In the past, marketing always had something of a natural lifespan. Posters would be taken down, flyers would find their way to the bins and even the TV ad would start to become wearing. Content lifespan fitted quite naturally with the length of a recruitment campaign or a sales drive and even if things didn’t align perfectly, most marketing initiatives died a natural death.
The birth of the internet, however, means this isn’t the case any more. The vast memory reserves of our modern servers mean that the internet is a veritable dumping ground for old content, much of which is now superseded, inaccurate or just plain wrong! Is it time you killed off some content?
Old Web Pages
Your corporate web capital is too valuable to be lost in a maze of old pages, broken links and dead information. Every three months or so you should be testing your web layout as an outsider and making sure that trails make sense.
This is particularly important during big recruitment drives; graduates will be after serious swathes of information on different roles and positions and, ultimately, the big link to your application system. This should all be accessible without coming across a page stating last year’s vacancies or links to old departments; not only is it counter-productive to applicants, you could be at risk of giving away more information than you need to.
Expired Blog Copy
Blog articles are the essay of the twenty-first century, they should be to the point and succinct but are very often speculative; they’re a fine place to discuss market movements or new developments. At the time, this is great, but don’t leave yourself open to error once the news moves on!
You should also be wary of any SEO objectives your web team might have before cutting old web copy. Blogs are great places to target keywords and cutting articles might be seriously detrimental to your marketing team’s strategy! Don’t do it without prior permission.
Recycled Information
Pages frequently go out of date, but that doesn’t always mean you have to axe information altogether. Sensitive editing of keywords, particular phrases and dates often means you can use the same basic frameworks more than once.
Again, you’ll need to consult your SEO team on this as duplicating pages can harm your website’s potential. Equally, you shouldn’t be too quick to copy and paste information; it will be spotted by discerning readers and might look careless if it’s not properly re-edited to suit the tone of a different format.
Developing a model to update content systematically is important and keeping track of your online presence is essential. If you don’t know what content is still lurking in the depths of the internet, you don’t know what applicants, clients or customers could find!
Tom started his career early; taking on an associate role at Deloitte just a few days after his eighteenth birthday, working in a technical role but with a focus on identifying and recruiting talented undergraduates. He is now entering his final year at Exeter University and he continues to work with the recruitment side of the firm and remains an active brand ambassador on campus.
Over the last few years, Tom has spent time building up a reputation as a freelance writer and has developed both a strong client base and good knowledge of social media along the way. Though there’s still plenty to learn, experience working in both the smallest and the largest of businesses has served him well and given him a feel for balancing strong corporate ideas with a personal tone.
As a student, Tom is able to offer a valuable insight into the way graduate recruitment works from the other side and how students and interns react to particular styles of marketing and recruitment. Eventually he hopes to take off his copywriting business before embarking on an MA in philosophy.
