Demystifying Content Strategy: A Beginner’s Guide to Crafting Killer Content

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A Deep Dive into the world of content creation and the strategy you don’t see behind your favourite posts

Never-ending demands from your social media marketing can be draining. So get ahead of the game and leave yourself with more time to tend to the other areas of your business.

Let’s Talk About It!

If your social media is your brand’s online persona, then your content is the first impression that you make to your consumers. So it’s important that there is a plan to what you want to say. The day-to-day interactions you have with your consumers through your content is what influences their behaviour, and therefore influences the possibility of reaching your marketing objectives. 

Content creation is a 50/50 mix of creativity and science. In fact, the most amount of creativity you need to harness for social media marketing in this day in age, is for developing an action plan that helps you stand out from the crowd. That’s where your content strategy comes into play!

Whether you’re a budding blogger, an influencer guru, or a CPG brand looking to renovate your creative assets, buckle up because we’re about to demystify the magic behind content strategy.

Let’s break down the basics.

What Is Content Strategy?

Behind each individual piece of content you see in your day-to-day feed, there is a team of creatives armed with a developed strategy to support long-term marketing objectives. A content strategy provides the blueprint for planning, creating, distribution, and managing content. They are the roadmap through the content creation process, ensuring that every blog, story, and comment, serves the greater purpose and resonates with your consumers regardless of where they are coming from.

Whether you are looking to drive traffic, increase brand awareness, or nurture customer relationships, a well-rounded content strategy will attract and engage the consumer in a way that supports your business goals. Ultimately content strategies guide the entire lifecycle of your content to maximize its impact and achieve optimal results.

What You Need Before You Get Started

First rule of thumb: lay down a sturdy foundation. Every plan involves data-driven thinking that helps to pull all of the little pieces together until you have a perfectly curated strategy. 

Begin with clearly defining your brand’s goals and objectives. Your content strategy is only one piece of the overall marketing strategy, and having an understanding of what you’re wanting to achieve will help you identify what part your content plays.

Part of knowing your marketing objectives is having a deep understanding of your target audience. You need to know who your audience is and how your product fits into their life. What pain points can you address and what tone appeals to them most? The better you know your audience, the easier it will be to create content that speaks to them.

Next, familiarize yourself with your competitors and the content that already exists in the landscape of your industry. Analyzing your competitors allows you to identify gaps, opportunities, and unique angles that can set your content apart. 

Finally, know your limits. Budgeting, resources, man power, everything that would require you to maintain a consistent distribution of content. Quality reigns supreme and knowing your limits will help you develop a comprehensive content strategy that won’t put strain on your existing marketing efforts.

5 Things To Include In Your Content Strategy

#1: Brand Narrative

Regardless of what stage you are finding yourself in your business, it’s important to know your brand’s narrative. The story behind your brand and what makes it unique to other similar industry brands. Especially in the beginning of building credibility through content marketing, a strong brand narrative helps to establish trust amongst consumers. As e-commerce continues to grow and competition increases, authenticity is a vital aspect of connecting with consumers.

#2: Content Creation Process

You could argue that the content creation of your content strategy is the most important to have streamlined. The effectiveness of your workflow has a direct impact on the quality of content you are able to produce.

Establish a creative process for creating your brand’s content, including conducting research, gathering tools and materials, developing graphics, identifying key points of interest within the business, and cultivating a variety of formats.

#3: Content Types and visual assets

Curating a library of creative assets to pull from is one of the key steps in developing your content strategy. Producing high-quality visual content requires a plan of its own - understanding the content pillars you want to address, the aesthetic you want your content to have, having an action plan for repurposing content and knowing how to include user-generated content.

Building a content library to support your strategy takes time. That’s why it helps to work with a creative team to ensure that all of your content is consistently branded and works for what you are trying to achieve. The number one question to answer when it comes to creating your content is “does this suit my brand and its purpose?” One of the most effective ways to do this is by investing in our video blueprint workshop and advice from our creative professionals.

Psst.. since you’re looking, check out our Video Production and Photography services.

#4: A system for Content management

The content you create needs a system for its management, keeping it organized and distributed properly. 

Our biggest tip for content management is relying on content calendars. Content calendars are essential in ensuring there is a variety of content types created, and helps to streamline the workflow. Content calendars help managers identify key opportunities for social media posts, or website upgrades. If your brand has plans to develop a seasonal campaign, a content calendar would help not only manage the creation process of the campaign's creative assets, but also how they could be distributed for optimal results.

#5: Content Audit Strategy

Having a deep understanding for your brand’s business and marketing goals, help in knowing what key-performance indicators to measure when conducting an audit of your content. 

Digital content can be fickle, and there is always a new trend that demands the immediate attention of content marketers. So giving yourself a baseline to follow will help you identify what content works and what doesn’t, helping with future content creation.

This will be the area where you will also include your key-word research, and SEO optimization to help expand your content’s searchability.

Conclusion

There you have it folks, a crash course in the basics of content strategy. Remember that content creation is equal parts art and science, so use data-driven decision making when experimenting with different, creative approaches. 

Conquering the digital world is a lot easier with killer content and an aptitude for communication.

Need some inspiration? Check out some of the content we created with Miocen, as part of revamping their content strategy!

Are you ready to turn up the heat on your content? If you’re looking to gain a little more support with your content for social media marketing, look into our ‘done for you’ approach to Social Media Management.