Creating a Content Strategy

 

 

A content strategy is a plan in which you use content (audio, visual, and/or written) to achieve your business goals. A successful content strategy will attract your target audience at every stage of their journey with you and keep them engaged even after they have worked with you.

1. Who will be reading your content?

Who’s the target audience for your content? For how many audiences are you creating content?

Just as your business might have more than one type of customer, your content strategy can cater to more than one type of user. Using a variety of content types and channels will help you deliver content that’s tailored to each persona.

2. What problem will you be solving for your audience(s)?

Ideally, your product or service solves a problem you know your audience has. By the same token, your content coaches and educates your audience through this problem as they begin to identify and address it.

A sound content strategy supports people on both sides of your product: those who are still figuring out what their main challenges are, and those who are already using your product to overcome these challenges.

Your content reinforces the solution(s) you’re offering and helps you build credibility with your target audience.

3. What makes you unique?

Your competitors likely have a similar product as yours, which means your potential customers need to know what makes yours better — or, at least, different.

Maybe your main asset is that your company has been established for many years. Or perhaps you have a unique brand voice that makes you stand out from your competitors.

To prove why you’re worth buying from, you need to prove why you’re worth listening to. Once you figure that out, permeate that message in your content.

4. What content formats will you focus on?

To figure out what formats to focus on, you need to meet your audience where they are. While you may to tempted to launch a podcast since it’s grown so much in the last few years, or launch a YouTube channel, find out first where your audience lives. Otherwise, you may waste time creating content that either won’t reach your audience or capture their attention.

Once you identify the best formats, start creating a budget to assess what resources you can allocate to execute this strategy.

5. What channels will you publish on?

Just as you can create content in different formats, you’ll also have various channels you can publish to, from your website to social media.

This, again, will reflect where your audience lives. If your audience prefers long-form video content, you may opt to publish your content on YouTube. If you have a younger audience that likes quick content, you may opt for TikTok and Instagram.

We’ll talk more about social media content strategy in the step-by-step guide later in this course.

6. How will you manage content creation and publication?

Figuring out how you’ll create and publish all your content can be a daunting task.

Before you execute, it’s important to establish:

• Who’s creating what.

• Where it’s being published.

• When it’s going live.

• In a small team, this may be easy enough as you may be the sole decision-maker. As your company grows, you may need to collaborate with several content teams to figure out an effective process.

Today’s content strategies prevent clutter by managing content from a topic standpoint. When planning a content editorial calendar around topics, you can easily visualise your company’s message and assert yourself as an authority in your market over time.

Here ar

Educate	Engage	Entertain	Inspire
How To’s	Questions	Jokes/Funny Story	Quotes
Quick Tips	Polls	GIFS / Memes	Story Telling
Info / Did You Know	Contests	User Generated Content	Testimonials
Promote	Projects / Work	Personal
Products	Work In Prog	Stories
Upcoming Events	Before & After	Fact
Subscribe	Past Projects

 

Whether its is photos, carousel posts, reels, long form video or 20 second stories it must be either:

• Educational content – Creating value-driven educational content is a great way to get started on reels—especially since people are encouraged to share and save reels. Here are some examples of educational content: Five things to do before you start to build, layout ideas or plans, and top three things to look for in a good builder. Think of tips and advice that your audience wants and needs.
• Products or services – Reels are primarily seen by non-followers, which means this a great way to promote your business to new people. Share how-to’s, before and afters, vlog-style videos with your products—anything to catch people’s attention.
• BTS (Behind the Scenes) – People want to see more relatable and raw content on social media. BTS videos are a great way to be more personable and to build rapport with people. Share things like your business story, a day in the life at your company, or funny, relatable clips of you and your team.

Keep these tips in mind:

• Keep the videos short, simple, and easy to follow.
• Include captions and text overlays for accessibility.
• Use trending sounds in the background (when possible).
• Include keywords related to your business in your videos, captions, and hashtags.

The goal is to connect with them through your imagery:

• Provide value through education, humour, or inspiration.
• Build trust through customer reviews or user-generated content.
• Encourage interaction so users will save, share, and like your posts.

When you are creating your Captions & posts:

Personal Speech Phrases  💡 What words of phrases do you say all the time? If you don’t know ask your team.

Feels Check  💡 Does your content make your client FEEL the way you desire them to feel? For example, if your brand is an inspirational brand is your post inspiring?

Offer Seeding 💡 Did you mention your current offer / event/ build  or tease that you’re working on a new offer / event/ build ?

Testimonial or Result  💡 Does your post have a client result or a testimonials baked into it? You can reference it in your caption or use it in your graphic / video

Analogies  💡 Analogies help the client to more deeply understand what you’re talking about. 

Community  💡 Did you reference your community at all? Use words like “we”, “us” instead of just “I” to create a sense of community.

Hooks  💡 Hooks are designed to grab your readers attention so that they either keep reading or keep watching your content. They’re traditionally 5-10 seconds long & are the first sentence of your video or caption / carousel.

Call to Action  💡 Now that you’ve helped your client with your content, what do you want them to do next?

 

Next Lesson: Types of Content For Social