Step #1 on Your Content Repurposing Journey: A Content Inventory
Set the stage for repurposing content with a content inventory, which is a systematic review of your existing content to identify what should be updated, consolidated, repurposed or removed. It’s likely that your organization has spent a lot of time, energy and budget creating content, but you may not have a good handle on what content you have and whether the content that you have is worth maintaining going forward.
Jennifer Schmich wrote in Intuit’s Content Strategy 101 that “inventories and audits are the first place(s) to start with any content strategy project.”
You can’t optimize your content if you don’t have a grip on what content you’ve got. That’s likely the case for many organizations, as a Semrush survey of 481 marketers revealed that more than three-quarters lacked a fully integrated AI search and SEO strategy. Internal silos or islands of content mean that disconnects within organizational content can lead to inaccuracies in how brands are represented in AI and traditional searches, the survey noted.
In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the reasons why you should perform a content inventory, how to create an inventory of your content, the difference between an inventory and an audit, why a content inventory is important in the age of AI search and how often you should inventory your content.
Where Do You Start When Building a Content Inventory from Scratch?
Know what you own is a key principle in investing; the same is true with content creation. If you aren’t aware of what content you’ve already created, you run the risk of creating duplicate content. An additional benefit is that a content audit helps you understand the gaps that exist in your content and informs your content strategy going forward.
It’s no surprise that duplication can happen, especially as marketing leaders, subject matter experts, writers and designers enter and exit your organization. As you create new content, older content may be removed from your website or it just may be pushed farther down so that it isn’t visible to your clients and stakeholders.
The biggest reason behind performing a content inventory is that you’ll find it much easier in terms of effort, time and budget to repurpose existing content rather than create new content. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2025 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks Report, only 29% of B2B marketers consider their content strategy extremely or very effective, which means there’s a lot of opportunity to better organize and leverage existing assets. Whenever possible, squeezing as much juice out of the content you’ve already created is likely improve your strategy.
Odds are, if you don’t remember what content you’ve put out in the past, your audience doesn’t either. Refreshing that content quickly can give it new life and create more opportunities for engagement.
You can also expand the types of content you offer to your stakeholders with less effort than creating that content from scratch. Perhaps one of your subject matter experts just wrote a report. Ask them to create a two-minute video with highlights of the report that you can use in social media.
What Does a Content Inventory Look Like Step by Step?
A content inventory involves a seven step process:
Survey your organization to make sure you know who creates content, what they create and where they store content
Identify all your content—or focus on one specific subject area at a time—across your website(s), blogs, social media accounts
Create a master list of all of your content, including blogs, videos, social media posts, videos, webinars, white papers, press releases, landing pages, podcasts and reports
Organize the content by subject area, including at least 10 subject areas within your organization’s areas of expertise
Identify the primary question answered in each asset so that you understand how the article will be treated by AI engines
Flag whether your subject matter expert, original data or research are cited for AI engine credibility
Record key details such as web URLs, publication dates, subtopics, author and formats
Once you’ve complied a list or spreadsheet of your content, ideally you could keep adding to that record as you create content.
When is a Partial Content Inventory the Right Choice?
Of course, not every organization has the resources to keep a content database updated. In that case, I recommend auditing your content every two years.
You may decide that a complete content audit is either unnecessary or beyond your capabilities. In that case, you might want to take bite-size steps towards at least a partial content audit. You could audit specific areas where you your engagement numbers tell you that readers are most interested to ensure that you’re meeting their needs for content in key areas and to see where the gaps are and how you can repurpose the content you have to meet those needs.
A narrow content audit might be a good project for a summer intern. You can give that intern very specific parameters around what kinds of content should be inventoried, how to access that content and where and how to log that content. Check in with the intern regularly to ensure the project stays on track and that you’re getting the results you envisioned.
What’s the Difference Between a Content Inventory and a Content Audit?
A content inventory tells you what content you’ve got, while a content audit tells you whether that content should be updated, repurposed, consolidated or removed. “Content inventories tell you how much content you have, but they won’t tell you how well it’s performing,” said Anna Kaley, director of consulting at NN/G in How To: Content Inventory and Audit.
A content inventory identifies and catalogs every content asset your organization owns. Then, a content audit uses that inventory as a foundation to evaluate each content asset against predetermined criteria.
You’ll learn more about content audits in the July 15 blog post.
How Does AI Search Change What a Content Inventory Needs to Capture?
As search engine optimization (SEO) transitions to generative engine optimization (GEO), a content inventory matters for different reasons. An SEO-focused inventory helps improve your organization’s content rankings and traffic. A GEO-focused inventory helps AI systems find, understand, trust and cite your content.
Not only will a content inventory help you eliminate duplicate content and identify repurposing opportunities, it will also help you identify authoritative content most likely to be cited by AI-powered search tools.
In the GEO era, a content inventory should identify which assets include original research, subject matter expert attribution and trustworthy references. That’s because AI systems are more likely to synthesize information from authoritative sources than unsupported marketing claims.
Why is a Content Inventory the Foundation Every Content Strategy Needs?
A content inventory may not be the most exciting part of content marketing, but it provides the foundation for everything that follows. When you understand what you own before you create new content you may discover that your next blog post, webinar or video already exists—it simply needs to be refreshed and repurposed.
Once you’ve got either a comprehensive or more targeted content inventory, the next step is to identify your top-ranking assets through a content audit. In the next post, you’ll learn how to translate engagement metrics into a repurposing strategy so that your most successful posts gain a new life.