Content strategy 101
All companies (and people) have a digital footprint. If you’ve followed our work, you know we say that EVERYONE needs a digital strategy. [Yes, you do!] But one of the largest pieces of that digital strategy is your content. It’s an integral piece of your plans. If you’re a visual learner, come with us on this metaphor. Imagine your digital strategy is a wheel, your content strategy would be the hub (or the center of the wheel) where all the spokes (or content pieces) stem from. It’s the overarching tactics for how you’ll achieve your goals. Need another visual? Content strategy is the bridge between your business goals and your online presence. Yeah, it’s a big deal.
So, how do you build your content strategy? First, you need your digital strategy in shape. Meaning -- you need to know what your goals are, who your audience is, what your competitors are up to, what you are currently doing that’s working or what could be improved, and how you will measure your success. Yes, it’s a lot. But if you don’t know what your goals are or what success means to you, you’ll never know whether you’ve accomplished them.
Once you have your digital strategy in place, you can move on to the content strategy which is where a lot of the fun begins. You get to actually start creating stuff!
Here are our 5 top tips for building your own content strategy:
Be realistic. A big part of dreaming up your content strategy is the realism of your capabilities. Not everyone has access to a giant production company. Is someone on your team a great writer? Terrific! Tap them for blog posts. Have a budding photographer? Perfect! Get them shooting some Instagram drool-worthy shots for your social. Don’t have a lot of creatives on your team but have a budget? Never fear! There are lots of freelancers you could tap to create content for your channels. Just be realistic about the time, effort and capacity you and your team have before you put together a huge content calendar and realize that you don’t have anyone to actually produce it.
Focus on quality over quantity. Yes, we’re harping on this again. But no matter your industry, the market is saturated. You do need a decent amount of content to break through, but what you want to break through on is not something that is low-quality, poorly written, or filled with mistakes. You want your audience to enjoy the content they stumble across.
Keep your audience your main focus. How can you make their lives better? How can you impact their day? Are you inspirational? Funny? Helping them solve a problem? No matter what you produce you should always have your audience front of mind and be creating something that feels like it’s just for them.
Build out a content calendar. Organization is key to figuring out what method works best for you to reach your goals. Here at M.T. Deco, we use two different spreadsheets to track our content strategy. One is a long-term planning doc that includes our monthly theme, our monthly color palette, and the breakdown of our 16 posts we’ll produce that month. The second spreadsheet is a tactical in-production look at publish dates and status (in progress, waiting for graphics, waiting for edits, etc.). It keeps us organized, focused, and ensures we have a good mix of content for our audience.
Test, tweak, repeat. Don’t feel like you need to nail everything the first time you hit “publish.” Instead, start out with your initial strategy while keeping an eye on the metrics. Are certain posts performing well consistently? Produce more that fall into that category. Are others continually falling flat? Consider a way you could revamp them, or leave them out altogether. Do you feel like you’re overwhelmed trying to get it all done on the timeline you made? Consider a new workflow or less content overall.
Just like your digital strategy, you should constantly be honing and improving upon your content strategy. The important part is to just keep going. It can be tempting to say you’ve tried this for a month, didn’t see the results you wanted and stop putting in the time and effort on it. But the truth is, this work takes time and dedication. As long as you stick with it, keep following these tips, all your hard work will eventually pay off. We promise.