Building a Great Content Strategy! Challenges & Solutions...

As digital is the way to go, Content has become the King, Queen, and Ace of the marketing deck of cards. A good Content strategy can mean a make-or-break situation for your organization, especially in cases when you are just starting off. Having been a part of 2 startups in their initial journey, I can attest to the fact that one good Content is manyfold better than multiple bad ones. But consistent great Content can result in you being in front of your desired customers always; building recalls and relationships. So how do we go about that? Should we start pumping Content that everyone is posting? Do we post daily or weekly? What exactly do we publish? I will answer all these questions in this post, so please feel free to hang on.

How do you think you could build a content strategy ?

I joined a consumer services startup, and when I joined, the business had just started, it was an open playing field for me, but the challenge of having no one to supervise or guide me was also there. Here's how I went ahead with building the Content for this startup:-

1. I asked the founders numerous questions regarding the product & solution.
2. From the answers that I got, I identified whom we were trying to serve.
3. After we had gotten our first few clients, I went and met them, and The goal was to understand why they chose us.

Through the 3 activities, I was able to identify the following:

1. What was the value the company wanted the customers to perceive?
2. What the customers perceived as giving value.
3. The gap between the 2.

The first set of activities around the content strategy was to build stories, which helped bridge that gap. As a startup, you may not have the comfort of case studies & facts based on research, especially in the B2C space. Comparisons are great for sales but do not help in establishing brand loyalty. To solve this you have got to do your own research and tell stories that would resonate with your customer. After all, the job of a marketing leader is not just to reach the right audience but also to convince them to take the desired action.

Should you start pumping Content because everyone is doing so?

NO!

Pasting Content just because you wish to increase your follower counts on social media can be detrimental to your brand and long-term growth. There have been cases where influencers with thousands of followers could not even sell a single piece of the product when they launched their own brands.

The cause, their followers were following them just for entertainment, they didn't form a part of their conscious decision-making process.

Build your Content around the problems you are solving and the problems your customers perceive you are solving. Then, take a leaf out of the advertising playbook of yesteryears, such as the Dhara Ad or the Nirma ad, and tell a great story that resonates with your audience.

How Frequently Should You Post?

There is no hard and fast rule that you need to post daily, weekly, or monthly. What you need to ensure is that you engage with your audience on a regular basis, even if you don't post daily. Engagement can be just a like on the posts of people you follow or can be done based on hashtags you wish to engage with.

The more you engage with your audience, the better results you will see in your posts.

Posts are also determined by various factors, such as the team's bandwidth, Internal capabilities, and needs. Not all businesses need to post thrice every day to stay relevant.

It is also platform dependent; if your primary audience driver is Twitter, then having three posts a day could be helpful for you. Even one to two posts a week can be beneficial if your audience is primarily on LinkedIn. Remember that it's always to focus on Quality over Quantity.

Content is also sector dependent; if you are working in the B2C space, you usually need to be more active on social media, not that it's necessary but rather advisable. While if you are in the B2B space, a less active social media presence with some great content goes a long way.

One thing to note is that there are always exceptions; you don't need to be what others are; build your own path.

What Do I Post?

This is the final and most significant hurdle for any marketing team or startup. What to post!

While many will suggest that you can post about your products, services, or offerings, one needs to remember there is a limit to how much you can talk about it; you don't wanna bore your audience, do you?

A good way to tackle this problem is to create a persona for your brand or service and then talk to your audience about how that person will talk to his friends, followers, or even customers. Build the stories people would love to hear and will likely engage with. It can be as simple as going out on an adventure to tell about a recent funny incident. But before you start building your persona, identify what the brand/service stands for and what your target audience is likely to engage with.

Yes, this is thankless work because, during this phase, you would be doing nothing but just researching and analyzing; you will have Zero output to show for it. But it's one of the necessary evils of content marketing that no-one should shy away from.

If you do find this useful, then share it forward. It could help someone find a solution!