The Importance of Goal-Setting in Your Content Strategy

Navigating the vast sea of ideas around content creation without a clear direction can leave your strategy adrift, disjointed, and ineffective. Goal-setting steers your efforts toward measurable success, both in strategy and production.

Understanding Business Objectives: Aligning with Business Strategy

You need to consider two critical things regarding your content strategy: how it will help you grow your business and how it will add value to your ideal customer's desired outcomes.?

For example, a content piece titled "The Importance of Goal-Setting in Your Content Strategy" aligns with my business goal of maximizing thought leadership and brand engagement. Hopefully, it will also align with your goal of setting goals to deliver a better content strategy.?

In order for your content to be successful, it must add value to the desired outcomes or Missions of your ideal customers. You need to understand your reader and their Missions and create content that adds value based on (Not just your products and services) but also your expertise. In other words, your content needs to be able to add value independent of a monetary exchange of goods and services.

Also, try to align your content to help your ideal customers be successful in the entire process of achieving a particular outcome, not just the part where your product fits.

For example, As an agency, we build content strategies. We can also do a lot of writing, but we don't do video production. Just because we don't do video production does not mean I should not share what I know about it as it applies to a content strategy. I have a level of expertise in video. My knowledge could be valuable even though I will not directly profit from it.

So, how do you discover your content strategy and create goals to bring it to life?

You also have to be brave. You have forces that will try to thwart you!

No one cares about your content strategy until someone does.

Actionable Exercise:

Try this exercise with your team. Include members of the marketing, sales, service/product delivery teams.

Each person completes what I like to call a White Noise session around a content strategy theme that will add value toward a desired outcome for your ideal customer and also align with your business objectives. (You can learn what a white noise session is here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/white-noise-session-robb-luther-a0ipe/ )

Think something like: I want to grow [my company's X] by helping my customers achieve [Y].

White Noise Session Prompt:

?? Free Writing (2 Minutes)

Spend 2 minutes dumping out as many outcomes your ideal customer is trying to achieve as you can. Don't forget to consider how your products, services, and expertise align with helping your customers achieve these outcomes. Make sure this aligns with your business objectives.

?? Set Intention (3 Minutes)

Read what you wrote. Pick the approach you feel is the strongest one to invest time and resources in for your company.

?? Dive in (25 Minutes)

Dive into the customer's perspective here. Think of the outcomes they are trying to achieve. What are their hurdles and roadblocks in achieving these outcomes? What questions are they asking themselves? What are they taking for granted? What metrics are they using to establish progress? Where does their Mission start? Where does it end? Where can you add the most value?

In 25 minutes, get into as much detail as you can about adding value to your customer's outcomes.

?? Conclude (5 Minutes)

Perhaps you can organize your approach in a structured outline: beginning, Middle, and End.

Project: What benefit would this content strategy have for your company if successfully executed?

Everyone should share their submissions with each other and then schedule a brainwriting session to settle on the best content strategy focus. Want to learn more about brainwriting ?

Executing your content strategy with BORRAT Goals

While SMART Goals are the gold standard in goal setting, I don't find them particularly suitable for a team approach to a project. I developed the BORRAT framework (Background, Objectives, Requirements, Resources, Approach, Time), which offers a more comprehensive method for aligning teams to achieve a specific outcome. The BORRAT ensures that everyone, from writers to designers and SEO specialists, remains aligned with the mission.

Let's take a look at how we might write a BORRAT for one blog post in a content series:

? Background:

We are working on a blog post with the working title "Identifying Your Core Audience." This content piece should fit into "Chapter 1: Laying the Foundation – Developing Your Content Strategy" of the Mission: "Maximize thought leadership by sharing our knowledge"

? Objectives:

Publish an SEO-optimized and well-planned blog post and social media posts to help promote it within one week of this task's creation date.

Share the blog post on our social media channels and in our newsletter.

Add it to the review schedule for future improvements.

? Requirements:

Must stress:

• The importance of taking a "Customer's Perspective" approach when defining your Hero.
• How PIC views heroes

Offer recommended reading

• What Customers Want - Anthony Ulwick

Cite two expert resources outside of PIC that speak about the value of content from the customer's perspective

? Resources:

• What is the Hero Mission Strategy (Internal Document)
• Pew Research - Writing Survey Questions
• What Customer Want - Anthony Ulwick

? Approach:

• Create the blog outline
• Write the blog post draft & request any design assets
• Optimize the blog post as necessary for search
• Editing and review
• Add blog post to HubSpot complete with graphics
• Publish post & share on social
• Add to the upcoming newsletter

? Time:

• Outline Draft & Assets: 3 Days
• Optimize & Editing: 2 Days
• Post and schedule: 2 Days

When creating a Hero Mission Strategy at PIC, we may consider six chapters with three or more content pieces for each chapter. This content will focus on delivering value to help our Heroes achieve their specific outcomes or Missions.

To be successful at your content strategy, you need to find time to step out of the whirlwind of day-to-day work and set time for content creation. To do this, you have to create a content schedule with due dates. Without specific blog posts and exact due dates, you will struggle to achieve an open-ended goal consistently.

Plan out your entire content story complete with blog topics, outlines, and due dates. Then, you can start assigning them to your production team or marketing agency. Here is information on building a Hero Mission Strategy .

Monitoring and Adjusting Content Goals

Setting Up Metrics

The leading indicator of a successful content strategy is publishing content. The trick is to understand how your audience receives that content.

Define clear metrics that will indicate the success of each content piece according to the set objectives. What are your impression metrics and engagement metrics? Ask the sales team to share the content with relevant customers and prospects and ask them for feedback.

Regular Review Cycles

Implement a schedule for regular reviews of the content's performance against the goals. This will not only track progress but also allow for timely adjustments to the strategy.

Adapting Goals to Changing Circumstances

Stay flexible and responsive to shifts in market dynamics or internal business changes without losing sight of the overall objectives. Adapt your goals to maintain relevance and effectiveness, and always look for avenues to add value.

Let's sum it up.

That was a lot. The key takeaway is to understand your ideal customer or your Hero. Understand their desired outcomes or Missions, and create content that helps them be successful. You can incorporate your products and services in your content strategy, but the value your content provides should not depend on adapting your products and services.