The Importance of Content Strategy

Content strategy is an essential tool for marketers. It helps them define their goals and create effective campaigns. It also allows them to measure their performance.

Documenting a content strategy can be time-consuming, but it’s an important part of the process. It can help keep teams on the same page and minimize duplicated efforts.

Goals

Having clear goals is the foundation of content strategy. This helps you make decisions about who to target, what topics to cover, and how frequently to publish.

It also ensures that your content aligns with your brand’s objectives. This will allow you to measure your progress and determine the success of your campaigns.

The pillar page approach to content marketing involves creating multiple pages about the same topic in order to provide a deeper understanding of the subject matter. This approach can increase your search engine ranking and boost user engagement.

Audience personas

To create accurate audience personas, marketers must gather a variety of data, including demographic information, interests, pain points, and content preferences. This will help them develop effective strategies to reach their audiences.

It’s also worth considering your existing best customers as a starting point for your personas. For example, CoSchedule uses their own customer personas to inspire and guide the content they produce for professional marketing managers.

Another way to gain insights into your target audience is by conducting competitor analysis. This will reveal the standard practices in your industry and help you identify opportunities to improve your own content.

Audience research

Whether you’re looking to create new content, evaluate existing efforts or grow your audience, audience research is an important starting point. It’s also a great way to keep everyone on the same page and make sure your messaging is aligned with your goals.

Audience research is an ongoing process and requires time to collect data that can be used to make decisions. It’s best to include all stakeholders in the research so that you can get a more holistic view of your audiences.

Content audit

The first step in conducting a content audit is to figure out what you hope to accomplish. This can be as simple as determining whether you will update, rewrite or delete a piece of content.

A good way to record a content audit is by using spreadsheets, which are flexible and easy to work with. Each column in the spreadsheet should contain a different data point that is important for your goals. For example, the template linked above has tabs for content by industry, step in the funnel and topic.

Content creation

When creating content, content strategists should always keep their goals in mind. This way, they can create assets that will drive the most traffic and convert visitors into leads.

They should also consider the competition and the market to ensure they’re capturing opportunities for growth. This is where researching keywords and competitor blogs is key. Lastly, content strategists should be aware of seasonal trends and holidays to maximize impact. Also, they should make sure to balance different content types and platforms, including blogging, video and social media.

Content distribution

Content distribution involves promoting and sharing your content on the channels your audience uses. This often requires professional market research to understand your audiences’ media preferences and to optimize distribution strategies.

It’s also important to use a mix of paid, owned and earned media, as well as to leverage influencers where appropriate. Finally, a continuous improvement strategy should be in place to monitor and optimize content performance based on your KPIs. This helps you get the best return on investment from your content marketing efforts.

Content metrics

Content marketing can be challenging to measure. But with the right tools, it can help you understand how your content is performing and drive more business outcomes.

The metrics you choose should align with your content goals and business objectives. For example, if your content strategy is focused on driving awareness, relevant metrics might include social shares and newsletter signups. Content that is designed to convert leads might focus on lead form completions or conversion rates. Other important metrics can include website sessions by source and the number of unique visitors.

Content governance

Content strategy is a recognized field in user experience design and draws from adjacent disciplines like information architecture, business analysis, and technical communication. It also includes marketing techniques, such as branding.

A successful content governance system requires a lot of work and attention, but it can help ensure that all your content is consistent and aligned with brand guidelines. This will allow you to build trust with your audience and maintain a consistent voice throughout all of your communications.