A strong content strategy connects your organization’s marketing efforts with business goals and user needs. It also also ensures an organization delivers timely content to the appropriate audience.
How Do You Create a Content Strategy?
A solid content strategy takes into consideration:
- The nature of the content — What is it about?
- The organization of the content — How do you optimally display or structure your content to best convey messaging?
- Key stakeholders — Who is responsible for maintaining and updating the content to keep it fresh, engaging and timely?
Who Manages Content Strategy?
Additionally, one or more stakeholders should be tasked with message integration to ensure all content contributes to the same brand positioning. These stakeholders then review the content to make certain it aligns with the organization’s overarching goals.
There are tools you can use to measure how well your content is performing, which can then inform future tactics and help determine article topics. For example, you may find that certain topics perform well when featured in an email newsletter, but not when posted to your organization’s social media accounts, or vice versa.
Why Is Content Strategy Important?
A robust content strategy helps market and sell your organization’s product or service. As content strategist Julia McCoy says, content strategy “is the backbone of your content creation and the marketing efforts that help you develop a brand with authority in your industry.”
A strong content strategy supports and strengthens your brand and leads prospective customers to your website through articles, video and infographics that present your brand as a thought leader and a helpful resource within your industry. Thanks to your content strategy, prospective customers will view your brand as increasingly relevant and helpful; this increasing familiarity will make them more likely to seek you out should they need your service or product.
Content Strategy Example
For example, let’s say you sell health insurance, and so does your friend Dave. You’ve developed a content strategy that takes into account the nature of the content, organization, key stakeholders and message integration for your brand. You continually refine and update your topics based on audience feedback and have developed quite a following, especially among seniors searching for Medicare information. Dave, however, doesn’t invest much energy in his content strategy, fails to make timely updates and has fallen in Google search rankings as a result. Who do you think will be top of mind (and, likely, higher in search rankings) when someone is in the market for health insurance? That’s right: It’s you with the solid content strategy.
Content Strategy: What Are the Risks and Benefits?
When implemented properly, a strong content strategy can enhance your brand and enable efficient customer acquisition. When messaging is poorly thought out, however, it can damage your brand and cause confusion among current and prospective customers. Content needs to meet people where they are; if your content is irrelevant (for example, sending Medicare articles to a young audience) your brand will lose standing.
