Whether you’re heading up a global conglomerate or you’re the owner of a local biltong shop, having a powerful content strategy will serve as your road map to marketing success.
In this short guide, you’ll learn what a content strategy is, why you need one, and the 4 major key components.
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy is a road map designed to help you reach your business goals using content marketing. In essence, it helps you decide on and plan for the creation of engaging, valuable content at each stage of the buyer’s journey. From initial awareness, to becoming a client, to eventually becoming a loyal brand advocate.
Content strategy vs content marketing: What’s the difference?
A content strategy is the road map you use for creating and managing content. Content marketing is the specific approach you use to follow that content strategy.
In other words, content marketing is the process of creating and distributing helpful, valuable, relevant, and consistent content.
The aim of content marketing is to connect with your audience and drive profits.
Why do you need a content strategy?
- To help you create content that has a purpose.
- To stay on track with your business goals.
- To speak to your audience’s needs.
- To have a well-documented strategy that improves your chances of success.
- To be more efficient, as opposed to creating spur-of-the-moment content.
- When you plan your content for the month, quarter or even year, you can easily divide your budget and designate your resources in the best way possible.
- A data-driven approach to content marketing allows you to understand and prioritise which types of content are most important for your business.
- Finally, having a content strategy helps you understand what is working, what isn’t, and what you need to focus on in order to improve.
The 4 key components of a powerful content strategy
Below are the 4 key components of a powerful content strategy and why each is important.
1. Business goals and metrics
A powerful content strategy should not exist in a vacuum. It should focus on the bottom line. For example: What does your business want to achieve in the next six to twelve months? How can content marketing help you achieve that?
It should also help all your marketing efforts along, pushing them in the right direction and keeping your business aligned with these goals.
2. Audience profile
In order to succeed in content marketing, you must first understand your audience. Beyond knowing their demographics and buying habits, you should have a deep understanding of their goals and pain points.
You also need to know the types of questions they ask when engaging with your brand. Knowing this will help you create a content strategy tailored to your customer’s needs.
It will also ensure that your content resonates with your audience and that your budgets won’t go to waste.
3. Content management plan
Your content management plan will form part of your content strategy. It does the heavy lifting and forms much of the production process, as described below.
The production process
- Content creation: How will you create it? Who will write and design it?
- Editing: Who will make sure that your content is of the highest quality, that it’s well optimised, and ready to be published?
- Organising: Who will create the editorial calendar and make sure that everything is done on time?
- Distribution: Where will your content be posted, and in what formats?
- Promotion: How will you make sure that your content reaches the right audience?
4. Budget and execution
Finally, it’s important that you consider how much budget and effort you are willing to spend on the execution of your content strategy. Good execution is as important as the content strategy itself. Doing this correctly will mean the difference between success and failure.
If you have very limited resources, it’s best to focus on a few key channels that you know are going to be most effective for your business instead of trying to do everything all at once.
It’s also better to focus on creating a few pieces of amazing content rather than churning out a thousand mediocre pieces.
No matter which way you slice it, you will need a decent amount of budget to pay for your business’s content strategy, production and promotion. So think carefully about these elements before pushing full steam ahead.
Once you’ve put your content strategy together, you can begin moving towards your action plan and tactics. Your action plan is your content strategy. Tactics are the tools and methods that you will use to effectively execute that strategy.
Here are some typical tactics when it comes to content marketing:
1. Boosting/sponsoring/promoting quality content on social media to generate traffic and followers.
2. Producing gated content in order to build a mailing list and generate leads.
3. Writing blog posts specifically optimised for search engines to generate organic traffic to your website.
Final thoughts
By now you should have a solid understanding of what goes into creating a content strategy. At least enough to form the basis of one. When embarking on this journey, keep in mind that your goals and tactics may shift, and that’s okay. The important thing is to stay focused and continuously steer towards your end goals.
