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Content Strategy, The Art of Breaking Paradigms

16 min readApr 28, 2022

Planning your work and working to conquer your audience.

Plan your work and work to conquer your audience.

It never hurts to update your content strategy plan and make sure it’s up-to-date, original and engaging for your prospects and consumers — regardless of when or how they intend to buy. But, if you are a newbie, or If you’re having trouble planning for your new entrepreneur or for the upcoming year or need some fresh ideas to include in your plan, read on.

Planning your content strategy — Photo by George Becker

In this post, we’ll look at what content strategy is, why your company needs one, and how to go about creating one.

What is content strategy?

A content strategy is a plan for achieving your business objectives through the utilization of content (audio, visual, and/or textual). A great content strategy will engage your target audience at every point of the conversion journey, even after they’ve made a purchase.

Assume that one of your company’s objectives is to raise brand recognition. To do this, you may execute an SEO-focused content strategy to improve your website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) and generate visitors to your products or services.

Early on, new business owners may believe that a content strategy is a nice-to-have but not essential. Producing high-quality content, on the other hand, may be extremely beneficial in terms of establishing trust with new audiences and achieving long-term success.

In a buyer’s journey that follows the inbound marketing paradigm, a good content strategy is the cornerstone of your Attract and Delight stages. You can use a content strategy for sales enablement and customer happiness in addition to drawing prospects to your brand.

Furthermore, with 70% of marketers actively spending on content marketing, developing a robust content strategy is vital if you want to compete in your business niche.

Why do you need a Content Strategy for your business?

Content marketing aids companies in preparing for dependable and cost-effective sources of website traffic and new prospects. If you can write just one blog post that gets consistent organic traffic, an embedded link to a free e-book or tool will continue to generate leads for you long after you hit “Publish.”

Your evergreen content will provide a consistent source of visitors and leads, allowing you to experiment with additional revenue-generating strategies such as sponsored content, social media advertising, and distributed content.

Furthermore, your material will not only assist you to get leads, but it will also educate your prospects and raise brand recognition.

Point to consider in creating a content strategy.

There are a few questions to consider while creating a content strategy. Let’s have a look at them right now.

1. Delimit your market.

Who is going to read your content? Who is your content’s intended audience plays a key role in your strategy definition. Knowing which and how many different audiences are you catering to with your content will help you to profile a planned course of action to success. Your content strategy can appeal to multiple types of users, just as your firm may have multiple types of customers.

You can distribute material that is personalized to each persona by using a number of content types and channels.

2. What problem will you be solving for your audience(s)?

In an ideal world, your product or service answers a problem that you already know your target market faces. Similarly, as your audience begins to recognize and confront the problem, your content needs to guide and educate them.

A good content strategy benefits people on both sides of your product: those who are still finding out what their key difficulties are and those who are already utilizing your product to overcome them.

Your content is key to your business success and helps you create credibility with your target audience by reinforcing the solution(s) you’re delivering.

3. What makes your products or services unique?

The internet is overwhelmed with offering and competing is tough, for sure you will find thousands of products similar to your offering ready in the market. Because your competitors’ products are likely identical to yours, your potential buyers will want to know what makes yours superior — or at least different.

Perhaps your most valuable asset is the fact that your firm has been around for a long time. Perhaps you have a distinct brand voice that sets you apart from the competition. At this point, you don’t know, but you’ll need to identify that differentiator to succeed.

You must demonstrate why you are worth buying from and listening to in order to get others to buy from you. Once you’ve figured it out, you will need to incorporate that secret sauce into your article.

4. What types of content format will you concentrate on?

Understanding your target audience and their location will save you time, money, and headaches. This is a crucial step for deciding your content strategy and its implementation cost.

You must meet your audience where they are in order to determine which formats to focus on. While you might be tempted to start a podcast or a YouTube channel because of how popular they have become in recent years, first figure out where your target audience lives. Otherwise, you can squander time generating content that doesn’t reach or engage your target audience.

Once you’ve determined the ideal formats, start planning a budget to see what resources you’ll need to put this approach into action.

5. What platforms will you use to distribute your content?

Know you’ll be able to publish to a range of platforms, including your website and social media, and you’ll be able to create material in a variety of formats. Knowing your target audience preferences will help you cut costs at the time it will make

This will also show the location of your target audience. YouTube is an excellent place to start if your target audience appreciates long-form video material. If you have a younger audience who enjoys fast-paced material, TikTok and Instagram are wonderful possibilities.

