Content marketing has become a crucial growth strategy for most businesses. And it is all for good reasons. Content marketing helps increase visibility due to better ranking on search engines. It also gives you an opportunity to provide value by answering your customers’ questions. This not only sets you apart as credible and authoritative, but also builds customer trust and loyalty. In addition, good and engaging content is valuable in connecting and nurturing relationships with your customers. Ultimately, it leads to quality leads and more sales.

However, it would be quite difficult to see good content marketing results without a solid content strategy. In this article, we address a successful content strategy - what it is and the tools and techniques that you need to create one.

What is a successful content strategy?

A content strategy is a detailed plan on how to develop and manage content. This can be anything from video, blog posts, social media posts, podcasts and the like. A successful one is a strategy that helps you achieve your set goals. It does so by allowing you to attract and engage your target customers at every step of their buying journey.

To develop a successful content strategy customized for your business, you need to answer a few questions. They include:

• What do you want to achieve?
• Who are you creating content for, and what are their buyer personas?
• What type of content do you need to focus on to achieve your goals?
• What is your brand voice to use in the content?
• What style guides to follow for written content?
• What is the distribution plan, which channels to focus on, and when should you publish each content piece?
• How do you track and measure results, what are the KPIs?

However, creating a successful content strategy isn’t such an easy task to undertake on your own. You can make it easy by working with a digital marketing agency. Find an SEO agency that understands your business. You should be able to get valuable advice on how to create a strategy that helps you achieve your goals. In addition, a good SEO company can help you integrate SEO in your strategy to ensure that you rank higher in search engines.

Creating high-quality content

Creating high-quality content should be your primary focus in your content strategy. This means creating content that is engaging, helpful, accurate, comprehensive, educational and interactive.

One thing to keep in mind is that your target audiences know what they want. It is unlikely that they will stick longer if your content isn’t satisfying. That is why you should strive to meet their needs. If they are looking for answers to their questions, or want to buy products, your content should serve their search intent.

High-quality content is also important for SEO. If you produce low-quality content, Google has a way of detecting that. This can mean your pages ranking lower in the search engines. Another advantage is that high-quality content can give you a competitive edge over your competitors.

Importance of having a content calendar

Consistency is very important for your content strategy as it helps keep your audiences engaged. But, it can get a bit hard when dealing with multiple platforms. A content calendar can be a valuable tool to stay organized. You can use a content calendar to organize content ideas, when to write and edit, and then publish in different outlets. This ensures that you stay consistent and enhances efficiency.

Tips and tools for creating high-quality content

1. Focus on your readers

When creating content, you are doing it for your target audiences to consume. It is very critical that you create content that they actually want. That starts by understanding who you are writing for. Who is your buyer persona? What are their interests and preferences? What information are they looking for? You can use tools such as ExplodingTopics and BuzzSumo to find topics that people want. Persona templates can also come in handy in developing your buyer persona.

2. Create engaging and readable content

Make sure to use a simple format with clear headings and simple paragraphs. Use bullet points for easier reading. Eliminate hard-to-read sentences. You can use Hemingway Editor to edit your piece to make it easy to read.

3. Ensure relevance

Providing inaccurate and outdated information can hurt your credibility and trust. Always aim to provide the right information that is helpful to the readers. This can mean updating old posts to eliminate irrelevant information.

4. Eliminate grammatical errors

Improper punctuation, misspelling, and other grammatical errors can create a bad impression on your audiences. Make sure to proofread every piece before publishing. Google Docs and Grammarly are good tools to help you with this.

5. Use visuals

Adding visuals to your content can be a great way to make it easy to digest. Visuals also make reading interesting, which enhances engagement. Make use of videos, charts, screenshots, photos, and the like.

Promoting and distributing content

After writing great content, you need to put it out there for your target audience to see. Below are some strategies and tools that you can use to promote and distribute content:

Leverage your emailing list – SendPulse has a bulk email service that can help you create professional email marketing campaigns that you can use to notify your subscribers about your content

Use guest posting and link back to your content – A simple Google search with relevant keywords can unlock sites in your niche that accept guest posts

Share on social media – Identify platforms where your target audiences frequently post your content there. You can use a tool such as Hootsuite to manage your social media pages on one platform

Use paid advertising – Create ads that resonate with your buyer persona on different platforms such as Amazon, Instagram, and Facebook

Work with popular bloggers and influencers in your field – BuzzSumo can help you search for successful bloggers that you can contact. Use the Content Analyzer feature to find high-performing articles

Tactics to boost business success

Having your content strategy in place is not yet a done deal. The digital marketing space keeps evolving. You need to keep improving your strategy if you are to continually reap the best results. Here are some techniques that you can use:

• Experiment with new types of content
• Audit your existing content library to find areas to improve
• Discover new topics and content ideas that resonate with your target audiences
• Update existing content to match user intent and meet SEO requirements
• Use keyword research tools such as Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner to search trending keywords
• Repurpose old content, for instance, you can repurpose a video interview as a blog post
• Make use of user-generated content such as user reviews and customer testimonials
• Optimize content for SEO to enhance visibility
• Leverage the power of tools and templates to streamline and automate processes

Measuring and analyzing content performance

Your content strategy should fulfill the goals that you have set. If it is not doing so, then it is a waste of your efforts. Analyzing and measuring content performance gives you insights whether the strategy is meeting the intended purpose. It will help you identify content that is performing poorly, so you can work on improving it. Here are some metrics and tools to measure performance:

Traffic – Use Google Analytics to see the number of site’s visitors and page views.

Engagement – This measures time spent on a page, bounce rate, and a number of pages visited. You can use Google Analytics Audience Overview feature to see this information.

SEO performance – How well is your content ranking on search engines? Google Search Console can help you monitor your ranking and show you the keywords that you are ranking for.

Authority – Measure how your page ranks as compared to the competition. Moz can help you see this as well as show keywords that others are ranking for.

Conversions – Visit the behavior section of Google Analytics to see the sales generated on your site.

Conclusion

Content allows you to connect with your audiences and establish yourself as an authority. It also boosts your SEO efforts. But, that would be difficult without a good content strategy in place. To create one successfully, define your goals and identify your buyer persona. Brainstorm on the content ideas to focus on and your style guide. Put in your brand tone and create a strong promotion and distribution strategy. You also want to define KPIs to measure performance. Make sure to leverage tools such as BuzzSumo, Google Analytics, Moz, Google Docs and more.