Creating your content strategically
Are you creating your content strategically?
Last week we talked about three ways great content can help you grow your business. However, the trick is you need to have a strategy behind creating that great content!
Your content strategy is different to your content plan. Your content plan is more along the lines of what content you’re going to deliver and when.
In a nutshell, your content strategy focuses on the goals you’re trying to achieve through delivering great content.
Ideally, you build your content strategy in place before starting on your content plan.
Now your strategy can be quite complex, but, if you’re familiar with us here at Starfish Marketing, complex is not our thing. We like to keep things simple for you.
So, how do you build your content strategy?
Building a basic content strategy
Well, It’s all about the W’s. Five of them, Why, What, Who, Where, hoW!
Ask yourself the following questions and document your answers as you work through.
Why
Start with Why. Why do you need content marketing for your business and as part of your marketing strategy? Does content marketing align to your overarching business strategy?
What
Follow with a What.
What do you want to achieve with your content marketing? In other words, what are your goals?
Who
Then, channel your inner owl and think about Who.
Who is your market? Who are you trying to attract to your business with your great content? Or who are your existing clients/customers?
Where
Where will your reach your Who?
Think about the channels or platforms where your market hangs out. Where will you speak to them with your content?
Are they online? (If they're not online it's going to be pretty hard to reach them with a content strategy). Which social media platform are they using? Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, etc.
How
Yes, it starts with an H, but there’s a W in there.
How much do you have in your budget to spend on developing and sharing your great content?
And how will you measure your success? Hint – map this back to your goals.
What’s next?
Your answers to the W questions make up your basic content strategy. Document them.
Here's a free basic content strategy template to help.
Once you've built your basic content strategy you can start on your content plan (the what and when). You may notice we've included a simple plan in the basic content strategy template.
Building your content plan is something we will go into next week. A sneak peak though – the key when you’re building your content plan is to head back to your strategy and make sure your plan is going to help achieve your goals.
If you need help building your content strategy feel free to book a catch up to see if we can help you.
It's a no-obligation chat about what you are finding difficult and we'll see if we can provide a solution that suits you.