We’ll go over social media content strategy in greater depth in the step-by-step lesson that follows this article.

6. How will you manage content creation and publication?

It can be difficult to figure out how you’ll develop and distribute all of your content. Before you start, figure out who’s going to create what, where it’ll be published, and when it’ll go live.

This may be simple enough in a small team or if you are a solo entrepreneur, there are high chances you are the lone decision-maker. But, depending on the size of your business, you may need to collaborate with numerous content teams as your firm grows to figure out an efficient procedure.

Today’s content strategies avoid clutter by managing material by topic. You can easily picture your company’s message and establish yourself as an expert in your market by organizing a content editorial calendar around issues.

How to develop a content strategy.

If you work in the content marketing world, you need a framework that will help you create a solid content strategy. We’ll dig into a few examples from different industries and give you a handy cheat sheet. So when your marketing director or client asks about content strategy, you won’t even skip a beat!

1. Establish your content goals.

Once with a clear roadmap of your strategy, It’s critical to set clear business goals and KPIs before launching any new content marketing plan. You can’t establish a strategy, monitor program effectiveness, or communicate ROI to company stakeholders if you don’t have goals.

Concentrate on the end result. Build your goals around the outcomes you want to achieve, since they will motivate you to take action and drive your content strategy. When it comes to goal-setting, experts believe that using a two-tier framework (stretch goals and S.M.A.R.T. goals) will help you achieve more.

2. Define your audience segments and buyer personas.

With clear objectives set, it’s time to research your audience and create personas. This step is crucial since wasting time and money designing a content strategy that targets the incorrect demographic. Target audience research will allow you to create audience segments where to focus your strategy.

Although an audience segment does not reveal the features of buyer personas inside a market, it is a useful framework for helping you target your marketing. And the more focused your marketing is, the more effective it will be.

3. Conduct a gap analysis and content audit.

Conduct a content audit to identify and inventory all existing brand content, as well as to assess its efficacy. An audit can assist you to figure out if you have:

Gaps vs competitor content
Gaps in customer interest content
Steps in the customer journey strategy that are missing
Content that isn’t relevant, and pages that aren’t working well

Knowing who your clients are isn’t enough when it comes to reviewing and evaluating your material. You should conduct a competitive analysis in order to develop a strong and distinct content strategy. |That is why a gap analysis is a vital step of your business strategy.

However, when getting to this step, don’t only look at the content strategy of your immediate competitors. With a good SEO strategy, major e-commerce firms frequently lose visitors to review sites and industry blogs just because they relaxed this step. Lead generation websites and magazines frequently outrank financial services organizations in search engine rankings. Do not repeat the same mistake, take notes of all the websites in the Google SERPs that are competing for your client’s attention and set your differentiators.

4. Create a map of content requirements for each stage of the customer journey.

After you’ve defined your audience groups and buyer personas, trace the customer journey of each persona through the buyer’s funnel, including details such as:

What are the actions of potential customers?
Where do they go on the internet?
What information are they looking for?
What is the format of the content?

Studies have demonstrated that people focus on content at the time of reading or watching will depend on the stimulus we give their brains. Research on eye movements was undertaken by Russian psychologist Alfred L. Yarbus. In this study, paintings were shown to the participants. Several questions were posed on them and then it was observed each participant’s eye movements changed depending on the question they were asked beforehand. Participants looked at completely different regions of the picture for every individual question.

So, be smart, with a clear map of your customer journey, you will be prepared to lead your customer as your like.

5. Conduct keyword research.

It is not enough to know who is your target audience, what they like or need, remember your primary goal is converting them into customers. But to do that, you need to make sure a significant amount of this audience is exposed to your content. So, You need traffic whether your primary goal is lead generation or increasing eCommerce sales. However, strong content alone will not bring thousands of people to your site.

In order to get traffic, and people visiting your content, you should also optimize for keywords. Because it directs you to the most valuable topics and keeps you organized, keyword research is the core of an SEO-focused content strategy. A good SEO strategy will translate to more traffic, engagement, and conversions.

But, what do you do first? the first step of this stage is discovering the topics that your audience is most interested in using tools like Ahrefs and Semrush. You may also utilize SEO tools to identify your competitors’ top sites, as well as the head phrases and long-tail keywords that are bringing in the most traffic, and you will use those keywords and phrases to enrich your content.

