ARE YOU PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE?

In a recent conversation, we (Ganesh and Joy) recently spoke about how most businesses have their content strategy all wrong. They seem to have jumped onto the content wagon without putting certain fundamentals in place. They don't realise that content is not an end in itself but the means to an end — helping them communicate their brand’s expertise effectively, thereby building trust and likeability for their brand vis-à-vis their target audience. This, in turn, must lead to a growth in business.

So we are sharing this step-by-step roadmap in the hope that it will help you create content the right way. Whether you run a company, or are an individual building their person brand, this 11-step method will help you achieve the objective we mentioned earlier. It may seem a little too involved for these times, but brands are not built by taking shortcuts!

1. Identify the problem your brand is solving or the need it is fulfilling.
2. Define your core target audience sharply by segmenting the market properly.
3. Identify the demographics (statistical data such as age group, income, gender, location, etc.) and psychographics (their station in life, state of mind, aspirations & dreams, pain points/challenges and anxieties w.r.t your field of work, their sense of self, etc.) of this target audience.
4. With these and other inputs, create a powerful, authentic, differentiated identity for your brand. In essence, this is about creating the right perceptions about your brand in the minds of your target audience. If you don’t do this by design, wrong perceptions will be created by default and the brand will likely suffer. You don’t want that, do you?
5. Being a brand is not just about ‘owning a niche’ and ‘identifying your areas of expertise’. You must define your brand's entire identity, encompassing crucial elements such as its driving belief, core insight, unique value proposition, core values, personality traits, vocabulary, key benefits, source of credibility, tone of voice, etc.
6. Write down the goals of your content strategy. Do you simply want more visibility? Do you want more leads? Want to enlarge your customer base? Or do something else? What kind of impression do you want to create about your brand?
7. Identify the aspects or issues on which your target audience will find content useful. Your content should aim to educate and elevate them, and occasionally entertain them. It should make a meaningful difference to them.
8. Draw up a content calendar with these themes in mind. Space out the content well and mix up the issues to avoid monotony. Try to mix up the formats to — play with text, visuals & videos.
9. Check if your content is bringing out the expertise and personality of your brand. Otherwise, you'd be saying the same things as others, and in the same way!
10. Execute the calendar consistently and efficiently. Be patient.
11. Track the stats regularly to see if you are on track. If you aren’t, change course suitably. Unless you execute your content strategy according to a calendar, it will remain ad hoc and you won’t be able to track its performance correctly.

As you can see, drawing up the content calendar appears only as late as Step 8. And its execution, only after that. Which brings us to what we started this issue with: putting out content without getting your brand identity right is a sure-shot way to go adrift.

Don’t make the mistake 98% of the crowd is making. Articulate your brand right before generating content.

We'll sign off here. See you again next week! Meanwhile, if you haven't subscribed to Speaking of Brands, do so right away. And please spread the word among others trying to build their brands.

Ciao!

Joy & Ganesh

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Speaking of Brands is a weekly practical, no-nonsense primer on branding & communication for smart business owners. If you want your brand to fuel the growth of your business, subscribe to this mag now!