How To Lay The Foundation Of A Right Content Strategy?

What begins well ends well! You must have heard this phrase several times. But when it comes to content marketing, there is no end to it.

What begins well ends well! You must have heard this phrase several times. But when it comes to content marketing, there is no end to it. It’s an ongoing process. It won’t be wrong saying – what begins well continues to do well.

Though every business which is in online selling has benefitted in some or other way by incorporating content in their marketing efforts, it’s not a discipline that can be managed with a casual approach. With so many considerations to make, so many choices available, businesses need to lay the foundation of their content marketing strategy right. There is nothing one-size-fits-all approach; it can be a challenge for businesses to build an appropriate strategy to meet their unique business goals.

So, where does the right content marketing strategy begin?

Well, I would say, from imagining the future of your business. Obviously, you would want to put efforts to achieve something that you don’t have in present. And once you know where you want to be, you will have to master the art of making things possible.

Identify Your Business Goals

However, what you want to achieve should be feasible and measurable. This means that the right content strategy begins from identifying your business goals. The content should be in such that it helps you achieve your goals.

Identify Your Audience

Once you know where you want to be, the next step is to identify your audience and label them carefully. It also includes knowing their needs and requirements and segmenting them into different groups basis their interest, profession, lifestyle, financial status, etc.

Also don’t forget to analyze their information needs, preferred content types, information/media channels they visit and where they socialize.

This gives useful insights into what they like and expect from brands. Besides, the information collected acts as a basis for a solid content strategy.

Decide on Content Mix

What content type meets the need of your audience? You will find this out when you analyze where your target audiences fulfill their information needs, the conversations they indulge in and what they share.

You may find a few groups more active on social media while others on directory sites. Some may prefer video content while some in the form of short quickly digestible form.

How Are You Going to Produce Content?

From there, you can get into resources required to create content to meet the information needs of your audience. At this point, you again need to make a decision – how you want to get it done? There can be a number of resources – creating entire content in-house, outsourcing entire content production and distribution job and dividing the job among in-house employees and external content partner.

If you wish to get it produced in-house, you may need to incur a huge expense initially. This is because you will have to recruit people, build infrastructure and appoint experts. However, if you outsource the job completely, you may save a lot of money. The content marketing company will produce and publish content on your behalf and provide you with reports on monthly basis.

When you collaborate with an external partner, you can focus on your core business as well as keep a tab on your content marketing partner, while they can produce and publish content for you. This way you’ll enjoy better control over your content marketing campaign.

A right content marketing strategy can help you get maximum of your investment and effort.

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