Also, confirm the queries that your audience poses on the internet. Use Google Question Hub or tools like Answer the Public and Answer Socrates. This provides you the strategic advantage of being the first to respond to a crucial question. You may also double-check the “People Also Ask” (PAA) boxes for your desired keywords in the Google SERPs. Remember, like bees, people will go where the pollen is.

6. Brainstorm content ideas.

Then, using your keyword list, come up with new content ideas. But, with over 4.2 billion web pages fighting for attention, how can you develop distinct, usable content? Fortunately, the great majority of web pages that have been indexed are horrible. So, take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to iterate and improve on what currently exists!

Iterative ideation is a fundamental component in creating exceptional content. The finest innovative ideas, as author Steven Johnson, demonstrates in his book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, are often iterative, take shape over time, and frequently originate in the domain of the “adjacent feasible” (relying directly on previous knowledge). This means you won’t get your best the first time, so do not spend exercise time trying to be perfect.

7. Set your content apart from the crowd.

To be different from the crowd, you don’t need to outdo yourself. Don’t waste time looking for something that hasn’t been written yet. Instead, come up with new ways to approach an old, dusty issue, or combine two distinct ideas to create something new. Don’t know where to start? Buzzsumo and Ahrefs are great platforms for revealing keyword rankings, backlinks, and traffic, whereas Semrush and Ahrefs are great for revealing keyword rankings, backlinks, and traffic.

After you’ve identified the best-performing content for each keyword, outperform it by a factor of ten and refine your content. This differentiation will be enough to ensure your success.

8. Choose a content management system.

At this point of the process, you have a clear map of your strategy, plan, and finished content strategy, so you are almost complete. Now depending on your strategy size, you’ll need a powerful Content Management System (CMS) if you expect to produce a large amount of content. Blog entries, audio, video, PDFs, and other types of material may all be created, organized, published, and stored using your CMS.

Fortunately, depending on your requirements, you have a wide range of options to pick from. Magento, for example, is a huge eCommerce platform that supports over 200,000 online retailers spanning 20+ industries. Enterprise websites that require high security and scalability frequently utilize Sitecore. WordPress has the biggest market share of any content management system. Drupal is also a wonderful choice if you require more customization and data management features.

A bit of research from your side will be required to decide the platform to use to deploy your strategy.

9. Create a content development process.

You’ll need a well-defined, repeatable, and systematic content strategy development process because your content won’t make itself, someone has to do it. The reality is that most entrepreneurs start small, so much of this work lies on them which represents a lot of work. In time, this workload will decrease if you are smart and organized.

Remember this, You’ll always be able to produce high-quality, high-value content, despite your business size if you use the right and prespecified methodology.

10. Implement a content calendar.

A content calendar is more than just a list of events. It’s also an organizational framework that connects wither your content habits or team to your overall marketing strategies and objectives. A content calendar will organize your work and will make you predictable for your audience which is good.

The entire content creation process is kept on track by a content calendar. It ensures that deadlines are met and that “fire drills” are avoided at the last minute. Your content calendar keeps your entire team organized and on track to meet your objectives.

If you create material that is multi-format, such as a blog article with a video or an infographic then, in your calendar you can make separate line items for each component and so manage your content separate. To be effective your editorial calendar should be accessible online for either you or your team. Keep it clean and skimmable so it’s easy to see what you published, what’s still in process, and what’s on the back burner.

A content calendar keeps the entire content production process on track. It ensures that deadlines are met and that last-minute “fire drills” can be averted. Your content schedule helps you or the entire team stay organized and on pace to hit your goals.

Finally, to track performance, a good content calendar should link each item of output to your S.M.A.R.T. goals. It also aids in the prioritization of topics that are most likely to have the most impact. Your content schedule should include the following types of material, depending on your organization’s goals.

11. Place a premium on quality over quantity.

If your audience is paying attention to you, don’t waste the opportunity to interact with them by offering them stale material. Make your brand stand out by using high-quality materials. To rank high in organic search results, you must supply useful information. That is Google’s recommendation.

So, instead of squandering money on ineffective content that no one will read, concentrate on creating actionable content that generates traffic and leads. Remember, the more traffic your drive to your site with the less effort, will make you an expert in your field, which will result in media attention, natural backlinks, long retentions and you’ll raise brand awareness.

What, on the other hand, is useful, useable content? It might be original market research, professional advice in a podcast, a reference listicle, gorgeous photographs, or even emotionally engaging content and films, depending on your industry. But if you keep it simple, it’s clear and demandable content. What’s the bottom line? Give your readers something they’ll enjoy and want to tell their friends about.

