How to Make Content Strategy Creation Easier
Content creation is hard.
But what’s even harder is putting in loads of effort to create content and not seeing any real traction toward meeting your goals.
Talk about a way to burn out fast!
It’s not enough to have great products or services. To build a loyal audience that cares about you, you must create helpful, inspiring, and relatable content that encourages long-term relationships and addresses your audience’s problems.
But where to start?
What content do you create that helps you meet (or exceed) your goals?
When launching an effective content strategy, I use this stoplight analogy. It’s a solid foundation and simple to remember.
- What is a Content Strategy?
- My Content Strategy Stoplight Analogy
- Content Marketing Efforts Depend on a Strong Strategy
What is a Content Strategy?
A content strategy is a plan to help you create high-quality content. This plan includes:
- Content ideas and topics
- Content formats (social media posts, blog post, email marketing, video content, etc.)
- Content calendar (schedule showing when and where content will be published)
A successful content marketing strategy also considers existing content. You should conduct a content audit to assess what’s working well and where the gaps exist for you to consider in your content mix.
Content optimization isn’t often the “sexist” part of your content strategy. Still, it’s vital to include it in your editorial calendar as you build a plan showing when content formats like blogs need to be revisited and updated.
My Content Strategy Stoplight Analogy
Putting together a successful content strategy can be daunting, especially if you don’t do it often or feel you have the expertise to do it properly. But I have a simple way looking at it.
You can think of your content strategy framework as a stoplight.
The red, yellow, and green colors all have associated actions.
At a red light you’re at a stop.
This is often the first step in creating a sound content strategy. Stop to clarify business goals and objectives. Before you do anything else, you must have a strong handle on what the business is trying to achieve through its content marketing efforts.
Then, you have the yellow light signaling to be slow or cautious.
This also makes me think, “Take your time.” When creating a content strategy, you want to give yourself the time to dig into what the target audience craves regarding the content they’re hungry to consume.
Finally, of course, there’s the green light.
If you’re an SEO, green is also associated with a good content score. If your score is in the green, your article ranks well or even better than similar articles.
When you’re at the “green” stage, this is the time to take what you know about the business goals and your audience and inject SEO keyword research findings to create content that both your audience and Google notices.
So, let’s dive in further.
Business Goals (The Red Light)
Before getting overly eager to create and publish, what the heck do you need to see happen?
This is important for all key stakeholders – researchers, writers, CRO experts, social media managers, marketing consultants, paid consultants, etc.
When I’ve asked clients about their goals, they’ve responded with…
“I need to increase organic traffic to my site.”
“I need to drive more traffic to purchase my product.”
Other goals could include:
- Generating qualified leads
- Increasing customer engagement (clicks/comments)
- Building or nurturing an existing audience base
Of course, you probably have multiple goals, but the key is to prioritize which ones are most important for the quarter, your six-month plan, etc., that you’re focused on with your content strategy.
I recommend starting with your top two goals.
This eliminates feeling overwhelmed by “all the things” you think you must accomplish now. It also allows you to stay more accountable for tracking results by looking at Google Analytics, social media analytics, and other data tools to gauge what’s working and what’s not with your content.
Audience Content Cravings (The Yellow Light)
This is the information-gathering phase that’s important to put intentional time towards.
You want to explore the target audience and their pain points, really getting into the content they crave.
And I think of content cravings as the juicy stuff that, deep down, your audience wants to know beneath all the surface-level content that doesn’t speak nearly enough to the experiential day-to-day goodies.
First, it’s identifying who these people are! Can you visualize this person?
During my corporate days working with agencies, every deck had at least one slide about the persona. This would give you a picture of who we were trying to target with our messaging before we ever jumped into how the strategy broke down into actionable tactics.
A customer profile or buyer personas would usually contain the standard information:
- Gender and age
- Household income
- Status (single, married, with kids, etc.)
- Location (where they lived – city, suburb, rural)
- Interests (a picture of what they did with their free time)
A stock photo would show who Jane (the busy mom, married, with two kids living in the suburb and struggling to have the time to cook healthy meals for her family on the go) looked like. This was to get you invested in the story you needed to buy into (because your audience would also need to do the same).
So, to unlock these content cravings, you need to acknowledge the buyer persona you’re targeting.
But once you’ve done that, you can dive further into the pain points—what your target audience is asking over and over and needing to solve. Surveys, CR transcripts, online forums, and making it a point to ask your audience open-ended questions are great places to start.
Solid SEO (The Green Light)
This is one of the last steps in outlining your content strategy before you can identify content tactics and create content.
Once you have clarity on the top two goals, how you will measure them, and what challenges or problems your target is grappling with, it’s time to inject some SEO keyword research.
This is the added fuel to give your content some traction once it’s created and published.
I think of it as sprinkling in what Google tells you people are searching to make your valuable content even more “findable.”
Especially if you plan on adding blog articles to your website, allocating specific keyword phrases to website pages, or maybe doing paid advertisements of any kind – you’ll want to know the keyword phrases you can capitalize on from a high volume and search intent perspective.
Don’t make the mistake of creating content based on what will rank well, having little to do with what your potential customers care about. That will never be a content strategy that will benefit you long-term with your audience.
Content Marketing Efforts Depend on a Strong Strategy
You can’t skip the strategy part of your content creation process.
Or if you do, you’ll have spent a lot of time creating one-off stuff without a clear vision. And not having a vision only leaves you spiraling and, unfortunately, losing valuable time that could help you achieve your goals faster.
So, in summary, it’s very possible to kick off your content strategy with a smart framework. Remember my stoplight analogy?
#1 – Stop to understand your business goals. Then, pick only two goals to focus on initially.
#2—Take enough time to understand your audience and use market research to determine the type of content they crave. Hone in on the content that answers their most probing questions and helps them feel more settled after reading.
#3 – Before you take off on a full “go” to create and publish content, incorporate solid SEO into your strategy with the right keywords and best practices you know you can win on.
If you start here, you’ll be on your way to launching intentional content strategies, which will help you create content that benefits both your audience and your business long-term.
