What is a Content Strategy
A Content Strategy sets out a plan for content creation, management and distribution against a specific business goal, and measures the success of the strategy via data and analytics.
In addition, the plan might also be phased and rolled out across a period of time which allows for a feedback loop on performance and engagement that informs further phases of the plan
What comprises a Content Strategy?
1. What is the business goal?
Knowing who they are and what part of the digital ecosystem they are in will define where the content needs to be distributed, and what sort of content will engage with them.
Of course, there may be several goals behind a content strategy and in larger businesses, there will be many stakeholders, but the greater the clarity, focus and purpose of a strategy the greater the likelihood of success.
2. Who is the target audience?
Knowing who they are and what part of the digital ecosystem they are in will define where the content needs to be distributed, and what sort of content will engage with them.
And of course, you will likely have far more than one audience. As we enter a phase of hyper-personalisation, audience segmentation becomes more and more refined and granular and so the content which is served to them needs to resonate with them
3. Define your content plan
The type of content will be heavily influenced via the outcomes from points 1 and 2, and content exists in many forms.
You may lean heavily on social content (organic, paid or both) and within that you will likely have a mix of imagery, text and video. If you are targeting businesses, you will likely look towards Linkedin as the social platform and lean more on digital advertising or perhaps use webinars to develop your authority.
Whereas a product campaign might also involve ads to run on digital billboards alongside a microsite with editorial content describing product features and how it can help people, alongside an email campaign for existing customers.
4. Content creation & production
This is where the creative and studio teams fit in, be they in-house, external agencies or both.
They will work to the content (or media) plan defined by the marketing team and at this stage all content will be specified in detail about the exact nature of the content, its format, where it is running and requirements of the platform on which it will run.
A large content plan can easily run into hundreds of individual pieces of content (some of which will be assembled into outputs such as emails), so the more granular and detailed the process, the better.
5. Distribution
You might also describe this as, ‘getting your content out there’! And the tactics used will depend on the nature of the content and a large scale content strategy might involve internal marketing teams alongside media planning or third party agencies.
The key to any distribution strategy is to ensure it is measurable so that you build a picture of what is resonating with your audience and what isn’t. This data is vital as it can inform any further phases of the plan in terms of messaging, creative and what channels are working for you.
The data will be platform specific - be it web analytics, social performance and engagement metrics, display ad click through rates, email open rates and so on. Using and understanding that data will inform decisions on future content plans.
6. Content Management
A vital part of a well executed content strategy is how the content is managed, so that it can be easily accessed and saved for future use. Medium to larger businesses will use a Digital Asset Management system (DAM) which, in very simple terms, is essentially your content library in which you can save, tag, find and reuse your content.
Can we help?
A content strategy may seem overwhelming but the starting point is to understand what you need to achieve, and from there the rest will follow.
If you’d like to chat to us to see if we can help with your Content Strategy, just get in touch!