How To Develop A Content Strategy

What Is a Content Strategy?

A content strategy includes the creation, publishing, and management of content. It should include an understanding of the definition of content creation. You need to know what you will write about, who will write it, and when to publish blog posts.

Why Is Content Strategy Important?

A content strategy is essential to the success of content creators. It can help you with the following items.

• It Helps You Set Your Goals: Ask yourself what you want to achieve with your content. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales?
• It Helps You Schedule Content: Scheduling content helps you stay organized. It also allows you to batch content. Batching is helpful if you have difficulty staying on track.
• It Encourages You To Post Regularly: Posting content regularly will help you build an audience and keep them engaged.
• It Allows You To Track Your Success: You can track your content strategy’s success by looking at your website traffic, social media engagement, and conversions. Doing so will help you see what’s working and what’s not.

Who Needs a Content Strategy?

Let’s now review who needs to sit down to create a solid content strategy.

• Businesses With an Online Presence: If you have a business with an online presence, then having a content strategy is key to your success. Your content should remain aligned with your business goals.
• Blogs: Writing is a crucial piece of running a blog. A content strategy will help you write consistent content, promote your blog posts, and increase your audience. It is also essential when you hire freelance writers to help create the posts.
• Online Retailers: An online retailer needs a content strategy because it will help to develop the content for product pages, blog posts, and social media posts. Online retailers need to focus on creating keyword-rich content, so potential customers find their products.

What Is a Good Content Strategy?

There are several key elements you should keep in mind when developing a content strategy.

• Keep content original
• Keep content relevant to your target audience
• Use high-quality content
• Optimize content for SEO
• Post shareable social media content

What Are the Components of Content Strategy?

As you develop your strategy around content marketing, keep the following components in mind.

Goals

Outline your goals first.

What do you want to achieve with content marketing?

• Do you need more website traffic?
• More conversions?
• Better brand awareness?

Once you know your goals, determine what content will help you reach those goals.

Research

You must identify the keywords that will help attract the best-fit prospects who will buy your products.

Think about top-of-the-funnel, middle-of-the-funnel, and bottom-of-the-funnel keywords as you research ideas around how each keyword will drive content ideas.

Pro Tip: Learning how to do keyword research will help you immensely at this stage.

Competition Analysis

A winning content strategy will analyze what your competition does.

Not only can you learn from their successes, but you can avoid their content strategy pitfalls.

Look at their blog content, website content, social media posts, and any other content they produce.

Identify their most popular content and the topics they write about most often.

Target Audience

Write content for the specific people you want to reach rather than trying to write content that appeals to everyone.

When you narrow down your target audience, it becomes easier to produce content that resonates and drives results.

Ask questions that help with the brainstorming process.

• What are their needs?
• Their pain points?
• Their wants?
• Their interests?

Schedule

Consistency is key when it comes to content marketing.

Creating a content calendar will help keep you organized and on track.

By outlining the topics you want to write about and when you plan to publish them, you can ensure a consistent content strategy.

Types of Content

Keep these popular types of content in mind as you brainstorm content ideas.

• Blog Posts
• Articles
• Ebooks
• Infographics
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Images
• Social Media Posts
• Newsletters
• FAQs
• Product Descriptions
• How-To Guides
• Landing Pages
• Reviews

Topics

After becoming clear about the types of content to produce, outline the topics to write about.

Remember to consider content that appeals to each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Content Management System

A content management system (CMS) is a software application or set of tools that helps you create, edit, manage, and publish content.

A CMS will help you keep your content organized and make it easy to publish new content.

Assignments

Now that you have a content strategy in place, it’s time to assign content creation tasks.

Consider the skills and experience of your team members when making assignments.

For example, if you’re assigning a blog post about a new product launch, you’ll want to assign the task to someone familiar with the product.

How Do You Create a Perfect Content Strategy?

When it comes to content strategy, there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

However, you can use the following ideas to structure how you plan content.

Content Strategy Methods

If you use these four content strategy methods, you will find that your content begins to build traffic, leads, and sales.

Pillar and Cluster Strategy

The pillar and cluster strategy involves creating content around a central theme, or pillar.

That content is then divided into subtopics or clusters.

If your pillar content is comprehensive and well-researched, it will rank high in search engines.

Evergreen content is best in this situation.

It will act as a traffic magnet, driving prospects to your website.

Once visitors are on your site, you can use cluster content to further engage them and move them down the sales funnel.

For example, if your pillar is “content marketing,” your clusters could be “SEO,” “social media,” and “content creation.”

Or, if your pillar is “personal finance,” you could use “budgeting,” “saving money,” and “investing” as your clusters.

SEO

Don’t forget about optimization when implementing a content strategy.

By including keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for, you can improve your content’s visibility in search engines.

To do this, start by doing keyword research.

Use tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer to find keywords related to your business.

Once you have a list of keywords, you can then incorporate them into your content.

Tracking Results

Learn how to track the results of your content strategy.

Tracking helps you see what’s working and what’s not. Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you perform a content audit as you track your results.

Using Google Analytics, you can track things like page views, bounce rate, time on site, and conversion rate.

You can also track how your content performs over time.

The data will help you adjust your content strategy as needed.

User-Generated Content

One way to engage your audience is to encourage them to generate content for you.

For example, you could host a contest and ask entrants to submit a blog post, video, or image.

You can also include user-generated content on your website or social media channels.

For example, you could create a hashtag for people to use when they share content about your brand.

Or, you could allow customers to leave product reviews on your website.

Content Strategy Example

Here is an example of a content strategy that you could use for your business.

Pillar: How to start a business

Clusters:

• Choose a business idea
• Write a business plan
• Find funding
• Launch your business

SEO keywords:

• How to start a business
• Starting a business
• Business ideas
• Writing a business plan

Tracking:

• Pageviews
• Time on site
• Conversion rate

User-generated content:

• Hashtag: #startupstories
• Customer reviews

Wrapping Up

A content strategy is a crucial part of any effective digital marketing plan.

By creating yours, your content will resonate with your targeted audience. You should start to see a steady rise in traffic and revenue.

Do you still have a few questions?

If so, please ask in the comments below so we can help.

If you’re ready to start planning your content strategy, get it done today.