Content Strategy: What It Is & How to Get Started
In an era where we’re all constantly bombarded with information, a strategic approach to content creation and distribution is so important. If you’re looking to help your business stand out, engage your audience, and drive meaningful results with content, a content strategy is crucial.
What is Content Strategy?
Content strategy is the what, why, and how behind each piece of content you create. It involves planning, creating, distributing, and optimizing your content to reach your target audience and support business goals. With so many different content formats and online platforms to connect on, it’s easy to get lost and overwhelmed. You need a plan to make sure you’re making the most of your time, energy, and budget. In short, you need a content strategy.
We believe a good content strategy includes:
- Clearly identifying your target audience and understanding your customers
- Goals to ensure focus and accountability
- A documented editorial calendar that outlines topics, keywords, purpose, and type of content (videos, case studies, landing pages, blogs, etc.)
- Guidelines for quality, including editing and brand voice
- Distribution recommendations
- Tracking and reporting
“There’s no doubt that good content is an investment,” said Emily Miels, Inbound Marketing Strategist at E-Power. “Starting with a solid content strategy helps to ensure that investment pays off in the long run by aligning every piece with your brand, business goals, and audience’s needs.”
Content Strategy Tactics
Keep in mind, there are numerous content tactics and formats you can leverage as part of your content marketing strategy. Here are some examples of content businesses and our clients are using:
- Blog Posts & Articles
- Social Media Posts
- Thought Leadership Posts
- Landing Pages
- Videos
- Interactive Content
- Product Demos & Tutorials
- FAQs
- Emails/Newsletters
- Infographics
- Podcasts/Audio Content
- Webinars/Live Streams
- Case Studies & Whitepapers
- Ebooks
- Press Releases
- Print Publications
This is just a start. Of course, there are pros and cons to every type of content and a time and place for each. It’s up to you (or your marketing team) to figure out what to create and how to use the content to drive customers closer to your end goals.
Why Invest In Content Strategy
“Through consistent interaction and ongoing support over time, strategic content has the power to build trust, nurture relationships and, ultimately, turn strangers into loyal customers,” Emily said. “By providing value at every point, you go from an unknown to the go-to source when your ideal customers are ready to purchase or need your services.”
Benefits of a Solid Content Marketing Strategy
Our Content Marketing Strategy Framework
OK, that’s all great…but how do you actually create a content strategy? At E-Power, we use a comprehensive framework to develop and execute content tailored to your unique needs.
Step 1: Customized Goal Setting
Before we jump into any ongoing content development, we’ll help you clearly define business objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). These are part of the Strategic Marketing Guidelines we develop for every client that help us measure the success of content and other marketing efforts.
To ensure content is helping you meet your goals, some key metrics to consider include:
- Page Views
- Average Time on Page
- Organic Traffic
- Backlinks
- Keyword Rankings
- Conversion Rate
- Comments, Shares, and Reactions
- Leads & Sales
Step 2: Targeted Audience Research
We’ll work through questionnaires, education sessions, competitor audits, and other research to understand your target audience demographics, interests, preferences, and pain points.
This research serves as the basis for our Buyer’s Journey Maps and helps us outline key messaging and tactics to engage customers along their path to purchase.
Step 3: Research & Trends-Based Content Planning
We take that research and develop a quarterly editorial calendar, giving a big picture overview of topics and publish dates for the upcoming months that we think best align with your goals and audience. Our editorial calendars outline the format and direction of the piece and tie it back to your business goals and target audience.
We’ve found a quarterly plan allows for a structured yet flexible approach. We can plan ahead, take advantage of seasonality, and remain consistent. At the same time, you can adjust based on the data you’re seeing and not plan so far ahead that you miss out on emerging trends.
Step 4: Content Development
Now it’s time to bring your content plan to life by creating high-quality content that captures attention and showcases your brand. Whether it’s articles, videos, or infographics, we can take time-consuming content development off your plate and showcase your brand story across platforms.
Unlike freelancers and many niche agencies, our experienced content team works hand-in-hand with our search engine optimization (SEO), advertising, social media, and email marketing specialists for a well-rounded approach to content development. We also leverage a variety of advanced content tools to ensure top-notch quality and consistency in every project.
