Hey friends, whether you’re just beginning with content marketing or have some experience using an approach, it’s always a good idea to revisit your content strategy framework and check if it’s innovative, updated, and engaging for your customers and clients.
Think of a content strategy as the GPS for your company’s success. Without a well-defined content framework, you’ll create outdated content, leaving your audience wondering if you live in the 90s.
Read on if you’re looking for fresh ideas to include in your plan and are confused. In this blog, we’ll dive into content strategy insights, why your business needs it, and the steps you’ll need to take to create a solid strategy. So, stay tuned and join us in this inspiring journey full of knowledge and insights.
What Is A Content Strategy?
A content strategy is the art of curating and delivering compelling messages with the use of content (audio, video, and/or written) that resonates with your target audience and helps you build connections by leaving a great impression. A successful content strategy does not just end with sales; it keeps the audience engaged even after the purchase.
For example, let’s say that your business goals include increasing brand reach. To achieve this goal, you might implement a content strategy focusing on website content, SEO and social media to increase your website reach and visibility and drive traffic. A content strategy framework is necessary from the early stages of business to build trust with the audience and boost growth.
Content is king, and no marketing strategy can flourish without content so. Therefore, content is always at the heart of digital marketing. Therefore, developing a great content strategy is important to compete in the industry, as 70% of marketers actively invest in it. And not just this, 93% of the most successful B2B marketers use content marketing. Also, a total of 67% of B2B and 64% of B2C marketers consider it important.
Before developing a content strategy framework, consider and answer these questions.
Why Are You Creating Content?
Before creating a content strategy framework, you must define clear objectives and decide why you want to create content. And how content can help you achieve your goals. Without a clear goal, you cannot create a content strategy framework. Your goal can be anything from getting more organic traffic to your website to simply engaging your audience and building social media presence.
You can also implement the SMART framework to define your goals more specifically. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. You can use Bit.ai’s SMART goals template to define your goals quickly and hassle-free.
Who Are Your Target Audiences?
As your business may have target audiences of different types, you’ll have to create different content strategies for each type of customer, as a content strategy for a target audience may not work for the other. So before creating content ask these questions to yourself and get the demographics:
- Who’s the target audience for my content?
- For how many types of audiences should I create content?
Use a mix of content channels and types to deliver content that’s tailored to each persona.
For example, if your target audience includes millennials and Gen Z, you can use e-mail and social media to deliver your content.
What is The Suitable Content Format?
The better you understand your target audience, the better content format you can choose. Meet your target audience where they are most active. And for this, you’ll have to understand the demographics and data.
Analyze the data and see on what platform your target audience is most active and then prepare a content strategy framework to deliver your content in that format only. You can deliver your content in the form of a podcast or video.
Skipping this step may lead to a waste of time creating content that won’t capture the attention of your target audience.
Which Channels Work For You?
Just like you create content in different formats, you’ll also have to choose various channels to publish that content. This can be your website, social media or audio podcast channel.
This will also be decided with the help of demographic about your target audience, what type of content they prefer, the text form, long-form or short video content. After understanding this, you can choose the channel accordingly from the website to Instagram or YouTube.
Steps To Create A Content Strategy Framework
To create a winning content strategy framework, you must focus on the details and follow many steps. And this can sometimes prove to be a hectic process. But don’t worry; we’ve simplified the process for you in 7 easy steps. Follow these steps clearly, and you’ll craft your business’s best content strategy framework.
1. Define Goals
Know your goals before you begin to plan your content strategy framework. There must be a reason why you’ve decided to begin this content journey. That reason can be your goal and help you determine the best steps to create a strategy. Know those goals and stick to them till you achieve them.
2. Target Audience
The first step to creating a content strategy framework is to define and understand your target audience. It is best if you create customer avatars or customer personas for each segment of the audience segments that you want to target. Each persona will include their demographics, interests, and pain-points, etc.
A better understanding of your audience can make your content more targeted. And will help in achieving the goals set for the campaign.
3. Determine Content Types
In this step, you have to define your brand voice and tone by deciding what type of content you exactly want to create.
The idea behind keeping your brand voice and tone consistent over all the platforms is getting your audience familiar with your content. Each brand has a distinct voice and approach, just like a brand’s personality.
Content types may include blogs, social media posts, audio podcasts, videos and anything else you want to include in the content strategy framework.
For example, Nike’s sporting goods brand has a very simple, effective, distinct voice. All of their messaging is focused on being confident and assertive. They encourage their audience to go for their goals and never give up.
And it’s unnecessary to create fresh content every time, especially for social media, where you’ll have to post content frequently. In such cases, you can use content curation tools like Elink.io to curate and share content in a visually engaging form. You can even manually search for and share content. This will ensure that you are consistent and post something regularly without spending too much time creating content.
4. Content Audit
The next step is to audit your content to understand which type of content performs best and which has the lowest performance metrics. Initially, most of brands start with blog posts. So, if you want to explore different content formats, you can run a content audit. You can also review your previous content marketing efforts and results and plan your future strategy accordingly.
A content audit will help you find the gaps in your current content and brainstorm fresh content ideas.
5. Pick Distribution Channels
Once you have decided on the content, you should focus on the distribution channels and frequency of posting content. You can choose a mix of distribution channels instead of just focusing on one or two.
If you have a website and blog, then you must focus on that for creating a content strategy framework. Otherwise, you can always guest post on relevant sites in your domain or industry.
B2B firms must include LinkedIn as their key distribution channel because it’s a platform for professionals. Remember not to post over; you can irritate your audience by doing this. Choose the right numbers and quality content, and you’ll succeed.
6. Publish and Manage Your Content
According to the distribution channels you select, you’ll need a content calendar to plan what content needs to be published and what day or time.
There are a variety of content scheduling and sharing platforms. Buffer is one where you can upload the content in bulk and automatically go live according to the date and time set.
Whichever tool you select, ensure you have complete visibility and access over all tasks and content schedules. Also, ensure that you can easily communicate with your teams and keep track of the status of content published or to be published.
7. Track and Measure Performance
The process of creating a content strategy framework is incomplete without tracking and measurement of performance. Just like an examination is incomplete without the result, a campaign is also incomplete without the performance report. This is the only way by which can track the achievement or defeat of your content initiatives.
All the content goals should have KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure whether the goal is met or not. So, create your content strategy framework, execute it, measure its performance, and improve your future strategy accordingly.
You should use analytics tools to get insights and analyse the performance of your content. For the website content, you can use Google Analytics and Google search console to get insights about the page ranking and traffic. Social media platforms also have in-built analytics features to determine how well the audience interacted with your content.
Now that you’ve got a complete roadmap to create a content strategy framework don’t wait for your competitors to drive away your audience with their content. Apply these steps and strategies and leave behind your competitors in this content game. But before leaving, read the next section, where we’ve mentioned the key takeaways from the article and some useful tips.
Key Takeaways
Well, congrats! You are ready to run successful content marketing campaigns, as you have a solid content strategy framework in place.
Use this post as an ultimate guide for designing a content strategy framework for running different content marketing campaigns and making them successful.
And to learn more about marketing strategy, read our content in the form of blog posts and follow us on social media, where we implement these strategies and post some really useful content. Follow us on Twitter @bit_docs and get regular updates about various marketing strategies and trends to stay ahead in the marketing game.
Further Reads:
Top 11 Content Marketing Trends in 2023!
Gated Content: Meaning, Examples & Best Practices!
Dynamic Content: What is it & What are the Ways to Use it?
User Generated Content: Meaning, Types, and Tips!
How ChatGPT Can Help You Create Content? A Quick Overview!
