What is a Content Strategy?
A content strategy is a strategy for creating, publishing and promoting content to achieve specific marketing and business goals.
Why do you Need a Content Strategy?
Without a content strategy, businesses often suffer from a lack of direction.
It isn’t always clear what the next step should be if you don’t know where you’re going.
And without clear business goals, you’ll keep throwing random pieces of content at your audience, hoping it will get their attention.
For that reason, every business that’s looking for growth needs a content strategy.
How to Develop a Winning Content Strategy
Your business strategy must clearly tell your story.
It has to show your expertise while providing value and helping your customers at the same time. It should also highlight why you’re unique and what makes you better than your competitors.
That way, you’ll give your prospects lots of reasons to work with you and stick with your services in the long run.
But now you might be wondering - what are the key elements that you need to get right before you can start creating content?
1. Set Business Objectives
Making a plan always requires setting goals first, because you can’t hit something if you don’t know what it is.
Before thinking about your content strategy, you must first define your business objectives.
Start by answering this question:
What do you want your company to achieve?
And only then will you be able to move forward in the process.
2. Research your Target Audience
Who will you be creating content for? What are their pain points? Why do they need to listen to you? And how will your services or products change their lives?
These are all critical questions to answer before creating any content.
Different buyer personas require different types of contents, different tones, and different platforms.
Make sure you’re as clear and precise about your answers to the aforementioned questions if you want your marketing plans to succeed.
3. Choose your Content Formats
In what forms will your content come? And what platforms will work best for each type?
The most popular content formats today are:
- Blog Posts
- Infographics
- Ebooks
- Videos
- Audio Podcasts
- Case Studies
Here are some examples of how you might use content formats:
- If you want to publish more blog content, you need to pick a content management system
- Infographics work well on social media platforms
- Ebooks are shared best via email using an opt-in page.
4. Test and Learn
It's hard to get everything right from the beginning. But waiting for the perfect content strategy isn't a smart solution.
Most businesses that fail spend a lot of time thinking about an ideal content strategy rather than just implementing something. And that can put an end to the whole business if it takes too long.
Just start creating content and see how your audience respond to it.
What topics do they prefer? And what problems do they need to solve?
You'll have all your answers along the way. Getting things wrong is not necessarily a bad thing if you learn from it.
5. Create Valuable Content
By this point, your content strategy is almost ready!
It’s time now to create content that solves problems and helps people improve their lives. You should always keep learning more about your audience, their struggles, and their preferences.
You’ll see your numbers grow as you start getting closer to your perfect content strategy.
How Can We Help?
Could you do with some guidance regarding your content strategy? We can help you with that.
Contact us today and we’ll organise a free strategy session with you to create a plan of action.
If you like what you see, you can always request to be paired with an awesome team to implement everything we discuss and more!
Otherwise, you could check out our training courses for ongoing marketing help. We explain and walk you through the most effective SEO and marketing practises we know - giving you a head start against your competition.
