6 Reasons Why You Need a Content Strategy.

A content strategy is a critical factor regarding business performance. Content strategies enable businesses to define their marketing goals and plan their work to ensure that every effort is goal-driven. 

According to Neil Patel, 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day, and if an SEO guru says content marketing is a must-have strategy for every business, we best believe him!

What is a Content Strategy?

First things first, content strategy and content marketing are two different things. A content strategy uses content to convey your business goals and showcase your products or services without sounding salesy.

For example, if one of your goals is to increase brand equity to gain customer loyalty and ultimately generate leads, you might implement a content strategy focused on brand differentiation and use SEO to drive traffic. Through tailored and optimized content, your audience can tell whether your brand stands out from the competition.

Bill Gates was onto something in 1996 when he said: “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet…“

A content strategy is not optional—business owners need to understand that delivering high-quality content to meet business needs can build trust among new readers/viewers and help achieve long-term success.

You need to identify why you need a content strategy before implementing one.

Here are some questions to consider:

• What do we want to achieve through content creation?
  
  
• Why are we creating this short-form or long-form content piece?
  
  
• Have we identified our audience?
  
  
• What actions or reactions are we aiming for?
  
  
• Will we promote our content?
  
  
• How will the published content be promoted?
  
  
• How will our content reach our audience?
  
  
• What types of content will we create?
  
  
• Where and when will we publish our content?
  
  
• Who will create the content?
  
  
• How will we maintain consistency (in brand voice and tone) across all channels?

Content marketing is a major trend, but many marketers overlook the importance of planning, structure, and documentation. Documenting your content strategy is a fail-proof approach to ensure your work delivers tangible results.

Helps you Identify Goals.

A content strategy will remind your team why your business exists in the first place. Since content creation is part of your marketing tactics, it should help achieve your vision. Therefore, you need to communicate your business goals to all parts of your company to ensure that you’re curating content that matches your target market.

For instance, using long-tail keywords can yield better results than short competitive keywords. Being cognizant of the ultimate goals of your content creation ensures that your time and efforts are not being wasted.

Content strategies structure your marketing goals and define priorities.

Tracking Progress Becomes Easier.

Content strategy is only worth implementing if you have identified your goals and recognized the metrics. Metrics make it more manageable to align the people and systems involved with your goals.

According to Bright Edge, these are the 4 ways to define your content success:

1. Determining whether your content can be easily found through site visitors, CTR, clicks, and impressions.
   
   
2. Ensuring that your content is engaging. Considering time on page and bounce rate is a good start.
   
   
3. Connecting your content strategy to every stage of the funnel to maximize customer retention.
   
   
4. Checking whether your content is worthy to be shared.

Metrics should be set and tracked according to the results you seek to achieve and the platforms being used. This might be redundant, but your metrics have to be adjusted as per your short-term and long-term goals. An effective content strategy requires metrics to be analyzed to gauge your quarterly results.

Helps you Identify New Possibilities

Content creation is largely about engagement, and one of the reasons to create content is to increase brand loyalty. A strong content strategy takes into account events, new topics, news, and trends to keep up with the audience. These are elements that should be injected into the creation plan, and therefore, content strategies need to be somewhat flexible to allow for content adjustments when required. For instance, if your site is about raising awareness regarding refugees, you need to be on the lookout for relevant and up-to-date news to keep your audience hooked.

Consider including avenues for news to refresh your story ideas. Without coordination, your strategy is likely to suffer from poor organization.

Content Strategies are a Cheaper Advertising Alternative.

Careful planning is essential to ensure that you’re not overspending when curating and distributing content. The issue is that marketers often tend to overlook the financial aspect of content strategies and later must bear the consequences of inadequate funds.

A good content strategy defines not only the metrics but also considers the costs involved in content marketing. Identifying alternatives and reducing costs should be a priority for marketers.

Content strategies should focus on delivering goal-driven, consistent content that attracts a clearly defined audienceand ultimately leads to sales. A lack of planning might undermine your overall marketing strategy.

Strategies Boost up Productivity.

We all know how hard it can be to boost team motivation. This is why you need a documented content strategy that helps in keeping track of progress, results, and errors, making it easier for your team to deliver result-driven content rather than engaging in trial and error. Documented content strategies enhance team productivity and ensure that everyone is accountable for their content delivery.

By documenting your strategy, your team can stay on top of what needs to be repurposed, what needs to be posted, and update the content calendar accordingly.

It also makes it clearer for everyone to recognize their roles and keep up with the workflow. Once everyone understands your expectations, it’s easier to set performance metrics and provide guidelines—all of which, in turn, increase productivity.

Turning Leads to Sales.

Content creation can enhance brand awareness and help build loyalty. Engagement and loyalty are key factors in turning your audience into leads and ultimately, sales. Beyond excellent customer service, content is essential to convert leads on an ongoing basis.

As mentioned earlier, the consistency of your brand’s tone and voice builds credibility and resonates with your audience. By identifying your target audience, you can determine the right tone, style, and format for your content. These steps are crucial and cannot be skipped when designing your content strategy.

A good content strategy provides a clear vision of what it aims to achieve and which promotional channels to leverage. Every element mentioned above serves as a guideline for your team and all parts of your business.

Conclusion