Content Attributes
You know that you need content to help your business grow, but it is hard to stand out when the market is awash with content. An effective content strategy is not just limited to knowing your target audience and the niche for your business around which you will generate content. It is a way to understand your business goals and offerings and ensuring that all your efforts align with your marketing goals.
If you do not know where your business is moving, you will not be able to connect your audience with your business. When it comes to pulling customers, your conversation starts with the basics of what goals are associated with your business. If you know where your customer stands and where you have to take them to, you will be able to cover the journey smoothly. If you want to give confidence to your brand, you must know what you need to create to engage and help your audience. Before you plan the content strategy, you should ask the following questions:
Question 1: Who is your audience?
Unless you know whom you are targeting, it is not worth making a content strategy. Who will read your content? How will it help your audience? Is it serving a solution to your audience? You must have the answer to all these questions. Once you know your audience, you should figure out their current problems.
Most of the entrepreneurs reinvent the wheel and end up shutting down their business within a year. You must have an answer to how you can help your users. It will be a good idea to offer them a solution to their current problems.
If you are dealing with the product that people are already familiar to, make sure that you introduce new features to make it stand out. For instance, there are various software applications for optimising ad campaigns, but a few of them are one-size-fits-all.
Question 2: How will you track your progress?
If you think that your role is over after brainstorming a couple of topics, you will write on. You’re mistaken. For an effective content strategy, you need to analyse the progress. Unfortunately, no one tool will give you a report on the overall result. Different KPIs serve different goals.
First, you need to determine what will be your primary KPI. Are you interested in generating leads, or do you want to concentrate on website traffic? Knowing what wish to measure is a key to choosing the KPI for your content strategy.
Question 3: Does your audience have specific content needs?
Of course, you will brainstorm a couple of topics to generate content, but your audience may be looking for a specific type of content. An effective content strategy is one that solves the problems of users.
Since you are writing content for your audience, you should give priority to what they want to hear from you. You should coordinate with your audience. As most of the people are now present on social media, you can encourage people to let you know what they are looking for.
Your brand will gain reputation if you directly approach them to know their concerns. People value a company that understands their problems to offer the right solution. Another way to understand what people want from you is to refer “People Also Ask”.
Question 4: How will you produce content?
One of the significant challenges entrepreneurs face is finding out the ways to produce content. Some of the content you will present in the house and some of it you will outsource freelancers, and some of its influencers will provide.
When it comes to producing content, you must have a software tool that can organise everything at one place. Use a calendar that maps out creating content on different topics, publication and sharing on social media platforms.
Question 5: When does your audience actively read your content?
You have fascinating topics to share with your audience that you must want your audience to read, but you need to figure out which period of the day your audience is active. If you publish content when they are free, you are highly likely to have increased traffic to your audience.
As you will send in the notification to your subscribers, they will immediately click the link to know what new thing you have to offer them, but all your efforts will go in vain if you release new content when they are busy with other tasks.
Question 6: How much does it cost?
You will have to evaluate your budget before starting working on your content strategy. Will you have your staff to produce it or you will outsource it? Will you need to be paid advertising to promote your content or not?
You must have surplus money to hit the ground running, but even so, you can have a shortfall of cash. In this situation, you can take out guaranteed accepted loans.
Before you make a content strategy, you must answer all these questions so that you do not mess up.