Creating a Content Strategy That Will Grow Your Business

A content strategy is a plan for how you will create, publish, and manage your content. It includes your overall goals for your content, who will create it, what kind of content you will create, and when and where you will publish it.

This strategy ensures that all of your content is created with a purpose in mind.

It helps you to be consistent with your messaging and branding and keeps you from wasting time and resources on creating content that doesn’t serve a purpose. The good news is that creating a content strategy doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming.😊

Follow these six steps to create a content strategy that will help grow your business.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

What do you want the content you publish to achieve?

Setting clear, measurable goals is the foundation of any successful content strategy. These goals will guide your content creation efforts and provide a metric by which you can measure success. For example, do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or generate new leads? Each objective demands a different approach and type of content.

Start by being specific about what each piece of content is meant to achieve. Are you aiming to educate your audience about a new product, establish thought leadership in your industry, or provide answers to common customer questions? Clarifying these objectives will help you create more targeted and effective content.

Once you have identified the immediate goals of individual pieces of content, consider how they fit into your broader business objectives. This might include long-term goals such as building a loyal subscriber base, improving customer engagement, or expanding into new market segments.

You might also want to consider setting SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This framework helps ensure that your content goals are attainable within a specific timeframe and can be quantifiably measured. For instance, instead of a vague goal like ‘increase website traffic,’ a SMART goal would be ‘increase website traffic by 30% within the next six months through bi-weekly blog posts on industry-relevant topics.’

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Step 2: Know Your Audience

Who do you want to reach with your content?

Identifying and understanding your target audience is ultra important in order to craft content that resonates and engages effectively. Who do you want to reach with your content? This step involves more than just knowing who they are; it’s about understanding their behaviors, preferences, and needs at a deeper level.

Begin by creating detailed personas for your ideal customers. These personas should include demographic information like age, gender, and location, but also psychographic details such as interests, challenges, and lifestyle choices. This comprehensive view helps in anticipating what kind of content will engage them, the problems they are looking to solve, and the most effective ways to communicate with them.

To further refine your audience understanding, consider their content consumption habits. What platforms do they use most often? Are they more likely to engage with video content or written articles? Do they prefer detailed reports or quick, actionable tips? Understanding these preferences will guide you towards what to create and how to shape the delivery of your content to maximize its impact.

Engage directly with your audience through surveys, social media interactions, and feedback forms to gather more insights about their preferences and pain points. This direct communication can reveal valuable information that personas alone may not cover, such as current trends affecting them or emerging needs related to your industry.

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Step 3: Create Valuable Content

Your content should be interesting, informative and should offer value to your audience.

The core of your content strategy revolves around delivering content that is not only engaging but also valuable to your audience. This value can manifest in various forms—educational, informational, entertaining, or even inspirational. Start by asking yourself: Is this content something that people would actually want to read, watch, or listen to? Does it add value to their lives or work?

To ensure that your content is impactful, focus on several key aspects:

Relevance

Tailor your content to meet the specific needs and interests of your target audience. It should address their most pressing questions, offer solutions to their problems, or provide insights that they cannot easily find elsewhere.

Quality

High-quality content is well-researched, well-written, and well-produced. It reflects professionalism and credibility, which in turn builds trust with your audience. Avoid cutting corners—poorly produced content can harm your brand’s reputation more than no content at all.

Engagement

Make your content compelling and memorable. Use storytelling techniques, include interesting data points, visuals, and calls to action that encourage interaction. Whether it’s a blog post, video, podcast, or social media update, the content should captivate and hold the audience’s attention.

Utility

Your content should provide practical value. This could be through how-to guides, tutorials, or actionable tips that empower your audience. Content that enables users to achieve something will be appreciated and makes them likely to return for more.

Entertainment

Sometimes, the value lies simply in the joy or relaxation your content offers. Not all content needs to solve a problem; some of the most successful content pieces are those that entertain, evoke emotions, or inspire.

If, upon evaluation, your content does not meet these criteria, it might be worth revisiting your approach. Consider what could be changed to enhance its value—whether it’s deepening the information provided, adjusting the tone, or transforming the format.

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Step 4: Promote Your Content

Creating compelling content is just the first part of your content strategy; the next step is ensuring it reaches your audience. Effective promotion is essential to maximize the visibility and impact of your content. Once you’ve crafted great content, it’s time to strategize its distribution to avoid it merely sitting unnoticed on your website or blog.

1. Social Media Sharing – Utilize all relevant social media platforms to share your content. Tailor your message to fit the style and norms of each platform, whether it’s a concise and engaging post for Twitter, a visually rich pin for Pinterest, or a detailed story for Facebook. Remember to engage with comments and feedback to further increase your content’s reach and visibility.
2. Email Marketing – Email remains one of the most direct ways to reach your audience. Send out newsletters featuring your latest content or incorporate a regular content round-up. Segment your email list to ensure that the right content reaches the most interested subscribers, increasing relevancy and engagement.
3. Content Syndication – This involves republishing your content on other sites or platforms to reach a broader audience. Look for industry blogs, online magazines, and content hubs where your articles can be featured. This not only extends your content’s reach but also helps build backlinks, which are beneficial for SEO.
4. Paid Promotion – Invest in paid advertising campaigns on social media or search engines to boost the visibility of your top-performing content. You can use targeting options to ensure your content is seen by a finely tuned audience who are most likely to be interested in your offerings.
5. Collaborations and Guest Posting – Partner with other content creators or brands to cross-promote content. Guest posting on popular industry blogs or featuring guest authors on your own site can tap into new audiences and add credibility to your brand.
6. Interactive Promotions – Consider hosting webinars, live Q&As, or online discussions that revolve around your content topics. These interactive elements can significantly increase engagement and bring more attention to your content.

