5 Ways to Build a Content Strategy that Works for Your Business

Content is important for any brand, but it takes more than just a good idea to make your content work for you. It takes time and effort to craft a solid content strategy that you can use to build a loyal audience, grow your brand, and drive sales.

In this article we'll go over 5 key steps that will help you do just that.

Set Your Goals

When you start the process of building a content strategy, it's important to first set some goals. There is no point in creating content without knowing what it's supposed to achieve and how it will be used. Don't worry about what other people's goals are for now. Instead, define your own objectives for the upcoming months or years.

The problem with setting goals too early on is that they can change as you learn more about your business and take steps toward achieving them.

Instead of looking at a long-term goal like "grow my email list by 500 subscribers this year," try writing down some shorter-term ones like "get 250 likes on Facebook per month" or "drive 100 unique visitors per day through Google Analytics."

These smaller achievements will help you stay focused on improving your business while making sure that whatever idea gets implemented works well in practice before scaling up (and hopefully doesn't crash and burn).

Craft Your Message

Crafting a message is one of the most important steps in creating a content strategy that works for your business. You need to know:

• What you want to say

• How you want to say it

• Why you want to say it (and who will benefit from hearing what you have to say)

• Who should hear it

Start with a one-sentence summary of what you want to say. Then, expand that into a paragraph or two about what your business does and why it's important to the people who will read your content. From there, write down specific problems that you’re solving for customers and how they can be solved by using your product or service.

Target Your Audience (Based on Actual Data)

Once you've defined your target audience, it's time to identify who is actually in that group. And the best way to do that? Data.

Understanding which demographics are engaging with your brand, products and services can help you better tailor content for specific audiences. This data can also be used to find out what content these people might like or need, and even provide a blueprint for how to create content based on what has worked well in the past.

In short: Data helps you create better content for more people, which is always going to be more effective than just slapping together some blog posts and hoping for the best (which no one does).

Plan Your Channels & Distribution Schedule

Planning your channels and distribution schedule is crucial. As you plan out your content strategy, think about where your audience is and how often they consume content. Your plan should include how long each piece of content will be posted for. Will it be a week? A month? Or longer?

Measure and Evaluate

It’s important to measure the success of your content strategy. You can do this by measuring:

• The number of visitors each piece of content gets (and how those visitors convert)

• How much time people spend reading it

• Whether they share it on social media, or otherwise recommend it to others

You should also look at what worked well, and try more like that in the future. This will help you improve your overall strategy for creating content for your business.

Follow these five steps to build a solid content strategy.

• Know what you want to achieve before you start

• Know your audience and what they want to hear from you

• Plan your content across different channels

• Measure the effectiveness of your content

• Reflect on what worked and what didn't

Conclusion

So there you have it: the five steps to building a content strategy that works for your business.

It takes time, dedication and hard work, but if you follow these guidelines, you’ll be well on your way toward creating a marketing plan that will help grow your company in the long run.

Need help creating content that converts to sales? Click here to schedule a free consultation so that we can help you!