Do you have a framework in place for your content strategy?
In other words, do you have your plan mapped out from A to Z?
Have you answered all the most important questions necessary to building your content strategy – and have you documented them?
For these reasons and more, it’s time to learn how to create your content strategy framework.
A content strategy is a plan that tells you exactly how to execute content marketing.
Your strategy is also a guide to success with content for your business.
It’s a research-backed, thought-out plan that tells you what kind of content to create, who you should create it for, what channels to post it to, when to post it, how to promote it, who should carry out each task, and what tools to use.
Brands and marketers that write down their strategies report more success than those that don’t. Specifically, planners are three times more likely to report success than their peers who don’t plan.
If a stranger signed on to your content marketing team, ideally, you could place your content strategy in their hands and they would understand exactly what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how to help make it happen.
To build your framework, answer these essential questions.
Building your content strategy framework must begin with uncovering the “why” behind it all.
Why are you creating content, and what do you hope to get out of it? What are your goals?
And don’t just say “We want more subscribers” or “We want more traffic” – that’s too general. Get specific, here.
How many more subscribers? How much more traffic? By what time?
Instead of setting vague goals, set SMART goals.
The beauty of goal-setting is that you can always tweak your goals along the way. As long as you’re tracking your progress, you’ll learn pretty quickly if you set your sights way too high, or if you’re underestimating what your content can do.
For example, say you set a goal of earning 50% more traffic in two months.
You’ll quickly find out whether that goal is way beyond your reach just by tracking your progress week by week.
So, tweak it: Maybe it won’t take two months, but rather 6-8 months. Flexibility within your goals and your plan is key.
Who do you hope will read the content you produce? Who will need the content you will produce?
Often, your target audience may surprise you and defy your assumptions about who they are. That means you should never define your audience based on guesses or unrealistic expectations.
Figure out who these people are on a basic level (job title, income, education, habits, preferences) through dedicated research, interactions, surveys, and social listening. Discover the channels they use to consume content.
And, if you find you have more than one type of audience you can target? Define each of your audience segments with separate personas.
These are basically fact sheets full of the traits, preferences, and challenges that most of your audience members have in common.
Next, decide on the content topics you will focus on and the formats you’ll use to get that information out there.
Choosing one or two overarching content topic areas of focus will give your content cohesion and relevance to two things:
The intersection of these two areas is your content sweet spot.
For example, if you sell photography services, you might publish content about photography tips and tricks, inspiration for sessions, and guides to getting the best family photos.
When deciding on the formats you’ll create, consider your resources and how your audience prefers to consume content.
Some types of content you might consider:
Even if you just choose to create a blog, there are limitless options for the content formats you can post there, like guides, checklists, infographics, stories, listicles, and more.
Where/when you publish content matters just as much as what you’re publishing.
Don’t choose your channels based on preference or whims. Instead, base this decision on where your audience is hanging out.
Do they eat up video content on YouTube? Do they love to listen to podcasts during their commute or while they make dinner? Or maybe they’re devoted to reading blog posts each morning with their coffee?
Similarly, when figuring out when to publish content and how often, look at your audience’s habits and preferences. When are they online? When are they on social media? When are they most likely to see your posts?
Whatever you do, always ensure your website is your home base. Every content channel can be linked up with your website and send readers and visitors there strategically.
Ultimately, your website is internet real estate you own and have the most control over. Make it the hub of your content to build longevity and authority online.
Content promotion is equal in importance to content publishing.
Often, promoting your content is the only way people will see it until you build up your brand presence.
So, make a promotion plan.
Choose a key promotion channel (again, based on your audience) and keep it simple.
Share a link to your new blog post when it goes live, whether you post on Facebook or send out an email to your subscribers.
In the process of executing content marketing, you need to be able to understand how your content is performing so you can adjust your strategy as necessary.
If what you’re doing is working, you can ramp it up.
If it’s not working, you’ll need to pivot and tweak your approach.
That’s why, to understand your content performance, you need to set specific key performance indicators (KPIs) and decide how you’ll track them.
For example, if you set of goal of earning more traffic by a specific time, you’ll need to track a KPI for that goal like unique website visitors.
You’ll also need a tool with the right data reporting to track the KPIs you choose. For the example above, we’d need the ability to track our website traffic numbers with a tool like Google Analytics.
See how that works? To sum up this process:
Finally, the last piece of your content strategy involves what I call “maintenance mode.”
How will you sustain the strategy in the future? How will you keep it running?
There are three questions to consider when we talk about maintenance:
Answer each of these questions with an outline of your set-up and structure.
Every successful content marketing campaign needs a strategy.
And every content strategy needs the right framework supporting it.
The key differentiator between results and crickets? Writing down your content strategy framework.
So don’t just ideate it – document it. Share it with your team. Follow your plan, measure and track results, and pivot as needed.
Map everything out, but keep it flexible. You’ve got this.
More resources:
Featured Image: dindumphoto/Shutterstock
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