Summary:
- Define your goals.
- Know your audience.
- Study your competition.
- Assess your position in the industry.
- How will you measure your results?
- What are your budget needs?
Defining your goals is the first step of creating an effective content strategy.
For example, if one of your goals is to build trust with your audience, create an action plan of how you can position yourself as experts so your customers will see you as problem solvers.
Create one to four goals with effective actions.
Common goals: build brand loyalty, attract or retain new customers, grow product awareness, etc.
Don’t just make a list. Make a plan to achieve your goals.
Know your audience
- Who do you want to reach?
- How do they consume content?
- What do they care about the most about your product or service?
Use ‘Buyer personas to guide you.
Study your competition
Don’t be afraid to follow what your competition is doing. There are lessons to be gained, learned, and avoided.
Examine your competitors positioning, shared voice, their SEO effectiveness, etc.
You need to discover how you can outperform your competition. Use competitive analysis to benchmark your site and find holes in your strategy.
Assess your position in the industry
Use site comparison tools to analyze which competing websites your audience visits. You can also use Keyword analysis to show the holes in your SEO strategy. This is will aid you in fixing the gaps in your content.
Data that you need to focus on is:
Pageviews per user
Bounce rate
Amount of time on your site
Use Google search to collect a list of data points, relevant to your site, that you can monitor.
How will you measure your results?
In order to measure your results, you have to know what to measure.
Conduct a content audit on your site to determine how you can improve your content that will translate into not only more site visits but longer visits. Your goal is to get your visitors to share valuable, informative content.
Create an excel sheet that lists the following:
- Activities (ex. create downloadable documents, funnel content, related articles,
- Decide which channels (blog, LinkedIn, your website) to funnel your content through,
- List justifications for each activity. Basically your reasons for measuring the said activity and channel, and with what frequency (how many times per week or month).
What are your budget needs?
Decide on what resources are needed to estimate your investments to meet your goals.
You can hire a freelancer or a digital marketing agency. Costs can run anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars. Ask for recommendations.
Remember to invest time and involve all stakeholders when constructing your content strategy. The more concise you are with your strategy and use effective tools to help you analyze your data, you will begin to see results quickly.