11. Publish long-form content.

Long-form material, such as blogging, nearly always wins when it comes to Google rankings and organic search traffic. Long-form content gets 3X more traffic, 4X more shares, and 3.5X more backlinks, according to a study by Semrush. This is due to a number of factors:

For starters, because it covers a topic in more depth, long-form content frequently ranks for more keywords than shorter content. You can answer additional questions, naturally, incorporate more long-tail keywords, and structure your content so that the featured snippet is captured.

Second, long-form content is more likely to be shared and to generate more backlinks. A 2,500-word blog post about how to choose the best running shoe, for example, is more likely to get linked to than a 500-word piece on a running website.

Thirdly, long-form content lends itself well to incorporating different content formats into a single article, making it more engaging and link-worthy.

Finally, funnels are easier to create in long-form content. With more real estate to work with, you can put more CTAs on the page, assisting your readers in moving to the next stage in the buying process.

12. Build expertise, authority & trust (E-A-T).

Conversions, client loyalty, SEO, and other factors are all influenced by rand trust. That’s why exhibiting your brand’s natural knowledge throughout your content strategy is crucial for building trust. If your project is selling spare parts, for example, you should stick to spare parts-related themes rather than accessories. However, there’s more to it from the standpoint of search.

You’ve probably heard of the E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trust) principles, which are the cornerstones of Google search. E-A-T isn’t a ranking metric in the traditional sense. Many ranking elements in Google’s algorithm, on the other hand, are designed to measure it in some way. As a result, enhancing your experience, authority, and trust can help an enterprise SEO program indirectly.

This becomes especially important as you create content for people who may not yet know about your brand or product. People are more likely to link to information they trust, and Google uses links as one of its trust indicators. So, building a reputation online is key for your strategy.

13. Evoke an emotional response.

Harvard Professor Gerald Zaltman estimates that 95% of our decisions are made subconsciously. Just think about it, the human brain subconsciously processes 11 million bits of sensory information each second. Compare that to only 40 bits per second on a conscious level. That is why smart content strategist understands that the most impactful content works on a subconscious level and the way to get that effect is by appealing to emotions.

The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio studied people who couldn’t feel emotions due to brain damage. Those individuals struggled to make decisions because they endlessly waffled between options, as they couldn’t feel strongly enough about one option versus another. In other words, humans need emotions to take action because we base our decisions on feelings.

Emotional content engages consumers, motivates them to take action, and inspires them to share. Emotions also increase engagement. People are more inclined to share content that elicits an emotional response, especially a high-arousal feeling, according to Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School. Furthermore, figuring out all of these factors combine to increase organic visibility by generating natural backlinks.

14. Plan a variety of content types.

In your content strategy, make an attempt to mix up the sorts of content marketing. Keep in mind that various demographics consume media in different ways, so keep your buyer personas in mind while you brainstorm. Even if your target audience segments have similar demographics, it’s still a good idea to shake things up. Some people like visual content, some prefer auditory stuff, and yet others prefer to read text. Consider using some of the forms listed below in your content strategy. The goal is to devise a content generation strategy that considers various learning styles as well as scalability.

15. Define your content distribution and amplification strategy.

When you publish a blog post or a video, your content strategy doesn’t end there. Consider that for a moment. You’ve spent a lot of time and money creating attractive content that you hope will provide results. As a result, don’t just share it once and then go on to the next job.

Rather, incorporate amplification into your content strategy. You need to drive traffic and make your work known abroad. So you share your posts on different social media networks. To market your blog articles, graphics, or videos, reach out to bloggers, online publishers, and even other businesses. Don’t be scared to run paid advertising as well if needed for getting the goals.

Content distribution is a great strategy to get more people to visit your website. You’ll notice a compound effect from your marketing efforts if you’re clever about content promotion and distribution. One magazine may distribute it to its readers, who may then distribute it to their own networks, and so on.

Summary.

In conclusion, it’s evident that having the correct content strategy in place can put your company on the right track to success. However, investing work into designing your content strategy has the unintended consequence of allowing you to achieve more with less. Remember, your investment will be as inexpensive as good your strategy is. You’ll be able to recognize when to accept fresh ideas and when to reject ones that don’t fit. At a time when businesses continue to churn out content at record volumes, laser focus on your mission. Keep an eye on the numbers and reassess your plan on a regular basis.