Everyday users consume a huge amount of content: they browse social networks, watch videos, and listen to podcasts. Standing out in this vast ocean of information is a task that seems almost impossible.
To draw attention to yourself as a brand, you need to create a thoughtful content strategy to help you move forward and achieve your goals.
A content strategy is essentially a brand's plan for attracting traffic, audience, and sales through content. This article highlights the top tips for creating an effective content strategy.
Define the goal
Any content strategy has to start in your head. Your site has certain goals; what are they? What is the concept of your resource, and what do you want to convey or provide to people with it? The answers to these questions should be determined first and laid out as the foundation of your future content strategy.
So, what goals can a content strategy pursue? Here are some possible and quite realistic options.
Increase brand awareness
Informing consumers about the brand directly affects the increase in sales. Useful content provides information about the product and gently convinces the audience of the need to buy.
Customer retention and increasing brand loyalty
Large companies spend a lot of effort to maintain the image of being experts in their field. A marker that indicates the right choice of direction for the content strategy will be an increase in the number of reposts, links to your information, and responses to the message. In the end, it will also manifest itself in an increase in orders.
Search for employees
In the labor market, where narrow-profile specialists are needed, the demand for workers often exceeds the supply. Employers try to present themselves in a better light by creating a positive image. The criterion of the right content strategy can be an increase in positive feedback from employees and an increase in employee appeals to the company.
Define your audience
Study your audience carefully, and create a few of your typical customers. This step is very important because developing a content strategy that targets the wrong audience will waste time and money.
Think about who might be interested in what you're going to put on the site. Draw up a portrait of him based on such characteristics:
- socio-demographic (gender, age, marital status, occupation, education);
- geographical (place of residence”country, city)
- economic (income level, employment);
- psychological (lifestyle, value system, motivation);
- behavioral (experience and frequency of Internet usage, actions in relation to your service, which sites she uses most often, whether she visits social networks);
- interests and hobbies.
Of course, it all depends on the specifics of the product or service. There can be many more of these indicators, but we tried to list those that will be universal for everyone.
Analysis of competitors
Starting to research competitors, for instance, writing services like TrustMyPaper, write down 5“10 of the main rivals in your industry. Carefully study their websites and conduct a content audit. Observe their actions for a while:
- what channels they use to communicate with their audience (social networks, blogs, email newsletters, publications in the media);
- what they publish (form of content presentation, frequency of publication);
- What content of what they do is most successful and liked by the target audience?
In the process of analysis, you can take note of the most successful cases, understand what not to do, and think about what will help your brand stand out among competitors. You can use the same search queries as competitors, but make the content based on them many times more interesting and useful.
Define the keywords
In order for your content to rank at the top of search engine results, it must be created using keywords.
Conduct research on what your target visitors are looking for in search engines. These words and phrases should be gently introduced into any text content you publish on your website.
But do not get carried away with their use; search engines do not like it very much. Foremost, the content should be created for people, be useful, and answer their questions.
Create content you want to share
Content can be presented in different formats: text, video, audio, images, and infographics. Decide what you will use based on the specifics of your topic and the needs of your audience. Combining multiple formats will help achieve maximum efficiency. Any content must be informative and carry a certain usefulness for the audience.
At the same stage, it must be determined who will be responsible for creating the content. Several specialists can be involved in this process”copywriters (included in the BestWritersOnline review), editors, marketers, and designers.
Content promotion
Content distribution is an important step in content strategy. After you create your content, you need to think about how to distribute it afterward to get as much response from your audience as possible. After selecting a channel to distribute your article or video, you should consider what you want to achieve as a result.
Leave links, invite bloggers to write about your publication, and don't duplicate content on third-party sites. Run targeted ads to promote your posts on Instagram and Facebook.
Track and analyze results
The final stage in the formation of the content strategy is the analysis of the results. When all the texts are written and published, it's time for the results.
Here is what you should pay attention to:
- How much traffic did the new content bring to the site (for each channel)?
- How much does the conversion rate increase due to the published material (performing a targeted action on the site: filling out a brief, ordering a callback, subscribing to the newsletter)?
- Activity in social networks (comments, likes, reposts of publications);
- Brand awareness. This is a qualitative indicator. Therefore, its effectiveness is more difficult to track but still possible.
Quantitative results will help to analyze Google Analytics. That is why it is important to set goals for analytics before starting the content marketing process. Otherwise, you will not be able to properly analyze the results of your strategy.
Summary
In conclusion, I would like to add that creating good content is difficult, but great material is a powerful tool for attracting attention to a brand. Use different formats and types of content, cover different communication channels, and combine content marketing and SEO. But first, start with a good content strategy!
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