There’s a lot more to content than meets the eye.
Organisations create content to engage with their audience, display their expertise, encourage the sales funnel, and generally foster good brand awareness online.
But content isn’t just something you cobble together, plop online, and immediately reap the benefits. Very rarely, some public social media thing will “go viral,” but when your business is dependent on consistently great content to earn new business, we need to be far savvier.
Content needs direction. It needs goals. It needs measurement. It needs strategy.
Without strategy, companies create content because “it’s the done thing,” not because it has real, tangible, provable promotional benefits. Without strategy, companies don’t know how their content factors into their overall marketing picture and can’t identify the impact it has on their business. Without strategy, companies just create whatever content they feel compelled to create – not what their audience would like to see.
In this article, we’re going to define and discuss content strategy and answer some crucial questions along the way. Oh, and stay tuned for some totally free content strategy resources!
So, let’s get down to business.
What is Content Strategy?
A content strategy is an organisation’s top-down plan for creating branded content and maximising that content’s promotional impact with their target audience. In turn, it should help you use content in a way that furthers your broader business goals.
Content strategy provides essential direction and purpose for your content marketing efforts. By and large, your content strategy should give you clear guidance around:
- Content Formats – What content formats are you going to use? E.g., blog posts, video, podcasts, etc.
- Content Plan – What topics are you going to approach, when, and in what formats?
- Content Frequency – How regularly you are going to create new content? How often will you update old content, if at all?
- Your Audience – What kind of audience are you looking to engage? What do they want/need to know about your service/industry before they consider purchasing?
- Content Distribution – Where/how are you going to publish, distribute, and promote your content? Where do you need to be in order to appear in front of your target audience?
- Your Sales Funnel– Where might content factor into your buyer’s journey? What content do your sales team need to support their work? How will content enhance buyer experience?
- Your Competition – How are your competitors using content? Are they targeting the same audience as you? What formats, topics, and publishing frequency do they use?
- Your Business Goals – What do you want to achieve with your content? What would content marketing success mean to you? What sales, marketing, and business goals should you track?
- Content Auditing – How will you assess older content for improvement or updating? How frequently will you audit older content? Why might you “retire” an older piece of content?
We’ve raised a few interesting, preliminary content strategy questions here. If you’d like more questions to ponder, I’m in the process of putting together a resource with 80+ content strategy questions to get you on your way. Join the waiting list here!
What’s the Difference Between Content Strategy and Content Marketing?
I’ve said before that content marketing is the practice of producing and distributing online editorial media that’s relevant to your company’s offering, industry, and audience.
You’re likely already familiar with the more tangible elements of content marketing, like writing blogs, promoting lead magnets, and resharing older content.
Yet these actions are just that – actions. They are the individual tactics that make up the meat of any organisation’s content marketing approach.
Your content strategy is your high-level plan for your content marketing endeavours. Wherever possible, formulating a strong content strategy should come before any tactical content marketing actions.
What Are the Benefits of Having a Content Strategy?
So, what do you stand to gain from having a clear content strategy? Why bother? Let’s explore 6 key benefits.
1. Clear Purpose & Goals
Having a content strategy means that you’re not just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. You have a clear, purposeful direction to serve as the foundation for all of the content marketing activities you do.
2. It Gives You a Consistent Plan
When you know what content you need to create, in what format, for what date; how it’s going to be distributed; and what results you would like to earn from it, you’re not left second-guessing what action to take next.
With a solid plan of action, you can better allocate resources to allow for your content mission, even if that’s simply knowing how much time you and your team need to devote to content every week or month.
3. Better Content Quality
With a firm plan, you’re not floundering, waiting for ideas to come to you. When you know what you’re going to be creating about, for who, and why, you’re in a better position to plan ahead and cultivate the right headspace to really add value to your audience.
When I’m able to plan content ahead of time, I always find that the resulting content naturally feels more put-together and intentional. You may find the same too.
