Building a content strategy is like constructing a bridge. When done right, it should connect your business to its audience through a path of valuable and engaging content. But how do you build this strategic framework? How can you make sure it withstands the test of time and the whirlwind pace of the digital world? To answer this question, we will dive deep into what content strategy means, why it matters, and how it works in harmony with your broader digital marketing goals. So, put on your hard hats, and let’s learn how to create a content strategy that gets the job done.
What is content strategy in marketing?
Your content strategy, in the world of marketing, is the high-level vision that guides the development of content across different media to achieve specific business and customer engagement goals. It involves planning, creation, delivery, and management of content, with a core set of goals and KPIs in mind.
When referring to a content strategy, the term ‘content’ itself is comprehensive. It ranges from written material like blogs, articles, and product descriptions, to multimedia content such as videos, infographics, podcasts, and more. But it isn’t just about producing a constant stream of material. The primary focus of a content strategy is to help your brand meet its objectives.
For example, let’s say you’re an online retailer and you want to increase organic website traffic. To achieve this, you could create a content strategy that focuses on the development of helpful SEO-friendly blog posts and videos related to your industry or products. The idea is to create content that improves your visibility and ranking on search engines, so you can attract more visitors.
Or maybe your brand is trying to reposition itself to appeal to a different audience. In this case, your content strategy should be geared towards transforming the brand’s reputation. You could achieve this by creating content that focuses on topics or values associated with your new target market. To put it simply, your content strategy is a goal-oriented roadmap for all your content-related activities.
What is the difference between content strategy and marketing strategy?
In the marketing world, lots of industry terms are thrown around interchangeably. While some might refer to content strategy and digital marketing strategy as the same thing, there are a few key distinctions between these two concepts.
A content strategy lays the groundwork for what kind of content you produce, why you produce it, how and where you distribute it, and what outcomes to expect. This strategy helps your team create content that aligns with your brand’s voice, ethos, and audience expectations. At its most basic level, it keeps your content production consistent and relevant.
On the other hand, a digital marketing strategy is broader, encompassing not just content but all methods and channels you use to promote a business or product. It defines the overall business goals, the target audience, and how to reach them most effectively. You can do this by leveraging various marketing techniques such as SEO, PPC, social media marketing, email marketing, and of course, content marketing.
To summarise, while a content strategy focuses specifically on content and its relevance and delivery, a marketing strategy looks at the big picture. It decides which marketing channels and techniques you should employ to reach your business goals. However, they aren’t independent of each other. In fact, a solid content strategy is a key component of a successful digital marketing strategy. It contributes significantly to achieving the overarching marketing goals.
Why is content strategy important?
Content strategy acts as the bedrock for all your digital content. How can you expect to create effective content if you don’t have a clear plan or structure in place? A content strategy creates the framework to guide you through the entire content creation process, from ideation right through to execution. Here are a few reasons why it’s more than just a nice-to-have.
It helps to create meaningful connections
A strong content strategy allows for meaningful engagement with your audience. By supplying them with content that’s both relevant and valuable, you create relationships that go beyond simple business transactions. Your audience gets to see what your brand stands for, and they’re more likely to become loyal customers.
It makes content creation more efficient
Without a well-structured plan, the creation process can quickly become disordered and produce lacklustre results. A content strategy is like a compass, guiding your content creation efforts toward your predefined goals. This ensures every piece of content serves a purpose – whether it’s to educate, increase brand awareness, or boost website traffic.
It allows you to build a robust brand identity
It’s a given that consistent, high-quality content enhances your brand’s image. A content strategy helps create and maintain a strong, recognisable brand identity, across every piece of content you produce. It also serves as the cornerstone for any content pillar initiatives and other digital marketing tactics. Ultimately, when you create a content strategy, you help your team produce a steady flow of content that meets your business’ objectives.
Your SEO performance will improve
Search engine optimization is deeply linked with content strategy. Content that is strategically planned, properly structured, and optimized for keywords, will be much more successful in terms of SEO. Additionally, a good content strategy allows you to plan and create evergreen content. This type of content will continue to generate positive results in the long run.
It’s a key lead education and nurturing tool
With a well-devised content strategy, you can educate your potential customers about your products or services, offer up solutions to their pain points, and guide them gently along the sales funnel. This proactive approach not only solves their immediate problems but encourages a long-term relationship with your business.
What makes a good content strategy?
Much like a solid building needs a detailed blueprint, a successful content marketing campaign relies on a good content strategy. What, then, defines an effective strategy?
Understanding your audience
At the heart of any impactful content strategy, there should be a profound understanding of your audience. What are their likes and dislikes? What kind of problems are they encountering, and how can your content address those issues? The better you comprehend your audience’s needs and preferences, the more effectively you can design valuable, relatable content. This means you need to perform detailed audience research and possibly create audience personas. Then adjust your understanding as you learn more about your audience over time.
