of the year. It allows you to plan out all the actions that need to take place in order to achieve the goals you set in step 1.

Using your goals as a foundation, you can break up each goal into a series of tasks, each being broken up into their own subtasks, based on the complexity. In order to achieve your goals, you need to complete all these tasks.

Setting a time limit on these tasks or a deadline gives you a time frame to work with. When planning a strategy, the calendar is as important as the step breakdown. Ideally, if you can estimate the amount of time you will take with each step, you can create a chart to show your desired progress throughout the next year.

Brainstorm

Decide what can be done to improve your content and your business for the coming year. Take into consideration everything you have learned in the last year and figure out how you can apply that to your current business situation. Be honest with what your content lacks and decide how you can fill in the gaps, whether it’s by doing your own research, purchasing pre-made content, or inviting someone to create content for you specifically.

Decide how these factors can reduce the time required to achieve your yearly goals. Create a proposal plan based on the estimates and see how well you guessed as your plan unfurls as 2015 progresses.

Get Organized

You are going to need all of your resources ready to go as soon as the year kicks off. This means getting whatever you need together and having it close at hand so that as soon as the New Year kicks off you can utilize your time effectively.

Take a look at your plan and see what resources you can put together immediately. The earlier you get working on your new year plan, the earlier it comes to fruition.

Proper organization allows you to get ahead of the curve and get things done. Ideally, if you can start filling out the demands of one of your tasks now, you should do so and get a jump on the New Year.

Ready to Rock n’ Roll in 2015?

By now you should be set and logically planned out what you want done as soon as the New Year opens. Planning is a chore, but once you get your plan done, you will be off to a better start. Many times, we start off with a plan for the new year, but the year overtakes us and we get lost in the clutter, leaving those goals fallen by the wayside and forgotten. Keeping a constant update on what you’ve done so far goes a long way towards ensuring you stay on target throughout the year.

2015 is here, so plan your goals and work your plan. Before you know it you will have achieved all your goals.

Image Credits

Featured Image: gui jun peng via Shutterstock