An effective brand content strategy is an essential component of broadcasting to the online world who you are, what you do, and why customers should trust you. Not only will your content strategy help you to connect with the right people and generate valuable leads, but it will also help you to demonstrate the expertise you are bringing to your industry.
Define your Objective
If you don’t know what you want your content strategy to help you to achieve, you are going to struggle to produce the right kinds of content at the right times. Understanding your marketing goals from the very beginning will ensure that the process of determining the right direction for your strategy will be simpler and more efficient.
Really Research your Audience
In addition to understanding your core goals and objectives, you also need to know who your audience is. Creating customer personas will help you to produce content that is more relevant and valuable to the people you most want to appeal to, which means that they are going to be more likely to want to engage with it and be successfully converted.
Thoroughly mapping your customer journey, including their thoughts, expectations and emotions at every touchpoint will guide your content creation process and help you to consistently deliver relevant, valuable and engaging material for your audience.
Audit your Existing Content
If you have already created and shared some content, understanding how well it performed will help you to determine which avenues are likely to be particularly successful for your business. Whether you want to improve the results you have been achieving or want to push your approach to content in an entirely new direction, the information you collect during this step will inform a variety of key future decision-making processes.
Determine the Types of Content you want to Publish
With so many options available to you, it is important to focus on creating the types of content that will deliver the best results for your business. Blog posts are an excellent way to deliver comprehensive information to your audience in a shareable and uniquely engaging format. Conversely, eBooks can be used as a powerful lead-generation tool and offered as a free download in return for contact information.
With everything from podcasts to video to consider, focusing on what will best meet the needs and wants of your audience is essential to securing the best return on investment (ROI).
Identify your Purpose
It can be all too easy to fall into the trap of making content for the sake of making it, however a solid strategy must always focus on addressing a need. After determining what your audience needs, you must be able to answer how your content will meet those needs in ways that your existing marketing efforts aren’t.
Communicate your Brand Values
Your content should always be immediately identifiable as belonging to your business [3]. By ensuring that your content communicates your brand values in a clear voice that will engage your ideal audience, you will find it easier to forge meaningful connections with your potential customers.
Demonstrate your Expertise
In a bustling digital landscape, setting yourself apart from the rest is essential and your content is a prime opportunity to do this effectively. Audiences are bombarded with a sea of content on a daily basis, so make sure that what your sharing is compelling, interesting, and demonstrates your expertise.
Amplify your Content on Social Media
Sharing your content to social media in the right way, using the right techniques, will boost your reach and help you to deliver your content directly to your ideal audience in the places they like to spend their time online.
The key here is to only post the types of content your audience will expect to see on each social network. Although on Facebook you will find yourself free to share a variety of content including video and promotional content, on Instagram your audience will want to see imagery that feels more personal to the ethos and personality of your brand.
Properly Manage your Content Calendar
In addition to covering the types of content you will be producing, your strategy should also detail how you plan to organise it. Creating a considered editorial calendar will help you to share a diverse range of content to each of your preferred channels.
Use Data to Evolve and Adapt
Crucially, your content strategy should always have a level of flexibility that will allow you to respond to your collected performance data. As you continue to create and share content, you will begin to see what is working well and whether there are any elements that would benefit from some additional refinement.
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