Maintaining a high-quality collection of online content is crucial to driving marketing engagement. According to the B2C Content Marketing report, marketers use content marketing to achieve three key goals: creating brand awareness, building credibility and trust, and educating their audiences. To achieve these goals for your organization, you must create a strong library of content for your website.

A website content library is a collection of assets such as photos, graphics, and videos that you can use to inform your audience about your organization and its mission. You can store these assets in your content management system (CMS), such as Drupal or WordPress, or a shared platform like Google Drive.

As a mission-driven organization, your content is critical to spreading awareness of important social, humanitarian, and health issues. This guide explores five tips for building a strong website content library to power your communication efforts.

1. Align your content with your audience’s needs and interests.

According to a Semrush study, 31% of marketing professionals say creating content that resonates with their audience is a top challenge. However, it should be a priority for your marketing team because developing content geared toward your target audience can drive a higher return on investment (ROI) for your marketing efforts. Your audience members are more likely to engage with this content and take steps to get more involved with your organization.

To reduce the challenges of creating audience-centered content, develop personas for your core audience groups. Personas are fictional representations of different segments within your audience. For example, a healthcare organization could have personas for prospective patients, current patients, healthcare professionals, patients’ family members, and volunteers.

Get started by using this template to create between three and five personas for your unique audience:

Then, reference these personas when designing new content to ensure every new material you create has a distinct purpose. Kanopi’s healthcare content marketing guide recommends asking yourself the following questions as you create new content:

• Who is the primary audience for this piece of content?
• What does the audience want to achieve by interacting with your content? 
• How can we reduce barriers to make it easier for audiences to access our content and complete their intended actions? 

By carefully thinking through these questions, you can focus your time and energy on creating content that appeals to your audience and strengthens their connection to your cause.

2. Incorporate multiple content formats.

Bare-bones, one-dimensional content won’t hold your audience’s attention for very long. Your audience members naturally have different learning styles and varying preferences for taking in new information. For example, about 65 percent of the population are visual learners, 30 percent are auditory learners, and 5 percent are kinesthetic (tactile) learners.

As you build your content library, prioritize the following types of high-quality web content to appeal to all types of visitors:

• Photos, including posed and candid images
• Audio clips and interviews with community members, staff members, volunteers, board members, etc.
• Videos on different subjects, such as donor appreciation messages, matching gift video explainers, and other topics relevant to your organization’s mission
• Infographics, including charts, graphs, and statistics roundups
• Podcast recordings on topics relevant to your organization’s mission
• Webinar recordings with valuable free educational content
• Reports or whitepapers with recent research conducted by your organization
• Downloadable eBooks that allow audience members to dive deeply into a specific topic

Getting Attention’s graphic design guide recommends telling stories using your graphics and other content elements. Throughout the content creation process, keep your organization’s primary message and mission statement in mind, and consider how each content element furthers the narrative to spread greater awareness to your audience. Ensure your content is uniformly branded with your organization’s logo, colors, and fonts to contribute to a cohesive story.

In addition, work with professionals or leverage marketing platforms as needed to fill your library with high-quality content. For example, with a video engagement platform like Gather Voices, you can access a simple, user-friendly platform to create user-generated video content that adds authenticity to your marketing.

3. Don’t neglect interactive content.

Interactive content is content that website visitors can actively engage with. Some estimates have found that interactive content can drive 2x more conversions than passive or basic content.

Make your content more immersive by adding these elements to your content library:

• Polls
• Quizzes
• Interactive maps
• Graphs and charts
• Calculators
• Self-assessment tools

Promote this interactive content across multiple platforms, including your website’s blog, your email newsletter, and your social media pages. Encourage audience members to share their quiz results or other informational content by including social media sharing buttons.

4. Create a standard refresh process.

Share your content library with all team members who will be refreshing your website regularly. Establish clear policies and internal communications guidelines for creating, uploading, and updating your content.

For instance, you might create a standard process for adding new content to the library with these steps:

1. Draft the content, i.e. take photos, create videos, draft blog posts or eBooks, record podcasts, etc.
2. Peer edit or review the content for brand alignment, clarity, and accuracy. Involve subject matter experts as needed. For example, healthcare website content should be reviewed by medical professionals for accuracy.
3. Upload the content to your library, whether in your CMS or another media-sharing platform.
4. Incorporate the content across multiple new website elements, such as blog posts, photo essays, testimonials, event pages, etc.

Develop a content creation calendar to keep your library fresh and up to date. For example, you might plan to record a monthly podcast episode or publish a new eBook four times a year. Also, set regular reminders for refreshing timely content, such as infographics or charts. This ensures that your content stays as accurate and updated as possible, providing more value for website visitors.

5. Track content engagement.

Assess your content performance over time to determine what’s going well, what needs improvement, and what strategic changes you can make to drive greater engagement. Measure performance using tools like:

• Website analytics, including time spent on a page, bounce rate, and average session duration
• Social media engagement metrics such as likes, followers, and shares
• Audience member surveys that ask website visitors their opinions on your online content
• Website heatmaps that track the actions users take while on your website, such as links or buttons they click on most or areas of the page that hold their attention

These tools can help you identify common roadblocks in the user experience or content types that don’t drive a lot of engagement. Get creative and try new content ideas to find elements that work well for your unique audience.

Once you have a strong foundation and a robust content library, you can easily pull out assets and implement different content types within marketing campaigns on any online platform. This will help streamline your communications process to get crucial information out to your audience faster and offer a more positive online experience.