What is content strategy? by expert

What is a content strategy?

Content strategy is an essential part of your marketing strategy because it outlines who, what, where, when, and how you intend to connect with your audience. It spans far beyond the topics of potential content formats and media. It also includes buyer personas, journey maps, editorial calendars, reviews, and content governance.

By observing a fantastic content strategy, you can establish a culture of content in your company that drives increased investments. To keep accountability and ensure ongoing consistent results, the framework will tell you exactly how much your content investments are paying off.

But creating content takes time and resources, so whether you outsource blog posts or create videos in-house, it is fundamental to have a plan to get the outcome you want. Your concept serves as a playbook that drives action and insight, like a playbook.

Content strategy vs. content marketing strategy

Content strategy is a type of content strategy. A Content marketing is just another term used to describe the content marketing strategy.

A content advertising strategy is a higher level of business strategy than content marketing. A content advertising strategy is a roadmap that helps you create and plan your promotional content.

It is also the decision-making behind whom your content is going to influence, how it is designed to cut through the clutter, and what your desired results are to accomplish. It includes defining content success.

Content marketing is the process of planning, straightening, publishing, and promoting content pieces. Content marketing is the technique that follows content strategy. Your content strategy defines your content marketing.

What you’re endeavoring to achieve Who you’re attempting to reach What kinds of content you will publish How your content will complement the brand How your content will be distinguished from others How your content will promote and amplify itself The metrics that define success.

Your content strategy defines:

What you’re trying to accomplish
Who you’re trying to reach
What types of content you’ll publish
How your content will support the brand
The ways in which your content will be differentiated
How you will promote and amplify your content
The metrics that define success

You won’t plan a trip without first determining your destination. Content strategy helps direct your content marketing efforts towards your favored destination. Without a strategy, you could waste a considerable amount of time writing and creating content that doesn’t achieve the desired results or audience engagement you anticipate.

Check out some content marketing examples implemented by key brands to see how creativity can improve your message.

SEO content strategy tips

Content-generation strategy and SEO strategy go hand in hand. An important part of a successful strategy is identifying your content’s key objectives, desires, pain points, and challenges.

Next, you conduct strategic keyword research to learn the way your target audience searches for answers to their problems.

Finally, you will build content on these topics that their target audience is searching for. This allows your brand to better connect with your audience when they’re most receptive to the content. And don’t overlook the SEO benefits of a content strategy. Brands that invest heavily in organic search have a global market presence.

Parakeet has recently released two reports that examine organic search market share for various industries by leveraging full sales funnels. It seems that some of the richest corporations have lost a substantial share of their revenue, leading to major declines, in online publishers with greater marketing funnels with stronger content strategies.

You can download the reports listed below.

Map content to the customer journey

As a marketer, we must develop a content strategy centered on our audience and not the other way around. Customer journey mapping helps you to uncover touchpoints that are decisive in getting the consumer interested in purchasing, such as when they noticed a requirement when they came up with an idea, and when they made a decision.

Then develop content that emphasizes brand identity, assists consumers, and influences decisions. This could involve blog posts, articles, and videos that answer consumers s questions, as well as Moab content to allow them to take the next step on their journeys, such as webinars and case studies.

And finally, you can create content like interactive tools and calculators, product comparison charts, etc. to push your audience toward the finish line at the bottom of the funnel by learning what comes next.

More importantly, understanding the customer journey helps you empathize with your audience. This ensures that you solve the right pain points, not just the ones you deem the most important.

Align with search intent

Whether or not you write the content, ensure that you are aligning with search intent. In other words, ensure that you write the content, data, and responses that someone who is searching for a specific keyword seeks.

The intent is everything. If you have content Google understands as being educational, and someone is looking for educational information and you only have it to sell a product, Google will realize the difference and presume it’s a product listing and therefore will show other content at the top of SERPs instead of yours. Similarly, if your product isn’t fulfilling a need that may be a checklist would, your site will fail once again.

A standard of Google’s algorithm lies in respecting search intent. This is seen in Google’s Quality Raters Guidelines, Section 12.7.5 of the guidelines is entitled “Understanding User Intent,” and the sections within that section include the goal of elucidating search intent.

