What is a Content Strategy?
A content strategy is the purposeful development of words, images, and videos, for the end goal of conversions. A call to action is any action you want your users to complete, a conversion is when they do that action. With a content strategy, it remains paramount that you know your primary audience and speak as they do. This can and should take the forms of as many media elements as you can effectively weave in. For example, if a page has well-optimized text, images, and videos on it, that is three verticals in Google content can show in and may show in multiple places on the search engine result page.
The point is the more media elements you have, the more that exists for Google to grab onto. It becomes important to integrate multiple forms of media into your content strategy to maximize the value it brings to users, which in return brings value to you.
What a Content Strategy is Not
Be very careful not to confuse a lot of content with good content. This represents the classic issue of volume versus quality. While we all desire high-volume quality, it is hard for both to exist. I can’t stress enough how critical it is that your content be unique and compelling. Without this, your material stands a good chance it will die in the backdrop of all the millions of pages that just had content, but not unique and equitable content. A content strategy is NOT simply pumping out words, memes, and videos. That is simply content creation.
The attitude, and message, and purpose behind your content must be focused on a goal, an end result, a bottom line. How this gets achieved IS the content strategy, and it takes creativity to figure out how to be unique in the topics you address and the conveyance of your message. The main point here is a content strategy is the creation of purposeful content.
Why is a Content Strategy Important?
When it comes to SEO both Google and users alike want to find websites that are authoritative in the things they are searching for. We want answers. We want the correct ones and quickly. These answers come from content on websites, and Google is very, very good at finding the pages that have good information for their searching users. This is why we all use Google, it does a great job of answering our questions. While it becomes more difficult, the website that answers people’s questions the best, gets the business. That includes the effect of seeing reviews and YOUR ANSWERS TO REVIEWS (don’t forget to respond to every review you can). It answers trust questions all users have.
Some think your website is how you connect with the world. But really it is content that is the primary way to connect with the world, the website is the delivery vehicle. We are judged by how it appears, how fast it loads, the tone of words, and the interpreted meaning. We are instantly moved or bored. Words have power, and when ordered in the right way can have unimaginable influence.
A good content strategy is important because it can literally change the financial landscape of a business. It is an interesting idea that with the right combination of vocabulary words you can increase the bottom line.
How to Come Up with an Effective Content Strategy
You make the best content by speaking to a specific user base and addressing topics from unique perspectives that are equitable to that base, meaning it has value. If your content is very unique, then it has a unique value. Unique equitable content is an easy formula to understand but oftentimes much harder to implement. The worst thing that can happen is you spend time, money, and calories on content that is unique like everybody else's.
The following steps can help you determine a plan:
- Determine a specific goal (To increase sales by 10% in the first quarter)
- Decide how to measure (Google analytics, remarketing, Google tags, user feedback, sales tracking).
- Clearly define the audience (to reach a middle-aged female audience)
- SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) - Know where you stand and what expectations to set. If you are in a highly competitive market against sites with thousands of pages, a few new pages likely won’t change the landscape for you.
- Determine venues - In what way are you going to deliver the content? Facebook? Website? T-shirts? Snail Mail?
- Determine deliverables - What content will get created? How many pages, videos, images, memes, infographics, etc will be needed?
- Determine schedule - When will these identified deliverables get delivered? The order and timing likely matter.
- Create content - Who, and how will content get created? Remember! It MUST be excellent! This is the hardest step and the one that can be the most expensive.
- Deliver - Execute the schedule.
- Measure - Measure the effects. - Will you do A/B testing?
- Maintain - Maintain positive results.
Again, while these are solid steps to follow, it still doesn’t spell out the magic you are going sprinkle into your content to show the world you are the authority. This is where creativity, brainstorming, and wordsmith wizards come into play.
What are Some Different Content Ideas?
Below is a list of different content types, how one utilizes each is beyond the scope of this post, but this list is a good place to start. Ask yourself; “Can my company make easy use of any of these?”
- Resources
- How-to’s
- FAQ’s
- Publications
- Blogs
- Charts/Graphs
- Landing Pages
- Conversion Pages (tied to PPC ads)
- Memes
- Infographics - explain processes
- Facebook Posts
- Instagram Posts
- Google Business Posts
- Videos
- Portfolio pieces
- Downloadable Marketing (press kits)
FAQs and/or How To often represent a good place to start. Typically questions equal verbatim search phrases. Questions and answers can be easily wrapped in schema markup which makes it eligible for rich snippet returns. FAQ is also a type of content that is easier to produce. Business owners know their business and the questions they get. The answers - the content - usually flow freely from them. The point here is that it represents easy equitable content. This low-hanging fruit should be grabbed.
How to Get Content?
Step 8 above in the planning phase addresses the actual creation of content. Of course, at Perfectly Optimized we have content writers skilled at weaving in your unique vocabulary with keyword search phrases, but again, content creation can feel expensive. A page ranges anywhere from $500 - $1500 to be created from scratch. While a page is easy to create a good page requires at least the following.
- Knowledge about the topic. If none is possessed then research is needed.
- Understanding of the reading audience. This can’t be overstated enough. Think about what reading grade level, tone, slang, or other nuances your readers will best receive.
- Structured words.
How Often Should I Make Content?
While there is no rule on a hard number, there are some general guidelines. You can also get an idea of the needed frequency by looking at other competitor websites in your industry. If you can get a sense of how many newsletters they put out, or how many new blog posts exist this lets you know their content frequency is at least what you should aim for.
However, make sure you never spread your content too thin. One quality page is worth more than 100 bad ones. Take the time that is needed to make the quality content you, the authority, are worthy of producing, otherwise, you risk the time you do spend is wasted. Even if someone beats you on frequency I would argue never let the quality of your content suffer.
The exception to this idea would be a news site, where speed and accuracy are both expected. But news sites represent a very unique and dynamic flow of information, an entire communication infrastructure that gets echoed through a webpage. This is much different than most other cases of small to medium-sized businesses needing to remain relevant.
So for all you small to medium-sized businesses, first let the frequency be of quality. Then through learning efficiencies in creating the direction of the content you need the speed of releases will increase naturally.
Summary: Content Strategy
Think of your content like a movie. Sure you can change it, but when it is perfect why would you? Like a good movie, it is going to bring a positive result every time it is engaged with. For businesses, it becomes a long-lasting sales person. Some pages can become long-time friends bringing engagement from new prospects. Now think of bad movies. Like bad pages they die a lonely death.
Take the time to invest in a strategy, then take the time to invest in good content. Contact Perfectly Optimized to help develop a customized content strategy for your business.