What is content strategy?

 
What is content strategy?
 

This might not be a question you have asked yourself recently, or perhaps even at all, but content strategy is a key part of both marketing your business online, as well as conforming to who you are as a brand in the real world.

To us, content strategy is encompassed by the following phrase: ‘content strategy is the governance and planning of collateral as defined by an overarching business objective.’ In short, this means there should be a reason to everything you output, and for everything you output, that reason should be the same.

The reason that we highlight our definition is to isolate what we are trying to achieve with a content strategy. Why do you need one?

Lack of a content strategy can lead to a disjointed perception of your brand, not only from those reading your blog, but across social media too. There needs to be a high-level understanding of who you are as a business and what you are offering people. If you spend time building up content that highlights your authority in a given area, don’t expect people to respond well if you start trying to sell to them. Equally, if you mention how approachable you are and don’t respond on social media, you are again tarnishing the image you are trying to create of your brand.

A content strategy is an important part of overcoming this, in that it gives you a set of principles and guidelines that your content will need to adhere to. And this applies to content across the board, from print media and blog posts through to social media interactions. Each of these are an interface with your company, and disparity between them can lead to a confused message to customers.

That said, even having a content strategy might not help if you have not outlined the specific business objective you are trying to achieve. A lack of focus to content can lead to generic content that is unlikely to get shared on social media because it doesn’t engage with your audience; and who likes writing boring stuff like that anyway?

When we sit down and chat with our clients about their content strategy, we like to research the following: their company, their customers, and their competitors. We consider these the key areas that will deliver the required insight into how their content can be best delivered.

Each of these areas will help define the tone and style of the content they need to deliver, as well as how best to deliver it to engage with their primary audience. Analysing their competitors will give an indication of how they can fit into the market, where the competition can perhaps be emulated, or indeed beaten.

With the business objective defined, there is now a common goal that their content can aim for. The strategy does not stop there though; it should be proactive, in that it drives the type of content that is required. Beyond that, you should define a content calendar, which will help you progressively engage with your audience over time, ensuring that your message remains consistent and precise.

These are all things that we can help deliver, and often an ‘outside the box’ approach can yield some interesting ideas about how your business can progress.

We’re always happy to chat about how we can help improve your digital marketing, so please do get in touch; we’re happy to answer any questions.

January
January