Read This Before Building Your Content Strategy

Grace Christos

3 years ago

Using social media as a tool in business requires that you have a strategy. If you have to churn out content, you need to be able to tell what your audience needs, the format they will most resonate with, and the action you want them to take.

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Trying to consider all of these with every content one after the other can be nerve-wracking and time-consuming. To be on top of things, you need a strategy that covers all parts of your content in bulk. This will inform your delivery process and build a connection with your community. Reasons Why You Need A Strategy

You can create content on autopilot and work on other parts of your business.
You get to produce content that gets results because it will speak to your target audience.
It helps you stay organized as you figure out content for your business.
You can go back to the strategy board if something is not working.

Building a strategy is not something very complex; it is like a series of plans you make in your content, but how do you get started?

Build a clear funnel: Have your customers’ journey in mind. It usually comes in 4 stages – Awareness, Interest, Decision, and finally, Action. Your customers are on different journeys. Sectioning your content across each stage helps to cater to every category.

For instance – You have a fashion business that deals with female ready-to-wear outfits. Awareness stage content can involve talking about female fashion and colours. During the interest stage, you can make fashion tutorials on places to wear your outfits too. During the Decision phase, show social proof – people wearing those outfits, testimonials, and reviews, etc. This funnel helps you section your content ideas and lets you know how to space them.

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When you gain new followers or subscribers from a brand partnership or a shout-out, it could mean that you need to create more Awareness and Interest content so people can tell what you do.

Set goals: Understand what your business needs and set goals accordingly. Any goal is valid as long as it is in the best interest of the business.

Your goals might be – attracting a new audience, more sales, increased leads, increased sign-ups, more engagements etc. Whatever goals you have will inform the kind of content you create.

Research: Understanding industry trends is a very much needed skill in your strategy. See what your competitors are doing and build on your Unique Selling point (USP).

You are able to stay focused and remain in sync with others in your niche.

Have content pillars: These are categories of content that your content is typically found in.

Sticking with our fashion brand, for instance, content pillars may include; colour combinations, fashion tutorials, etc.

Create a calendar to create content: You now understand your business goals, your funnel, and you have pillars for your content. Now is the time to get all your ideas together into an inclusive calendar. It can last for a week, two weeks, or even a month.

Batch create your content from the calendar and post. Space your content but also stay consistent to be able to measure results.

Engage your audience and track results: If you do not track how well the strategy performed, you probably will not be able to tell if it worked or not. As you engage with your audience, make sure to use Key Performance Indexes(KPIs) to know if you are on par with your goals.

There you go. You can use your strategy as many times as you want as long as it is relevant to your business because it sure keeps you relevant in business. Featured Image Source: State of Digital Publishing

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