Create a Working Content Strategy in Just 1 Hour!

So, you’ve heard a ton about content strategies but rarely use this knowledge to your advantage because the “brute force” method of brainstorming ideas and just writing what comes to mind for your website seems to work.

Well, this approach is a quick path to untimely burnout. And that’s because you’re missing one piece of the puzzle called the content strategy. Your content strategy is a detailed plan highlighting every little activity involved in the creation and distribution of your content. 64% of successful B2B content marketers have a documented content strategy.

Without further ado, let’s get into the process of creating a working content strategy in just 1 hour.

Tools You Need to Create Your Working Content Strategy

• A notebook and pen for laying out your strategy fast.
• A word editor like Google Docs where you will store the portable format of your content strategy.
• Google calendar for easy scheduling and timely reminders.
• A website or social media account (or preferably both) for sharing your content.
• Monetization options (now would be the best time to join an affiliate program).
• Payment processing tools (Go for PayPal, Payoneer, Skrill, or whatever works best with your content monetization options).
• Your content writing team or an AI writing tool.
• Graphics tools like Canva for making your content strategy easy on the eyes.

Note that most of the tools mentioned above are free to use. It’s possible to create a working content strategy without paying expensive subscriptions for simple tasks.

However, you do need to spend a little on the content itself (see why later).

How to Create a Working Content Strategy

Once you have all the tools on the list, it’s finally time to start building your content strategy.

Step 1: Lay Out Everything in Your Past Content Creation Processes on Paper

Estimated time: 10 minutes.

Tapping into your past experience, you want to lay out any existing tools and procedures that helped you thrive in your past content writing roles. Do it in a structured procedure as follows:

1. Note down your niche/niches.
2. State your target audience and the challenges you're trying to solve.
3. Identify your products/service solutions.
4. Note down your digital marketing assets (website, social media, email, and any other content sharing tools).
5. Take inventory of your content writing tools (include your team size or the AI content writing assistants you use).
6. Include your content calendar (if you already have one).
7. List down your content monetization options.

Don’t forget to list down your goals. Remember, your goal is not just “to make money blogging”, but rather, “provide the target audience with the best product/service that solves their problems in X ways and, as a result, make $X in 6 months”.

Key takeaway: Your target audience is the single most important defining component of your content strategy. The more accurately you can define your target audience, the closer you are to getting the results you’re after.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience

Estimated time: 5 Minutes.

Now, back to your target audience. A target audience refers to the people that will receive your message. Here’s where many content writers, bloggers, and even businesses get it wrong.

A target audience is not just anyone that would buy your product/service.

No.

Your target audience includes people that would actually benefit from buying the product/service. The most important question you can ask to find out who these people are is why? Why would someone buy what you’re selling? Is it to save time? Is it for convenience? Or is it for recreation?

With the why in mind, we can proceed to accurately defining the who.

In your notebook, jot down anyone that would benefit from your produce/service. Give them some additional context too. Write down:

• Their ideal age.
• Occupation.
• Location.
• Hobbies & interests.

But more importantly, list down their:

• Challenges.
• Opportunities.

It is through this brief list that you’re able to paint a clearer picture of your ideal target audience.

Step 3: Check Your Content Monetization Options

Estimated time: 5 minutes.

At the end of the day, there's a financial incentive to creating and publishing content. Content writers, bloggers, and businesses have one or a blend of the monetization listed below:

• Google AdSense.
• WordAds.
• ?Amazon Associates Program.
• Sponsored content.
• Gated content.
• Affiliate programs.

If you write content for a company, you’ll have several money-making options at your disposal as well, including:

• Freelancing for other companies.
• Part-time blogging.
• Affiliate marketing.
• Consultancy services.

Listing down and evaluating your monetization options is an essential part of your content strategy.

By understanding how you intend to monetize your web content, you’re able to pick the right content distribution channels that give you direct access to your target audience.

Step 4: Create Your Content Calendar Draft

Estimated Time: 20 minutes.

Your content calendar points to your content distribution schedule. It details how often you write content and share it on your content distribution platform.

Here’s what a content calendar should include:

• Your monthly content writing and publishing routine. For a new website, aim to write one 1000–1500-word long blog posts a day in the first thirty days. This should kickstart your website's traffic and activity.
• Content length. The length and depth of your content will depend largely on your chosen content distributing channel. Your website can take the longer version of the blog post, which should be deep enough to answer your audience’s questions.
• Assigned content writers. If you have a content writing team that writes for your website, you’ll want to know who’s working on what and when. Both Trello and Clickup offer great task management tools that further integrate your content writing team into one giant content production machine.

At this point, you also want to summon your online keyword research tool and find fresh content writing topics. You can use Answer the Public and Keywords Everywhere to generate lists of the best topic ideas around the digital marketing niche.

The ideas generated answer the basic questions of who, what, why where, when, and how.

At the end of this exercise, you’ll generate a massive list of over 600 relevant user queries. These are the most searched topics on the internet.

Step 5: Engage Your Content Writing Team and Start Writing

Estimated time: 20 minutes.

Now comes the fun part. Writing content can be difficult but with the steps highlighted so far, it shouldn’t be that difficult.

You know what would make it easy to write content? A content writing team. Now, hear me out.

Your content writing team – so long as it’s a good one – takes the burden off of creating web content. A content writing team also brings vast expertise in search engine optimization (very important for your website), proofreading and editing, keyword strategy, copywriting (selling with words), and so much more.

Unless you’re willing to pay for these services separately, it would be wise to find a good team with these skills and you’re halfway there.

Now, what if you’re the DIY-kind of website owner? Well, there are other solutions you can consider, and yes, that includes AI writing assistants. After rigorous testing, here are our recommended top picks:

• Frase
• Writesonic
• Rytr

Frase has everything you need to research content faster, write even faster, and even optimize your articles for search. You can manage your team and save your optimized work in a dedicated documents folder. Everything’s integrated into your online dashboard for easy access. Best of all? You can generate as much content as you need in your subscription.

>> Get your Frase 5-day trial here for just $1

Writesonic is your next best pick if you want tens of templates for blog content, social media content, long-form content, headings, and subheadings. Whatever template you need, they’ve already thought about it.

Rytr would be best for short pieces of web content. If you need an AI content writing tool that’s lightweight and generates enough ideas to get you started, this tool would be your best option.

Step 7: Track Your Results

Estimated time: Infinite

Most of your content distribution channels already have built-in analytics features.

However, don’t fall into the trap of making your decisions based on vanity metrics. Instead, focus on:

The engagement rate for your educational content:

• ????????Impressions for awareness-stage content.
• ????????Specific page clicks for sales-stage content.
• ????????Conversion rate for lead generation content.

Don’t base important decisions on:

• ????????Likes
• ????????Number of added followers
• ????????Page views

There are many definitions for vanity metrics depending on who you ask. The basic definition of a vanity metric is a metric that doesn’t reflect a useful business result.?

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Erick M. is a content-focused marketing services provider helping businesses turn their websites into virtual storefronts.