Strategy is an essential element in every aspect of our lives. Having a clear strategy for a business is as important as in any other domain, as it crafts a vision and a direction for your business. Content strategy is a higher-level business venture. Content strategy is the guiding light that leads your content marketing. It’s the decision-making that determines whom your content will influence, how your content will be recognized in the market and the targeted results. Additionally, it encompasses defining content success. So content strategy growth is so essential.
A successful content strategy will allure your potential customers towards your business and lead you to increase your lead generation.
Your content strategy defines:
- What you’re trying to aim
- Who is going to be your target audience
- What types of content you’ll publish
- How your content will support the brand
- How will your content stand out from the rest of the competitors
- How you will promote and enhance your content quality
- The analytics that determines success
The Goal of the Content Creation
The first step of content strategy is about having a certain target. Creating content just for the sake of creation is of no use. You need to have a defined objective about what your brand is about, what will be your marketing aims, and the requirements of the business. Transparency of goals allows you to measure results at the end and evaluate the performance. Here is a list of goals a content strategist might have:
A few goals that a content strategy may address include:
- Enhance brand awareness
- Getting customer loyalty
- Change people’s perspective
- Achieve customer and employee retention
- Providing free trial sign-ups
- Achieve high lead generation
- Gain customer’s confidence
Your goals keep varying as your business grows. In the beginning, making a strong base will be your goal, however, as the business grows you will want to achieve high lead generation.
The Essence of the Content
The next thing to consider is why you think your content has value. Ask yourself the following question at this step:
- Why is your purpose for creating this particular content?
- How will people perceive your content?
- What is the best way to deliver the content to the audience?
- Are there any brand standards you need to be integrated?
- At what stage of the sales funnel will this content piece fall under?
- Who is the target audience I’m trying to approach?
- Is there anyone else who would take advantage of reading this content piece?
- What factors make the content relevant?
- What type of tone should be used?
- Should you discuss it with some experts who can provide a deeper insight into the matter?
- Would imagery be useful to integrate throughout the content piece?
- How will the reader react after reading the content?
- Is there anything in the content that will address readers’ issues
- What strategy will you adopt to promote your content?
You can add value to your content by having a discussion about how you should put out the content. Seeing a project from other people’s perspectives gives you even deeper insight into the project.
The Target Audience
Apart from having a goal, you need to be clear about your target audience. The content will be of no value if it does not address the requirements of your audience. Conducting in-depth research is an essential element of content strategy, as it also leads you to have transparency about what content you should create. It also gives you an insight into the needs of your customers.
- Create reader identity
- Conduct user surveys regularly
- Employ Google analytics
- Find your potential audience on social media according to the insight of the platform you are using, for instance, find the audience on Twitter by connecting to your Twitter followers dashboard
- Conduct annual audience survey
- Monitor your social activity
- Keep track of your content
- Use an automated email method to get feedback from your customers
- Engage with your followers
- Keep track of your customer data
- Employ social listening tools
Content Creation Method
The next best thing is to figure out how you will be producing the content. Ask yourself the following questions about having a clear idea how your content should look like:
- What target do you want to achieve?
- If the content should be technical?
- What should be the tone of the content?
- What is the targeted format?
- How lengthy should the content be?
- What innovative ideas are we presenting?
There are following some of the factors to consider to create good content:
Optimization
To get top ranking on search engines, it is important that your content should be fully optimized. You should conduct keyword research and go for the ones which have high search volume but lower competition.
Conduct a competitors’ research
Competitor research is also essential, as it gives you an insight into how your content stands out from other people working in the same niche.
Create harmony between your story and content
Your content must align with your brand story. This technique is adopted by my content strategists.
How to Approach the Audience
Planning about how you will reach your customer is also a factor to think about. Here are some of the ways you can consider to approach your audience:
- Target ads
- Through social media, for instance, Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin
- Through Emails
- Affiliate Marketing
- By creating blog content
- Producing an attractive newsletter to boost leads
Content Marketing Tips
Here are some of the tips to consider growing your content strategy
- Understand the Content Marketing (Sales) Funnel
- Make a Plan
- Repurpose
- Establish Specific Direction for Your Content
- Have problem-solving approach
Bottom Line
Content strategy is an essential part of online business. Being strategic allows you to create content that will make you stand on the top of the list in the market. One might become overwhelmed with all the work, however, Lamar G Marketing Tree has got your back. It can help you solve your digital solutions to promote your products.