Content is a strategy: what is it for and how to create it
What is a content strategy and how is it different from a content plan? What is the benefit of content promotion? Why is content strategy analysis important? How is the development of a long-term or short-term content strategy?
A content strategy is the starting point for working on a blog on a company website and social media accounts. Without a common concept, it will not be easy to stir up the interest of the audience and find informational reasons for publications. Releasing articles or posts at random, relying on inspiration or only on competitors, is the way to drain the budget without the expected profit.
Content strategy and content plan: what is the difference
| Content plan | Content strategy |
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The content promotion plan consists of:
A content plan is enough if you are promoting an online store where you need to fill out only product cards, or a site with a small number of pages (up to 10). |
A content marketing strategy consists of:
A content strategy is a must have if you need comprehensive brand promotion in social networks and other channels. This is a long-term planning of working with different formats of texts, photos and videos. |
A short or long term content strategy helps:
- determine which topics are best for the audience;
- increase the loyalty of subscribers in social networks and users who visit the company’s website to get acquainted with the brand’s products;
- identify the weaknesses of competitors;
- find informational reasons that motivate the audience to make a purchase decision or seek advice;
- understand which content formats are suitable for different promotion channels of the company;
- evaluate the profit that the brand receives from publications;
- work on promotion faster, rather than waiting for inspiration to write another post or expert article.
An example of what a finished content strategy looks like:
Content marketing strategy: content types and formats
Audiences like different content formats. It is important to constantly warm up and hold attention, so we recommend including in the strategy:
- Texts are classics. These can be expert and entertaining articles, case studies. Texts are suitable for all segments of the target audience. It is important to structure and dilute the text with lists and visual elements: photographs, graphs, tables, pictures, infographics, and so on. This helps to improve the perception of the material.
- Videos can be product reviews, instructions, case studies. The format is popular because it is easier for people to spend 5 minutes watching a video than 10 minutes reading a text instruction. Video helps natively advertise a product or service, work out consumer objections, and clearly show the benefits. You can add an emotional component to the plot to increase audience loyalty, as the IKEA brand did on social networks:
- Photo content, infographics. Illustrations complement textual materials, and also make it easier to explain complex product options, as the Samsung brand did in the infographic for the robot vacuum cleaner:
- Podcasts are another popular content format. We recommend that you include it in your long-term content strategy by planning several hot topics at once that will be of interest to the audience.
Related article: Company business blog: how to write a good article
In order to understand which format is best for consumers, it is necessary to analyze the needs and interests of the target audience of the brand. It is also useful to “spy” on competitors which options cause more reactions. This will help develop a content strategy that pays off.
Ways to promote content: what channels to include in your content strategy
To attract consumers, you need to choose priority traffic generation channels. There are several options.
- Corporate blog. This is a classic for promoting expert articles. Publish useful materials: reviews of new products, comparisons of two products, instructions, case studies, company news, and so on. Use relevant search queries in the text to improve the ranking of a page with material in Yandex or Google.
- Social networks. Which option to choose depends on the specifics of the business niche. If a hardware store is being promoted, then it is better to create accounts on Facebook, YouTube, and if a cosmetic brand, then connect Instagram. A separate content strategy is created for the corporate blog and social networks, which includes newsbreaks and publication plans. Accounts can also announce the release of new blog articles to increase reach.
- Email distribution. Another way to increase the reach of blog posts. It is important to interest subscribers in the topic, and in the body of the letter give a brief description of what the article will be about.
- Thematic blogs, forums and media. These are sites that are popular with the audience. These include resources such as Meduza, Habr, vc.com, and so on. It is important to select thematic sites as donor sites.
Related article: 30 email header templates to get your email opened
Developing a content strategy: 4 steps
Defining goals
The goals of a content strategy can be long-term and short-term: doubling targeted traffic to the site, increasing the number of subscribers to 2,000 within a month, improving the company’s image with the help of publications, and so on.
Goals depend on the current state of affairs of the company: whether the brand has a name or is at the very start, what is the reputation of the company, what channels are used for promotion, and other indicators. Therefore, you first need to analyze the project as a whole, and then determine what to pay attention to and what indicators to increase in the first place.