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Step 5: Analyze and Adjust

Once your content is published and promoted, the next step is to measure its performance. This ongoing analysis is key to understanding what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to optimize future content for better results.

1. Track Performance Metrics – Start by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your content goals. These might include website traffic, page views, social media engagement (likes, shares, comments), conversion rates, and bounce rates. Use tools like Google Analytics, social media analytics, and email marketing software to gather data.
2. Evaluate Content Reach and Engagement – Look at how far your content is reaching and how much it engages your audience. High engagement rates often indicate that your content is resonant and valuable to your audience, whereas high reach with low engagement might suggest the need for more compelling content or better targeting.
3. Analyze Audience Behavior – Understanding how your audience interacts with your content can provide insights into what keeps them interested. Pay attention to metrics like average time on page and the number of pages visited to gauge content depth and relevance.
4. Review Conversion Rates – Ultimately, the success of some content is measured by its ability to drive actions, such as newsletter sign-ups, product purchases, or inquiry form submissions. Analyzing these conversion rates can help you understand how well your content motivates your audience to take the next step.
5. Gather Audience Feedback – Sometimes, direct feedback from your audience can be the most insightful. Consider conducting surveys, monitoring comments, or engaging directly with followers on social media to hear what they think about your content.
6. Make Informed Adjustments: Use the insights gained from these analyses to refine your content strategy. This might mean adjusting the topics you cover, the formats you use, or even the channels through which you distribute your content. For example, if video content shows higher engagement but lower reach, you might decide to invest more in video production and enhance your promotion strategies for videos.
7. Test and Experiment: The digital landscape is continually evolving, making it essential to stay adaptable. Experiment with different types of content, promotion strategies, and engagement techniques to see what yields the best results for your specific audience.

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Step 6: Rinse and Repeat

Maintaining an effective content strategy requires creating content and sustaining a cycle of regular, fresh content production. Consistency in publishing is key to keeping your audience engaged and your brand top of mind.

1. Establish a Publishing Schedule – Develop a content calendar that outlines what to publish, when, and where. This schedule shouldn’t be overly ambitious to the point of compromising content quality, but it should be consistent enough to keep your audience engaged and looking forward to more. Whether it’s weekly blog posts, bi-weekly videos, or daily social media updates, choose a rhythm that works for your resources and goals.
2. Stay Current and Relevant – Keeping your content fresh isn’t just about frequency; it also involves relevance. Stay updated with industry trends, seasonal topics, and current events that align with your brand. This way, your content not only attracts attention but also remains meaningful and timely for your audience.
3. Recycle and Update Old Content – Not all content needs to be created from scratch. Look back at your previous posts and identify evergreen topics that can be updated or repurposed. This could involve refreshing outdated statistics, adding new insights, or transforming a popular blog post into a video or infographic. Recycling content can maximize your efforts and provide value with less resource expenditure.
4. Encourage User-Generated Content – Engage your audience by encouraging them to contribute content. This can be through comments, reviews, or submissions. User-generated content not only builds community but also provides fresh, authentic material that can attract more users.
5. Monitor Content Performance Continuously – As you repeat your content cycles, keep a close eye on performance metrics to gauge what types of content perform best. This ongoing analysis will inform your content strategy, helping you adjust not just the types of content you produce, but also how often and in what formats.
6. Be Adaptable to Change – Flexibility is crucial in content creation. Be prepared to shift your strategy in response to feedback, performance data, and changes in your industry. Sometimes, the most effective content strategies are those that can pivot quickly to leverage new opportunities or address emerging trends.

 

The Key to Content Mastery ? Consistency !

Consistency is vital if you want to be successful with content marketing. A well-thought-out content strategy will help you be consistent with your messaging and branding.

Consistency aids also in optimizing your resources—both time and money—by focusing your efforts on content that genuinely serves your strategic goals. Instead of scattergun content creation, which can lead to wasted efforts on underperforming content, a structured approach ensures every piece of content has a purpose and contributes towards your overarching business objectives.

Adhering to the six steps of this sound content strategy, you can streamline your content production process, enhance engagement, and drive meaningful growth for your business. This approach maintains interest, engagement and establishes your brand as a reliable and authoritative voice in your industry.

To Your Content Strategy and Consistency Plan!

Janice

PS: Catch me on  ➡️ Social Media ⬅️ for more tips and resources.

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Janice Dugas, content optimization strategist and entrepreneur helps local businesses and solopreneurs reach a larger audience and grow their revenue by improving web visibility. Claim your free copy of  Boost Your Digital Presence: 11 Steps To Increase Your Online Visibility to build credibility and profitability.

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