4. Earn Meaningful Results
Any business’s goals are its guiding star. Content strategy ties your content marketing efforts to your fundamental business, sales, and marketing goals. You’re then better able to make content marketing decisions that are going to meaningfully move the needle for your business.
5. Consistent Audience Focus
Content’s job is to help you win over your audience and keep them on-side. In order to do that, you need to know that audience.
What problems do they need solving? What appeals to them? What pain points spur them on to purchase from you – or even just make them frustratedly Google alternative solutions?
When you have answers to these questions, you can better create content that capitalises best on those groups and sentiments.
6. Competitive Advantage
Businesses that have a more strategic, analytical, and considered approach are far more likely to do well compared to those that don’t. If your competitors’ content is still running on guesswork, your more informed, strategic approach will naturally stand you in better stead.
Creating a Content Strategy: Where to Start
If you’re looking to create a content strategy that works for you – where do you start? Here are a few starting points that might help you get on your way to strategy serendipity!
Audit Your Existing Content
If you already have content out there, take the time to review it. Is it up to date? Are there any burning topics you seem to have missed? How is it performing – both in terms of actually driving new enquiries, signups, and sales – and within tools like Google Analytics.
Basically, establish what is already working for you and what could you be doing better?
Know What Works Well
What campaigns, sales efforts, and other content (if you have any) seems to be a hit with your audience? Can you figure out why? What does that particular tactic seem to do better than others? Putting your finger on your own unique je ne sais quoi can help you inform future successful content endeavours.
Know Your Audience
Recentre your view on your audience. When was the last time you took the time to understand what drives them? What they’re looking for in a provider like you? What kind of magic wand they need to take their pain points away? What does an “average” provider look like to them, and what does “above and beyond” look like?
Don’t be afraid to carry out a bit of market research here to ask your audience directly what they want to hear from you.
Keep a Data Mindset
Data haters need not apply! Any content strategist needs to keep one eye on content performance and one eye on what the audience does, needs, and wants.
Remember that goals need to be SMART – that’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Unleash Your Inner Behaviourist
There’s more to measuring marketing performance than simply noting whether “line go up or down.” It really helps to have a real curiosity about your audience’s behaviour – why do they love this campaign but not that other one? What makes this high-performing content piece get more attention than another, related one? Why are your anomalies, anomalies? What makes your usual results, usual?
Much of marketing is informed experimentation. What new and interesting things can you try out within the boundaries of your content strategy that might earn you better results?
Harness Agile Improvement
No content strategy should be carved in stone. Businesses change and develop over time – as do your goals, and in turn your methods for attaining those goals. That includes your content strategy.
Your content strategy shouldn’t be something you do once, print off, and then put on a shelf somewhere to gather dust and never look at again. (Though having a documented content strategy certainly doesn’t hurt – record as much as you need!)
The Plan > Do > Check > Act cycle is a useful, ever-looping cycle that can help you continually improve any approach or process within your business:
- Plan – Uncover an opportunity, sense check it, and plan an experimental change
- Do – Test out the change on a small scale and gather the results
- Check – Review the results of your test and establish what you can learn from it
- Act – Take action (or don’t) based on what you’ve learned from the test.
Rinse and repeat.
Nab These Essential Free Content Strategy Resources!
Before you go, don’t miss out on these awesome, totally free resources to help you on your content strategy and marketing journey.
Free, On-Demand Webinar, The Juicy Stuff No One Tells You About Content Strategy – Thirsty for a dose of content strategy? This vitamin-packed, 30-minute-ish blast covers all of the delicious aspects of content strategy that I feel gets left out of “one-stop-shop” content marketing advice online.
Up & Coming Ebook – 80+ Content Strategy Questions You Need to Ask Yourself – Want to start out on the content strategy journey but don’t know what information you need to get started? This PDF ebook will be a goldmine of queries you can use to uncover all aspects of your strategic approach to content.
Alternatively, if you do have some budget for content strategy, you can take advantage of my content strategy service where I discuss your needs, goals, audience, and more and put together a comprehensive, actionable, living strategy document – along with some resources to keep it actionable where needed. Get in touch if you’re interested!
