HOW TO DEVELOP A CONTENT STRATEGY

Whether you're just starting out with social media marketing or you've been using the same platforms for a while, it’s always a great idea to know how to develop a content strategy. 

A good content strategy will help ensure that there’s a clear and unified intention behind what you communicate and that it's effectively helping to achieve your goals.

Content marketing is all about providing quality and meaningful content that’s relevant, useful, informative and entertaining. 

In this article we look at the steps to developing a content strategy that’s innovative and engaging for your prospects, customers and general audience.

First up, let’s look at: What is a content strategy?

A content strategy is a detailed plan for content creation and provides the framework for how it may be used to achieve your business goals. Your content strategy should be aligned with your overarching digital marketing strategy and social media marketing plan. 

Content can be audio, visual, or written and can be posted to social media platforms, websites/blogs, or in direct email messages.

A successful content strategy will attract your target audience at every stage of the customer journey and keep them engaged. The aim is often to increase brand awareness, build an audience, and attract prospects to your brand. Content can also be leveraged to make way for sales enablement and customer satisfaction improvements.

HERE IS A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO DEVELOPING A CONTENT STRATEGY

The steps below are intended to be a rough guide to developing a content strategy for your organisation. 

#1 Define your goals

Start your content strategy by defining your goals. Brainstorm with your team to create a clear list of achievable goals before you begin planning and revisit these goals regularly. 

Having a defined list of goals will give you a clear starting point and help you flesh out the finer details of your strategy later on.

Consider: Why do you want to produce content and what do you hope to achieve?

#2 Determine your customer persona

In order for your content to reach and resonate with your targeted audience, it’s important to identify who your customers are and what makes them tick. 

Collaborate with your team, as every person in the company can give great insights about what your audience wants and responds to.

Consider factors such as age, gender, demographics, and location. Also ask more complex questions like:

• What kind of language do they use? What tone of voice (eg. formal vs casual would they prefer?

• What forms of content are they likely to find amusing and entertaining?

• Which social media platforms are they most actively using?

• What topics are they passionate about?

• What influences their consumption choices?

Knowing your target audience helps to produce relevant and valuable content that they'll want to read, comment on, share and subscribe to. 

By including a customer persona analysis in your content strategy document you will provide your team with a clear point of reference to ensure that content is always on point.

#3 Run a content audit

A content audit will help you determine what resonates best with your audience and identify gaps in content topics. Audits also help you discover ways that your social media presence could improve. 

Audits are an excellent planning resource and roadmap for future content creation. When completing your own content audit, include the following topics:

• Categories/pillars for content creation: These could include inspiration, tips, and promotions. Consider your goals from step 1 and identify the types of content that will assist in achieving them.

• Ways to build brand awareness: To build brand awareness you need to have defined your audience and set guidelines for how to most effectively be visible. Set targets and experiment with posting on different platforms to see which one delivers the best results.

• How to plan and structure your content: Decide on how often you want to publish content (3 times a week is great). Consider the benefits of using content planning tools like Planoly or Later to form structure and a cohesive visual identity.

• How to increase community engagement: How can you entice your audience to leave comments and send you messages? Even better, saved and shared content is amazingly effective. Consider call-to-action opportunities, where your audience will reply and interact via polls and feedback. Think about these aspects of engagement in relation to your brand and include ideas in your plan.

Ascetics: What colour palette will you use and what themes/styles will you adopt in order to create a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing feed? Think about what your brand represents and come back to consider your target audience and the choices they will identify and respond to best.

#4 Brainstorm content ideas

There are a variety of options out there for the types of content you can create, from visual imagery and video and written content like blog posts to audio content like podcasts. 

Get together with your team on a regular basis to brainstorm content ideas and concepts. Link these ideas back to the customer persona, and list all good ideas under the content pillar categories mentioned in step 3. This will provide a structure for ideas when seeking inspiration.

#5 Schedule, publish, and manage your content

Content management includes the creation of content, the publication of that content, and content analytics. 

A regular posting schedule will help keep your audience engaged and your account visible to new viewers. In this regard, a content planner can help you keep on track and stick to a regular posting schedule. 

Create a monthly content planner and fill the schedule according to your content goals, around 3 times a week is great! Complete the creation of your content in advance and upload it to your planner as soon as possible.

A content scheduler will enable you to schedule posts in advance, publish posts at specific times, manage messages and comments, and track your content in an easy and sustainable way. 

There are many systems available to use and everybody wants to know “What is the best one?”This is a little bit like asking, “What is the best flavour of ice cream?”.

Sure, everyone’s got their answer, but it’s difficult to come up with a factual and definitive response that works for all situations. However, we suggest that you start with Meta Business Suite which works well, is easy to navigate, and is also a very popular choice.

Handy tips: It also helps to have some extra content prepared in case the need arises.

If you want to free up your time, as content creation can be time-consuming and requires a lot of staff capacity, you may want to hire a professional social media marketing agency like Green Socials to take care of all your content needs for you.

At Green Socials we provide a range of social media services for eco-friendly businesses in Australia including Instagram & Facebook management, LinkedIn management, and our IG Powerhour social media consulting services.

A content marketing strategy is an ever-evolving plan

If you’ve been looking for ways to develop a content strategy, then hopefully this article has given you some useful pointers and inspiration to get started. 

The key to developing a successful content strategy is to provide your business with an actionable framework for producing content that can be optimised in order to plan future content. 

It’s also best to create and schedule content with a targeted purpose or goals in mind and to review your content strategy regularly.

At Green Socials, we help brands develop content strategies as part of our goal to provide online marketing for eco-conscious businesses in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Margaret River, Tasmania, or anywhere in the world. If you have a purpose-led brand and you’d like to elevate your brand using the power of social media, then get in touch with us to see how we can work together.