Content is king, but not all content is created equal. If you want to stand out from your competitors and attract more customers, you need to create better content that meets the needs and expectations of your target audience. But how can you do that? In this article, we will show you how to use content strategy to beat your competition with better content. You will learn how to:
In order to create content that stands out from the competition, the first step is to conduct an audit and analysis of their websites, blogs, social media, and other channels. You can use tools such as SEMrush, BuzzSumo, or Ahrefs to do this. When looking at your competitors' content, you should consider what topics and keywords they are covering, what formats and styles they are using, how frequently they are publishing, how engaging and authoritative their content is, and what gaps and opportunities there are in their content. By analyzing your competitors' content in this way, you can identify their strengths and weaknesses and find ways to differentiate yourself and create value for your audience.
Don't just shoot your competitors' content gaps. Sometimes they stay away from certain content topics for a reason. Consider that first.
The next step is to define your content goals and metrics to ensure that your content strategy aligns with your business objectives and optimizes results. To do this, you need a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your content and how you will measure success. Common content goals include increasing brand awareness and visibility, generating leads and conversions, building trust and loyalty, educating and informing, and entertaining and inspiring. Depending on these goals, you should select the right metrics to track progress and performance. Common metrics include traffic and impressions, engagement and shares, leads and conversions, retention and loyalty, and satisfaction and feedback. By defining these goals and metrics, you can optimize your content for the best results.
The third step in your content marketing strategy is to create a content plan and calendar. You'll need to consider your audience personas, the topics and keywords you want to target, the formats and styles you'll use, the channels and platforms you want to use, and the frequency and schedule of your content. Tools like Trello, Asana, or CoSchedule can help you organize your content ideas, tasks, deadlines, and resources. Additionally, Google Trends, AnswerThePublic, or Quora can help you discover relevant and trending topics for your content. Creating a content plan and calendar will not only streamline your content creation process but also ensure consistency and quality across all of your content.
Creating channel specific content- soundbites, visual bites, articles, newsletters will help drive engagement and audience growth. Keep content succint ..(but impactful !) and easy to consume. Versatility in content helps being on the radar with your audience, driving brand messaging across.
The fourth step is to produce and distribute your content, which should be valuable, unique, optimized, and engaging for your audience. You can use tools like Grammarly, Hemingway, Yoast, Canva, Unsplash, or Lumen5 to create content that is both appealing and optimized for your goals. Additionally, tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, or Mailchimp can help you automate and schedule your content distribution across various channels and platforms. By producing and distributing your content strategically, you can deliver value to your audience and achieve your goals.
Don't be afraid to repeat the same topics as competitors if you think you can do it better. Our collective understanding of many subjects is always evolving. And sometimes your competitors just screw up or half-ass things. It is very much possible to do things better than them, even when you're competitors are rich & powerful.
The final step is to monitor and evaluate your content. You need to measure how your content is performing against your goals and metrics, and how your audience is responding to it. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or HubSpot to collect and analyze data on your content performance and impact. You can also use tools like SurveyMonkey, Hotjar, or UserTesting to gather feedback and insights from your audience.
By monitoring and evaluating your content, you can identify what is working and what is not, and make adjustments and improvements to your content strategy.
By following these steps, you can beat your competition with better content that attracts, engages, and converts your audience. Content strategy is not a one-time project, but a continuous process that requires research, planning, execution, and optimization. If you want to learn more about content strategy and how to create better content, check out our online course on Content Strategy Essentials.
Data-driven decisions are what drives a content strategy forward. What worked? What didn’t work? What did users engage with? You can develop an incredibly thorough content strategy, but if your proposed touchpoints were selected arbitrarily, there’s no point in putting them out there. Tools like Google Analytics (and even the analytics included with the respective social platforms) can give you that information and more.
When a competitor owns the Google snippet on something, it's tempting to create content just to knock them out of that place. But be sure to address a customer need at the same time, otherwise even if you win the snippet, you won't stay there for long.