Creating a long-term content strategy can help you achieve your goals, reach your audience, and grow your brand. But how do you plan, execute, and measure your content effectively over time? Here are some best practices to follow.
Before you start producing content, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. What are your business goals, your target audience, and your value proposition? How do you align your content with your marketing and sales funnel? How do you measure your success? Setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) objectives will help you focus your content strategy and track your progress.
Your content aids your business goals. The type of content you create will impact your sales and ultimately you income. Hence why you must really sit into you business goals to create your content strategy - be clear on what you're selling, be clear on who you're selling to so you don't create a mismatched offer and ultimately, be clear on how many products you need to sell to hit your income target. The last point helps you identify when you need to run ads, work with an influencer etc. Ultimately, your long term content strategy should reflect how your content would aid your business at different points and you need to be clear about the vision for your business to create one.
First and foremost, you need to understand your audience. What do they want? If not, you could be serving radishes to cats. They might be great radishes, but cats won't eat them.
Setting clear and measurable goals is crucial for guiding your content strategy. It’s essential to identify what you aim to achieve with your content, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, or boosting sales. By defining your goals upfront, you can align your content efforts with your overarching business objectives and measure success more effectively.
A content audit is a systematic analysis of your existing content, its performance, and its gaps. It helps you identify what works, what doesn't, and what needs improvement. You can use tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, or Screaming Frog to collect and organize data on your content metrics, such as traffic, engagement, conversions, and SEO. You can also use qualitative methods, such as surveys, interviews, or feedback, to understand your audience's needs, preferences, and pain points.
Data-informed strategy is good strategy. Part of an audit also includes conducting human-centered-design research to gain qualitative and quantitative data. Speak to your audience and fellow experts in your niche. What questions do they have that no one is answering for them? What are the gaps in the industry? What are your audience's biggest problems that you or your product can solve? This should be the primary focus of all of your content. Then weave in content that builds brand trust and authority and entertainment.
Conducting a content audit involves assessing the performance and effectiveness of your existing content assets. By analyzing metrics such as engagement, traffic, and conversions, you can identify which content resonates most with your audience and which may need improvement or updating. This insight allows you to make informed decisions about future content creation and optimization efforts.
A content calendar is a tool that helps you plan, schedule, and manage your content production and distribution. It helps you create a consistent and coherent content flow that matches your objectives, your audience, and your channels. You can use a spreadsheet, a project management software, or a content marketing platform to create and update your content calendar. You should include details such as content type, title, keywords, format, deadline, responsible person, and status.
Mein Tipp für den Content Kalender: Wiederkehrende Events und Termine einplanen. Das erleichtert die Redaktionsplanung und die Suche nach Aufh?ngern für den eigenen Content. Geeignete "Welt-xy-Tage" dürfen nicht fehlen. Inzwischen haben wir ja für fast jedes Thema einen Welttag, und diese Tage helfen wirklich, Aufmerksamkeit für ein Thema zu erzeugen. Genauso eignen sich Jahrestage berühmter Pers?nlichkeiten, die mit einem Thema verknüpft sind. Oder wenn sich ein Durchbruch in der Forschung j?hrt. Aber auch j?hrliche Messen, Kongresse oder Wettk?mpfe. Ein Tipp: Nicht direkt am Tag des Events ver?ffentlichen, sondern im Vorfeld, einige Tage vorab. So bekommt der Content mehr Aufmerksamkeit und kann l?nger auf der Agenda bleiben.
Créer un calendrier de contenu, en tenant compte des actualités de son domaine, des évènements du mois, de l'année, que ce soit global ou dans son secteur. Penser à recycler également, en abordant les thèmes sous différents angles.
A content calendar serves as a roadmap for your content strategy, outlining planned topics, formats, and publishing schedules over a designated period. By creating a content calendar, you can maintain consistency in your content production, plan ahead for important events or campaigns, and ensure alignment with your overall strategy and goals.
High-quality content is content that is relevant, valuable, and engaging for your audience. It solves their problems, answers their questions, or entertains them. It also follows the best practices of content writing, such as using clear and concise language, following a logical structure, adding visuals and media, and optimizing for SEO. You should also ensure that your content is original, accurate, and trustworthy. You can use tools like Grammarly, Hemingway, or Copyscape to check and improve your content quality.
Creating content is not enough. You also need to make sure that your content reaches your audience and attracts their attention. You need to choose the right channels, formats, and timings for your content distribution and promotion. You can use a mix of owned, earned, and paid media, such as your website, blog, email, social media, influencers, guest posts, or ads. You should also use tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, or Mailchimp to automate and optimize your content delivery and outreach.
The last step of your long-term content strategy is to measure and evaluate your content performance and impact. You need to collect and analyze data on your content metrics, such as views, clicks, shares, comments, leads, or sales. You need to compare your results with your objectives and benchmarks, and identify what works and what doesn't. You need to use tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, or HubSpot to track and report your content ROI. You also need to use feedback, testing, and experimentation to optimize and improve your content over time.
Be yourself. Stop spending all your time stressing on strategy, because that's just going to burn you out. If you're not creating content that makes you passionate, think about WHY you're doing it
Get someone who knows what they're doing to help you. If you can't afford that, post something you care about and stick to that.