A content strategy is a mechanism that organizes your content. It includes planning, research, and monitoring. A content strategy is unique to each brand, and it must be in the interests of the target audience and pursue specific goals.
Thus, the strategy shows where the project should go. If you have already set clear goals for your brand and know what you want to get from marketing, then it is better to create content armed with a good strategy. Publishing content based on analytics and research and a clear plan can significantly improve your brand’s performance and lead to goals faster.
However, a content plan is different from a content strategy. A content plan is the planning of publications and the distribution of roles/types of content/dates for several months in advance, and a content strategy is a global definition of the vision, goals, and purpose of content in the overall marketing strategy.
So, in this article we will cover:
What is content?
First, let’s take a look at what content is.
Content is information that you provide to your audience through several channels: your website, social media, or promotional campaign. Content is not just text. It can be presented in different formats: audio, graphics, video, etc.
Creating relevant, useful content is not so much about what you want to convey, but how you do it? Where? and for whom?
People are already so used to promotional content that they automatically ignore any promotional messages, especially if they are very intrusive. When people interact with your content, they expect that in return for the time they spend on your website, or on your Facebook or Instagram, they will get some kind of benefit. This benefit can be professional advice in a particular field, interesting facts, a checklist, etc. So, you have to give them what they expect in high-quality and useful information.
Content types
- Informational content: The goal is to provide new information and educate the public.
- Commercial content: The goal is to increase sales.
- Entertaining content: The goal is to help the audience entertain, relax and have fun.
- Followers Generated Content: Testimonials, Followers’ Stories, and any other content co-created by Followers.
- News content: The goal is to talk about product updates or share industry news.
- Expert content: The objective is an expert opinion on a particular topic in a particular field.
- Reputation content: The goal is to create a positive brand image.
- Viral content: stubborn content, the purpose of which is to spread quickly and attract attention.
You can easily integrate some of these types of content. For example, when you share an article about the head of sales opinion on a sales topic that works for your company, you simultaneously incorporate and publish three types of content: informational content, expert content, and reputation-building content for your agency.
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy is a kind of map that outlines the path to the goals of your brand, project, or business. It doesn’t matter what kind of content is online, if it doesn’t have a direct purpose, it won’t resonate with your audience.
Your content strategy should run in parallel with the overall brand strategy and be in tune with the brand style.
When developing a content strategy, you need to answer a number of important questions:
- What area do you specialize in?
- Who is your target audience (TA), and what are their problems?
- How can your business solve these problems? Why is your solution better than that of your competitors?
- What type of content is best for addressing these issues?
- Which content distribution method suits your target audience?
We’ll talk about the details of these issues later, but for now, we’ll analyze why content strategy is so important.
Why content strategy is important?
Creating content without a strategy is like going to a store without a shopping list. How it will turn out, as we all know, is a waste of time and resources.
A well-designed content strategy gives you a clear goal and direction in which to lead your project and helps you not get distracted along the way. Strategy-based content is structured and consistent. Consistent content is what builds brand awareness and constantly attracts new customers who otherwise wouldn’t be accessible.
Without a content strategy, it will be difficult to define the goals of the business itself and to understand whether your marketing is effective. The strategy sorts everything out.
6 steps to building a content strategy
With the definition, everything became clear, now let’s move on to analyzing the content strategy development process.
Content marketing is not a straightforward process, but rather a cycle of activities. Creating and publishing content is important but it is not the only part of this process. It is preceded and followed by other procedures.
Strategy and planning before work begins, as well as analysis and revision after it is completed, are just as important as the creative process itself. So, how do we create content strategies from scratch in 6 steps:
1-Determination of goals:
What do you want to achieve by content creation? What are your overall marketing goals? And how can the content help you achieve them? The first step in building a content strategy is defining the brand’s goals, mission, and vision.
The goals you set for your brand will significantly influence the content you create. Do you want to reach a new audience or deepen your connection with an existing one? Or, for example, to increase conversion rates?
At this stage, you should pay attention to the sales funnel, it can also be used as a content strategy. Consider what stages a potential client should go through when getting acquainted with your content.
2-Definition of the target audience:
The next important step in your content strategy is to learn as much as possible about your target audience. By ‘knowledge’ we mean an in-depth study of demographics, age, gender, occupation, what they need, what they care about, etc. The target audience can be divided into several segments and create separate images of consumers who will have different characteristics and data.
Once you know who your audience is, what topics they are interested in, how busy they are, and what social media platforms they prefer, you can determine which content will resonate most with them. This data is the basis for your content strategy.
3-Competitor analysis:
So, once you have a general idea of what content to create, it’s time to take a look at what the competition is doing. Look at competitors’ websites and social media accounts. What kind of content do they have? What topics do they cover? Do they have emails or other promotions?
Your job at this point is to analyze their experience and find gaps and missing themes in your content strategy. The main thing is not to copy! You will be able to reach a new segment of the audience in your niche by creating original materials on lost topics.
4- Making a list of topics:
So, it’s time to prepare a list of topics and keywords that will be of interest to your target audience. When choosing topics and keywords, it is important to strike a balance between topics that your audience is interested in and that are popular in terms of search volume and traffic.
5- Content plan development:
At this stage, you should determine the specifics of the content based on the planning and analysis carried out in the previous stages. To do this, you can create a content plan. The content plan should include:
- Type and format
- Distribution channels
- Common topics
- Information tone
We recommend that you arrange the content plan in the form of a table, so you can track all content and distribution channels by date and author. To begin with, it is worth distributing the types and formats of content by segments of your target audience based on the data that you received from the analysis of the target audience. Next, select distribution channels for all content types and fill in the columns for titles, keywords, metadata, and publication dates.
When drawing up a content plan, it will be useful to determine at what stage of the sales funnel your potential customers are. If they are in the attention stage, they need to be told more about the project and products, and if they are already interested in your offer, they need to be called to action.
It is necessary to develop a content plan for several months. At the beginning of the year, you can already plan articles, promotions for some important events, etc.
6-Performance tracking:
We advise you to track the effectiveness of content after publication and analyze the results. This will help you identify missing points in your content strategy and help you edit content to achieve the desired result.
Every successful business has a set of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that align with business goals, and you should have them too. Identify key metrics that will help you measure the effectiveness of your content. Examples of metrics: traffic, search engine ranking and bounce rate, engagement, and conversion rate. It all depends on what goals you have set for your business.
Summing up
We hope you found our guide useful and will help you develop your content strategy and achieve your goals.
If you have any ambiguity in any of the points we talked about in this article, or if you need a content creation service and do not have the time, you only have to Contact us and we will help you with that.