Launch SEO topic clusters

For your content ecosystem to work well, you should structure it with purposeful content and align it with intent. For that purpose, SEO topic clusters are an effective way to boost organic traffic to relevant keyword phrases. A topic cluster is a hub-and-spoke system of content production.

The main article page (the hub) makes a broad reference and contains useful hypertext links that connect you to the long-tail cluster pages. The hub page is intertwined with the spokes, which hypothesize on the hub, and vice-versa; these are connected by links that traverse the internal structure of the site.

Topic clusters are similar to concentrated buckets of significance. They help search engines better understand the context, relationships, and hierarchy of the context of each article within a family. At the same time, they help your readers find pertinent and related information easily.

Atomize your content

One content technique that may help your organic search engine results is your creation of multiple content pieces from one source material. For example, you can create a report as a starting piece of content from which you will then develop additional content pieces.

Atomization enables you to break up your content into bite-size portions that can be consumed at one’s leisure. You can then distribute these separate components, like videos, audio recordings, reports, white papers, workshops, webinars, data visualizations, and other kinds of content.

As long as you maintain your SEO efforts from cannibalizing the search results of your pages, content atomization is an effective means of content marketing that nourishes SEO reach, traffic, and engagement by building an entire audience of the appropriate sort for your content.

Develop online tools

There is a content strategy that can make your SEO more effective than others. Design and develop a free website tool online. When you provide your audience with a valuable free website tool, many times they’ll link to it, strengthening your linking profile (and thus your organic search rankings).

For instance, Maybelline s line-up of makeover tools like Maybelline’s Retouch Tube has generated more than 1,000 links to its site. CoSchedule’s headline analyzer tool has helped attract links from more than 6,600 websites.

How to develop a content strategy (15 steps)

Now that you know what and why to let’s look at the processes and steps you should take when creating a content marketing strategy template for your brand.

1. Establish your content goals

Since you won’t be able to produce a successful strategy or communicate your ROI without having clear business goals and resources, you should establish clear goals before establishing your new content marketing strategy.

Focus on outcomes

Your content’s goals motivate you to collect material for articles, making your goals positioned around your desired outcomes.

When setting goals, experts generally advocate you pursue two tiers of goals: stretch S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Stretch Goals vs. S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Stretch goals are aspirational. These are often major quarterly or annual milestones designed to push your team to achieve more ambitious outcomes. S.M.A.R.T. goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-constrained (having a clear deadline). Consider these your process goals to ensure that you do the things necessary to achieve your stretch goals.

Support one another as you progress with your strategies using these S.M.A.R.T. goals. For instance, if you seek to increase your organic web traffic by 100 within this year, a couple of S.M.A.R.T. goals might support you: Increase the number of visitors to your content by 100.

Publish 25 blog posts each month. Record a weekly podcast and accompanying SlideShare. Engage with 100 third-party publications monthly.

When you are attempting to reach a goal, it may be difficult without a targeted digital marketing approach in place. Similarly, S.M.A.R.T. goals cannot be achieved without some overarching, long-term goal.

2. Define your audience segments and buyer personas

By developing persona profiles, it is then time to target your audience. This is necessary because creating content that targets the wrong audience can result in wasted money and resources.

Audience segments

In case you’re in the financial industry, one target audience segment might be recent college graduates who have completed $10,000 worth of student debt and are interested in refinancing. Or, it may be female pianists with finance portfolios worth $100,000 that are open to seeking advice.

Another segment with a net worth of over $10 million may be prime candidates for estate planning guidance. A target audience segment may not reveal characteristics of buyer personas within that industry, but it is a useful framework to help you make your marketing more targeted. The more targeted your marketing, the more likely it is to be successful.

Data sources

There are many different classifications and resources you can use to segment your audience based on your product or services, audience size, and reach. For instance, buyer personas for marketing to B2C customers may include demographic components, including age and gender.

