Last week, you were able to read that developing a content strategy can be painful when it turns out not to work. To avoid this, Colleague Ilias has listed 8 steps for you to achieve a successful and good content strategy.
The first four steps can be found in the blog of last week. Hopefully, you got something out of this and are a bit further in developing a successful strategy.
In this blog, you will read how to create good content in particular and how to optimise this content for various online marketing channels. Avoid a content strategy that doesn't work by following the rest of the 8 steps. Good luck!
Step 5. Create a content calendar
An important part of your content strategy is to know exactly when you are going to post what. It is also important to know which piece of content will be posted on which channel. The biggest stumbling block for many organisations and entrepreneurs is the lack of planning. You can avoid this by developing a content calendar.
A content calendar is a tool to organise and schedule all the content you want to post. There are different methods for carrying this out. Some are relatively simple and some ways need a bit more thought and time.
For example, you can use the Google Calendar and set deadlines for each piece of content in your diary. This works pretty well on its own if you don't publish that much content. This is probably the simplest approach. However, if you post a lot of content and even need to manage a content team, you will probably need something extra.
Nowadays, there are many different tools available to do this. You can choose to use task management and productivity tools. A personal recommendation then is the online programme Asana, but you also have the programme CoSchedule which is specifically for organising all marketing activities.
Step 6. Research relevant topics
Before scheduling content, you obviously need to know what content needs to be developed. You do this by thoroughly researching topics your audience is inspired by. Part 1 of this blog article already mentioned that you create content according to what your target audience is waiting for. You simply want to know what questions your target audience has within the field you operate in. The ideal tool for this is Answer the Public, because it literally shows you a list of questions that people type into Google.
Here is a small example from Monkey Vision:
From this, take a question that seems relevant to your target audience. Then decide what type of content you want to develop for it and give the piece of content to be created a title. Repeat this process for each piece of content you want to schedule for the coming months.
Step 7. Developing the content
The time has finally come when you can actually start creating content. As you have read, a lot of time goes into developing a content strategy. To arrive at a value-added piece of content, here's a very useful tip (shhh, don't tell). Because you have already done your research, you already know roughly what you are going to write and on what topic. Before you start writing, you will still need to do a little bit of research, this is going to make your piece of content stand out from the rest. You will need to find out two things:
- What content is already available on the internet?
- How can your new piece of content bring value to your target audience?
To find out, it's a matter of nice Googling. Look at the top content on your topic and determine how you can improve this piece of content. In addition, of course, you also want to develop original content. You do this by properly researching the keywords you want to be found on in the search engine. Once you've done this, it's time to write the piece of content.
Step 8. Measure the results
If you thought your content strategy ended with developing the content, you’re quite mistaken. A content strategy should be constantly evolving. It’s important to measure the results of your strategy so that it can be continuously improved. In part 1 of the blog, you’ll have read that setting goals and KPIsis important for measuring the success of your strategy. You can do this in Google Analytics by looking at how long visitors stay on a particular page, what the bounce rate is, and whether the content leads to conversions. Is that the case? Congratulations! Your content strategy can be called a success! Not quite there yet? Don’t be discouraged; developing a successful content strategy takes time.
Want more advice on developing a successful content strategy? Then contact us at content specialist Ilias!
