On Facebook alone, more than 30 billion photos are uploaded every day, 510,000 comments are posted every minute, and 293,000 status updates are made. When you think about Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter, those numbers keep growing. There are also countless paid blogs, influencer posts, and ads to consider. The digital world can quickly become overwhelming for marketers, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to capture audience attention with the amount of content that’s competing.
In a digital world where people are constantly posting, businesses must be strategic with their posts and publications. Developing a content strategy can help you attract new customers, build your brand, and increase conversions. In this article, we’ll explore the steps needed to create a content strategy that works for your business.
define your audience
The first step in creating a content strategy is defining your audience. This should include demographic data such as age, gender, and average income. You may also need to specify a geographic area to target. Finally, you need to consider their behavioral characteristics and motivations for buying your product. Behavioral traits may include details such as their profession or hobbies. Motivations may include problems or needs they have.
If you’re selling farm supplies in a country town full of family farms, one likely target audience is middle-aged family men who live in the area, farm for a living, and need easy access to equipment and feed. Identifying this target audience will allow you to periodically purchase additional inventory to meet demand. What’s more, it will allow you to place ads on appropriate platforms.
For live content, maybe a farm supply business will post planting tips and tricks to ensure the best harvest possible. Once you understand your target audience, you can create content that meets their needs and addresses their concerns.
set your goals
Once you know your audience, you need to set your goals. These should be specific, measurable, and aligned with your overall business goals. For example, if your goal is to increase conversions, you can create a content strategy that focuses on lead generation. If your goal is to build your brand, you can create a content strategy that focuses on creating engaging, shareable content. The more shares your content gets, the more visibility you get for your business.
According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, businesses that set specific goals for their content marketing efforts are more likely to see positive results. When marketers were asked what goals they had achieved using content marketing, 88% claimed an increase in brand awareness. Most are also able to build credibility, educate audiences and generate leads. Setting goals is the first step in achieving them.
Perform Keyword Research
Keyword research plays an important role in content strategy. Keywords are words and phrases that people type into search engines. This research is important because it allows you to work backward when creating content. If you know what people are searching for, you’ll know what information is useful to them. If you know how many people are searching for a particular term, you know how popular the topic is.
Once you know which keywords are relevant to your organization, you can strategically target specific phrases and use your time and resources more effectively. Depending on your strategy, you can target either long-tail or short-tail keywords, but you will most likely cover both (and some keywords in between). You want to make sure you are competing with your competitors when it comes to short-tail keywords. However, you also want to increase your chances of standing out by covering some long-tail phrases.
Keyword research can inform what kind of content you should create to rank in search results, so it’s a critical step when creating a content strategy. Every piece of material you make should highlight a specific keyword. This ensures your organization covers relevant topics, but also helps boost your SEO efforts.
Perform content moderation
Once you’ve defined your audience and set your goals, including the keywords you want to target, it’s time for a content audit. This involves looking at all the existing content on your site and determining what works and what doesn’t. The purpose of the audit is to understand what type of content resonates with your audience and what types of content need improvement. It’s also a way to identify gaps that your content may need to fill.
If you take the time to compare your content to that of your competitors, you will find a way to outperform them. For example, maybe your competitor has a video that is popular on their site, while you only have a blog and an infographic. This observation can tell you that your audience loves visual media and you should prioritize video. Adding this medium to your repertoire can recapture your audience’s attention and increase your traffic.
It’s important to note that you can’t spend all your time searching for contest content. Creating your own innovative and authoritative content is paramount. Just browse through the other content every now and then to get an idea of what’s going on.
Develop content calendar
Once you’ve completed your content audit, it’s time to develop your content calendar. A content calendar is a plan for creating, publishing, and promoting content over a specific period of time. It helps ensure that you are consistently producing valuable content that aligns with your audience and goals. It’s also a great way to get everyone on the team on the same page.
There are many templates and software options available to simplify this process. You need to make sure that there is time throughout your calendar for each department or team member. Give writers the time they need to research and be creative. Schedule time for editorial accuracy checks. If you have a design team, you’ll want to allow for time for them to see the content as well.
A content calendar needs to include more than just when you want your work published. It should consider all the steps in the process and how much time each one takes. You might even consider having separate calendars for print, online, and social media content. Calendars do vary based on an organization’s needs and goals, so keep in mind it may take some trial and error.
Promote your content
After creating your content, you need to promote it and get it in front of the right people. You can promote your content in a number of ways. Social media, email marketing, and paid advertising are just a few examples. The key is to find the promotion channels that work best for your business and audience.
If your target content is young adults, Reddit, YouTube, or Tiktok are probably your best bets. But if you’re trying to reach middle-aged women, Pinterest, Facebook, or a blog are more likely to get their attention. Every platform has a variety of users, but every demographic has analyzed preferences and habits. It’s important to do your research and decide strategically where to promote your content.
Measurement and Analysis Results
The final step in creating a content strategy is measuring and analyzing the results. This involves tracking metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, and engagement to understand what’s working and what needs to be optimized. The purpose of this step is to understand what type of content resonates with your audience, which promotion channels are most effective, and how your content impacts your bottom line.
Tracking data allows you to notice important trends, and you can learn from your actions to improve your overall content strategy. If you find that longer-form articles with lots of infographics are better than first-person videos, you’ll know which type of content to prioritize. If social media posts on Facebook get more likes and shares than posts on Instagram, that’s another window into audience preferences. Tracking the performance of your marketing efforts allows you to improve your content and the strategies behind creating and promoting it.
Developing a content strategy is an essential step for any business looking to succeed in today’s digital environment. Following the steps above, you can create a content strategy that works for your business. Remember, winning your audience’s attention requires a lot of work on the back end. However, your hard work in planning and executing your strategy will pay off in the long run.