Age
Gender
Location
Family status

Income level
Disposable income
Interests
Goals

Products desired
Product attributes
Pain points

Occupation

For B2B marketing, on the other hand, you might include:

Job title
Department
Division
Industry
Company size
Decision maker
Business goals
Impact of goals

Pain points
Effect of frustrations
Products desired
Product features

Audience insights

Fortunately, there are plenty of places to glean audience insights, including:

Search data
Social media data
Email marketing data
Google Analytics data
Behavioral intelligence

Survey data
Analyst reports
Customer interviews
Interviews with salespeople

Interviews with support teams

Use that data to define your target audience segments and then create personas within each segment.

Buyer personas

A buyer persona is an implied representation of a specific customer or group of customers based on relatable features, such as demographics, psychographics, and interests.

The difference between a buyer persona and an audience segment is that buyer personas encourage you to think about your audience as an individual, rather than a group. And within each segment, you may have multiple examples of buyer personas.

is-investing-in-polygon-crypto-a-good-idea (cryptoees.com)

Let’s look at the previously mentioned audience segment of females with a net worth of at least $100,000. A buyer persona within that segment would include further detail, such as:

Name: Aya Accumulator
35 years old
Female
Lives in a city or nearby suburb
Married, but independent-minded
Director or VP level at work
Ambitious about her career
The net worth of $100,000+
Invests in a range of funds but little retirement savings
Intelligent, but would feel safer with investment guidance
Wants to be perceived as successful

Digitally savvy

However, don’t just focus on solutions. In case you find a gap in the marketplace, why not create content that entertains your audience? You may be able to cut through the clamor with something that holds people’s interests, excites them, or motivates them to think more highly of themselves.

Read more – What is content marketing? How to do it?

3. Conduct a content audit and gap analysis

As you conduct a content audit to find out what kinds of brand content you have, you’ll figure out how to evaluate how effective they are.

Competitor content gaps
Customer interest content gaps
Missing steps in the customer journey
Irrelevant content

Underperforming pages

To have a strong and differentiated content strategy, you will also need to perform a competitive analysis. However, don’t just focus on your direct competitors’ content strategy.

Major e-commerce stores sometimes see a drop in traffic to online retailers and market research blogs with an effective SEO strategy. Financial services firms can later lose search engine placement to lead generation websites and magazines. Therefore, be attentive to all of the websites competing for your audience’s attention in the Google SERPs.

Scrutinize everything you’ve published.

For example, a list of your blog posts might show that some are outdated, not aligned with business goals, or not performing well in organic search. You can then decide whether you want to correct your blogs or postpone them for a while.

Delete irrelevant posts
Update outdated content
Combine multiple posts into a consolidated, more valuable post
Create completely new content pieces

4. Map content needs throughout the customer journey

The Conversion Funnel

As you define your target audience segments and target customers, map the path taken by each customer from one persona through the funnel, identifying the dimensions that cause resistance.

What do potential customers do?
Where do they go online?
What information do they want?

How is the content presented?

In addition, how do these kinds of questions look to them? Alfred L. Yarbus, a psychologist, researched eye movements. Participants were asked to look at paintings. Yarbus asked a particular question, then she tracked the eye movements of each participant.

What he discovered was participants reexamined different aspects of a painting depending on the questions they had been asked previously. Essentially, our brains are hardwired to find responses to particular queries we ask ourselves. So, you must make your audience’s burning questions a high priority during each stage of the sales funnel.

Targeting stages of the funnel

For example, the introduction to a blog post could look generic to your industry to capture those just beginning the buyer’s adventure. The post may clarify common questions and provide potential solutions. Or, it could be an entertaining or thought-provoking post meant to expand reach and capture attention.

Another blog might target the middle of the funnel when a prospect has completed their initial research and has begun to engage with various brands or vendors. At this point, the prospect may want and need more detailed and custom content.

Eventually, prospects need to compare and contrast options, often to decide in favor of the product. Then, you can add an ability to calculate an ROI, provide case studies, or have an available free trial or coupon. For more about funnel stages, explore the article about ToFU, MoFu, and BoFu.

