A good content strategy serves as a guide and a plan for producing, publishing, and promoting content that helps you meet specific business goals.
If you are looking to improve your marketing effectiveness by implementing a content strategy for digital marketing, it’s helpful to understand some content strategy best practices as well as the essential elements of a content strategy.
We recently published an article about why you need content strategy, exactly what content strategy is, and what information you need before you get started. In case you missed it, you can read it here.
Let me start by pointing out that what goes into a content strategy can vary quite a bit, depending on the scope of your content marketing and the size of your team. That’s why you’ll find content strategy templates out there ranging from simple checklists to massive spreadsheets. A content strategy plan can be simple or very detailed and complex.
If you’re just starting to create a digital content strategy on a smaller scale, keeping it simple is the way to go. At a minimum, it must include the elements of a content strategy detailed below.
THE BASICS: 5 elements of a content strategy
1. Topics and messaging
What topics and messages will you address with content?
As we stressed in our previous post about content strategy, you need buyer persona and keyword research to inform your content topic selection. This intelligence will help you select topics that align with the needs and interests of your buyer. You’ll want to talk about subjects that shed light on your differentiators.
However, this is critically important: your content must NOT be too product-and-service focused or sound like a sales pitch.
Instead, your content should focus on your buyer’s pain points throughout their buyer’s journey, answer their questions, and position your company as a helpful and trusted resource.
2. Content types
What forms will your content take?
There are a multitude of formats for creating digital marketing content: blogs, videos, ebooks, podcasts, email newsletters, social posts, webinars….the list seems to grow every day.
Don’t try to do everything right out of the gate! Focus on a few (or even just one to start with) that meet the following criteria:
- The types of content your buyers prefer
- The best format to convey your content and messages
- What the content must achieve (i.e attract website visitors, convert leads, shorten sales cycle)
- What you have the resources and budget to produce
3. Distribution and promotion channels
Where will you publish content and how will you promote it?
You probably already know that the old adage “if you build it, they will come” is definitely not true when it comes to digital marketing!
Once you have compelling content for your target audience, you need to get found and get noticed by being where your buyers are online. Your choice of publishing and promotion channels is critical to get the right content in front of the right people. (Your buyer persona research tells you all about your prospects’ content consumption habits and preferences.)
For example, you might choose to publish a regular blog on your website, using SEO to help buyers find your content. You might use blog posts to create short videos published on YouTube. Then you might promote your blog posts and videos by sharing on LinkedIn and Twitter. You could also share blog posts and other content with prospects and/or customers via an email newsletter.
4. Publication frequency and schedule
When and how often should you publish content?
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to how much and how often to publish content. What’s best for you depends on:
- Your goals and timeframe for achieving them
- Your target audience and their content consumption patterns
- Your resources and budget
The simple truth (although it’s not so simple to implement) is that you may need testing to determine your optimal content publication frequency.
When it comes to publication schedule, it’s also important to align your content calendar with business initiatives (such as events and new product launches) and seasonality, if appropriate.
5. Metrics
How will you measure progress toward your goals?
Metrics and reporting serve two important purposes:
- Letting you know how well your content marketing strategy is working to achieve your goals (and, ideally, the ROI you’re getting for your marketing spend)
- Giving you insights to help refine and improve your content strategy based on what’s working well and what’s not
Your content strategy should include what metrics will be tracked for each type of content.
At least monthly, you’ll want to review your metrics and possibly make changes based on the insights you glean from reporting. However, remember that content marketing is a long-term strategy… it can take some time to achieve your goals. So don’t jump too quickly before you have a chance to see if your content strategy is working.
Being impatient is probably the second-biggest mistake in content marketing (behind not having a strategy at all):
“So many marketers only care about here-and-now results rather than the long-term game … Sugar-rush results are tempting and temporary. Long-term results yield a greater return and snowball into lasting customer relationships.” (Source: CMI)
When your marketing is driven by these content strategy elements, your results will grow consistently over time. Your valuable content becomes an asset that’s working for you 24/7 to bring in business for years to come.
Do you have the expertise to develop an effective content strategy?
Organizations just getting started with digital marketing often need some help with developing the right content strategy. Even if you understand the content strategy elements and have a talented marketing team in place to execute your strategy, your team may not have the specific knowledge and experience needed for intelligence-gathering and content strategy development.
In that case, knowledgeable consultants or a content marketing strategy agency can help get you on the path to successfully achieving your goals with content marketing.
Questions? We’re always happy to talk through your situation and recommend smart solutions.