Why Have a Content Strategy?

Content is the holy grail of any marketing strategy. Well-written, attention-grabbing content introduces prospects to your brand. It sets you apart from competitors and creates loyal customers.

What is a content strategy? Why is a content strategy essential to your marketing?

A content strategy is the framework for all of your content marketing. Content strategies:

• Outline and translate the goals of your content marketing
• Use research about your business's market and audience
• Combine various tactics for effective content marketing campaigns

In other words, with a content strategy, you determine how, when, where, and why your content is delivered.

So, let's learn how to create a content strategy.

Creating Your Content Strategy Template

When creating your content strategy framework, follow these steps:

1. Define why you create content - What goals do you want to accomplish? Do you want to increase email subscriptions or boost website traffic? Defining the purpose of your content ensures your content to remain focused and on track.
2. Understand who you're targeting with your content - Whether it's your social media marketing strategy or website content strategy, your content should meet the wants and needs of your audience.

With your framework outlined, you can create a holistic content strategy. A good content strategy example includes tactics like the following:

• Picking platforms that your audience frequents
• Implementing brand voice and consistency across all content
• Planning to boost content visibility and accessibility
• Creating timelines for publishing, updating, and retiring content
• Strategizing content promotion
• Researching competitor content

Picking the platforms of your audience is particularly important. If you create strategies for each point on this list but miss publishing on the right platforms, you'll be fishing in an empty fishing hole. You need to go where the fish are.

Developing Your Social Media Content Strategy

After you've researched consumer insights in your content strategy, you'll know your audience likes Facebook, LinkedIn, or another social media platform.

Start by creating a template for your social media content that includes things like the following:

• Content strategy of your social media campaign - A simple social media strategy definition is to customize your content strategy for your audience and social media so you can make the biggest impression.
• Settings to target your audience - With Facebook, for example, you can select your audience's interests, general location, etc., when promoting your content.
• Keywords your audience uses - Your clients search for similar things. On Instagram, for example, try targeting hashtags that your audience follows.
• Tone of the platform - Each platform has a tone in addition to that of your audience. Take LinkedIn, which has a professional business tone.

Store these general insights and presets on a central social media strategy template PDF. Each time you create a new social media content strategy, the template is there for you to access.

Understanding and Organizing Your Website Content

The way you outline your website content strategy is similar to that of your social media content strategy. Start by identifying the content you want to create.

What is content?

The content of your website can be a lot of things—the articles you write, images you share, videos you post—but all good content answers a question.

The question can be anything: how to wash dogs, where to buy bitcoin, how does this improve my life. By targeting questions like these, you provide helpful information, and you can use the questions to group ideas and organize your content.

Why quality content is important.

When you look at what content does, the importance of content creation shines. Content helps your audience make informed decisions and prompts readers to do something: to apply advice, to buy, to call, to learn more. Good content engages.

The benefits of content writing come from being able to answer your audience's questions. The higher your content's quality, the more readers will act after digesting it. Providing relevant information is the best way to create a loyal customer base.

Content Marketing

Once you have your content strategy, you can build your content marketing campaigns. You might ask what is content marketing vs. content strategy. The terms are similar, but there is a difference.

Where content strategy is the bones, content marketing is the meat. Content marketing centers on the actual creating of any content that your audience will find informative, relevant, and actionable.

Your content strategy may include these types of content marketing:

• Blog content marketing
• Social media content marketing
• Email marketing
• Evergreen/long-form content marketing
• Infographic content marketing
• Video content marketing

To engage with your audience, you need to apply the research and planning of your content strategy to all your content marketing. The driving force of content marketing is content strategy.

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Or for more inspiration, check out our article on how to do content marketing and these great content marketing examples.