5. Conduct keyword research

Whatever your primary goal, you need the traffic to bolster site traffic and online store revenue. But quality content alone won’t draw thousands of visitors to your site. You must optimize for those keywords, too. Keyword research is the foundation of an SEO-focused content strategy because it helps you identify the most valuable topics and keeps you arranged.

With thorough keyword research, you’ll be able to cover topics thoroughly without having to compose the same blog post multiple times. That suggests more traffic, more engagement, and more conversions. How do you get started? Use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to find the topics in which your audience is interested.

You can use SEO tools to view your competitors’ most popular pages and the targeted keywords driving most of their traffic. Confirm the questions your audience asks online, as well.

Use tools like Answer the Public and Answer Socrates or Google Question Hub. This can provide you with the tactical opportunity to be the first to answer an important question.

You can also check the Popular Questions boxes in the SERPs for your selected keywords on the Google search engine. First, you need to choose relevant keyword strings and question expressions, and you ought to assess the eventual search contexts. Then, you must create content.

6. Brainstorm content ideas

Next, use your list of keywords to aid with content creation. But, how can you generate fresh, unique content when some 4.2 billion web pages are competing for attention? Luckily, the bulk of indexed web pages is undesirable. So, take that golden opportunity to iterate and improve upon what already exists!

From a single, original idea to the finished product, it is time to consider the importance of a process called iterative ideation. In Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From, he describes how some of the best innovative developments began at a nexus of the adjacent possible (focusing on objective and existing knowledge).

Don’t waste your time searching for something you have not yet written, so seek out ways to build a new fresh idea or cross-pollinate different “solutions” to engender something fresh.

Unsure of how to start? Tools such as Buzzsumo and Ahrefs can display audience engagement, while Semrush is crucial for looking into keyword rankings, backlinks, and traffic.

After you identify the most engaging piece of content for each keyword, make it 10 times more outstanding. Use these suggestions to elevate the efficacy of your content.

Leverage proprietary data
Visualize boring topics with graphics
Simplify or break down a complex topic
Combine related content into a comprehensive guide
Use explainer videos within your copy
Create something 10X more entertaining

7. Choose a content management system

If your content is going to be famous, you will need a well-made Content Management System (CMS). With your CMS, you can create, arrange, publish, and store different kinds of content, such as blog posts, audio files, video files, PDFs, and much more. Luckily, many available CMSs are depending on your needs.

For large ecommeeCommerces, Magento, for example, is used by more than 200,000 different online stores in 20 distinct industries. Sitecore is often used for corporate websites that need substantial security and scalability.

WordPress has the largest market share when it comes to any Content Management System. And Drupal is the preferred choice if you need the customized data management and reporting features.

8. Establish a content development process

Your content will not create itself, so you need a clearly defined, repeatable, structured content strategy development process. The right methodology ensures that you always create high-quality, high-value content.

Your process should include:

Keyword research
Title
Content brief
Draft

Edit
Revisions
Media selection

Content strategy is an essential part of your marketing strategy because it outlines who, what, where, when, and how you intend to connect with your audience.

It spans far beyond the topics of potential content formats and media. It also includes buyer personas, journey maps, editorial calendars, reviews, and content governance.

Do you know who will be tasked with each task and by what due date? Also, establish standard technology stacks and workflows for your projects. Beyond your CMS, there are other project management software, grammar checking software, SEO software, and much more.

9. Implement a content calendar

A content calendar is more than just a mere schedule. It can also be used as a business structure that helps your content team support your marketing tactics and goals.

An effective content calendar should tie each piece of content back to your S.M.A.R.T. goals so you can track performance. It helps prioritize items that are likely to have the greatest impact.

Depending on the goals of your organization, a content calendar may include a variety of types of information.

Title of Content Piece
Target Audience Segment or Persona
Content Format
Author
Content Brief Due Date
Draft Deadline

Editing Deadline
Design & Development Deadlines
Publication Date
Target SEO Keyword(s)
Associated Keyword Query Volume

Comments or Other Information

Do you typically have an article transcription accompanied by a corresponding visual content item? Then, create an entry in your editorial calendar for every such split-up content item.

Your editorial calendar should be shareable directly from your online hub. Keep your calendar clean and compact so it is easy for everyone to see what you have published, what is being worked on, and what is still under consideration.

