You're an executive in Content Marketing. How can you develop your strategic thinking skills?

Make Google Search Console your best friend. When I first started working in content marketing, I always wrote the kind of content that I wanted to read. However, once I got introduced to Google Search Console for our website, I began understanding how people are discovering my blog. I took that feedback and always tried to incorporate those topics in greater detail. Example: I would spend hours crafting a great story for my hiking blogs. However, I found out that most people come to my website to download the route map that I have uploaded. That helped me create a USP for the website and beat competitors who had been around for years.

First, put strategic organizational leadership ahead of functional leadership. Start with the vision and strategic priorities of your organization. Consider which external and internal stakeholders need to know about, understand, believe in and take action upon those priorities in order for the company to realize its vision. These are likely your key audiences and communication priorities. If you have access to personas or journey maps for these audiences, use these to understand the role content can play throughout their journey, before, during and after interactions with the company. Are you serving content in these moments? Does it meet audience needs? Is it served when, where and how they want to receive and engage with the content?

As a content marketing executive aiming to enhance strategic thinking skills, it's crucial to start by focusing on the desired objectives. Begin with brainstorming potential ideas, exploring different angles, and considering the required content type to achieve goals. Prioritize and organize generated ideas based on relevance and importance. Define your target audience meticulously, understanding demographics, preferences, and needs. Align ideas with overarching business objectives and KPIs. Analyze market trends, competitor strategies, and industry insights to refine your strategic approach. By systematically developing these skills, content marketing executives can drive impactful campaigns.

On my content writing journey, I learned that strategic thinking is pivotal. To enhance these skills, I prioritize on below given points: - Staying updated on industry trends, competitor strategies, and consumer preferences. - Encouraging creativity and innovation by collaborating with individuals from various backgrounds. - Establishing specific objectives to guide my content marketing strategy. - Remain flexible and agile to adjust tactics in response to evolving market dynamics. Utilizing metrics and analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of my strategies and make data-driven decisions. Continuously refining my approach based on insights gained from past experiences.

Current reality is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. Looking at your product and services, the condition of the marketplace, and where your competitors are beating you is hard to be objective about. ChatGPT and its specialty GPTs for this purpose are great thinking pairs. Any leader not learning conversational intelligence with AI may find themselves following rather than leading in the future.

crafting a clear vision after discussion with stakeholders leads to a full understanding of which direction the content marketing plan will go with. Also sharing this vision and focusing on it makes efforts reasonable for all teams.

It's important to consider how content marketing aligns and support the company's goals in the short and long term. The best content strategy won't work -or won't even happen- without the buy-in of other stakeholders (executives, sales, partnerships, customer success), so it's important to do some research and even conduct meetings that can help the Content Marketing team to know more about the company's vision, goals, concerns, and expectations, and see how Content Marketing support those goals.

Having a systematic way to establish goals as the SMART goals framework can work too. In the end, defining your objectives properly from the beginning will allow you to create an effective strategy aligned with them.

?? Vision Crafting: Define a forward-looking vision that aligns with long-term business goals. ?? Mission Mapping: Articulate how your content marketing efforts will achieve this vision. ?? Feedback Loop: Regularly revisit and adjust your vision and mission based on team feedback and market changes. Your vision and mission are the compass for your content marketing strategy. Clearly defining and communicating them not only guides your team but also ensures every piece of content contributes to your overarching business objectives. Keep them dynamic and responsive to the evolving landscape.

Here's how I develop my strategic thinking skills: 1. Continuous Learning: No one knows it all so, I invest time in reading articles, attending webinars, and participating in workshops to expand my knowledge and perspective on strategic planning and execution. 2. Setting Clear Goals: I establish clear and measurable goals for each content marketing campaign or initiative, aligning them with broader business objectives. 3. Embracing Creativity and Innovation: I foster a culture of creativity and innovation within my team, encouraging brainstorming sessions and experimentation with new ideas and formats. I hope this helps?

?? Market Research: Utilize tools for keyword research and competitor analysis to understand market dynamics. ?? Customer Surveys: Gather direct insights from your audience to tailor your strategies effectively. ?? Social Listening: Monitor social media for real-time trends and audience sentiments. Arming yourself with detailed market and customer insights allows for informed decision-making and strategy development, ensuring your content marketing efforts are both responsive and proactive to market demands and opportunities.

To develop a deeper understanding of strategic content marketing, begin by analyzing case studies across different industries. Focus on campaigns that have achieved success, dissecting their strategies and decision-making processes. For example, studying a technology company’s use of educational webinars to attract leads can provide valuable insights into effective audience engagement. Through such analysis, you will identify recurring tactics and strategies that can be adapted to your own efforts. This practice not only enhances your knowledge of the marketing landscape but also improves your strategic thinking abilities.

Strategic thinking requires extensive knowledge of the market, competitors, customers, and industry trends. Perform market research and analysis to identify opportunities and threats for content marketing. Understand the needs and preferences of your target audience. Utilize tools such as keyword research, competitor analysis, customer surveys, and social listening to collect and analyze data.

