How do you match content to your brand?

1 Define your brand voice

Your brand voice is the tone and style of your communication. It expresses your brand's personality, values, and emotions. To define your brand voice, you need to understand your target audience, your unique selling proposition, and your brand story. Then, you can create a brand voice chart that lists the traits, dos, and don'ts of your brand voice. For example, if your brand is friendly, helpful, and professional, you might use words like "you", "we", and "let's", avoid jargon and slang, and use a positive and upbeat tone.

2 Choose your content types

Your content types are the formats and mediums of your content. They include blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, ebooks, webinars, and more. To choose your content types, you need to consider your audience's preferences, your brand's goals, and your resources. For example, if your audience likes to watch short and entertaining videos, your brand's goal is to increase awareness, and you have a video production team, you might choose to create video content for social media platforms.

3 Plan your content topics

Your content topics are the themes and ideas of your content. They include the problems, solutions, benefits, and stories that relate to your audience and your brand. To plan your content topics, you need to do keyword research, analyze your competitors, and brainstorm ideas. For example, if your brand is a fitness app, you might use tools like Google Trends, SEMrush, and AnswerThePublic to find out what your audience is searching for, what your competitors are writing about, and what questions and challenges your audience has.

4 Create your content guidelines

Your content guidelines are the rules and standards of your content. They include the tone, style, format, length, structure, and quality of your content. To create your content guidelines, you need to document your best practices, examples, and templates for each content type. For example, if you create blog posts, you might have a content guideline that specifies the headline, introduction, subheadings, body, conclusion, call to action, images, and links of your blog posts.

5 Evaluate your content performance

Your content performance is the measure of how well your content achieves your brand's goals. It includes the metrics and indicators of your content's reach, engagement, conversion, and retention. To evaluate your content performance, you need to set SMART goals, track relevant KPIs, and use analytics tools. For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you might track KPIs like page views, bounce rate, and time on page, and use tools like Google Analytics, Moz, and Hotjar.