What is Content Strategy and Why Is it Important?
Content strategy is an all-encompassing term that is used to describe the creation and management of content that serves to further your business goals. The world is your oyster when it comes to the content you put out because "content" itself is a broad term that can mean anything from a detailed blog post to a YouTube video. The purpose of the content you put out is to support your audience’s experience with your brand by providing information and conveying the identity of your brand cohesively. Within the past decade, various online platforms have risen in popularity. Today, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are some of the many platforms that garner millions in revenue and viewership thanks to content creators. Creating an effective content strategy is important when it comes to navigating your brand within the digital space. Producing content that is relevant to your business and conveys the main ethos behind your brand defines your audience and scope, which is the start of creating an effective brand strategy.
Begin by developing your mission statement. Ask yourself what the purpose of your content is. What are your long-term and short-term goals when it comes to your business and how can you relate this to the content that you put out for your audience? Are you looking to raise brand awareness with your content? Perhaps you are hoping to improve search ranking results or improve revenue through increased traffic on your website. A common goal for most businesses, when it comes to their content strategy, is to raise brand awareness. Depending on your business, define your goals clearly so that you can maximize your content strategy to achieve these goals.
A measure for the success of your content strategy is to examine if you are meeting your goals is by establishing your key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs essentially serve as a checklist and will have specific numbers attached to them that allow you to track your progress with the content you are putting out. Not only is this a specific measure to see how effective your content is, but it also serves as an indicator of whether you might need to change the direction of your content. KPIs allow you to optimize your content strategy by assessing the bigger picture of how the content has contributed to meeting your goals. Perhaps blog posts might not be working for your website, and you might consider investing time in producing easily digestible content on Instagram. KPIs that you might want to hit could be a certain revenue target within the quarter, increased website traffic, or increased engagement on social media.
The success of a content strategy lies in establishing your target audience. For B2B marketers, the goal is to reach buyers, end-users, and business owners. For B2C products, the aim is to appeal to your customers directly. You want to be able to develop a buyer persona, which is the target audience of your content. A buyer persona is your ideal customer. Develop a thorough study of your buyer persona by establishing their demographic. Knowing their challenges and how you aim to solve these problems helps cater your content towards them, as well as attract
more of the visitors that your content is aimed towards. Establishing this will provide the structure that you will need to plan a strategy that is cohesive long-term. This is also helpful for those who are expanding or altering your target market because understanding your demographic is the background information necessary to create a cohesive content strategy.
When it comes to the type of content that you produce for your brand or business, this is where your brand identity, target audience, and specific goals meet to produce the content that conveys information. For some, this might be as straightforward as an informative blog post. For other businesses, this could be a chance to develop social media campaigns that are informational and involve your audience. The content you produce can be as elaborate as you choose, and various strategies can be employed within the medium chosen. For blogs, one common strategy is to feature evergreen content, which is canonical and timeless content that can be referenced for a long time. This content is usually of higher quality, is informative, and has been optimized with the right keywords so that it serves a larger purpose of being a resource for your audience.
Doing the research and setting up a comprehensive strategy allows you to estimate your investment into your marketing budget. You might consider outsourcing work or investing more money into an area that demands more. Breaking down the costs of your content strategy will also force you to make use of the resources that you already have.
Examining other businesses that you share the digital space with is a good way to see some of the different mediums that are being used to promote a brand. Conduct an audit on the content that exists can also be an effective strategy to determine the best mediums to use when it comes to producing your content. Examine the posts that have performed well and their corresponding analytics. Consider why your audience responded positively to these posts and how you might want to alter or reuse the strategy for your future posts.
Here are some additional tips to create a meaningful content strategy:
Constantly reflect on the needs of your organization and audience by examining your analytics.
Communicate in a personable yet concise and professional way.
Be consistent by applying a style guide for editorial and design purposes. This creates content that is seamless and therefore easier to understand.
Examine your competition and consider the strategies that they are using.
Leverage your unique voice or point of view that will set you apart in a sea of competitors.
