How to Develop a Content Strategy
If you haven’t read my previous post about content strategy go and do that first. There you can learn what it is, here you can learn how to do it yourself.
You need to ask yourself what is the purpose of creating a content for your business. Just to have more content out there, to have content for your website, to have content for your book…?
No! You need to develop a goal for that content. Is it for people to engage with it? Is it for them purchase something? Do they need to contact you? What do you want them to do after they see the content?
Besides the goal and format of your content, it’s important to think about the objective behind your content. Your objective will answer the question: Why are you making the content in the first place? Examples of objectives are to entertain, to educate, to inspire – a reason why people would engage and like your content.
For example, in my branding company we write educational articles because a lot of entrepreneurs find them useful. Our objective is to educate, and because we have tailored our content to be educational, our target market keeps coming back to our articles to learn more.
We even made this free mini-workbook to show you how to define the core personality traits of your business and express them to your audience. You can get your copy of the workbook here:
Start with Your Value Proposition
After this you can start with establishing content ideas. The easiest way to do this is to develop your value proposition, and then use that value proposition to influence new content ideas. Your value proposition, or brand promise, is something specific that you promise to deliver to your customers.
It’s not just saying “Hey, you will have an amazing website when I create it,” but it’s more like saying “Hey, your website will have more qualified leads and a higher conversation rate when I create it.” You need to focus on your client’s problems and how you can solve those problems by promising you can do it and explaining how.
So, what can you promise that people will get when they invest in your product or service? Try to be very specific here and speak to their tangible desires, because you need to include that one thing that they want to hear!
To develop your unique value proposition, summarize the following in one or two sentences:
- What your company is
- How your business can solve your target’s problems or improve their current situation
- Your specific value that you offer
- Why your ideal clients should buy from you (and not from your competitors).
Once you have completed your value proposition, you will use it on your landing page on your website, in your blogs, on your brochures etc.
The next step is to expand your content based on these ideas. You can’t just use the same sentence or two over and over again. By using that list of your unique value proposition that you just created, you can create a variety of brand stories.
Brand stories are stories about your company, similar to taglines, that you can use and repeat depending on the platform you use the copy for. For example, a coffee company can use “daily brewed,” “fresh beans,” and “distinct flavors.” Those can be three main brand stories, and they can expand into three more brand stories that branch from each one.
So, “daily brewed” can become “Every morning at 6am we freshly brew our coffee for customers who need a coffee to go,” then the next one can become “Are you ready for our daily brewed cold brew?”, and one more “Every day we brew our coffee to keep the consistency…” – you get it.
Once you do that with all your brand stories you will have at least nine new sentences that you can expand into paragraphs, blog posts, website copy, flyers etc.
If you’re curious about what brand stories would be right for your business, take our quick brand personality quiz here! Your results will include ideas on what types of content will resonate the most with your audience:
Using Keywords and Measuring Your Results
To make sure your content matches what your target is searching for, you can create a keyword list based on your buyer persona’s common search terms. Think about what they look for before finding you.
My target, for example, is searching for a logo design because most of them don’t know that they need brand strategy before developing a logo. So even though I focus on brand strategy, I write some content about logos in order for them to find me. What are your customers looking for? What do they think they need?
Content strategy, when done correctly, can be a powerful force that drives people to your business. If you don’t do it right the first time, don’t worry – it’s easy to create new content as you go along, and with every piece of content you create you will learn more about what does (and doesn’t) work for your company.
Even if your business shifts into another direction, changes, scales, or you completely change your target – you can keep creating relevant content based on your new direction and customer base. Update your content as often as you feel like you need to. Some parts of your content strategy, like your key words, will likely stay consistent — but the rest doesn’t have to.
The final and crucial piece of your content strategy is to measure your results. You might create videos because you think your audience likes them, but then when you look at the website statistics you discover that your audience actually prefers blog posts. There are different online tools to help you analyze your user feedback – how many reviews, views, comments, and engagement you have.
You will be able to see what your audience liked as well as what they didn’t like. Use these metrics as a guide as you continue to create content — you can focus on the content topics and formats they prefer, and continue to make sure giving them what they want.
If you’re looking for an expert to help develop an effective content strategy for your business, email us here to schedule a consultation. Aventive Studio helps health & wellness businesses create powerful brands that attract their target customers — let’s work together.