Do you want to dominate your niche with the most authoritative content, improve your search engine ranking, and drive more engagement with your audience?
You need an effective content strategy to achieve all of these. The fun part is… it doesn't take so much to create a winning content strategy. Moreso, 2022 is officially here, so it’s the perfect time to get prepared for a strong year.
In this post, we'll define content strategy, discuss why your company needs a content marketing plan, and outline the steps you'll need to take to create one.
What is Content Strategy?
Hubspot defines content strategy as a plan in which you use content (audio, visual, and/or written) to achieve your business goals. Furthermore, a successful content strategy will walk your target audience through the funnel and keep them engaged even after a purchase.
This means that a content strategy caters to all the stages of a customer value journey, helping you create a lasting relationship with your customers. Needless to say that with a solid content strategy, you'll generate more brand awareness, create better engagement with your audience, increase your sales conversion, and build a loyal customer base.
What is a Content Plan and why do you need one?
After creating your content strategy, you'll need a solid plan to execute it, right? That's where a content plan comes in. A content plan outlines the types of content and topics you'll need to produce to achieve your content marketing goals. It also helps you figure out how you'll create the content.
Essentially, a content plan improves the overall quality of your content by speeding up the content creation process, helping you explore new ways to engage your audience. You can also maximise your marketing budget ROI without compromising on quality.
How to create a Content Strategy
In case you weren’t already fully convinced of the importance of impactful content, did you know that 47% of buyers check three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep? Your sales are only as good as the leads they get in contact with, and top-notch content is the first step to top-notch sales conversion.
To help you out, we've compiled a list of strategies that will assist you in preparing your content strategy. Ready? Let's dive in.
Step 1: Define your goals
What are your goals for creating a content marketing strategy? What drives you to create content and develop a strategy? You'll have an easier time deciding what's best for your strategy if you know what you actually want to achieve.
Step 2: Conduct persona research
To create a successful content plan, you have to define your target audience or your buyer persona. This is especially true for newcomers in the marketing industry. If you don’t know who your target audience is, you don’t know what they need to know prior to converting, which means you can’t create targeted, effective content.
Step 3: Run a comprehensive content audit
A content audit will help you find what your audience responds to the most, in addition to identifying gaps in your subject clusters and developing new content ideas. A well-prepared audit can help you determine your best and worst-performing content. You can then use that information to fill in any gaps and expand on the topics your audience seems most interested in.
Step 4: Choose a Content Management System
Investing in a content management system (CMS) allows you to publish, manage, and track all your content in one place. WordPress, for example, lets you add features such as free web forms, live chats, email marketing, and analytics, among other things to increase your content management options.
Step 5: Determine the type of content to create
Before deciding on the content to create, you must first understand how your audience likes to consume content. Start by conducting research, then collect content style ideas and outline the content marketing strategies you will use. Going through these essential steps will help you decide on the content type to create. Does your target audience like reading articles? Or do they prefer video or audio formats?
Step 6: Brainstorm more content ideas
This has to do with generating ideas for your next content marketing project. Brainstorming allows you to develop the best proof of concept, clarify your messaging, select the best format, and understand your keywords. You could use tools like Feedly, BuzzSumo, and CoSchedule Headline Analyzer to aid the brainstorming process.
Step 7: Publish your content
When all is said and done, you'll have to launch your content to the world. Part of that process includes managing and organising your content, distributing it across all channels, and creating them in different formats. Here, a content calendar will come in handy to keep you organised and consistent.
That's Not All
Before concluding this topic, we want to quickly add that having a content strategy in itself is excellent. However, implementing an SEO strategy, which is your golden ticket to getting found, alongside your content strategy, helps you win in the long term.
We'll be covering that in an upcoming blog post, so watch this space. Ready to push your content marketing in the right direction in 2022? Get in touch with us today for a quick chat; we'll be glad to address your needs.