For keyword-focused content, track scores from SEO tools such as Clearscope, MarketMUSE, SurferSEO, and similar alternatives to ensure content meets your threshold. A content calendar keeps the entire content production process on track.

Your content schedule ensures that everyone has their top priorities met and that timely emergency drills can be avoided. Combined with a team structure, it allows all group members to stay on schedule and accomplish their shared goals.

10. Prioritize quality over quantity

If your audience gives you their attention, don’t squander the chance to connect by creating meaningful content. This will help you succeed in organic search rankings.

Your brand takes time to establish a loyal following, so it shall be necessary to produce content that is entertaining to your members. That’s just what the search engines are advising.

You won’t waste resources on thin content that nobody will engage with
You’ll focus on actionable content that drives traffic and leads
Stakeholders will see you as an industry expert which can earn media mentions and natural backlinks
You’ll keep visitors on your site longer

You’ll increase brand affinity

But it depends on what your production provides your readers, but whatever it is, you should focus on excellent work that is valuable, and usable, according to your industry.

In it, you can find expert market research ch, the advice found on a podcast, listicles of resources, beautiful photographs, or even emotionally engaging videos and content. Ultimately, your goal in providing your readers with something worthwhile is to encourage them to share.

11. Publish long-form content

When it comes to organic search traffic, long-form content like blogging typically wins out. A study by SemRush indicated that long-form content generates 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks. There are several reasons for this.

First, long-form content tends to rank higher for more than one keyword than shorter content, since it covers a subject in more depth. You can then offer more detailed answers to questions, naturally, throw in more long-tail keywords, and make your content capable of grabbing the featured snippet. Second, long-form content tends to be shared more frequently and leads to more backlinks.

For instance, a running website is more likely to link to a longer, 2,500-word article on selecting a running shoe than a 500-word article. Third, long-form content seamlessly integrates audio, video, and graphics, which makes it more engaging and link-worthy. Lastly, it is easier to build funnels within long-form content.

Having the chance to create more content on the page will permit you to include more CTAs, which will convey readers to the next step in the potential customer journey. If you require a concrete instance of the effectiveness of extending content, take a look at our post about How Byrdie Upended Billion-Dollar Beauty Industries (Without Ads).

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

Building your brand’s reputation improves segmentation, customer loyalty, SEO, and more. That’s why it’s important to establish a reputation for quality. Examples include advertising claims related to photography, rather than optometry. From a performance perspective, however, there is more to it.

You have probably heard of the concept of expertise, authority, and trust (E-ATC), which is a set of principles foundational to Google search. E-ATC is not a direct ranking factor; however, many ranking factors within Google are meant to measure it in some way. So, improving your E-ATC can indirectly help some enterprise SEO programs.

For example:

People are more likely to link to content they trust, and links are one way Google measures trust.
Expert authors cover topics more thoroughly, which means they’re more likely to mention relevant topics and co-occurring keyword phrases.
Google continues to improve its understanding of entities which helps them recognize well-known authors.

This becomes especially vital as you go on creating content for those nearby to your brand or product. Even though your eyes may widen when you see the sheer number of searches on a query near the top of the distribution funnel, the significance of this becomes particularly apparent as you continue creating content.

But ask yourself this question: Does this make sense for my business to talk about this? If it does t, you will have to find a new angle or look for an alternative opportunity.

13. Evoke an emotional response

A smart content strategist understands that the most effective content affects people on a subconscious level.

Here’s why:

The brain transforms into an elaborate mechanism that makes approximately 11 million bits of sensory input every second, but only processes a mere 40 of these at a conscious level. By conservative estimates, over 90 percent of the decision-making process takes place subconsciously.

( Learn more – What is Shopify? Shopify explained by the best 1 team )

So how do you tap into your customers’ subconscious minds?

Emotions.

Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at the University of California, studied the intellectually disabled men who’d lost feeling in certain mental areas of the brain.

Those individuals struggled with deciding since they couldn’t strongly feel one way or another regarding a choice. Thus, humans require strong emotions to make choices because our decisions are made based on feelings.

