Content is the material that makes your website, social media, and other marketing channels come alive. It's what gets people to read, watch, listen to, and interact with your brand—and it's one of the essential parts of your content marketing strategy.
But where do you start? How do you know what to write about? How do you make sure that every piece of content you publish is helping your business grow? That's where a content strategy comes in.
A content strategy is a plan for creating and publishing great content that helps you achieve your business goals. It outlines what topics should be covered, who will be responsible for writing them, what kind of format they should take, and how often they should be published. Basically, everything there is to know about creating content for your business.
Content is not just limited to blog posts and other written material. A content strategy should also include the design of custom images and visual content. This includes video content. After all, there are many video content types and other visual content forms you should pay attention to. For example, if you add a filter to your photos with a tool like Picsart, you can enhance your images and increase your engagement with readers either on social media or directly on your website.
When you develop a content strategy from scratch, it can feel like a lot of work—but if done correctly, it'll pay off big time. This article will walk through the basics of developing a content strategy from scratch. By the end, you'll have the tools and knowledge needed to create amazing content that helps grow your business tenfold.
Define your goals
Before you start creating content, it's essential to define what you're trying to accomplish. What are your goals for the content? Who is your audience? What are your plans for the business?
To help make sure you define clear and measurable objectives, use a SMART goal meeting template:
- S = Specific. Your goal should be specific and focused, not too vague or broad. For example, "I want to generate more leads" is vague, whereas "I want 2,000 more leads per month" is specific (and measurable).
- M = Measurable. The best way to measure a specific goal is by using numbers. Measurable goals make it easier to understand how close or far away you are from achieving them. If your goal isn't measurable, how will you know if you've achieved it? How will you know if your efforts have accomplished what they were supposed to accomplish?
- A = Achievable. Make sure that your goal is attainable and realistic; don't set yourself up for failure by setting an unrealistic goal. For example, "I want 100 million new leads" may not be attainable, but "I want 15 new leads" seems more realistic when getting started.
- R = Relevant. Ask yourself: Why does this need to be done? Is this going to help us reach our business goals? Your content must contribute to the overarching strategy of our business so that you can achieve meaningful results from it.
- T = Time-bound. To measure your success, you need to make sure your team is on the same page about when a goal should be reached. What's your time horizon? When will the team start creating and implementing your content strategy? When will they finish?
Identify your audience
To develop a content strategy, you first need to know your audience. You can't create content without knowing who you're making it for, the same way you cannot create an eye-catching email subject line without knowing who is going to read your email.
Your audience should be someone interested in what your business does and who has the potential to take action and move through the buyer's journey.
For example, if you're a company that sells fitness apparel, you may have several audiences, including potential customers and existing customers. Within those broad categories, there are many different sub-categories:
- Potential customers could be people looking for the best bodyweight exercises, local yoga studios, or the best treadmills on the market.
- Existing customers might want information about the proper clothes to wear during yoga, weightlifting, or running.
Regardless of your audience, it is vital to understand who they are so you can help curate specific content to meet their needs and provide value.
Analyze your brand
Content is the vehicle in which you will be telling the story of your brand, so it is important to keep it top of mind.
Your branding includes your logo design, color scheme, font choices, website design, and even your photography and editing style for social media posts. These are all aspects of your business that will be intertwined with your content strategy.
If you are not confident in your business branding or feel that it needs to be updated, it is important to do that before developing your content strategy. You may want to consider using a professional online branding service like Tailor Brands if you feel it is time for a refresh.
Spend time on keyword research
A well-thought-out content strategy can help you reach your target audience and build trust. It will also help you improve your conversion rates and sales by making sure that you're providing the correct information to the right people at the right time.
When creating a content strategy from scratch, you need to know what your customers want and how to deliver it in the best possible way.
Keyword research helps you understand what your customers want to find when searching for specific products or services on Google and uncovers trends in your industry that could influence how you create content for your website or blog.
For example, if there has been an increase in searches for “internet safety tips for kids,” it might be worth creating more content related to this topic to draw in concerned parents by sharing helpful information and offering potential solutions.
Find and understand your competitors
Now that you have identified your audience, the next step is to understand where you stand among your competition.
