Andriana BoyrikovaThe development, implementation, and monitoring of a content strategy is vital in today’s digital world. Did you know that 84% of companies worldwide have a documented content strategy while only 11% evaluate their content strategy as an excellent one? But what is a content strategy and why should you care?
As a small business owner you can’t enjoy the luxuries of big enterprises. You might find it more difficult to make your marketing efforts pay off as you have a limited budget and small staff. However, you can still overcome some of your challenges with proper strategizing.
A content strategy can consolidate all your current and upcoming initiatives, allowing for an organized and efficient content creation process, while it helps you build and maintain a professional business image.
Why do you need a content strategy?
Perhaps you have already applied the following content forms: a business blog on your website, free e-books or white papers, social media posts, webinars, podcasts, emails and newsletters. But is there any strategy behind creating and publishing all this content? Or are you posting whenever the inspiration strikes you or you have something to announce?
Content is your only way to get the attention of your prospects and keep the attention of your current customers. A content strategy will give you the clarity that is required at each step of your marketing and communications practices and content creation process.
One of the primary purposes of a content strategy is to help you eliminate content ideas that fail to serve your target audience and your business. In a nutshell, a content strategy helps you systematically create relevant and valuable content that adds value and appeals to your ideal customers, building trust and arousing genuine interest in your products or services.
What is a content strategy?
But what is a content strategy? Let’s start with explaining what ISN’T a content strategy.
Perhaps you have defined your tone of voice, content formats, distribution channels, and posting frequency. But this isn’t a content strategy: it is an editorial planning. Of course, you need that but there are other things you need to figure out before you plot your content ideas on a calendar. You put the cart before the horse starting with a content planing without a content strategy in place.
Content strategy isn’t planning and it isn’t execution: it is the process you go through to get to the planning step that then leads you to execution.
You might want to get started with producing content right away because there are things that you find important and you want to share with your target audience. But be careful: you run the risk of losing sight of why you are creating content in the first place and who you are creating it for (remember: you don’t create content for yourself but for your ideal customers).
A content strategy focuses all your efforts on your Why and is tied to your overall business goals.
A content strategy defines:
- who you want to reach and why
- what content you need to create
- how and when you need to create, distribute, and promote it
- customer journey
- content objectives
- resources and capabilities assessment
- content creation process
- distribution channels and amplification practices
- how you will measure if you have reached your set goals
- KPIs
- and more.
Benefits of a content strategy for your small business
1. A content strategy helps you reach your ideal customers
Every business has its ideal customers – the people who are most likely to purchase the product or service that you offer because it meets their exact needs. A content strategy helps you add value to your ideal customers by creating content that is relevant to their needs and pain points and answers their questions.
After all, the goal of all your content endeavors should be to provide the right content to the right people at the right time, and a comprehensive strategy helps you achieve this. With the right people I mean your clearly defined target audience (I guess your target audience isn’t everyone, or is it?) and with the right content I mean content that they will consume and act on.
2. A content strategy makes content creation easier
Are you at a loss what to post on your blog or social media? Have you run out of original ideas for your next newsletter? Once you understand and define your Why, the brainstorming and implementing of content ideas will smooth itself out.
Each piece of content you create should be tied to a goal that is directly related to your business goals.
A content strategy gives you the needed clarity so that you can create content in line with your goals and avoid wasting time on content that doesn’t resonate with your target audience and isn’t aligned with your business goals.
3. A content strategy helps you stay organized
With a content strategy, you (and your team) can stay organized and make consistent tactical content decisions at any time, even when obstacles come up along the way (and they always do). A content strategy will make it much easier for you to prioritize what needs to get done and when.
Knowing how to plan and organize your content initiatives will enable you to make confident – and clever – decisions also when it comes to what topic to talk about, what format your content should take, where and how often to publish it, and how to distribute it effectively.
4. A content strategy improves consistency
Publishing unconnected pieces of content will surely confuse your audience, and so will sporadic company updates created for the sake of positing something. This can look like disengagement and negligence from your side and can potentially turn off your target audience.
A content strategy helps you create an overview of when and how often you should create content to ensure a consistent stream of relevant content. This, however, doesn’t mean you should post every single day: it is crucial that you create a feasible schedule, so if this means posting once a week, this is perfectly acceptable as long as you can follow through with it.
6. A content strategy saves you time and effort
Creating relevant and valuable content is difficult and time consuming, especially if you don’t know what you are doing: you are wasting precious time that you can invest in running your business.
Knowing who you are creating content for and what they want, why you are creating content, how to create and distribute content, and ensuring you have a streamlined and efficient process can significantly reduce the amount of time and effort that you and your team invest in content creation.
Conclusion
I can keep enumerating all other benefits of developing, implementing, and monitoring a content strategy, but I know you don’t have much time as you have a business to run.
So remember: a content strategy is your roadmap to achieving your business goals through content, and it is a must-have tool for organized, consistent, and efficient content creation practices.
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I hope you have found these tips helpful. Do you have a content strategy? Let me know in a comment.
Featured image: Kelly Sikkema, Unsplash.
Note: this article was first published in Dutch on Business Women Nederland.
Do you need a hand with your content strategy? Email me and I would love to help you.
