Any SEO campaign uses content in some form. Yet just because content is used doesn’t necessarily mean it’s implemented effectively. That’s why putting together a content strategy can pay off big time.
But what is a content strategy, exactly? This guide will explain what is content strategy in marketing terms, along with how to create a content strategy that yields results.
What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?
When people see the words ‘content strategy’ for the first time, they’ll often ask questions such as, ‘what is a content strategy?’ and ‘what is content strategy in digital marketing?’ Fortunately, the definition is straightforward.
When we say what is content strategy, this is simply a plan wherein content is utilised to achieve your business’s goals. This content can be written, visual, or audio-based. When a content strategy is successful, it will keep your target audience engaged before, during, and after consuming your content.
For example, your business objective might be to improve your organic search traffic. To achieve this goal, you create a blog featuring a regular stream of written content with an SEO focus. By doing so, you keep your audience interested and boost your website’s search ranking across the board, leading to more traffic and sales for your products or services.
See, straightforward! What’s less simple, however, is knowing how to create a successful content marketing strategy. The good news is we have you covered – this guide explains all you need to know about content marketing.
How to Create a Successful Content Marketing Strategy
What is a content strategy without a proper plan? So, you may know what it is from a digital marketing perspective – but now, it’s time to learn how to come up with a content strategy that works for your business and its unique goals.
Make no mistake: when it comes to learning how to plan a content marketing strategy, plenty of time and effort are required. Yet, this endeavour will be rewarded with observable results – as long as your content strategy hits the mark!
With that in mind, here are several points you need to know when learning how to create a content strategy.
Know the Aim of Your Content
When learning how to build a content strategy, the first step is understanding the direction of your content. What do you want your content to do? Firstly, you need to know your overall goal. Secondly, you must understand how a content strategy will help you achieve that goal.
As part of this early planning, you must perform a content audit and look closely at what you’re already producing content-wise. Why is your current content not hitting the mark? What changes are required for your future content plan?
With this early research, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of your current content, helping you figure out how to build on this with your upcoming strategy and yield greater results with your future content efforts.
Understand Your Audience
The next step in knowing how to create a successful content marketing strategy is to identify your target audience. Now, this might seem obvious – particularly if you have already been in business for many years. However, consumer habits and behaviour can change, and you must fully understand your audience here and now – as well as predict future changes where possible.
Here are some characteristics you could cover:
- Demographics (gender, age, location, etc.)
- Employment status
- Behavioural (mobile users, app engagement, etc.)
The more you learn about your audience, the more you know what type of content will resonate with them and capture their attention.
Select a Content Management System
What is a digital content strategy without the right digitalised approach? Sure, you already know that creating and publishing content is important – but do you understand the importance of properly managing how this content is used? Investing in a content management system (CMS) enables you to leverage this technology to produce, manage, and track all of your content.
Managing your work is easily overlooked when fathoming how to come up with a content strategy – which is especially the case when dealing with a large quantity of content. Without a CMS, you can get overwhelmed, holes can appear in your plan, and content production is liable to fall to the wayside.
Choose Your Content
This step is the most obvious in our entire ‘how to create a content strategy’ guide. You have to decide on the type of content you want to make. This content could be blog posts, in-depth guides, eBooks, podcasts, photos, YouTube videos, infographics, social media posts – the list goes on and on.
Another facet when learning how to build a content strategy is to know your limitations. If you don’t have the time, expertise, or resources to produce certain content, you must be realistic and focus on content types that are a better fit – or else hire professionals (like us) to do it for you if your budget permits.
Come Up with Content Ideas
If you’re wondering how to make content strategy production truly work, the most important ingredient is selecting content ideas. Without a collection of interesting, attention-grabbing content ideas targeted to your audience, you’ll fail to gain the traction and results you want from your content strategy.
There’s no way around it; content ideas are important. When learning how to create a content strategy, you’ll discover that consistently coming up with new content ideas is a must. Fortunately, you don’t have to do this alone – tools such as BuzzSumo, Feedly, and AnswerThePublic make the task easier.
Measure and Refine
You know why you need a content strategy – to improve the performance of your current efforts and garner and maintain your audience’s attention. But how do you know if your content strategy works without accurately tracking performance metrics?
Crucial metrics you should monitor include:
- Bounce rate
- Time spent on web pages
- Scroll depth average
- Organic traffic
- Conversions
Once you have studied the numbers, the next step is to refine your content to boost any metrics that are lacking. Where can you enhance your content efforts to improve your metrics? What opportunities are available to give your content strategy that winning edge? These are questions you need to answer in order to craft an epic content strategy that delivers strong results.
Conclusion
You know what is content strategy. You’ve learned how to create a successful content marketing strategy. The next part? Putting this knowledge into action! By following the steps above, you’ll be able to put together a system that takes your content – and website – to the next level!
Does Your Content Strategy Need a Professional Touch?
Naturally, content strategy isn’t easy, particularly for beginners or those who simply don’t have enough time to learn or create high-quality content that gets results. However, that’s where our experts here at Click Intelligence come in. Our highly experienced content and SEO teams develop bespoke, results-driven strategies every day and have been doing so for decades.
With our wealth of experience and 97% client retention rate across over 40 industries, who better to entrust your content strategy than one of the UK’s leading digital marketing agencies? Contact our content experts today for a no-obligation chat if you’re looking to take your website to new heights!