Step 5: Content Distribution and Promotion
Once the content is live, we’ll help you get the most out of every piece of content! As an end-to-end content marketing agency, our team can help you tailor the content and approach for each platform and audience touchpoint to maximize reach and engagement. We’ll distribute, repurpose and promote your content across various channels, including social media, email marketing, SEO, and advertising.
Step 6: Performance Measurement and Optimization
As your ongoing marketing partner, we’ll regularly monitor and analyze content performance according to your goals. You’ll receive a customized digital marketing dashboard that you can access whenever you want to check in on marketing performance.
We’ll identify what’s working well and what’s not and use that to guide ongoing marketing efforts. Looking at what content is generating traffic, conversions, and engagement helps us do more of what resonates with your audience and allows us to invest more in what’s driving the needle forward for your business.
What Does a Successful Content Strategy Look Like?
By implementing the above content strategy framework for one of our ecommerce clients, we’ve scored some big business wins.
We’ve been working with this client for over a decade, steadily growing their content library and optimizing their website.
We generally focus on creating two new blogs or resources per month, with increased efforts during their busy sales season. We also rewrite and optimize approximately one older content resource per month, ensuring we’re providing the best user experience possible.
This consistency and ongoing work pays off. Last year, the blog generated:
- More than $300,000 in assisted revenue
- More than 180,000+ website views
- 5,300 keyword rankings
Content was one piece of a well-rounded marketing strategy featuring digital advertising, SEO, social media, and email.
Last year, our efforts generated $2.7 million in sales.
5 Important Content Strategy Best Practices
Whether you work with a content marketing agency like E-Power or tackle content on your own, we don’t believe in gatekeeping. If you’re ready to tackle content strategy, here are some best practices our content team uses to get the best results from our content strategy framework.
1. Know Your Audience Inside Out
Don’t skip over the research stage or create based on intuition. Invest time in understanding your audience’s demographics, interests, behaviors, and pain points. Use tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and customer surveys to gather valuable data. This data can help you better understand the tone, topics, and content formats that will resonate with your audience.
2. Focus on Quality
Prioritize quality and relevance in every piece at a sustainable pace for your business. Instead of churning out high volumes of AI or mediocre content, create good content that adds genuine value and aligns with your audience’s needs and interests.
Look for ways to add authority and perspective, such as expert quotes, personal stories, case studies. and unique data. Also pay attention to things like content format, website design, page load speed, readability, and other optimization factors that impact user experience and perceived quality.
3. Repurpose & Recycle Your Content
No need to start from scratch every time. Maximize the ROI of your efforts by repurposing work into different kinds of content and distributing it across various channels.
For example, turn a blog post into a video, an infographic, email, or a social media series. This makes it easier to keep a consistent content cadence and allows your audience to engage on their preferred platforms.
4. Stay Agile and Iterative
Marketing is always evolving, so it’s essential to stay agile and adaptable. Continuously monitor performance metrics, gather feedback, read comments, and keep up with industry trends.
Use that information to tweak your content strategy and optimize results. (One of the major perks of working with a marketing partner like E-Power is that we stay on top of the latest marketing trends and data so you don’t have to.)
5. Embrace Authenticity
As you build your content strategy, make sure you’re staying true to your brand and, more importantly, your customers.
In a world of highly curated and filtered content, you can stand out by embracing the human-side of your business. That includes featuring the team members and customers that make your organization great, highlighting both wins and challenges, and being transparent every step of the way.
Let’s Do This!
As a leading content marketing strategy agency in Wisconsin, we’re passionate about helping you unlock the full potential of your marketing.
“At E-Power, we’re here to develop and execute a content marketing strategy that aligns with your business goals and generates meaningful results. That means we craft compelling content that’s tailored to your target audiences from start to finish. We’ll do the heavy lifting from ideation and strategy development to copywriting, optimization, and publishing. We’ll also report regularly on content performance, helping you understand what resonates with your audience and drives business results.”
– Adrian Bredeson, Owner, E-Power Marketing
