How to Create a Content Strategy

How to Create a Content Strategy

A content strategy is both written and visual, and helps differentiate your brand from competitors with easily recognizable content. Content strategies take into account the quality, type and timing of your content distribution. In order to get the most out of your content strategy, you need to start with the channel that will drive the most traffic to your website. Once you know which channel that will be – primarily based on where your target audience spends the most time online – you can optimize content for that channel, then update or expand upon that content for secondary channels. By having a strategy for the type of content you produce and distribute, you can increase your brand awareness and top-of-funnel activity.

Step 1: Where does your target market spend the most time online?

Once you figure out where your target audience spends most of their time online, optimize your content for that channel. If your target market is comprised of businesses, the best place to be online would be LinkedIn. Whether you’re prospecting for new clients or sharing valuable insights from your blog, LinkedIn members online are already in the mindset to do business and look for new opportunities.

If your business sells products directly to consumers, start by looking at the primary demographics on other social media networks, then find which one overlaps with your target market using the demographic cliff notes below.

Blüm Agency Digital Marketing Social Media Users Statistics

Channel statistics via the 2018 Social Audience Guide.

Step 2: Optimizing content by channel

People expect different types of content depending on the channel they’re using. For example, longer-form written content like blog posts do better on channels like LinkedIn, whereas images and short video content are more engaging on Instagram. Long videos are best for YouTube, and short written content is the best fit for Twitter.

Your content strategy means taking content optimized for your primary channel and expanding it to other social media networks. If your business-to-business service posts a blog on LinkedIn, that same piece of content should also be utilized for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to expand your company’s reach and show brand consistency. While the same piece of content won’t work the same way on all channels, it can be repurposed for each. A video on Youtube can translate to a short blurb and link on Twitter, a clip on Instagram, and an embedded video in a blog post on your website.

Step 3: Scheduling content and creating a content calendar

This is the easy part of your content strategy. Once you know which content you want to post, you can schedule it based on your monthly content calendar. Scheduling content to promote upcoming sales or deals and new products or services gives you flexibility to handle other parts of your business, while getting you increased visibility and new clients.

Now that we’ve covered the “how,” let’s circle back to the “why” of content strategies. A content strategy differentiates your brand and increases brand awareness, engagement, and top-of-funnel marketing activity.

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