Clear, measurable goals
Purpose drives an effective content strategy. Each piece of content you produce should serve a specific goal. Perhaps you’re looking to increase traffic to your website, raise brand awareness, promote a new product, or build stronger customer relationships. Having clear and measurable goals for your content strategy helps you to track your progress, make necessary adjustments, and ultimately, see a higher return on your content marketing investment.
Incorporating SEO
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, isn’t an optional add-on. It’s an essential ingredient in your content strategy. It involves the strategic use of keywords, building quality backlinks, optimizing your content layout, and following other SEO best practices to boost your content’s ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs). Even the most engaging content won’t be effective if your target audience can’t find it!
Consistent delivery
A consistent content strategy is like a promise to your audience. Keeping a steady tone, style, and publishing schedule builds your audience’s trust and expectations of your business. They’ll know when to look for your content, and they’ll appreciate your brand as a source of reliable, trustworthy information. Consistency extends beyond your publishing schedule to the voice and visual branding of your content too. Maintaining this consistency helps to reinforce your brand’s image and message.
Adaptable and flexible
A good content strategy is flexible and adjusts to changes in your brand’s industry and the world around it. It should keep in step with current events and emerging trends, as well as the changing preferences of your audience. This means keeping an eye on analytics and feedback to understand what’s working and what’s not. Then you need to be open to experimenting with new content formats, platforms, or strategies. Staying current with industry trends and changes in audience behaviour also provides valuable insights to help refine your content strategy.
Variety of content formats
While blogs and articles are important staples of content, a well-rounded strategy will include a mix of formats. Videos, infographics, podcasts, webinars, social media posts, eBooks – there are many possibilities. Different types of content not only caters to different audience preferences, but also provide opportunities for repurposing content, broadening your reach, and meeting your audience in different stages of their customer journey.
A mix of both evergreen and topical content
Your content strategy should be a balanced blend of evergreen and topical content. Evergreen content refers to content that retains its relevance over time. It can help drive steady, organic traffic to your site. On the other hand, topical content is timely, addressing current events or trends in your industry. This type of content can help drive spikes in traffic and showcases your brand as up-to-date and engaged with the world around it.
Content pillars
Another important element of a strong content strategy is the establishment of content pillars. These are broad topics that you continually build upon with your content. Each content pillar serves as a cornerstone or foundation for your strategy. Under each pillar, you can generate several smaller, related pieces of content. This includes blog posts, infographics, videos, and so on to dive into various aspects of the topic. This approach not only helps in organising your content creation efforts but also in establishing your brand as an authority on these topics. What’s more, it’s great for SEO, as search engines tend to reward comprehensive coverage of a topic.
By piecing together these elements, you can create a content strategy that serves as a sturdy pillar for your entire digital marketing strategy. It’s not a one-time effort but a living process that evolves with your business, your audience, and the digital marketing landscape.
What are the steps of content strategy?
Building an effective content strategy is like preparing for a long journey. It requires careful planning, a detailed map, and the right tools to make sure you reach your destination. Below, we break down the steps to creating and executing a strong content strategy. This includes how to create a content plan and how to create a content calendar.
Step 1: Understand your audience
The first step in any content strategy is to know who you’re creating content for. This involves defining your target audience and understanding their needs, preferences, and behaviours. What kind of content do they consume? What platforms do they use? The more detailed your audience persona, the more tailored your content can be. Performing a content audit (see step 3) can also help with this process.
Step 2: Define your goals
What do you want to achieve with your content? Are you looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or nurture customer relationships? Defining your content strategy goals will guide your content creation and help you measure your success later. Without a clear, measurable goal, your strategy might fall flat. Take the time to determine what you really want to achieve with your strategy.
Step 3: Conduct a content audit
This involves reviewing your existing content to see what’s working and what’s not. An audit can help you identify gaps in your content, see what types of content are most popular with your audience, and discover opportunities for repurposing or updating existing content.
Step 4: Identify content pillars
A content pillar is a broad theme or topic that your content will revolve around. These pillars should match your audience’s interests and your brand’s expertise. Once you’ve identified your content pillars, you can create various types of content around these themes.
Step 5: Create a content plan
Your content plan is your strategy put into action. It should include the types of content you’ll create, the topics you’ll cover, and the platforms you’ll use for distribution. Once you have created your content plan, then you can start creating the content that you want to publish (and create your content calendar too).
How to create a content plan
Creating a content plan involves several steps:
- Analyse your strategy. Start with a clear understanding of your content strategy. What are the key themes, objectives, and audience insights you’ve outlined? Keep these front and centre as you move forward.
- Decide on content types. Based on your strategy, decide which types of content are best suited to convey your messages. This could include blog posts, social media updates, videos, podcasts, or infographics. Keep in mind the preferences of your audience and the strengths of your creative team.
- Break down your themes. Take the main themes from your strategy and break them down into specific topics. For example, if your theme is sustainability, your topics might include renewable energy, recycling practices, and sustainable lifestyle tips.