Analysis of target audience and competitors
First of all, focus on three main factors:
- Who is the consumer of the brand. It is important to break the target audience into segments to make it easier to determine the needs of each group and generate content for it.
- What is the competitor’s content strategy. It is important how often new publications are released, which newsbreaks evoke a greater response, and which formats have good coverage. We recommend that you enter the data in a table to make it easier to analyze the results.
- What content has already been published. Look at which sections on the company’s resource are filled with relevant information, and where the text needs to be rewritten. It is important to reflect the USP of the business and the benefits of the brand’s products. On social media, rate which topics and content formats resonate the most with your audience.
There are two main target audience segments: the main one, which initiates the transaction, and the indirect one, the consumers who place an order. Let’s say a toy store is moving forward. Indirect buyers are parents, and the main audience is children who choose a product.
To analyze the audience, you can use the results of Yandex.Metrica, as in the example:
The graph shows data on the age of buyers, gender and long-term interests. Metrics can be used to prioritize content formats and post topics.
Related material: SEO and content marketing: 7 steps for developing a content strategy – how to get customers from search engines
The results obtained are used as a starting point for a strategy for promoting content in social networks and search engines.
Creating the core of the strategy
At this stage, the content plan itself is drawn up: topics, content format (text, video, podcasts), types of publications (reviews, expert materials, instructions) and the frequency of their release are determined. Platforms are also selected for posting articles and other materials. These are a corporate blog, company accounts in social networks and thematic donor sites.
KPI Definition
Developing a content strategy is a long-term investment. The first profit may appear within six months, or even later, depending on the number of competitors in the niche, the specifics of the business and the budget allocated to the project. But it is recommended to track indicators already in the first month in order to understand how things are going.
The data is taken from analytics services. In Yandex.Metrica, open the “Content” section. It indicates the number of views of the publication, likes and reposts. In Google Analytics, the results can be viewed in the “Site Content” section.
Marketers use the following metrics to analyze content strategy:
- traffic. The blog traffic indicators and the rating of popular materials are analyzed, from what sources visitors come to the site;
- engagement. The bounce rate is taken into account, as well as transitions to other pages of the site. The metric helps to understand whether the published content is relevant and interesting to the audience;
- perception. How positively users feel about the material will show the number of likes and reposts;
- conversion. It’s important to set up a metric in analytics services so that you can monitor and evaluate regularly. As a target action, you can set registration on the site, subscribe to the newsletter, and so on.
The main mistakes in content marketing strategy
- There is no balance between advertising and other types of content. Of course, the main goal of brands is sales. But the audience is tired of head-on advertising, so if users see only such content on a blog or social networks, the company will quickly lose subscribers. Consumers need to be motivated to make a purchase, so it is important to work on increasing loyalty.
- The interests of the audience are not analyzed. Companies need to publish materials that are useful to consumers. No need to wait for inspiration or try to “hit the sky with your finger”. Conduct a survey of the audience, what would be interesting for consumers to read, see what topics are raised by forum users or subscribers of thematic groups in social networks, analyze high-frequency queries in Yandex Wordstat. This will help to find informational reasons that will resonate with the target audience.
- Results are not evaluated. This will cause a drain on the budget and a waste of working time. A marketer will not know where the company is going, whether it is worth changing something in the strategy.
You can advertise a product natively even in expert articles by including a link to the product in the text. Definitely worth talking about promotions and sales. This can be done in social networks – in posts and stories, as well as in the “News” section on the site.
Related material: Content plan for engagement and sales
The content strategy should be flexible and change depending on the behavior of the audience. For example, the 2020 pandemic changed the needs of users, and those brands that were able to tailor the work to the needs of the buyers hit the jackpot. During the period of self-isolation, companies released more podcasts, came up with new formats for using products under quarantine conditions, and conducted more streams to communicate with the target audience. Therefore, it is important to respond to changes in the interests of the audience quickly so that competitors do not take advantage of this.
The content strategy from the Exiterra agency will help make your brand recognizable and attract a new audience with any changes in the world. To find out more, contact our specialist and ask questions about the “Content Marketing” service.
