How to create an effective content strategy
When it comes to creating a content strategy that really works, there are several things to consider before you actually create your content.
Whether you are a small business looking to build brand awareness or an established company looking to grow your strategy, the same strategic approach to content creation can be applied.
What is content Strategy?
Content strategy refers to the strategic thinking, planning and execution of digital content. Whether it is written content, audio or video; a comprehensive content strategy is vital in supporting digital marketing initiatives and to achieve wider business goals.
Crafting your strategy - Consider your audience
Before you deep dive into creating your content, it’s important to take a step back and ask if you really know who you are creating your content for. Do you have existing buyer personas? Or perhaps you have some customer research with valuable insights.
Having deep knowledge of your audience can help pave a path for creating a content strategy. If you don’t have any insights like this to hand, general demographic and psychographic data available in Google Analytics can give you some guidance on what your audience is interested in.
Determine the purpose of your content
Every piece of content should be created with a purpose in mind. Often digital content creation is aligned with the top and middle of the funnel activity; this is especially important for SEO driven blog content.
From addressing awareness at the top to helping the decision-making process at the middle; the content you produce can help move users down the funnel. The content formats often used for these stages range from blogs or guides to ebooks and downloadables.
Utilize Insights
It’s always a good idea to keep a close eye on seasonality data as external factors can often disrupt user search behavior Besides that it’s a great way to get a feel for when a particular topic is most popular in search.
If you don’t know where to start, begin by looking into the seasonality trends of your products or services – often you will find yearly trends. These insights can help you decide when it’s best to create content about a particular topic.
Keyword Research & Topics
Once you have gathered all your insights; it’s time to do some keyword research. This is arguably the most important step in crafting your strategy, especially if you want to use your content to drive organic traffic. Once you have gathered a list of keywords you can begin to cluster them into topics.
A topic cluster is essentially a group of keywords that are related and cover the same topic. You can think of it like putting groups of keywords into buckets, based on their similarity.
Final thoughts
When it comes to planning engaging content, make sure you backup your strategy with the insights from your research, as this will help when pitching your ideas.
Don’t forget to ensure your strategy adds something unique and provides value to your audience. You want to be an authoritative and trustworthy voice in your niche, but also don’t be afraid to put your own spin on it.