Content Strategy for Your Website: Outline and Examples

In today’s digital world, content is truly the king of marketing. It's arguably the most effective means to drive engagement, and it also helps build an impressive online brand presence through your website.

But in order to reap the reward of your efforts, you need to understand and implement the best practices that go into a good content strategy. We’re going to take a look at how and why content strategy is key to your website’s success and explore a few examples of effective content strategies.

What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?

Content marketing is the process of producing and distributing informative and consistent content tailored to your audience (or audiences). Strategy comes into play when determining what content you create and what channels you use. When developing your content strategy, it’s important to consider the pain points of your target audience. Each piece of content should fit within your overall plan to address those needs.

Another major factor to consider when developing your strategy is to consider what type of content you will make. Are your customers more likely to view videos of how to assemble your custom furniture? Will they open a chatty newsletter in their inbox that highlights your team? Do they tend to spend time reading informational blogs that answer questions about your services? You should opt for the type of content that makes sense for your business, keeping in mind cost and return on investment.

Content marketing is incomplete without proper distribution of curated content on different digital media channels. Owned media, earned media, and paid media are three major elements of an effective distribution strategy for content. Your content marketing strategy must include the right mix of each channel scattered throughout the content distribution plan.

One example of a content strategy that works well for many businesses is to focus on blogs and attracting organic traffic rather than paid. After all, a survey by Goo Technologies in 2014 found that 82% of Americans ignore online ads like online banner ads (73%), social media ads (62%), and search engine ads (59%). Ads certainly haven’t become less prevalent since 2014. By providing blog content that answers questions that your audience is already searching for, you can avoid wasting money on paid ads that they’re going to scroll past and ignore.

Why Is Content Strategy Important for a Website?

Simply put, a good content strategy helps your website rank higher on search engine result pages and capture that traffic. Websites, whether for personal, business, or educational purposes, often struggle to generate organic traffic and fail to create the desired digital footprint.

Take a listen to DemandJump's "Page One Or Bust" podcast for more information on why having a high-quality content strategy is so important. Check out a clip below:

What Are Examples of Content Strategy?

You can learn a lot about great content marketing by emulating somebody else’s strategy who is successful in the space. Let’s take a look at some successful examples of content strategy and why they work so well.

• "Share a Coke" Campaign by Coke

The company identified around 150 most common names in Australia and inserted these names under "Share a Coke with" on the bottle label. Coke replicated the campaign across the world. Remember how excited people were to find their own names? That’s the brilliant strategy behind this campaign’s success: personalization. Although this is an example of content strategy that is outside of the digital realm, you can (and should!) take this lesson to heart. Creating personalized content is vital for today’s audiences, and the "Share a Coke" campaign is one of the best marketing strategy examples for that.

• Inbound Marketing by HubSpot

HubSpot is a popular online platform that offers guides and tools in marketing. It has a simple content marketing strategy: attracting, converting, offering value, and delighting their customers. HubSpot achieves this through creating informative and engaging content and offering users top-quality education resources, such as e-books, courses, marketing tools, and more to help them hone their marketing skills. The simplicity of this makes it one of the great examples of digital content strategy. By providing valuable content, their audience continues to come back again and again.

• Pillar-Based Marketing by DemandJump

Here at DemandJump, we bring a unique approach to content strategy on your page. Our focus is on search engine optimization and giving you the tools that you need to make your content rank quickly. Our pillar-based approach works by creating a network of content, establishing you as an authority on the topics that your target audience is searching for. With DemandJump, one of our customers was able to identify the most powerful search terms in our competitive ecosystem, dramatically increasing the month over month revenue by more than 260%. This is just one brand content strategy example, and you can see how there are plenty of different approaches to creating your content strategy.

How Do I Create a Content Strategy for My Page?

Now that we’ve looked at some content strategy examples, let’s get into actually making a content strategy. There are several approaches that you can take.

• Use A Template - There are plenty of free templates online that you can use to develop your content strategy (more on this in a moment)
• Use A Tool or Tools - Even a simple spreadsheet or word processor can be a great help when creating your strategy. Using platforms like DemandJump can help you figure out what content to prioritize when developing your strategy.
• Use Your Resources - Odds are there’s someone you can lean on to assist you. Like most things, it’s helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off of and talk through the details.
• Use Data - You’re probably not going to get it right the first time, and that’s okay! It’s important to establish what success looks like and collect (and then analyze) information about your content. With DemandJump, we make it easy to see the impact that your content is having with competitor rankings and interactive dashboards.

What Is a Website Content Strategy Template?

There are many resources available, like a content strategy framework template, that are meant to help you map out your strategy. Often a digital content strategy template is more like a guided set of questions to help you develop your own unique content strategy rather than a set way of creating content.

Should I Use a Content Strategy Template?

Content strategy templates can be helpful, depending on their format and intent. Look for a template that will help you develop your own strategy rather than forcing you into a set way of doing content marketing. For example, walking through the following questions can help you figure out a strategy that will work for you.

• What is the goal for your content? Are you trying to get more clicks? Sell products? Gather emails? Think about what you want to achieve.
• How can your content align with your business goals?
• What metrics will you use to measure success?
• Who is your audience? What demographics are you trying to reach?
• How effective is your current content marketing? Where are there opportunities for improvement?
• What are your brand guidelines around voice and messaging?
• What channels will reach your target audience?
• What is your timeline? When does your content need to be created and published? When do you plan to schedule your content production?
• How will you communicate your content strategy to the wider company?

How Do You Write a Content Strategy Report?

Think of the content strategy report as your roadmap. It doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy. For example, this content strategy document could be as simple as a one page PDF that lays out all the answers to the questions above. This can be shared with colleagues, keeping everyone on track and aligned.

DemandJump: Create Your Content Strategy Quickly and Easily

We’ve got some great news for you: creating a content strategy doesn’t have to be difficult. Here at DemandJump, we love providing people with the right tools and resources they need to get their content ranking on page one of those search engine results (in fact, check out this content strategy sample/content strategy template we’ve put together for you. It’s completely free!). We’re marketers, and we built DemandJump to empower other marketers with a data-driven approach to content marketing, keyword research, pillar page strategy, content strategy, and marketing attribution.

Still have questions? Ready to learn more? Reach out to us today!