You can find competitors by doing some basic Google searches. When entering a keyword, look at the resulting websites at the top of the page, specifically those in the first two spots. Take note of these URLs and what type of content they are producing to help them rank highest on the search engine results page (SERP).
Publishing quality content in one industry can place your company as a leader and trustworthy reference in one domain. Breadcrumbs, a lead scoring software, is an excellent example of a website that uses a specific content strategy focused on sales and lead scoring strategies to outrank its competitors. They rank number one in Google for the keyword "best sales books 2021".
Given this detailed information from your leading competitor, you'll want to analyze your competitors' overall content strategy. Using Moz's Open Site Explorer tool, you can get more insight into how well each competitor's website is optimized and what keywords they're targeting. You can also use Buzzsumo to check out who has shared their most popular posts and identify any popular influencers in your niche.
Once you have a pretty good understanding of your competition and their audience, it's time to differentiate yourself from them. This is one thing many businesses fail to do with their content marketing strategy—they don't focus on differentiating themselves from competitors through unique messaging or delivering quality content that will satisfy their needs.
Look into current content trends
Content trends change every year, and with them, audience interests. You can find out what your audience wants to know by examining relevant social media analytics, looking through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and industry-related subreddits on Reddit. Then, you can use Facebook content creation studio to craft content that matches your target audiences.
If you look at the popular content that has come out recently or the trending topics right now on your favorite social platform, you will have a strong indicator of what people love to read about.
Step by step guides are prevalent forms of content because they help break down complex topics into simple, achievable steps, making content easier to understand and digest.
Keep in mind that while step by step guides may be popular today, they might not be so popular tomorrow. Many things rise and fall in internet popularity—and this includes content.
Define a posting schedule
There's a lot of advice out there for writers, but one thing that seems to get missed repeatedly is the importance of consistently publishing content.
Your posting schedule is a crucial part of your content strategy. A large number of content writing companies, such as TrustMyPaper, assure that your posting schedule is a crucial part of your content strategy. If you don't have one, creating and maintaining a steady stream of content will be much more difficult.
Your posting schedule should include the following:
- What type of content are you publishing: The type(s) of articles and content you make will depend heavily on what has proven successful in driving traffic to your website. Typically informative or instructional pieces like "how-to" guides and videos perform best. Moreover, you also need to decide if you will do original content exclusively, or if implementing a content curation strategy would be a good idea.
- When you plan to post new content: This could be daily, every other day, or once per month. Find a balance that works, including the frequency of your posts and the length of the pieces you create.
It can take a lot of work off of your plate to automate the tasks within your posting process. Tools like CoSchedule can help with planning, organizing, scheduling and posting your content.
Build up your content cache
When you're first starting, building up that cache can be intimidating.
You may not feel ready to start creating content regularly, but don't feel like you have to come up with everything at once either. Review your competitor and keyword research to help determine what type of content you think is most accessible and convenient for you to create.
Optimally, the first few pieces of content you create should be things that serve multiple functions: articles, videos, or comparisons that can double as blog posts, e-books that can double as lead magnets, and so on. If one piece of content serves multiple purposes, it will save you time and help you build up your library more quickly.
Once you have a few pieces underway, keep adding new ones to your plan as often as possible—even if it's just one new piece per week or month. And remember: try not to worry about the quality of your content at first—you can continually update it later down the road.
Review and update regularly
Review your content strategy regularly. As you publish more and more content, you'll be able to see what works and what doesn't. If you see that a specific type of content isn't working, it might be good to replace it with something else or repurpose the content. That will help shape your future content strategy.
If there's a particular piece of valuable content that keeps getting a lot of engagement, try to come up with similar ideas to keep feeding into the momentum of your successes.
Additional resource: SEO for Startups in 2022
Wrapping Up
A content strategy is crucial for building a brand and reaching your audience. It's like the glue that holds everything together, and it's something you need to be thinking about from the very start of your business.
If you're like most content marketing beginners, developing and implementing a content strategy can seem daunting. It's normal to feel a bit overwhelmed at first especially in industries where content marketing isn't that popular, such as restaurant content marketing.
Luckily, it doesn't have to be scary. Developing a content strategy is entirely manageable if you take these steps one at a time.
There is no time better than the present to put your head down and write. Remember: publishing content consistently is the key to success.