- Plot out your content. Think about the timing of your content. What topics are relevant throughout the year, and which ones coincide with events, seasons, or trends in your industry? Use this info to start building a timeline of content.
- Incorporate SEO best practices. Your content should be easily discoverable. Use the SEO guidelines from your strategy to infuse your content plan with keywords, meta tags, and optimized descriptions. Always make sure that SEO complements, rather than dominates, your content. Readers can spot writing that has been unnaturally stuffed with keywords, so tread carefully.
- Define your distribution. Identify where each piece of content will be published. Use insights from your strategy to inform your choices and consider whether you can repurpose content across different platforms.
Step 6: Create a marketing content calendar
A marketing content calendar is a visual workflow that schedules your content production and publication. It’s an essential tool to ensure consistent content delivery and to manage multiple content creation tasks efficiently.
How to create a marketing content calendar
A content calendar can be as simple or complex as you need it to be, but there are a few key elements that it should contain. At a minimum, your content calendar should detail what content you are producing, who is responsible for creating it, when it is due to be completed, and when and where it will be published.
You can present this in a spreadsheet or using a project management tool. Start by plotting out any key dates or events that are relevant to your business. This includes product launches or seasonal events and plan your content around these. Your content calendar is a living document, so regularly review it and update it to ensure it stays in step with your ongoing content strategy.
Step 7: Publish and promote your content
Once your content is ready, it’s time to put it out into the world. This includes publishing it on your chosen platforms and promoting it through various channels like social media, email newsletters, or your website.
Step 8: Measure and adjust
Finally, track your content’s performance using analytics tools. Are you meeting your content strategy goals? What kind of content is performing best? Use these insights to adjust your content strategy, refine your content plan, and update your content calendar.
A content strategy is not a one-and-done project. It’s a dynamic process that evolves with your audience’s needs, market trends, and your business goals. Stay flexible, keep learning, and don’t be afraid to adjust your course as needed.
Outsourcing your content strategy
If you don’t have the time, experience, or resources to create your own content strategy, consider outsourcing it to an agency that specialises in providing content strategy services. A content marketing agency can help you create, implement, and maintain a comprehensive content strategy that meets your digital marketing goals.
It’s not an admission of defeat, it’s a smart business decision. Content creation and marketing require specialised knowledge, skills, and resources. Hiring a content agency can save you time, effort, and money in the long run. They can also bring a fresh perspective to your content creation process.
Here are a few tips on outsourcing your content strategy:
- Determine your content needs. Decide what type of content you need (blogs, videos, podcasts, etc.) and how much content is necessary to meet your business goals. This will help you communicate your needs more effectively and narrow down the list of potential agencies.
- Experience in your industry. Look for a content agency that has experience in your particular industry. They will have a better understanding of your unique challenges, audience, and the kind of brands you are competing against.
- Pricing and value. The cheapest option is not always the best. Look for an agency that provides value for your investment. As they say, buy cheap, buy twice!
- Set clear expectations. Once you’ve chosen an agency to work with, make sure you outline your content strategy goals and expectations clearly from the start to ensure everyone is on the same page. The more information you supply upfront, the smoother the content creation process will be.
Final thoughts
Content is key to any successful digital marketing strategy. It’s a way to attract and engage customers, build relationships, and develop your brand’s identity. Producing high-quality, timely, and relevant content requires some forethought. A content strategy helps you organise your ideas and create content that serves a purpose while adding value to your business.
If you’re short on time or resources, outsourcing your content strategy to an experienced agency can get the ball rolling. Here at VAMS, we can help your brand create a content strategy that works for you. Contact us today to discuss how we can help your business reach its objectives and get more out of your digital content.
Frequently asked question (FAQs)
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about building a content strategy.
How often should I review and update my content strategy?
While there’s no hard and fast rule, it’s generally recommended to review and update your content strategy at least once a year. However, for a more dynamic approach, you might want to do a check-in every quarter to adjust to changes in your business goals, market trends, or customer behaviour.
How do I measure the success of my content strategy?
There are several metrics you can use to measure the success of your content strategy. These can include website traffic, time spent on page, bounce rate, social media engagement, backlinks earned, and conversion rates. However, the key is to align these metrics with your content strategy goals.
What types of content should I include in my content strategy?
The types of content you include in your strategy will depend on your audience and your goals. This could range from blog posts, articles, and guides, to videos, podcasts, infographics, social media posts, email newsletters, and more. The key is to choose formats that your audience engages with and that effectively convey your brand’s message.
Can I create a content strategy on my own or should I hire a content marketing agency?
Creating and executing a content strategy effectively requires a good understanding of your audience, some experience in content creation, and a firm grasp of SEO and analytics. While it’s possible to manage this on your own, especially for smaller businesses, hiring an agency that provides content strategy services can save you time, provide an extra level of insight, and more than likely yield better results.