How Content Strategy Influences You
Content strategy has been around for a long time. Whether you’re just starting out with content marketing or you’ve been using the same approach for a while, it never hurts to revisit your content strategy plan. You need to make sure it’s up-to-date, innovative and engaging for your customers.
It is inherently impossible to design a great user experience for bad content. If you’re passionate about creating better user experiences, you can’t help but work on delivering useful and engaging content. After all, you’ve got more competition than ever. The first step to getting ahead of the competition is to actively engage your audience and have a solid, smart content marketing plan in place.
In this article, we will learn much more about content strategy and also how to create an effective content strategy.
What is Content Strategy?
Content strategy is defined as the management of any and all media that you create and own irrespective of any form. It is the piece of your marketing plan that continuously demonstrates who you are and the expertise you bring to your industry.
Content strategy is the discipline responsible for satisfying business requirements through content creation and distribution. It plans for the creation, delivery and governance of useful and engaging content. It implies that someone is stepping back and asking the fundamental question of ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’
Content strategy helps businesses prepare a plan for reliable, cost-effective sources of website traffic and new leads. If you can create just one blog post that gets a steady amount of organic traffic, that will continue generating leads for you as time goes on long after you’ve published it.
The reliable source of traffic and leads from your content will give you the flexibility to experiment with other marketing tactics in order to generate revenue such as sponsored content, social media advertising and distributed content. Plus, your content will not only help attract leads but will also help educate your target prospects and generate awareness for your brand.
The Brain Traffic model
Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach designed a model for covering all the essential elements of a content strategy in their book ’Content Strategy for the Web.’
This model places content strategy into five components:
▶ Core
How do we intend to use the content?
▶ Substance
What content is needed?
▶ Structure
How is the content organized?
▶ Workflow
How is the content created?
▶ Governance
How do we decide what to do?
How to Create an Effective Content Strategy
Now, let’s get into learning the specifics of how to create a content strategy. The steps are as follows:
Have pre-defined goals
What’s your aim for developing a content marketing plan?
Why do you want to produce content and create a content marketing plan?
Setting your goals before you begin planning will help you have an easier time determining what’s best for your strategy.
Conduct persona research
To develop a successful strategy, you need to clearly define your target audience also known as your buyer persona.This is especially important for those who are starting out or are new in the market. By knowing your target audience, you can produce more relevant and valuable content which may convert into leads in the future.
If you’re an experienced marketer, your targets may have changed. Revisiting your audience parameters by conducting market research each year is absolutely imperative to growing your audience.
Run a content audit
Most people start out with blog posts, but if you want to venture out and try producing other kinds of content pieces, consider which ones you would like to make. You’ll have to go over different types of content which can be used in the distant future.
If you’ve been in business for a while, review your content and the results from it in the past by running a content audit. Figure out what you can do differently in the coming future and set new goals to reach there. This time can be used to align your team’s productivity with the rest of your organization’s goals.
Choose a content management system
Form a system where you can create, manage and track your content. A few vital parts of content management include content creation, content publication and content analytics.
Publish and manage your content.
Your marketing plan should go beyond the types of content you’ll create. Many of the ideas that you think are revolutionary are just relevant for a few months. That being said, you shouldn’t ignore current trending topics either as they can help you generate loads of traffic. Most people count on incorporating popular holidays in their marketing efforts, but you don’t have to limit yourself to these important marketing dates.
Benefits of Content Strategy
Content strategy offers a plethora of benefits. Some benefits are reaped in almost immediately, while others take time to come into fruition. A few of them have been listed down below as follows:
Reduced Time and Money Consumption
Content strategies lead to more efficient use of available resources and content creation. You can focus on creating the right content rather than creating unnecessary amounts of it. The overall content structure is improved thanks to better coordination across all the business units. The risk of investing in publishing and maintaining content that doesn’t work is reduced. All these factors lead to more cost effective sales, lead generation and increased adoption of customer self-service.
Good Reputation
Reputation or brand recognition is absolutely crucial to any organization’s success. Your web content and communications build that reputation for many people. When you provide quality content, you become a trusted expert or an advisor of sorts. When you provide moments of fun and entertainment through content, your chances of being a likable brand are increased exponentially.
Earned Loyalty
Maintaining your reputation helps earn user trust. That trust is essential when you’re asking them to buy your product or act based on your recommendation. It also makes handling small mistakes during a long customer relationship much more easier.
Competitive Advantage
An organization that has the ability to provide customers with the right content in the right place at the right time is bound to have an edge over competitors. For example, when the majority of sales research happens online, you may miss out on users if you don’t offer informative and engaging content.
Innovation Potential
When you understand who is using your content and how, you have insights that can form ideas for new products or services. This can contribute towards groundbreaking innovative products or services and can boost overall ROI.
Regardless of which benefits interest you the most, the sooner your organization develops and starts to implement content strategy, the sooner you will enjoy them.
Final Thoughts
Once upon a time there wasn’t much out there about content strategy. But today, there’s an ever-expanding treasure of insightful, fruitful resources.
Creating a great content strategy isn’t rocket science, but it can be quite challenging to implement. You are bound to encounter roadblocks on this journey, along with lots of trial and error. Once you have a recipe for success, all you’ll have to do is repeat the process to see the kind of audience growth you’ve always dreamed of.
