Dana ChenContent strategy shouldn’t be a guessing game. You need a long-term mindset, data-driven insights and a secure knowledge of your audience.
Here are 10 insights you need to craft a successful content strategy, along with an infographic to tie it all together.
Target Intenders
Intenders are the core of your content marketing strategy. They have interacted with your brand in some way and come to you as a potential customer with a specific agenda.
Topics of Interest
These are your intender’s desired content topics as they relate to your brand. For example, a cleaning products brand should determine whether its intenders want spring cleaning tips, stain removal steps or bleach storage advice.
Search Terms
Overlay topics of interest with search terms based on your brand’s KPIs. For example, if you’re looking to increase SEO, look at content that garners the most sessions per article.
Gaps
You’ve got to mind the gap, or the disparity between what you think your intenders are interested in and what they actually want. A gap analysis is the best way to do this.
Interest Overlap
Overlap tells you how intenders interact with content completely outside of your brand. For example, a finance brand should learn what its intenders want in terms of travel advice, diet tips or even fashion content.
Competitive Audit
Start with an audit of your own content library, which will tell you the topics that already resonate with your audience. Compare that to the top five sites in your brand niche, then create more content in their sweet spot (or create more of the content that differentiates you from them).
Interest Velocity
Interest velocity indicates when certain topics will peak for your intenders. For example, holiday budgeting starts in September, so surface related content during that time (not December).
Editorial Calendar
This will document your content plan, from objectives to seasonality and promotions. Be sure to look at your typical traffic dips and highs so you can plan accordingly.
Formats
This should be based on the KPIs you’re trying to achieve. If you want to drive engagement, create visual formats. To increase time on site, focus on quizzes. Learn more about choosing formats here.
Devices
You must consider where your intenders will view your content. Place major emphasis on desktop, mobile and tablets.
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