A content strategy is point “A” on the way to business promotion. Without it, it will be difficult to know what and when to post on the site’s blog and social media accounts.
You won’t be able to pique your audience’s interest and lead them to sales and greater bets at a bet app Uganda if you publish articles and posts chaotically or irregularly. Accordingly, the effort invested in promotion will be wasted.
Table of Contents
What Is a Content Strategy
Let’s indicate right away that if you have a document, where you have a table with the topics on which and on what day the post or story will be published, it’s not a strategy.
It’s a content plan according to which the posting will be done. Even if the plan says what the purpose of the post is, that’s not a strategy.
Let’s look at what goes into a content strategy, then you can clearly see the difference from a content plan.
A quality strategy includes:
- Promotion goals
A description of the goal and objectives to be solved with a content strategy. It’s important, choose one main goal, so you can add several related goals. If there are many goals, you will just spray on everything at once, it will not bring the desired results.
- Target audience analysis
You need to include more than just a general description of the audience.
Divide it into segments to make it easier for you to form content for each potential customer. For example, you can use the persona method. It allows you to draw a collective image of each audience segment. When you understand who you are creating content for, it will be easier to generate it.
- Competitor analysis
This kind of analysis is necessary to set yourself apart from your competitors and build your strategy.
Every business is unique, if you just copy your competitor’s strategy, it’s far from certain that it will work for you.
But competitor analysis allows you to understand what content users react to better, what causes interest, and what topics and formats of content “catch” the audience. Moreover, you can see that your competitors don’t work and do not repeat their mistakes.
- The communication strategy
Communicating with your audience will help build trust and increase brand loyalty. Through content, the brand communicates with subscribers, answers questions of concern, learns people’s opinions, shares tips, etc.
- Content formats
These indicate what will be used to execute the strategy. For example, expert articles and posts, entertaining videos, engaging mechanics with polls. Anything that will pique users’ interest and draw them to the blog site or social networking site.
- Content release schedule
It’s important to find and prescribe that balance between 10 posts a day and publishing once every 3 months.
Furthermore, if the strategy is developed for several channels, you need to indicate the distribution of content between them. For example, you release an article on the site, then you need to release a post in social networks with an announcement.
At the same time you know that you release an article once a week on the blog on your site, and you publish posts in social networks every day.
- Performance Indicator (KPI).
This is necessary to track the effectiveness of the content strategy. The key figures are determined on the basis of the goals, they must be real and measurable.
Tools or Content Formats
One content format is not enough to keep the audience, different tools should be used. A strategy might include:
- Texts
One of the classic formats that can be used in different ways: posts, expert articles, cases. Texts are perceived well by different people. Users won’t read a blank canvas of text, so the text is diluted with images, tables, videos, and so on.
- Video
Recently, a very popular format. Social networks also contribute to the development of videos, promoting videos better.
Users are more comfortable watching a review or instruction than reading it because it takes less time. Videos can natively promote a product, show the features and benefits of a product, and work off objections that arise before a purchase.
Besides videos, content strategy can include live broadcasts, which increase audience loyalty and help build trust with subscribers.
- Images and photos
Anything that helps users see the product visually. This can also include infographics, it gives the opportunity to demonstrate complex products and services to consumers.
- Audio
The use of audio in content in podcast format is gaining popularity now. Such content won’t take up much of the subscribers’ time, and they can listen to the information and do their own thing, for example, when they’re driving in transport.
How a Content Strategy Affects Sales
A well-built strategy will bring in new customers. How does this happen? The fact is that by engaging with the content, the user passes through the stages of the sales funnel. Let’s see what works best at different stages.
Getting to Know the Brand
This is excellent work, blogs on the company website and accounts on social networks. That’s where the user learns a significant amount of information. They read the posts, study the information, and look at photos and videos.
It’s important to attract the attention of the potential client and arouse interest with useful content.
Involvement
The audience gets involved in the content and learns more not only about the product but also about the values of the company.
They want to get to know you and your product better. Live broadcasts, offering some free “plushies” that will introduce the product or company – checklists, guides, e-leaflets, etc. – work at this stage.
Decision Making
When the potential customer has learned the maximum amount of information about you, he decides whether to buy from you or not.
He should understand why he should buy your product. Personal content plays a positive role at this stage – a mailing to e-mail or in social networks. Also, case studies and reviews will help to make a decision to buy.
Client Retention
A potential client turned into a real one, but the work with him does not end. Also in blogs, on pages in social networks, the reference to this part of the audience through the content proceeds to lead to a repeated purchase.
Besides social networks and the blog, the site at this stage works on personalized mailings and live broadcasts to support those who have bought. For example, an explanation of some technical features or a “question-and-answer” broadcast from clients.