Given the fast nature of technology, staying current in market trends is crucial for any successful content marketing strategy and content writing. Here's how to tackle this: 1. Built a culture of continuous learning: I built into my work week a couple of hours reading and researching and suggest my team to do the same. 2. Embrace new tools such AI, social listening or news aggregators (I create a couple of google search on the market and on competitors). 3.Learning from each other: I have a group of people that I enjoy staying in touch with and exchange ideas with on a regular basis to share market insights they glean from conferences, blogs, or even social media.

Deep dive into your target audience and the ever-evolving content marketing landscape. Research industry trends, analyze competitor strategies, and identify emerging technologies that might impact content creation or distribution. Understanding your market empowers you to make informed decisions for your content strategy.

Without clear goals, you're navigating without a map. Setting goals isn't just about dreaming big; it's about making those dreams attainable through SMART objectives. For instance, aiming to increase blog traffic by 20% in six months is a SMART goal. It's precise, measurable, realistic, relevant to broader marketing objectives, and time-constrained. My advice: Start with what you want to achieve in your content marketing role—be it brand awareness, lead generation, or customer engagement. Then, break these down into SMART goals. This approach has always helped me stay focused and track my progress effectively.

?? SMART Goals: For example, instead of "increase traffic," set a goal like "increase blog traffic by 20% in Q1 through SEO optimization." ?? Select KPIs: Beyond basic metrics, consider engagement rate, content shareability, and conversion rate from specific content pieces. ?? Utilize Tools: Leverage Google Analytics for traffic analysis, use SEMrush for competitor keyword strategy, and a dashboard like Tableau for visualizing performance trends. Detailing your objectives with precision and monitoring them through specific, tailored KPIs ensures your content marketing strategies are focused and measurable, leading to more effective and impactful outcomes.

Move beyond vague goals. Set Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals for your content marketing efforts. Align these goals with your overall business objectives and identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and measure success.

Any strategy conceptualized needs to be measured too - the rule for this is simple. This should be quantifiable, and therefore measureable; practical and therefore achievable; and finally in a given period of time to measure trends, positive or negative in a time series. Digital tools including Google Analytics coupled with brand tracks as well as generation of dashboards are all pivotal in benchmarking actual performance to the pre-defined KPIs.

A strategy without execution is just a wish. Planning involves researching your audience, understanding their needs, and outlining the type of content that resonates with them. Execution, on the other hand, requires consistency and quality. For example, when I realized our target audience preferred detailed how-to guides over brief blog posts, we pivoted our content strategy to focus on in-depth articles, which significantly improved engagement. My advice: Use data and feedback to refine your content plan continuously. Always be ready to adapt and innovate. Execution is key, so set a schedule and stick to it, ensuring your team knows what's expected.

Strategic execution of your content strategy involves detailed organization and management: ?? Content Calendars: Utilize calendars to schedule and manage publication dates, ensuring consistent delivery that aligns with key events or dates relevant to your audience. ?? Workflows & Guidelines: Establish clear workflows and editorial guidelines to maintain quality and brand consistency across all content. This helps streamline the creation process, making it more efficient and reducing the likelihood of errors or off-brand messaging. ?? Content Management Systems (CMS): Implement a CMS that suits your team's needs, allowing for easy content updates, collaboration, and tracking. So now you can ensure a more organized, strategic approach

Develop a comprehensive content strategy that outlines the types of content you'll create, the channels you'll use for distribution, and the budget allocation. Ensure the strategy aligns with your vision, goals, and target audience. Then, lead your team effectively to execute the plan, adapting your approach as needed based on ongoing analysis.

SMART Goal 1: In six months, increase organic website traffic by 20%. To do this, use high-quality content and SEO. KPIs: Page views, bounce rate, session length, and organic traffic. SMART Goal 2: In three months, increase social media engagement by 25%. Prioritize likes, comments, and shares while executing focused marketing campaigns. KPIs: new followers, click-through rate, reach, and engagement per post. SMART Goal 3: Raise the 2% to 3.5% online conversion rate in a year. Improve CTAs and landing pages. KPIs: revenue, leads, and conversion rate.

All strategies are supposed to be dynamic rather than strait jacketed and static. As such, the objective should be to continually keep abreast of the industry and competitive dynamics, make changes wherever needed to the goals and strategy as well as innovate by introducing research audits, research tracks, dynamic performance dashboards - all geared to deliver an accurate and updated performance meter for the brand.

I usually learn from peers and others to improve my strategic thinking skills. As a marketing executive, it is very important to learn everyday as we are living in a fast growing world that we will be left behind if we don’t learn new things. Following related webinars or short courses can be a really good option to develop our strategic thinking skills.

Strategic thinking is an ongoing process. Stay curious, embrace new ideas, and encourage a culture of learning within your team. Actively seek out opportunities to develop your own knowledge and skills, attend industry conferences, and participate in relevant training programs. By continuously learning and adapting, you can ensure your content marketing strategy remains effective and delivers exceptional results.

Continuous learning and improvement are vital in content marketing. I stay updated on industry trends, seek feedback, experiment with new ideas, invest in professional development, reflect on past experiences, collaborate with others, and maintain a curious mindset. This approach ensures that my skills and strategies remain relevant and effective.

I suggest reading/listening to some good books on different ideas about strategy, such as Blue Ocean Strategy, Crossing the Chasm, etc. These help you consider your business in different ways, ways you may not have considered with the team you have. This can be extremely helpful.