What is content strategy?
Content is such an abstract word in today’s marketing landscape. The same goes for “strategy”. Put them together, and you have yet another word that seemingly means a whole lot of nothing.
It’s easy to think of content strategy as the strategy behind your content marketing efforts, but the truth is it’s so much more than that.
I like to define content strategy as the story you tell online. In other words, how your content across channels works together at all stages of its lifecycle – from ideation and production to distribution and repurposing.
It is the journey of the main character (your customer) and their supporting character (you) and how they arrive at the happily ever after.
Here are how some other, more textbook, definitions of ‘content strategy’:
Hubspot says, “A content strategy is a plan in which you use content (audio, visual, and/or written) to achieve your business goals.”
Content Marketing Institute says, “Plan for creating, delivering, and maintaining useful, usable content that attracts, acquires, and engages a target audience.”
Neil Patel says, “A content strategy framework is an outline of how you plan to create content.”
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Long story short: you need a content strategy to build a magnetic brand and stand out online with both search engines and your target audience.
Why is content strategy important?
Content strategy is essential to creating a community around your brand. Organic content allows you to humanize your brand and rally customers around your mission. Investing in your strategy not only saves you from a hefty advertising budget but also optimizes your (and your team’s) time.
As a creator, influencer, or small business, your content strategy should be the blueprint that gives you flexibility when you’re off the clock.
For instance, tactics like pre-scheduling social media posts save you time during the week when the posts are supposed to go out. In the same way, creating a custom, intuitive content process can free you from content creation sessions that seem like they’re taking forever and give you more time to pour into other areas of your business (or life!).
Creating this type of guideline requires you to dial into each piece of your brand and maximize all content processes to work in your favor.
What should my content strategy include?
A good content strategy changes with your business and your target audience, and is therefore fully custom to your needs. I work one-on-one with my clients to develop a comprehensive, evolving content strategy that encompasses the following:
Goals
At the heart of all content creation is storytelling. The aim of each piece of content you craft is to take your audience through a story that ends in them working with you.
But what does that really mean?
When you break this down, it means you have to consistently do three things:
Introduce yourself to your audience so they KNOW who you are and what you do.
Connect with your audience and share entertainment with them so they LIKE you.
Share valuable and engaging information so they TRUST you and want to keep learning from you.
Content Pillars
Many people assume content pillars are “educational, promotional, inspirational,” etc. and that is flat-out wrong. I also often hear things like "news/industry events, holidays, education," and that’s wrong too. Your content pillars are the key topics that establish your thought leadership in your industry.
In other words, these are the things you want to be known for. When you identify 3-5 distinct topics, you can start to form your unique niche without even trying. Selecting these pillars also strengthens the foundation of your SEO, or search engine optimization, strategy.
If you’re stuck on picking your content pillars, here are some questions you can ask yourself:
What topics do you want to be known for?
Which topics does your target audience engage with the most?
What topics are you most knowledgeable about?
What are your audience’s interests, goals, and desires?
With clear and specific content pillars, you can build a foundation for your content strategy that is consistent in delivering value to your audience. You will develop brand awareness for those 3-5 topics, and therefore, establish both credibility and customer loyalty because you will be seen as the go-to person on those topics.
Audience
Your audience is a key component of your content strategy. As a customer goes through the buyer’s journey, they will encounter different stages of awareness.
For example, a newly engaged couple may not know where to begin planning their wedding, so they feel overwhelmed. They are problem aware (they need help with planning), but solution unaware (they don’t know where to begin).
However, if they discover you, a wedding planner, and see the beautiful ceremonies you’ve helped put together, the couple will become solution aware (hire a planner).
In this way, every product and service comes with a unique buyer. When you can identify exactly who you’re talking to, you’ll be able to better understand what they need to be able to make a decision.
The combination of your content pillars and your audience will begin to form your “niche.” Think: wedding planner for South Asian couples, handmade clothing for the African diaspora, simple Indian fusion recipes for cooking newbies, and so on.
Content Creation
Content creation is, of course, a key element of implementing your content strategy. Using your extensive strategy around goals, content pillars, and audience, you can start to experiment with different types of content for different platforms and see what actually performs.
As you keep your audience’s buyer’s journey in mind and create content for each stage of the journey while covering your content pillars and targeting a specific audience, content creation becomes much more intuitive.
Having specific parameters for your content allows you to be intensely creative while also still being strategic. In other words, with the right strategy, content creation becomes a breeze. If you’re a fan of batching content, check out my free Content Planning Cheat Sheet, which helps you put the basics of this entire blog together into a spreadsheet so you can keep track of your content ideas and batch content is smaller chunks, or what I like to call microbatching.
Channel Plan
When you know your target audience well and you know what content you want to share, you will easily be able to prioritize what channels you publish content on. For instance, most people looking to discover new cosmetic products will be looking through Instagram and TikTok.
It’s not likely they’re scrolling through LinkedIn to find their next favorite lipstick combo.
By understanding you goals, content pillars, and audience, you can then create a plan to determine what type of content goes where. This includes everything from the format to the promotion strategy, and so on.
As you select your channels of priority, you can begin to build out a plan that allows you to maximize your content and your time.
Repurposing-Plan
Your content strategy creates an ecosystem of your ideas that allows you to create and publish content in an intelligent and efficient way. Once you have completed the foundation of your strategy, you have the setup to repurpose content quickly.
For instance, if you are a food blogger, your primary channel will be your blog. Maybe your audience lives mainly on Pinterest, so you are going to make that your secondary channel with TikTok and Instagram being your last priority.
Using this knowledge, you can create Idea Pins for every blog you post and then repost those Idea Pins to TikTok and Pinterest with minor changes in the on-screen text, background music, and more.
Then, have all three social media channels link back to your website blog post and voila – you have a circular repurposing plan that maximizes your time and your content ideas in different ways and still emphasizes your main goal of increasing website traffic.
Get custom content strategy for your brand today.
As you can see, content strategy is a living, breathing process that is highly specific and unique to your business and brand. Without professional strategy behind your content, it can feel like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks.
Instead, get SEO-backed custom content strategy for your brand – right from your back pocket. When you work with me one-on-one for content strategy consulting, you’ll get:
Bi-weekly, 60-minute calls (2x a month)
Shared hub with meeting notes, content audits, etc.
Content audit & competitive analysis
Internal content management system
4 hours of content review (from me, per month)
New strategies and content opportunities to grow your brand organically online (including social media, email, blog, etc.)
Direct Slack support during business hours
Contact me to get started today.