Instilling emotions that prompt higher levels of engagement may also lead to more successful communication. According to Jonah Berger, a Marketing Professor at the Wharton School, people are more likely to share content that triggers a response, which includes a high-arousal emotion.

Emotional and intrinsic content draws drawn in users, urges action, and encourages sharing. Especially, all those traits are a reliable recipe for earning natural hyperlinks boost and ing organic visibility.

14. Plan a variety of content types

When using content for online marketing and advertising, vary your catalog of behaviors to cater to various customer demographics. Take into consideration the particular habits of your target buyers when you produce your content.

Even if your followers are of the same age or similar demographic, mixing things up is important. For instance, YouTube’s platforms offer visual, auditory, and readthrough content. Consider incorporating some of the following formats into each of your content.

Blog Post
Article
Whitepaper
Ebook
Guide
Case Study
Interview

Checklist
Template
News
Topic Cluster
Infographic
Data Visualization
Survey

Presentation
Video
Podcast
Demo
Tool
Etc.

Before a content strategy can be drafted, plan your content creation strategy by considering different kinds of learning types and scalability. For example, before you start producing content, create a survey as the basis for your strategy.

Then, use the insights you gather from the survey results to shape your takeaways into various forms of content, such as infographics, videos, podcasts, blog posts, checklists, templates, social content, presentations, and so forth.

And don’t forget to distribute the content types conveniently. For example, if you created a video, upload it and optimize it for YouTube. By doing so, you’ll have a broader reach. A potential customer may find your content in your blog, but another may come across the video version on YouTube or a podcast episode on Spotify.

Think more broadly in terms of the SEO benefits of repurposing your content.

15. Define your content distribution and amplification strategy

Your content strategy does not end when you publish a blog post or a video clip. Don’t become discouraged. You have devoted a great deal of time and energy towards content creation, so you expect results. Therefore, don’t publish it just once and move on to another project. Build increased awareness in your content publishing process.

Share posts many times over several different social media networks. Create blogger outreach pitches to online publishers, as well as other businesses, to promote your blog posts, graphics, or videos. Also, don’t be shy about running paid ads. Just be sure you understand the ROI before you go on a spending spree.

A powerful way to increase website traffic is by incorporating content with distribution efforts. If you just invest in content, you will see results in the long term. Publications can share it on their website, and the audience may also share it with their audiences, so basically a ripple effect will happen.

Measuring the effectiveness of your content strategy

This content marketing strategy guide has walked through the steps to build a plan, set goals, identify your target demographic, plan a pipeline, create individual content pieces, and promote them to the right audience. Finally, you’ll need to measure success to iterate and improve.

Your content KPI metrics should measure your success rate based on making your marketing goal. So, if you care about conversion rates, include them as one of your KPIs. Don’t let yourself be persuaded into reporting against dozens of metrics that don’t support your aims. Here are three KPIs to take note of.

Google rankings
Number of ranking keywords
Organic visibility percentage
Google organic market share
Traffic (organic, paid, or referral)

Engagement
Conversions
Qualified leads
Revenue

Next, determine how you will collect, record, and report performance to this point. For example, will you report performance against a baseline each month, in comparison to the previous or previous year, or within a particular peperiodWill you create a live dashboard or pull data from typical search engine optimization tools, such as Google Analytics, STAT, and Semrush?

Finally, identify the individual(s) who will be in charge of monitoring the performance of personnel to provide information and updates on an accurate and efficient basis.

Future of content marketing strategy

Customers and B2B clients are often bombarded with too many distracting pieces of information to digest. Therefore, consumers often bar all of that information from their direct experience. Content marketing, therefore, requires some changes to raise your odds of being noticed, inviting interaction, fostering engagement, and boosting conversions.

Think larger than single parts of the content. Ithe instead, explore experiences that follow the consumer buy path and the broader journey. Brands that offer the best digital experiences will come out on top in the long run. A content strategy plan forges a clear path to take one step following the next.

It provides you with content that serves your audience and your business’s objectives. It also prevents you from wasting time and effort on content that won t move the needle for your business.